Yearly Archives: 2025

In Remembrance

Michael Compton Collins October 16, 1960 - July 29, 2025 It is with sadness that we note the passing of our friend and neighbor Mike Collins who was killed in an accident on July 29 while assisting a stranded motorist.Many knew Mike as the Co-founder and Executive Director of American Climate Partners (ACP), a charitable organization working since 2006 "to design, create, and manage projects, programs, and businesses which help rural America become more resilient in the face of climate change, loss of biodiversity, pollution, and disease,”  according to its website.Mike was an idea man known for his energy, vision and commitment to the environmental causes he championed. He was also on the ground doing the day-to-day hard work of cleaning rivers, improving soil health, and restoring habitats throughout…

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Happy Anniversary to Us!

Celebrating 50 years of memories and milestones. To real estate developer Gilbert Edwards, farm life offered a wonderful way of life, but impractical for him to try to manage on his own.  He gave up on his yearning to live on a farm, but couldn’t stop thinking about others who, like him, desired a country life without the sole responsibility of managing a large working farm.  Out of that thinking came the concept of Farmcolony, a master-planned housing community with a working farm as its focus rather than the traditional amenities typically found in residential developments like a golf course or swimming pool or tennis courts.Edwards was ahead of his time in real estate development. With the steady decline in the number of acres being used for farming each…

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Should the Horse Boarding Amenity Go or Remain

Should the horse boarding amenity go or remain? That is the question. The horse boarding facilities at Farmcolony “are not safe for horses or humans,” according to Farmcolony Vice President Becky Lorenzo who raised her concerns over the safety of our horse boarding facilities in a January Board meeting.  She is speaking from experience with 30+ years owning and managing boarding facilities. In response, the Board of Directors formed an ad hoc committee to review current conditions in our animal boarding facilities and to make recommendations to the Board on any necessary improvements. Will Farmcolony continue to offer a horse boarding amenity or will that long-held amenity be removed?  If the horse boarding amenity is to remain, how do we ensure minimum safety standards in the horse boarding facilities? …

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How to Get Along in an HOA

A Guide to Peaceful Living Homeowners’ Associations are notorious breeding grounds for hostility and disagreement.  Comedians make jokes about it.  Advice columnists offer tips on how to manage it.  Lawyers make big bucks trying to resolve it.  Why are HOAs so ripe for conflict and adversity?  Simply put, HOAs are made up of people and people sometimes have a hard time getting along, and the larger the group or the more diverse the worldviews, the harder it can be.  As community consultant Diana Leafe Christian reports in her book on communities, Creating a Life Together, 90 percent of intentional communities fail—in large part because of conflict.  An intentional community is a group of people, like us, who have chosen to share resources, in our case, a farm.  As a community…

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