"motley assortment of flamboyantly painted buses"

The tops of the buses were painted white (to show a level of agreement), otherwise the buses were variously colored, some flamboyantly like the "Cloud Bus."

"In 1969, Gaskin went on a speaking tour" The Caravan left San Francisco in October, 1970.

"A couple of years later, a 1,000-acre tract of land became available"

A couple of months later.

"for up to 10 years they had no running water and only limited battery-powered lighting"

The only households without running water as late as 1982 were those that did not desire it. Lines for the public water system began going into the ground in 1972 and were substantially completed by 1976. While most home electricity prior to 1984 was battery-storage, neither the central DC transmission system that recharged the batteries nor the availability of 12-volt lightbulbs and wiring were ever in short supply.

"the wheat berry winter when they were too poor to pay anyone to grind their wheat berries into flour and ate them, cooked but without seasoning, day in and day out."

The flour mill operated throughout the winter of 1972-73, producing not only wholewheat flour, but also white and yellow corn meal, soy flour, and buckwheat groats. The community kitchen, operating on a rotation system that meant a large number of inexperienced cooks challenged to come up with a diverse menu with no advance planning and relatively few ingredients, produced a number of novel uses for wheatberries -- biscuits, soup, gravy, chili, stew, burgers and burritos to name a few -- but not many appetizing enough to rate later cookbook mention. There was never a shortage of salt and pepper, or sorghum molasses, with which to flavor one's wheatberries, and wheatberries never made up an entire menu, although they occasionally could be found in more than one entree. However, it was from this mother of necessity that some genuine inventions -- wheat and peanut tempeh, soyburgers, okara soysage, seitan isolate, and ice bean -- were born. While there were real hardships, malnourishment was not one of them.

"decisions made by a board of directors that was partly elected and partly appointed by Gaskin"

Both the board of directors, and the Council of Elders which preceded it, were elected bodies. None who served in either body served by virtue of appointment. Appointments to administrative positions within The Farm were made by those bodies, or by study committees selected by those bodies. Stephen Gaskin had no more authority to appoint anyone to any job than did anyone else at The Farm. By 1977 most recruitment and lateral moves were supervised and approved by a personnel office.

"Mushroompeople, owned by Frank Michaels, who runs his company with the help of five part-time employees..."

Mushroompeople is a department of Summertown Food Company, one of the many divisions of the Second Foundation, a non-profit organization established to manage the communal purse of those Farm members who elected to remain collective during the "Changeover," returned after one or more experiments with non-collectivity, or joined the community in recent years and opted to live communally. Frank Michael is Mushroompeople's business manager. The business has no employees, but a number of other Second Foundation members also contribute their time. All of Mushroompeople's revenues go to support the charitable, educational, and religious activities of The Second Foundation, including the company's own work in hardwood forest revitalization.

"Floyd Hagler..."

... is actually Floyd Gaskin.

"their modest incomes aren¹t enough to cover savings for their retirement years."

Many Farm businesses have retirement plans in addition to contributing to Social Security. The Second Foundation, for instance, puts seven percent of corporate revenues into a pension savings plan for members, after Social Security payments and deductions.

Comments compiled by Albert Bates, The Farm Historical Society, 9/15/95.