They Built It. No One Came.

This was a great story. Thanks for telling us about these guys. I was impressed by their perseverance over decades despite lack of validation by others. What a contrast to today's youth, who freak out if they don't get enough "likes" on a Facebook page.

It brought to mind the commune I went to back in the 1970's, Twin Oaks in Virginia. I believe it is still there. Twin Oaks was great for people who wanted a rural commune where the emphasis is on working the land and creating little farm industries, with no weird spiritual aspects, no weird sexual aspects, no dominating leaders, just a group who rotate the work to be done so there is sufficient leisure time to enjoy nature and the countryside.

I don't know what's happening there now but at the time, Twin Oaks seemed to have figured out how to avoid the downfalls of so many other communes.

If I am reading the story correctly this is a male only enterprise?..Well do what you will with your own land but I think you could progress further by not banning half of the human race..

I think it is a shame that after 20 years there must still be hard feelings towards me. I was brother Adam Zinzendorf. I lived there from '95 to '96 when it was called Christiansbrun Cloister. I noticed no mention was even made of me, the person who made 18 leaded windows for the one building that we were going to use as the main hall. I bear no ill will towards either Johannes or Christian (Zephram now). I hope they continue to live a harmonious life with their animals and mother earth.

My fourth (or fifth) great-grandfather was named Johannes, staunch Lutherans migrating from a little town on the Rhine, because his job had been lost by a change of ownership of the Rhineland Pfalz, and the jobs were all suddenly Catholic. His life in Pennsylvania was on farmland outside the town of Reading. Trying to recreate those times is pretty much a guaranteed failure, though I found myself flirting with those ideas in the late '60s. Making a new society in the ruins of the present one doesn't work by going back to where we were.

Great story - they sounds like very interesting people. Despite not realizing some of their dreams, they lead and have led a wonderful life. Gotta love the freedom of the United States.

I really enjoyed this article. I thought Green did a great job drawing out the two men and their journey following their dream, picking out the details that seemed most important about them. I loved that they had a big dream, jumped in, and tried to figure it out along the way. It's not easy to do that, especially when others thought they were foolish, but there's a lot to be said about their character as they continued to figure out their dream as the years went by, reinventing it (and themselves) as necessary. The story also made me think about how challenging it is to live your life when others see you as "different." There often is not a lot of compassion for people who choose different paths from the status quo. Thank you for telling their story - it was well worth reading.

The most interesting aspect of this article was the locale, Pitman, PA. It hardly exists. It was the birthplace of my grandfather and home of the cemetery where at lest three generations of my mother's family are buried. My grandfather's eleven brothers were all carpenters; he decided to become a farmer and bought acreage in an adjacent valley in Reinerton, just east of Tower City. My mother said they very seldom visited Pitman; a round-trip over the mountain and back by horse-drawn wagon took an entire day. It doesn't sound like the locals have changed. I've always found them warm, friendly and generous as evidenced by the quilt story. My mother remains a quilter to this day, a talent unfortunately not inherited by any of my sisters.

Poignant. Odd, eccentric, naive, whatever they may be, these gentle souls did their best with good hearts and their own sweat - no doubt blood and tears too. I wish them happiness, peace, and strength to continue living as their faith and ethic led them.

Farming is grossly sentimentalized by our culture. Nothing is easier than to get your hands on a patch of land and accumulate a bunch of animals. If you did not grow up in the life, your planning for your needs will be wildly unrealistic.
And the bane of your existence will be other people's shallow enthusiasm for a so-called simple life.
Just one tip: 63 acres is not enough for cattle, sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese, unless you have 2 of each, and then you're not a farm, you're a petting zoo.

They may learned basic economics the hard way or they may not. Let's hope they have and at the same time find a way to combine the simple life with better decision-making.

Having lived at Sirius intentional community in MA for seven years, which is now bursting at the seams with young people wanting to learn how to grow organic gardens using the permaculture model, how to build energy-efficient structures harnessing solar and wind power, how to make what is needed, and how to communicate so living closely together functions smoothly, I imagine that having this article published in the NYT will bring similarly enthusiastic people to this beautiful piece of land - the dream isn't over yet!

