Vietnam, Protest, and Counterculture 493a group of artists formed “Drop City,” and built their own “civilization” on a
6-acre goat farm with creative domes made of scraps from the junkyard. One
of the best-known communes was the Hog Farm in southern California where
a group of hippies got use of land and a house in exchange for taking care of
the owner’s pigs. One of the residents there—they had no official leaders—
was Hugh Romney, better known as Wavy Gravy, who opened the Woodstock
Festival with the words, “what we have in mind in breakfast in bed for
400,000!” Outside of Taos, New Mexico, countercultural youth formed the
New Buffalo commune, and Taos itself became an attraction for hippies, but
also, ironically, “undesirables” who were just looking for a place to crash or
hideout, and did not do their share of the work. In New England, communes
also began to appear—the Rennaissance Community in western Massachusetts,
for instance, and Total Loss Farm, a site established by journalists escaping the
grind of daily life in Vermont and source for a best-selling book by Raymond
Mungo.
Some communal experiments had a spiritual purpose. Many hippies were
not into the hippie scene and began the “Jesus Movement,” born-again
Christians who dressed like hippies but did not practice traditional religion
and often diverted from standard views on issues like sex or drug use. Indeed
“free love” was common in many shared communities, a rejection of the idea
that marriage was a Capitalist ritual in which women were “property” and
people were inhibited in enjoying themselves and finding fulfillment. In
Tennessee, a group of around 300 hippies followed Stephen Gaskin, a Marine
combat veteran, to start The Farm, perhaps the longest-lasting commune [it still
exists today and its members were among the first to arrive in New Orleans
to offer aid after Hurricane Katrina in 2005]. Gaskins got the idea for The
Farm while tripping on LSD and he offered talks on Buddha, Jesus, or what-
ever spiritual ideas sprang to mind. Gaskin’s purpose for The Farm was to
create a higher consciousness, become self-sufficient, keep the environment
clean, and enjoy a “flamboyant hippie lifestyle.” It stressed individual expres-
sion, freedom, instead of social obligations, conformity. It did not reject
Capitalism, however. Unlike other communes, The Farm had its own book
publishing business, sold pickles and syrup with the “Old Beatnik” label, and
even sold Geiger counters for people to measure radiation leaks at nearby
nuclear power plants. The Farm’s members even got along with the local
police, though that did not prevent the sheriff from arresting Gaskins when