Sussing out community for my home

For My home. Building a house, regrowing a garden and the surrounding ecology, tapping the well...these are all physical challenges that I have much more control over. It's easy enough to look at the topography and climate of a place and guess whether it suits my farming and personal preferences. But what about the community and social side?

Relationships and community are something you feel. I know both of these to be elusive because I sometimes struggle to be present with my emotions, and because you can't know what people truly think unless you can access their honesty (either by exceptional forthcoming honesty - a quality that is hard to come by by virtue of the fact that it's a great filter for my closest friends - or because you're tight).

So what can I do to suss out the community, aka the vibes, for my future home?

• #advice Ask people who have both lived in a place and left what their experience was like. People who have seen a life outside are more likely to have a helpful perspective - living in the community, and outside it.