a018  2344  19 Jun 83
PM-Another Look: Commune Life, Bjt,650
Twenty Years of Change in Flower Children's Commune
Eds: 'Huw' is cq in 6th graf.
Laserphoto NY15
    DAVENPORT, Wash. (AP) - The flower children who two decades ago
founded Tolstoy Farm are entering their late 30s now, are married,
with kids, and don't believe in free love anymore.
    Like many quests for utopia, the commune north of Davenport, in the
heart of eastern Washington wheat country, has fallen short of its
original ideals, some residents said recently.
    Shared living quarters have given way to private homes with a
slightly middle-class flavor.
    Government by consensus remains intact and business meetings usually
follow a potluck dinner and volleyball game.
    Residents are beginning to take jobs in the outside community, and
the farm now has a shortage of children willing to carry on their
parents' legacy.
    The farm was started in 1963 by a handful of people who followed the
dream of Huw ''Piper'' Williams, an Edwall, Wash., farm boy they met
on a peace march in Washington, D.C.
    Williams was inspired by novelist and social theorist Leo Tolstoy,
who wrote of living in harmony with the land in loving cooperation
with all humankind. Williams' parents and grandparents loaned him the
land until he could buy it.
    ''To find new answers, you need experimenters. That's what all young
people are good at. We didn't have anything, but we shared it,'' said
Williams, now 40.
    Founders had hoped for no bills, no taxes and no need for money.
Everyone was to work for the good of everyone else. Love was to be
free and shared. Open marriages were encouraged.
    In the early days, 20 to 30 people lived on $100 a month. The
population grew to about 60 people and, at its peak, the farm ran a
state-approved school staffed with resident teachers.
    Pat Reed estimated that the average age of farm members was 18 when
she arrived 17 years ago. Today, it's 35, she said.
    Last year, she paid $58 in taxes on her home, plus her share of the
$270 assessment on community land. She has no telephone or utility
bills, and kerosene lighting cost $20. She received an income tax
rebate for using solar power.
    The farm's communal spirit suffered a major blow when the group's
living quarters burned in the late 1960s. Farm lore says the arsonist
was an angry visitor. The blaze led to a move toward single-family
dwellings, and residents began to value their privacy.
    ''I'd be walking around and see someone wearing my clothes. I'd come
home from (teaching) school and find (a visitor) drinking my coffee
and typing on my typewriter. Finally, I said, 'Hey! Out!' '' said Ms.
Reed, 38.
    People would pledge time and money for community projects, then show
up empty-handed or not at all. ''I finally decided to work toward
finishing our own household,'' said Rico Reed, Pat's ex-husband and
now her neighbor at the farm.
    Some blame the isolation of rural life for the failure of many early
farm marriages. Others fault the concept of free love. Monogamy is
now preferred.
    Reed lost his wife to another man after living as a threesome
failed.
    Ms. Reed and her lover stayed at the commune, but the farm's
isolation made Reed's search for another mate difficult. ''I dated
about 50 women from Spokane, once each,'' he said.
    He finally met and married Terri, 24, after she wrote to Tolstoy
Farm for information.
    ''Most of us found out monogamous relationships are more satisfying
in the long run,'' Williams said.
    Reed recently cut his hair and became active in Lincoln County's
Democratic Party. He spends a third of his income on politics and
community projects.
    Williams left a decade ago, but on visits still takes pride in the
community's orchards.
    ''We're learning to replant the forests, like it was in the Garden
of Eden,'' he said.
    
ap-ny-06-20 0243EDT
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