Benes Companies

When Brett & Tenay Benes married in 2019, we began dreaming of creating intentional communities that optimized the chances of people like us receiving healing. In the pursuit of our own healing, we learned that a person’s entire lifestyle and community that got them to a hurting place, so it must be creating a completely new lifestyle and community that will get them to a healed place.

By combining Brett’s background in ranch operations and passion for land development with Tenay’s background in biology & business as well as her passion in psychology, we came up with the concept of healing communities. This model simplifies lives so that people can focus on healing and not paying their bills.

Healing Lots

At first, we started by imagining a 30-acre lot dedicated for each family unit. If it were built in a way that is self-sustaining, green, low-effort, and beautiful, it could facilitate a lifestyle that empowers each family to not only survive but thrive, regardless of water is going on in the world:

• Self-sustaining means each family plot will produce its own clean food, clean water, and clean energy as well as process its own waste without having to rely on others. It also means that each family builds a small inventory of long-term food and water storage that is sufficient to get them through one year of failed crops or disrupted supply chains.
• Green means the substances used in each family plot will be not only low-carbon footprint and non-toxic, but as beneficial to the environment as possible. Options include using local building materials, using renewable energy for construction or maintenance, using organic agricultural methods, using shielded electronics to reduce electromagnetic pollution, using organic cleaning and personal care products, and disposing of organic waste (food scraps, compostable toilets) in a way that promotes soil regeneration.
• Low-effort means growing food using no-till, no-weeding, no-fertilizing, no-watering agroforestry methods. It also means creating a diet around small animal by-products (bees, chickens, ducks, sheep, goats) and small animal meat (chickens, ducks, rabbits, fish), because these are easier for the average person to grow, kill, and prepare for eating. Low-effort animal care means setting up their environment completely free range–no cages ever–with on-site shelters and living food sources (like vegetation, fish, and a pond) that the animals can use when they need.
• Beautiful means investing time and effort into architecture, landscaping, sound, and arts to bring joy to any person who observes the Healing Family Plot. That’s because Beauty–not Utility–is Healing to wounded souls.

We envisioned that new residents would receive assistance setting up and maintaining their operation by Benes Companies employees, including help with agricultural activities, hunting, and processing food for long-term storage. As we have gone through much of this learning curve ourselves, we know that it can be long and difficult without some help from people who have the skills and the tools to set it up well the first time.

Healing Villages

We then imagined ten Healing Family Plots with housing arranged near one another, close to a self-sustaining, green, low-effort, and beautiful 30-acre Healing Village Center. The Healing Village Center would have on-site services that benefit most families including:

• A Gathering Place for social events like picnics, educational events like seminars, work events like meetings, wellness events like fitness classes, governance events like a village meeting.
• A Family Place for group child care, children’s classes, relationship classes, and family classes.
• A Work Place with rentable tools for basic building, equipment maintenance, and art.
• A Fun Place for recreation like an adult-kid playground, a pond with fishing pier and swimming beach, a walking garden, a biking trail, and an outdoor amphitheater for performances.
• A Marketplace for trading goods and services between Healing Family Plot residents, as well as selling complex, imported goods to residents.
• A Waste Place to collect waste products resulting from imported goods.

We imagined the concept would be to promote local relationships, commerce, and entertainment so that hurting people can get back to a simpler life for as long as they need it. In addition, on-line services like Telehealth or coaching, on-line schooling for middle-school and above STEM classes, and on-line shopping from organic product sellers could augment in-person services. Ultimately, Healing Villages should allow ten family plots to be even more self-sufficient than before because they promote families helping one another to thrive.

Healing Towns

We then imagined ten Healing Villages arranged near one another and close to a self-sustaining, green, low-effort, and beautiful 30-acre Healing Town Center. The Healing Town Center would have on-site services that benefit most villages including:

• A Gathering Place for social events like fairs, educational events like schooling, work events like conferences, wellness events like cooking classes, governance events like a town hall meeting.
• A Family Place for group children’s events, children’s field trips, relationship events like speed dating your spouse again, and family retreats.
• A Work Place with rentable tools for more complex building, equipment manufacturing, and art.
• A Fun Place for recreation like an adult-kid waterpark, an adult-kid train track, an restaurant garden, a larger biking trail, and an indoor amphitheater for performances.
• A Marketplace for trading goods and services between Healing Village residents, as well as selling complex, imported goods to residents.
• A Waste Place to manage waste products collected from Healing Village residents importing goods.

The concept would be to promote regional relationships, commerce, and entertainment so that hurting people could get access to more complex services without losing the simpler life they need for healing, for as long as they need it.

Heard This Before?

Although lots of people have created intentional communities since at least the 6th century B.C., and at least two intentional community founded to help hurting people in the 1900s, there are several key differences between our Healing Communities concept and other intentional communities, doomsday-prepper homesteads, or utopia-based communities created by religious or cult groups. Check out the table below to see the differences.

Desirable Community Characteristic	Healing Communities	Other Intentional Communities	Doomsday Preppers or Homesteads	Utopian Religious or Cult Communities
Central mission of the community is the holistic healing of its residents	Yes	Very few	No	Very few
Residents are invited to stay as long as they need or want, but not beyond	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Residents can buy out their community from the developers after commerce and services are stable	Yes	Unknown	Yes	No
Residents’ connections with the outside world are highly encouraged through trade, employment, and relationships	Yes	Some	Some	No
Importing outside services to augment the community is an important part of building a stable economy and free culture	Yes	Some	Some	No
Long-term food storage is to promote self-sufficiency and food security so that residents maintain hope and peace regardless of world events	Yes	Some	Yes	Some
Residents are encouraged to seek spiritual unity, but not religious conformity	Yes	Unknown	No	No
Communities are not expected or advertised to be utopian, only to reduce some of the lifestyle stressors of modern-day living that can prevent their mission	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Residents are encouraged to work outside the community, whether in-person or on-line	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Lifestyle is green, low-impact on the environment	Yes	Most	No	No
Resident decision-making is somewhat collective, but based on previously agreed-upon principles	Yes	Yes	No	No
Residents are encouraged to practice self-sufficiency in their daily lifestyle	Yes	Some	Yes	Some
The attitude of the community is hopeful, expecting that everything will work out well within and outside the community	Yes	Some	No	No
The building blocks of the community are individual and family self-sufficiency, village self-sufficiency, and town self-sufficiency (interdependence without isolation or codependence)	Yes	Very few	No	No
Total Desirable Characteristics	14/14 Great!	9/14 Good	7/14 Fair	1.25 Poor