David and Karen Friedman request membership:
David is a 52 year old business owner with a deep interest in becoming involved with earth-friendly businesses. His business skills are apparent through the success he has met as owner and founder of Innovative Packaging, Inc. He’d like to apply these skills to helping the community connect to business opportunities that would be environmentally based.
Karen is a 47 year old first grade teacher. She works in an underprivileged community. The challenges she has faced have made her more aware of issues within our society and given her the opportunities to help children and their parents through these issues. She has gathered families for hikes, student performances and parent meetings. She loves helping parents solve problems with their kids and build on their parenting skills. Karen also enjoys nurturing children’s curiosity and exploration. She has taught/guided children from the age of four to fourteen.
Avi, our 21 year old son, is a rising senior at Virginia Tech, majoring in mechanical engineering. He does research for a professor and works at Techsburg, an engineering design company. He enjoys hiking, fire making, rock climbing, being active constantly.
Marissa, our 19 year old daughter, will be a sophomore at the University of VA in August. She is majoring in Chemistry, and shows an interest in food science, the environment and helping people connect to the environment. She enjoys soccer, rain and being as active and productive as possible.
Zachary is our 17 year old son. He will be a senior in high school in August. He enjoys the outdoors, art, math, music, and sports.
Brianna, our 15 year old daughter, will be a high school sophomore in August. She enjoys the outdoors, animals, art, gymnastics, robotics, soccer, socializing, and being busy all the time.
David and I met in a community setting almost 30 years ago with thoughts of living closer to the land within a community. We did not choose to stay because Karen had not gone to college yet and David felt an obligation to his family.
Time has gone by without our dream of being part of a community fulfilled. Now, we see an unstable economy, unstable weather, unstable governments throughout the world, unreliable systems in general. We have an opportunity now to move toward becoming self sufficient within a community. Our children are older and have all shown interest in living life. That is, to live in such a way that respects the earth and humanity.
We have always dreamt of becoming self-sufficient within a community and learning and sharing skills towards that goal. About four and a half years ago we along with friends began working together towards this project. For us this includes offering food, camaraderie, spirituality, and education.
We would like to help develop a primitive skills school, an organic community supported farm, and move in the direction of becoming self-sufficient within Union Acres. We purchased land adjacent to Union Acres for the purpose of shared organic farming.
Why would we move? We both have good jobs. Our kids are happy in Baltimore County.
Each one of us in our family is excited about the possibility of moving to this area. We look forward to less congestion, more green, and cleaner air and water. We also look forward to building new friendships and living for a community rather than just in a community.
During this period we attempted to create our own community. However, we realized through the needs (lack of skills & funding) of our virtual community that we could only be successful with this in an established community with similar goals.
We also have discovered that some of you prefer to use fewer county-run utilities and are driven to become more self-sufficient.
Time Frame:
We are interested in applying for membership to Union Acres. We may move here as soon as December of 2012. However, David’s father is not in the best shape and needs a lot of support. Although our high school children are excited about the opportunity to move here, moving at the end of a school year would make for an easier transition. We look forward to moving to Union Acres and working towards a more self sufficient way of life.
