Newsletter June 2026
Building a community that enjoys a rich quality of life for all ages, brings a more equitable society, and a harmonious and responsible relationship with the natural world.
The last month and half have been full of events and visitors pretty much every weekend and sometimes during the week too! June will be a bit quieter but we’re still looking forward to a few events and a few visitors.
Upcoming Events
In an attempt to not fill your inbox with unwanted emails, we don’t send out reminders throughout the month. If you would like to receive email reminders before each event, email tcfamilycoop@gmail.com and say “sign me up for reminders.” You can specify if you only want reminders about online events and not in-person events.
June Potluck - Saturday, June 13 5:00-7:00pm
Join us for good food and good company! We’ll provide a vegetarian main dish, drinks, and dishes. Bring your kids, bring your friends, we can’t wait to see you! Use this link to RSVP.
June Online Drop-In - Wednesday, June 24 12:00-12:45pm
A time to drop in and ask a question or just say hi. Life can be busy but this is an easy, informal opportunity to connect. No need to register ahead of time, just put this link on your calendar and show up.
Cohousing Picnic - Saturday, July 18 3:00-6:00pm
Learn about cohousing and hear from some local communities that are forming or adding members. Enjoy conversation, face painting, games, a playground and giant bubble making. This picnic is hosted by CohousingMN and Twin Cities Family Cooperative. All are invited! Use this link to RSVP.
July Online Drop-In - Wednesday, July 29 12:00-12:45pm
Check our website or facebook page for events in the coming months. If you can't make it to these events and you want to connect, email tcfamilycoop@gmail.com. We’d be happy to connect in person or online.
1 Year of Living Together!
May: Closing! Our realtor, Carolyn, gifted us the sign that now hangs in our community dining room.
June: So much moving! Thank you to everyone that helped us clean and move into our new home!
July: Steve L (our first Explorer, to move in) planted a garden. Erik enjoyed helping.
August: Free Sale! Combining households, we found that we had a lot of belongings that we wanted to pass on. Our Free Sale allowed us to meet our neighbors and pass things directly to people who wanted them.
September: Community Work Day! Our new building is old and had been neglected for decades so we spent much of our first year here on maintenance and fixing it up.
October: Halloween! We carved pumpkins and went trick or treating around our new neighborhood.
November: Fun outside! This is Minnesota and we play outside year round. A little snow doesn’t stop the kids from jumping on the trampoline.
December: Cookie decorating! We had a huge cookie decorating party and even had some friends over to join in the fun.
January: Sushi! Friends came over and we all learned how to make sushi.
February: Snow! Some of us spent time playing outside. Some spent time walking the neighborhood to look out for our neighbors and participated in mutual aid efforts.
March: Intergenerational cooking together! Our daily community meals are a big part of our community.
April: Our 1st Annual Meeting! Objects that represent community to us sat on the table for the weekend of meetings and time together.
In the News!
Look for Twin Cities Family Cooperative in the May/June issue of the Minnesota Women’s Press. Becca Brackett interviewed Nancie and Beka about what led us to start our community. The article is titled “One Family’s Journey into Building an Intentional Community.”
Cohousing Picnic
Learn about cohousing and hear from local communities that are forming or adding members. Enjoy conversation, connection, face painting, games, a playground and giant bubble making.
Co-sponsored by Twin Cities Family Cooperative and CohousingMN.
Bring a dish or appetizer to share. Organizers will provide disposable plates, cups and utensils, and cookies (gluten and gluten free), and ice water. (Please let us know when you register if you will provide your own reusable items to reduce waste.)
Look for the CohousingMN and TCFC signs at the parking lot entrance at 1227 Montreal Ave., on the north side of the street, near Highland Golf Course. Bathrooms are nearby. FREE and all are welcome!
Please pre-register to help with event planning. For more information and to register, use this link.
2nd Annual Free Sale
There were some interesting finds at this year’s Free Sale - like this Suturing Skills Trainer. This year’s Free Sale was an even bigger success than last year’s! Our goal after last year’s Free Sale was to make this a neighborhood event. This year, we reached out to our neighbors ahead of time to spread the word and encourage others to host a Free Sale in their yard or drop things off to be added to the Free Sale. Two other yards hosted Free Sales in their yards and many, many people dropped off things to give away. During the 3-day event, we had a pretty steady stream of people come through in our yard alone. We gave away about a dozen plastic storage bins worth of clothing, boxes of kitchenware and household items, a dozen games and puzzles, an enormous bin of stuffed animals, a bicycle, 3 computer monitors, and many other things. Our neighbors who participated loved the event and people are already asking when we will have another one. We’re definitely planning to do another Free Sale next year and are thinking we might even do one this Fall. We only had a little bit left over at the end of the weekend and some of that we’re going to pass on to a clothing swap one of our neighbors is holding this month.
Cooperative Culture: “We”
This month Nancie reflects on “We,” one of the Cooperative Culture keys in Yana Ludwig’s and Karen Gimnig’s book “Cooperative Culture Handbook: A Social Change Manual to Dismantle Toxic Culture and Build Community.”
The authors talk about the importance of developing a healthy balance between one’s own needs and the needs of others in the Community. They reflect on how mainstream culture teaches us to focus on individualism, getting one’s own needs met; even when some parts of that culture (e.g., women) are taught that their needs are subservient to others (e.g., men or their children), the way they are taught to change that pattern, is to emphasize what their needs are, to move over to the “me” focus.
In an attempt to break out of that pattern, sometimes the focus becomes identification with a group, “us,” and how the group is different from those not part of this group, “them.” Thus a counterculture dynamic of “us versus them” emerges.
In cooperative culture, we seek to balance one’s individual needs with the needs of the community, with a “synergistic relationship between these two things rather than an adversarial one. (The) community is seen as good for the self, rather than being an imposition on the self.” (p.64) The authors talk about the importance of one's own life purpose aligning with the mission of the community in order to implement a “we” culture.
At TCFC, we work to balance our needs with the needs of the community in large and small ways. In general, we worked to find this balance in the purchase of our building and merging our resources. As we created our common kitchen, we couldn’t each fit all of our own kitchen equipment so we needed to let go of some of the things we were used to using. We all moved into smaller places than we were used to and had come to enjoy; a trade-off for the enjoyment of living in community. Food choices and eating together tends to bring out the need to compromise as we share our evening meal. Eating together deepens our relationships, thus making the balancing of needs and preferences worth it. Tidiness is another area where we seek to balance – some needing to step up their tidiness patterns and others tolerating a different level of tidiness than feels good to them. So this cooperative culture key is something to be practiced daily in a variety of ways.
There is the saying “living in community is like being in therapy on steroids.” That is certainly true as we seek to navigate the sometimes minefields of the WE.
Our Vision
We are an intergenerational community of individuals, couples, and families. We are queer-affirming, gender-inclusive, and multicultural. We value the spectrums of the human experience and each individual’s diverse abilities. We support each other in raising children and throughout all stages of life.
We strive to live out of a place of abundance. We develop internal economic policies that actively push back against capitalist expectations and ways of relating.
We are committed to nonviolence and environmental sustainability. We believe in the potential for radical transformation of society and see communal living as an element of that change. We strive to make meaningful contributions to society, engaged in dismantling the systems of racism and oppression in our society.
If you would like to learn more about Twin Cities Family Cooperative, please watch a virtual tour of our community, visit our website and facebook page, attend our events (online and in-person), or fill out our Interest Form to connect. All past newsletters can be found here. If you would like to be removed from our email list, please email us and let us know.
