MendoDragon

We are a collective of compassionate people who value living in community. We aspire to appreciate and enhance our home by working and playing together in harmony. We strive to understand and support each other through heartfelt communication and sharing wonderful, love-laced meals. Our vision is to serve as a model of cooperative living that actively resists the dominant paradigm of consumerist culture.

Our name, MendoDragon, comes from the Mondragon Collectives of the Basque Region of Spain where successful enterprises that benefit the whole community are cooperatively developed and collectively owned. MendoDragon is a cooperative housing model with a communal main house, garage/workshop, old barn, orchards and garden beds on two acres located in Boonville. Sharing purchase, development and maintenance costs offers an affordable alternative to single person households, as well as providing camaraderie and more hands to do the work. We envision a total of six personal “bed sheds” clustered around the main house and a future new common space and bath house.

Food is security and at MendoDragon we are serious about food, not only growing it but also preserving it, bartering with it and sharing it. To this end we are actively working on improving the food production systems we already have in place. Currently, we have a small flock of hens, an established orchard of apple and pear trees, a new orchard of 25 fruit and nut trees, vegetable and herb gardens and beehives. We host a monthly community potluck that is sometimes large, sometimes small, but always a lovely dinner party.

MendoDragon is affiliated with Cloud Forest Institute, a 501 (c3) educational non-profit. CFI was established in 1996 to encourage communities in the temperate forests of Northern California and the cloud forests of Ecuador to re-establish balance within our ecological systems. CFI serves as fiscal sponsor for other non-profits and produces educational programs ranging from yoga retreats in Ecuador to mycology workshops in Boonville.

Additional infrastructure we plan to develop includes: a cob oven, more veggie and medicinal herb gardens, a ceremonial fire circle, grey water and solar energy systems. We also envision renovating the old redwood barn into workshop spaces. While there is a vision, MendoDragon is a canvas waiting for co-creation, a community calling out to conscientious collaborators.