Agraria_Journal_Summer_2022

6 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2022 On March 16, 2022, we celebrated the fifth anniversary of our successful $655,000 bid on the 128-acre property that became known as Agraria. Over the last five years, we grounded ourselves on the land, started the long process of restoring healthy soil and water and found new ways to serve our community through youth education, donations of healthy food, re- skilling workshops and farmer trainings. We also continued the organization’s 80+ year tradition of conferences and publications to advance the thinking and practice of community. That work is ongoing, but it is also changing. Major infrastructure has been put in place, and funds — and an additional 10 acres of land — have been secured for the Mary’s Way bike path to Yellow Springs. Most significantly, The Nature Conservancy’s Jacoby Creek Restoration on 60 acres of the property has commenced. The re-meandering of Jacoby Creek is an opportunity to re-meander our organization to find its natural flow channel — the boundaries of our work. Our mission is, of course, broader than the farm; we aim to serve the whole community in pursuit of the wholeness of our community. But what is the right scale? ORGANIZATIONAL ROOTS Arthur E. Morgan founded our nonprofit to promote small communities and their contribution to society. Small communities, Morgan believed, were the foundation of democratic life and an ideal place to cultivate meaningful, cooperative, convivial economic and social relationships. He didn’t, however, advocate that they isolate themselves, but, as in the quote above, aim for “vital relations with the wide world.” Historically, we worked primarily at two scales: locally, within the village of Yellow Springs, and nationally as part of a larger network of community-oriented organizations. We are now carving out a third organizational space — our bioregion. Inspired by thinkers such as Stephanie Mills and Peter Berg, we are increasingly aware that both ecological functions and community challenges cross boundaries. Food production, ecosystem restoration and the protection of water supplies, to name a few, are more easily addressed at larger scales than that of a small community. As Dwight Eisenhower famously said, “If you can’t solve a problem, enlarge it.” This doesn’t negate the role of community, but sets the community in a slightly larger but still meaningful ecological context. So what is our bioregion? We are looking at an area that encompasses the upper Little Miami River watershed and portions of the upper and lower Great Miami watershed. It includes Greene, Montgomery, Clark and Clinton counties and the metropolitan areas of Dayton and Springfield. And our mission, simply, is to regenerate our bioregion. Like a person, a bioregion can only be healthy if all of its parts are cared for and contributing to a healthy and functioning whole. The question is, how can we best serve the communities in our bioregion that have been explicitly under- resourced and thus most in need of ecosystem restoration, economic revitalization and community regeneration? “A great community seeks excellence rather than size. It aims at full, well- proportioned life for its members, and vital relations with the wide world." ​—Arthur E. Morgan, 1940 Inhabiting Agraria’s Bioregional Vision BY MEGAN BACHMAN “Agraria is a farm, but it is also a model educational and cultural center that can serve as a nexus for learning, healing, and growing.”