Christmas party in the community building circa 1976.
NEEDMORE continued from 55 drywall, and the couple paid him with a stained-glass lamp made by Barnes’ wife. Barnes said he only paid for someone to put up the gutters.
Barnes turned the experience he gained building the house into a business, opening a cabinet shop in 1976.
He said the couple lived comfortably, with electricity, running water and a gas stove. That comfort helped overcome some harsh conditions.“ We had some very interesting winters,” he said. Barnes also got arrested once for growing marijuana plants that police had spotted from a helicopter. A justice of the peace in Brown County allowed him to plead guilty to a misdemeanor.
A few days later, on Oct. 7, 1971, Barnes received a mailing from the United Klans of America, in Greenwood, Indiana. It read,“ The eyes of the Klan ARE ON YOU.”
“ It’ s kind of scary when you’ re 20, you know, get a letter from the Klan,” Barnes said.
“ When I got the letter, I sat out on my porch one night with a shotgun … then I realized that’ s what they wanted me to do, is to be afraid.” Bill Land Bill Land lived in Brown County in the mid-1960s and read Kathy Canada’ s columns about organic gardening, living off the grid and homesteading in the Brown County Democrat.
“ That really appealed to me. I was very much a naturalist,” said Land.
56 Our Brown County • Nov./ Dec. 2024 courtesy John Barnes
He and his then-wife, Joan, hung out with the Canadas before they moved into the Needmore community in the mid-1970s.
The couple and their three children occupied a 28-foot geodesic dome and raised goats in Needmore, while Land also taught geography at universities, including a tenured position at Butler University.
The family’ s home had neither electricity nor water, and they had to get water from a tap about a quarter mile away next to a set of concrete buildings where they also could take showers and wash clothes.
While people paid small amounts of money to live in the community, Needmore ran into serious financial difficulties, prompting the sale of about half the land, in part to help pay property taxes, Land said. In addition, people could not get bank loans to build homes because they did not own the land.
Material mailed to John Barnes from the Klan.