Sarah’s Team Pick: Idyll Dandy Acres, a Queer Collective In Rural Tennessee

Do yourself a favor and watch this beautiful documentary short by Tim Hussin and Noah Hussin about Idyll Dandy Acres, a queer collective in rural Tennessee. This piece is part of the America Recycled project, which brothers Tim and Noah started in order to tell the stories of Americans making local change. The brothers are basically going around the country on their bikes, documenting different people who are “yearning to rebuild space, community, and local culture, each in our own way.” It’s basically about local revolution, and the formation of an all-queer community on a 200-acre farm in the middle of southern America is definitely that.

I absolutely love the statements these people are making about individual activism. It’s all about creating a space uniquely your own, where you can comfortably be yourself, and then sharing that reality with the wider world so that people realize all the variety of existences that surround them.

Eventually, the Autostraddle editors will be creating something very much like this where we can all disappear and live in the woods and hang out with a bunch of queers and make things with our hands. That’s the dream, right?

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!
Related:

Sarah

Sarah lives in Chicago with her partner and her big white Great Dane. She is a lawyer by day and a beer brewer/bread baker/knitter by night. She & her partner are currently learning how to grow their own food, and eventually they hope to move to a small farm outside the city. In 2009-2010, before jetting off to law school, Sarah was Autostraddle's Managing Editor.

Sarah has written 127 articles for us.

12 Comments

  5. True story.

    Thanks for posting this!! Starting next week I’m going to be in rural TN doing some advocacy work (related to health care reform). Maybe I’ll stop by IDA! What a serendipitous coincidence, wow. :)

  8. THANK YOU so much for sharing this! Best part of my day so far, and I don’t think it’ll be surpassed by anything else.

  9. I haven’t watched this yet but I am already excited/ Especially since I am thinking a lot about how I want to live my life, what with graduation looming and all.

  11. I really like what some of the people in the film were saying about the importance of making your own space for comfortable self expression, but also acknowledging the importance of not maintaining a closed off bubble and reaching out to people in the surrounding community. It seems a lot easier to stay in the collective and orient life completely to that space, and I think it’s very brave that members continue to interact with straights and see that as an important outreach/education role.

Comments are closed.