By Sheila McLaughlin
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Mary Lu Lageman runs the organic farm at Grailville, the women's spiritual center in Clermont County. (Steven M. Herppich photo) | ZOOM |

MIAMI TWP. - Mary Lu Lageman has watched the six-figure sprawl creep around her 300-acre home at Grailville in the 12 years she's run the organic farm at the women's spiritual center on O'Bannonville Road.

To the west, just inside Loveland, houses priced from $380,000 to $700,000 are under way in a new subdivision called Bares Creek. Due south, a community of 150 swank homes and townhouses with commercial buildings are planned for a historic homestead.

"As this land becomes more valuable in the marketplace, it (also) becomes more valuable as greenspace. We want to make the land more productive for people who want to live here," Lageman said.

For Grailville, an environmental and educational retreat center, that means taking a leap into the latest wave of communal living - an ecovillage.

Originating in Denmark decades ago, the concept of clustered living with emphasis on self-sufficiency and conservation began to spread in the United States about a decade ago. According to Global Ecovillage Network, more than 60 ecovillages have popped up across the nation, including one established 20 years ago in Price Hill.

A dozen women already live in the existing buildings at Grailville. But members now are talking about opening up the Clermont County property to families with children, singles and couples - young and old.

Members of Grailville have been talking about it for a couple of years, but they recently put out flyers at a nearby Montessori school to gauge interest. A small informational meeting followed last month, drawing a few outside the Grailville fold, and more are planned.

They say building an ecovillage fits in with Grailville's mission. The center is operated by The Grail, an international movement of women "committed to spiritual search, social action, ecological sustainability and the release of women's creative energy throughout the world."

The goal is to have a group of up to 40 people living off the land, and possibly running their own businesses, in a small settlement of clustered buildings where residents would care for each other and environmentally sensitive practices would be the norm. How new residents would buy into the settlement and other financing issues haven't been decided.

People who want a break from the rat race and to conserve the earth's resources have latched onto similar communities in cities and towns across the country, many of them in urban settings.

One of the first in the United States, The Farm, in south central Tennessee, started out as a hippie movement, nearly fell apart over distrust of its leader, then reorganized in the early 1990s as a rustic training center for ecovillages.

An ecovillage on 176 acres overlooking Ithaca, N.Y., established more than a decade ago and one of the first of its kind in the country, has become a model because of its success.

Building started at the Ecovillage at Ithaca in 1995 after years of planning, and about 170 people, including 50 children, already live in two housing clusters. Construction of a third cluster could begin sometime next year.

Homes are designed and built with the environment in mind, using recycled and natural materials whenever possible. Heat comes from solar energy. Residents raise much of their food organically, run businesses from their homes, make decisions together, share chores and some meals and check on each other. They share their know-how with others in educational programs.

"It feels like a very wonderful safe place where most of us plan to spend the rest of our lives," said Liz Walker, the ecovillage's director and one of its first residents.

"It's a way of living out our ideals in that many of us would like to model a more environmentally sound way of living compared to the mainstream culture."

The concept is nothing new to this area, where about 10 households on Enright Avenue in East Price Hill formed a loose-knit urban ecovillage called Imago that has existed for two decades. In addition, Cincinnati EcoVillage, another small group formed about a year ago, has talked about searching for land. The Grailville project would be the first here to emerge in a suburban, but somewhat country, setting, built from the ground up.

State Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Miami Township, said cluster housing is nothing new in the area, where communities of patio homes have sprung up all over.

"This is just a different twist on cluster housing," she said. "If there are people who want to live in that lifestyle, I think that Grailville provides the right environment for this experiment to occur."

Bill Cahalan, a 58-year-old psychologist who met his wife, Deborah Jordan, at Imago and bought a two-bedroom house there in 1988, is interested in the Grailville project. The couple wants a more rural setting. But they have to be sure it's right for everyone in the family.

The couple have a 9-year-old son. They don't want him to feel isolated, so they want assurances that other families with children will move in before they commit.

The ecovillage lifestyle is important to Cahalan. A Quaker, he also is on the board of Greenfire, a small ecovillage established by the religious sect on 74 acres near Athens, Ohio.

"I'm spurred on right now by the fact that I'm watching this administration we've got steadily and relentlessly unraveling every environmental regulation ever made," said Cahalan.

At least four others have expressed interest in building and moving to an ecovillage at Grailville - one of them Janet Kalven, who helped settle what started out in 1944 as a leadership center for Catholic women.

Along with about seven other "city" women, Kalven, a native of Chicago, planted and harvested corn, wheat and hay; milked cows; raised chickens, sheep and bees; milled grain; and baked wheat bread at Grailville while publishing booklets and holding classes to foster free-thinking in women across the country.

Now 90, she was forced by age a year ago to move off the pristine farmland she has called home off and on for 49 years. The steps in the cluster of simple, white buildings became too tough for her to climb.

She would move back in a minute if the proposed ecovillage can provide the type of single-story housing she needs, she said.

She thinks interest will spread for the same reason that attracts people to Grailville now for retreats, meetings and classes.

"The peace, the spirituality, the closeness to the land - that's what draws people," she said.

Lageman admits that it could be years before construction of the ecovillage could start at Grailville. She's pinpointed 17 different sites that would be right for a housing cluster among the acres of pastures, forests, organic gardens and hiking trails.

"It's going to be a lot of work. But, I think it's really going to happen," Lageman said. "We have to find the right people."

For information about the proposed ecovillage at Grailville, call Mary Lu Lageman, 683-2340.

E-mail smclaughlin@enquirer.com