My job on the commune is to be the guy who actually knows something about intentional living settlements, that even if you could pull it off farming only works as an economic base if you can produce something that sells for a premium over what would otherwise be grown on the land and keep costs tight – consider existing organic farms that do farmer’s market and farm-to-table production by burning out a steady supply of hippieish college grads.

Really you want a collective high value-added enterprise that everyone can play some role in and turns profit on a commune-wide basis, like the Shakers and their furniture

Working in the neighborhood and returning wages to the commune can work, especially starting out and on the margins, but over time without mechanisms to bind the community suffocatingly close this tends towards centrifugal dissolution according to individual earning capacity