Personal Adventure Blog and Professional Portfolio
After my scheduled stops, I drove around east Austin and came across a couple of other note-worthy sites. The first was a modern housing community development called, Agave, which consisted of eclectic, pastel colored houses of various shapes and sizes in this planned community!
Below is the Agave housing development sign at the bottom of the hill as you drive up into the community!
After my time at Community First! Village that morning, I went less than a few miles down the road to Green Gate Farm, across the street from an up-and-coming tiny house community, Village Farm. I had no idea about the Village Farm tiny house community, so that was a nice surprise I stumbled across! Unfortunately, I didn’t read the entire website for Green Gate Farm, only the tour page, which hadn’t been updated to reflect the tour connection to the farm stand seasonal hours.
I came across Community First! Village a couple of years ago while researching online, so I was really looking forward to visiting it in person! Knowing that this planned community for the chronically homeless sprouted from Mobile Loaves & Fishes, a christian-based mobile food service for the homeless, was very inspiring – so I made sure this was a pillar stop on my trip. And yet again, I had my mind and expectations blown sky high!
I stumbled on Mueller Park looking for a coffee shop with free WiFi while I killed some time before my next stop of the day. I initially pulled over at the food truck park, which I stopped at years ago if I remember correctly, but wanted somewhere that I could actually sit down, so I drove into the heart of Mueller Park!
The Community Gardens in Bastrop, Texas, really caught me off-guard because it was cooler than I expected, and that was even before I went through the free Aquaponics 101 class with Tyagaraja Welchthe (a.k.a Tyaga), resident permaculture and aquaponics practitioner, and owner of Sustainable Humane Earth in this business complex.
“At Community Gardens we have partnered with local business to provide quality local products and services to the community! We are an indoor/outdoor market place. We have a plant nursery, boutique, sustainable living systems such as aquaponics and a chicken coop. We also have a custom pool company, Landscape and custom home professionals to help with all your indoor and outdoor home needs! We want Community Gardens to be a unique and hands on experience for the entire family. We will be hosting many classes and events that will engage everyone from the smallest to the oldest and everyone in between. We look forward to serving you the next time you come by.” — Community Gardens Webpage
My final stop of the day was at the Roots Cooperative in Austin, Texas, for their open house and ‘meet and greet’ for those interested in upcoming available rooms.
“We are one of the 8 community cooperative here in Austin Texas. Our focus is on environmental sustainability and community building. We are governed through consensus process and highly value communication. Roots was founded by 10 activists out of the Occupy movement and takes a strong political and social stance for equality by gaining awareness of societal generated oppression and creating a new standard for non-hierarchical relationships.” – Fellowship of Intentional Communities Webpage
This is a view of the rental house turned underground cohousing community, which includes a couple of trailers for additional housing space. It’s tucked into an older neighborhood that is slowly being updated and gentrified with newer homes — a consistent trend in Austin.