The real Zinzendorf should be called an American Founder. His movement, the Unitas Fratrum or Moravians, got started in eastern Germany in the middle of the 18th century, where the man was a count, but he and his movement evangelized all over what became the Western World, taking a large role in the origins of Methodism and the American Great Awakening, and founding racially integrated communities like Bethlehem in Pennsylvania and Wachovia in North Carolina. Moravian churches are still around, but it's kind of a pity an idea so American is now so irredeemably passé.

Bless these guys! I would love to see what our driven and drained country would be if it were populated mostly by people like these men.

What a perfect setting for a writers' retreat... I wonder if they would consider that for the next incarnation.

The most important is to have a vision, mission and love for all creatures on this earth ..

All cults need charismatic leaders. These guys are neither.

The American dream! These two hardworking visionaries explored a part of the country they were unfamiliar with, took a chance, and transformed a landscape. They envisioned sharing their beautiful property with others all while improving it, being good neighbors, and preserving the culture of the area. Bravo!

Now that this article has been published, the word is out on these two extraordinary men. If they are still interested in opening up their home to others, they may consider posting their place on Air B&B or even bartering one of their cottages to a single mother in the area who is on a tight budget.

But, I encourage them to be careful about what they think they want. So far, it sounds like they have avoided being sued. This isn't always the case for generous private property owners who are welcoming to the public (especially property owners who have ponds and animals). I hope they have proper and adequate insurance.

I enjoyed this article. Thank you NYT!

Their big mistake was that they think a shared utopia exists. It doesn't as everyone's idea of utopia is different from everyone else's.

As long as they happy, more power to them.

What an amazing story of courage & perseverance. These two human beings answered a sacred calling. It didn't evolve the way they hoped it would but they kept going. I hope the years to come are kind to them and the animals that they care for and who care for them. God bless them.

I think most of the comments miss the point - here is a wonderful example of how life leads you down a path but it changes as you grow and evolve; that subscribing to ideals for their own sake allows you to be flexible and resilient when life throws you curve balls. this is the true meaning of 'following your passion,' most of the time you follow a dream because it is something you love to do, you have a vision, and it would be painful to do anything else. That and a sense of humor will get you far and lead to a successful life, independent of material possessions.

(For context, see related article in this section on the rich middle age deadheads spending thousands of dollars trying to reclaim the timeless ideals of youth.)

Being different and trying to live out side the old box is fine to a point......but lets face it...lofty ideas are great but not without LOTS of research. I think they both tend to live in a cloud..which again is fine, but don't expect a lot of others to live within that limited outlook....beautiful property they have though...

I find this a delightful story, as I love and applaud people's interest in creating unique communities or housing communities, whether they be spiritual, or earthy, practical or artistic, or all these.

As I read the story of these men, I tend to think that the community they wished to create, bears most resemblance to certain Pagan communities, such as the "Heathen" or Asatru, or the Celtic Reconstructionists, at least in the emphasis on traditional clothing and tools, as well as the spiritual/pagan beliefs in land spirits (Heathens would call them Wights or Landvaettir). Not all Heathen people are liberal, and many don't consider themselves Pagan, but they do enjoy engaging in traditions of the Norse/Germanic/Celtic peoples, and they believe in a whole array of deities and land and water spirits. Many value living close to the land, and engaging in work on the land. More so than many of the more liberal and urban Pagans. I'll bet if these two men connected with such communities they could find friends!

Why "Colonial-era tools?" Why not Stone Age tools, or whatever were homo sapiens' first known tools? Why pretend to eschew progress, or civilization, or whatever, and then take advantage of mankind's circa 18th-century advances?

What a great story of the American dream. My heart ached with joy, sadness and the knowing that comes to so many of trying to attain your dreams. Haunting and wonderful.

I went. This was almost a decade ago, and I'd read that these fellows were offering an artist's residency. I was working on a novel. That they might be weird didn't deter me. I also wasn't put off by the idea of hard work: I had visions of myself as Levin in Anna Karenina scything the hay. I applied, they accepted me, and I let them know when I'd be arriving.

But this wasn't Yaddo, with its cozy mansion, kind staff, and nametagged lunch pails lined up for the visitors at breakfast. When I showed up, the brothers weren't there. No one was, except a rather dour man who I thought of as Amish (see story). Buzzards were circling high above, and the property seemed composed of a dozen dilapidated buildings. I visited the (rather nice) outhouse, and thought of where the most common black widow bites happen (your junk).

