Newsletter—Meet our Member Eric Hungerman and Catch Us on the News!
Reclaiming Community — A member story from Eric Hungerman
Eric Hungerman has lived in four different places over the past ten years. He's met his neighbors, exchanged pleasantries, waved from the driveway. But he'll be the first to tell you: that's not community.
"I wouldn't feel comfortable going out there and asking them for help," he says. And that gap — between proximity and genuine connection — is exactly what led him to Burns Village & Farm.
Eric’s family — Farm building, Summer 1965
To understand why Eric cares so deeply about this, you have to go back a few generations. His mother's family were Polish farmers who immigrated to Michigan in the 1860s, settling in good farming country and building their own houses. What strikes Eric most, looking back, is how they worked: when harvest time came, all the neighbors came over and worked one piece of land together, then moved to the next.
"They were living in a very cooperative fashion that made life easier," he says, "even though life must have been really hard back then."
Something changed between that generation and the next, and again between that one and his. Eric raised his own kids in suburban California, struggling to get them outside, to pull them away from screens, to connect them to neighbors whose names they barely knew. He sees it as a pattern — a slow drift across American life for over a century.
Eric and family — Watering flowers with Grandma, Spring 1966
"Each generation, I see community dropping and cooperation dropping. And I'm ready to go the other direction."
That's what BVF means to him. He imagines waking up, walking out his front door at sunrise, heading to the common house — a workout, a conversation, whatever the day brings. "Your house is private," he says, "but if you walk out your front door, you're in community."
He's equally eager for the farm. Eric already grows vegetables and herbs in his suburban backyard — snipping fresh parsley straight into the pot, no transport, no wondering where it's been. He looks forward to doing that at real scale, the way his great-grandparents did: food grown for the people right next to you.
"Fresh out of the ground — not cut, not stored, not transported. That's the way to live."
That's the thing about community, when it's working: it makes you more alive. Eric has seen what it looks like when it's gone. He's come to BVF to help build it back.
Burns Village & Farm Hits the Airwaves
Something fun happened recently: we turned on the evening news and saw ourselves!
Burns Village & Farm was featured on WKRN Channel 2, Nashville's ABC affiliate, as part of a neighborhood news segment spotlighting our vision for a community built around a working farm. John and Rebecca sat down with the station to talk about what's at the heart of this project — connection, cooperation, resilience, and a way of living that brings people closer to each other and to the land.
There's something surreal and wonderful about hearing your own dream described back to you on the evening news. Middle Tennessee is paying attention, and that feels like a good sign.
The segment also offered a glimpse of the early neighborhood plans and touched on the growing appetite for community-centered living across the region. We're not alone in wanting something different — and it's exciting to be part of a wider conversation about what home can look like.
If you're curious about what we're building, we'd love to meet you in person. Come to an upcoming site visit or community gathering and see it for yourself.