Back winding roads and down a steep rocky drive in a hollow north of Lafayette, Tenn. there’s a place Dan and Mary Rufener and their seven kids call home.
There’s no electricity, no phone, no plumbing, no radio, no television.
The Rufeners came to Macon County from Homer, Alaska, when they decided to return to their Southern roots. An interest in communal living led them to Pennsylvania for a while, then to “The Farm” in Middle Tennessee, and then to a group of people they’d heard about who wanted to start a community in Clearwater, near Lafayette.
What they found was rolling hills and 11 acres for sale in a hollow that had what Dan was looking for· a spring on the hill, a clear creek, a barn and a house with a good roof.
They bought the place and set about creating a paradise for their children.
With a belief in children’s rights to look at things as children and to speak their minds, the Rufener kids attend home school until they choose to enter the school system. The oldest three, Meadow, 15, Danielle, 14, and Sadie, 12, did that last year. The younger four, April, 9, Logan, 7, Ina Rosa, 3, and Paula, 1, spend four hours a day with Mary learning at home.
Dan and Mary hope to impress their children with values of family, natural food and holistic living, so that when they enter the institutionalized educational system, they’ll be of their own mind and better able to withstand peer pressure.