When they finally arrived, Johannes showed me my cabin: It consisted of a single tiny room with a musty bed draped in cobwebs. In one of the top corners, I saw a suspiciously moving black mass. I delicately poked it with my umbrella, and a dozen hornets flew out.

I moved in with the dour Amish dude for the night.

That evening, some Radical Faeries arrived. We ate marijuana brownies, put on homespun housedresses and poke bonnets, and had what I can't quite recall but assume was an amazing time. But in the morning they all left, and I fled too.

They're great guys. I so wish their idea had worked. But it seemed a bit underdeveloped, at least to this city slicker.

They could try Airbnb. Does one notice a major detail? Not a single woman is involved. It probably explains some of the lack of interest.

'.....people thought we were weird.' Yep, that pretty much sums it up.

Lots of things that seem popular fail big-time in reality when some small-time person tries it without their meme being carried by a PR firm of some sort. I know, I'm in media. Everything you believe in has been approved and sanctioned... literally incredibly in most cases.

Some years ago, my husband, and I went to this farm and met one of the men. My husband taught a landscape painting class at Tyler School of Art, and took his students to nearby Pottsville to draw the coal breaker. We took many trips in Pennsylvania, exploring small towns and villages. On one such trip, we came upon Hepler's Grove, a little campground with adorable cottages. I took pictures of Hepler's Grove, and used them in a series of collages. A family was at one of the cottages (grandparents and two little girls). They invited us in for Shoo Fly Pie. During the course of the conversation, the woman mentioned the cult group down the road who was farming in an old-fashioned way. The manner in which she said it, with a hint of trepidation in her voice, struck our imagination. We drove there and met one of the men in this story. I was wearing sandals, and one of their rare English pigs came running down the hill and nipped my toes. That was
quite a surprise.

Where the good brothers went completely off-the-tracks was in not understanding that hippies, past and present, live in mortal fear of hard work.

Call me a cockeyed optimist if you like, but I think it would be a lovely thing if Johannes and Zephram’s lifetime of selfless devotion to spirituality and historical preservation could eventually be made over into a kind of refuge home for elderly liberals, progressives, anarchists and day-dream-believers worn out from a lifetime of devoting themselves to hopeless causes like a single-payer health care system, limitations on corporate financing of political campaigns, free college educations and the establishment of a Palestinian state;
all the while exhibiting a fervent belief in the saintliness of Elizabeth Warren.

I view it as serving as a homeless shelter for elderly liberals in reduced circumstances, a
permanent monument to American political folly of the past 50 years and a place that schoolkids from all over the country could visit to find out what happens to people who persist in believing in fairy tales. There shouldn’t be any need for government funding. Recognizing the great debt they owe to liberals for antagonizing the American people in ways that have contributed mightily to the preservation of traditional American values, conservatives are certain to be enthusiastic supporters of this effort.

To get the thing off to a rousing start, I hereby pledge to contribute $500. in Monopoly money to the fundraising drive.

Too bad they didn't allow themselves to post on cohousingusa.com. It would have given them traction.

I admire your determination but question your motivation, not that I feel any hidden agenda just a naivete that seems so completely foreign to the world as it has evolved. My sense is there is a better way to go about bringing acceptance and more importantly change, but then there is little doubt I am not the only person who has offered this criticism.

While it may not be a lonely place and as mentioned is probably jumbled, there is a feeling of resignation to failure which is quite a letdown to the energy and enthusiasm so apparent in the rest of the article. Changing your name may suit your mood at the time, but it certainly can't change who you are and who you are strikes me as pretty decent.

You are both relatively young and should have at least another decade of strength in which to accomplish the sort of fraternity/sorority you appear to seek.

Don't give up.

Their efforts fell victim to the same philosophical flaw that doomed the Shakers and numbers of other cults: lack of procreation to keep the movement going, relying solely on conversions of adults to their cause (which admittedly was a hard life). The Catholic religion has succeeded for all these years, despite having a non-procreative clergy that depends upon recruiting of adults for continuation, by permitting (yea, mightily fostering) procreation by the non-clergy to provide an on-going crop of potential recruits.