Tribute:
Community Founder
Jae Haggard
(Please excuse the odd formatting that blogspot seems to now sometimes cause when several photos are included.)
As a wimmin-centric intentional community, Jae Haggard's dyke-focused Outland in New Mexico holds much in common with the communal years here at Kulana Artist/Goddess Sanctuary in Hawaii.
Now that Jae took her cronehood across the rainbow bridge in April of this year, 2025, we wanted to finish out the year by celebrating her life & accomplishments in her own words, and in the words of her sisterhood.
We'll start with words she chose to share about living in new ways on wimmin's land in a lovingly handprinted, handbound book The Wimmin of Our Dreams, which she freely gave other lesbians permission to share in support of her heartfelt mission ... and we'll conclude with the Passings Notice published about her in the Sept/Oct 2025 issue of Lesbian Connection along with a description of Outland, the intentional lesbian land she created.
It begins:
WE ARE THE WIMMIN OF OUR DREAMS
We promise ourselves a future.
It is our way, creating, enriching life, dreaming of what is to come.
The future is born of the female: we carry the future within us, the promise of life, new beginnings, when all things seem possible.
We promise these things to one another.
We bring the dream to life....
I write sunrise hours before going off to build, garden, task or be with the other wimmin on this land....Writing is part of my search for ways that I can better live a land-based communitarian life, rooted in lesbian values and spirit.
The future is now or a moment from now, is part of us even as the past — all things or the potential for all, within us.
We are the wimmin of our dreams.
Our lands are everywhere. Many of us don’t see each other often. Many of us have never even met. Yet, we are connected. We nourish our connections when we share our stories, ponderings, experiences and observations.
We know much about each other and this is a good thing.
For we have much healing to do, much to learn and unlearn as we strive to build nourishing lives and relationships rooted in mutuality, caring and respect.
I think it is incredibly important for all of us to share our stories — both real and figurative. Our stories, our understandings, and our values are our lives and are the base for our dreams. The stories of what we do and believe on any one land creates both physical and psychic possibilities for all.
This ‘little book’ (as in homemade) is made entirely here at Outland....Most of us can put together a simple tape or book — gather our material, make copies, and send them off to other Lesbian lands. We can have our own book exchange.
Can you just see a whole shelf in each of our libraries packed with each other's stories — our how-to's, our wellness, our new ways of living together, our discoveries, and on and on?
I sure can. I grin at the thought.The books I want to read aren't written yet. They're the stories of every Dykeland and every Landyke...I believe every single one of us has important things to say.
Our everyday lives are important.
We are important.
No one else is going to record us or our lives. We must do it ourselves, for ourselves.
Both the writings and the book are my gift to you. I believe we need to find and practice our Lesbian ways and discard patriarchal ways. Buying/selling/bartering are all parts of a male system. I hope you will receive this book in the spirit in which it is freely given.
Ideas don't come out of a vacuum and are never the product of one womon's mind. I am greatly moved in my thinking, images, and my glimpses of what is possible by the Lesbians who live at and visit Outland. I especially thank Lee Lanning. So many of her ideas and values come out in my writings and conversations. Thanks to Puck and Suewillow for the ways we learned to live the dream....Thanks to Margriet and Kenna who gifted Gimbutas’ The Civilization of the Goddess to ‘strangers’ in the Landyke web.
Mostly, I thank you Landykes for the lives you lead and the dreams you follow, for your part in our incredible Landyke web. I glimpse the difference you make in all of our Lesbian lives, because I sure know how much you mean in mine!
....One trait I love about many Landykes is our real conscious search for ways to live in balance with the Earth and other wimmin. One way I search is asking myself what a life among Lesbians, in a Lesbian context and sprouting from Lesbian Spirit, might be like.
I picture an ordinary this-world/time dyke unintentionally visiting Wimmins World. Her ourworld her name is Patty. In the world of the Wimmin, she becomes Chrysalis.
What does she observe, learn, and ask as she lives and creates a life with the Wimmin? 
Although they do not know the word, compassion fills the lives of the Wimmin — for the joys and agonies of one are felt by all.
....Can we for a moment imagine a world, a life, a society without fear?
Although they do not know the word, compassion fills the lives of the Wimmin — for the joys and agonies of one are felt by all.....Can we for a moment imagine a world, a life, a society without fear?
On the surface no, and no again.
Yet look a little deeper — feel that sigh, feel the heart expand, feel the start-of-a-smile, feel the tears just behind the eyes.
The knowing of this life is in us.
We can touch it, remember it.
And we can help to create it, live it again.
JAE HAGGARD
Oct 21, 1947 - April 9, 2025
Jae Haggard of Serafina, New Mexico, left us on April 9 due to complications of diabetes. She was 77 and had lived most of the last 35 years at Outland, a women’s land in New Mexico.
Born Judy Nelson on October 21, 1947, in Bismarck, North Dakota, Jae started her career as a high school English teacher. But in the ’70s she left that job to begin her Landyke life.
Thanks to a loan from a friend, she and her then-partner, Lynn, obtained 80 acres of undeveloped land in Vergas, Minnesota. They built their house, kept a garden, and raised farm animals. They didn’t have water or electricity, so they had to haul in water for the animals and themselves. For work, they drove gravel trucks and operated heavy machinery at a local beet plant.
After ten years, the isolation caught up with Jae, and she moved to Minneapolis seeking community. There she was introduced to Lesbian culture, music and periodicals. For four years, she was part of the collective that created the Lesbian Inciter newspaper. She and Sidney Spinster co-founded Radical Rose Recordings in order to record our living Lesbian voices. Their cassette tapes included music, interviews and the audio magazine The Lesbian Frequency. They were ahead of their time – now everything is on audio!
In the late ’80s, Jae moved to the Southwest, first to Adobeland in Arizona, then to New Mexico, where she and I founded Outland, a 1000-acre women’s land and wildlife refuge near Santa Fe. This land, thankfully, already had water and electricity – but we still needed to build the buildings. A lot of women participated in Jae’s many construction projects – all of us learning as we went. Jae wrote that she had been building structures on womyn’s land since 1974, including frame, cordwood, post and beam, and adobe. Recently, Jae had been running Outland as a women’s healing center with guesthouses (NMWomensRetreat.org), and over the years, numerous guests have enjoyed the casitas and cabins, which include ten beds and ten woodstoves.
In 2004, Jae suffered a stroke and cardiac arrest. Thankfully, a year later, she was recovering well. She wrote to LC that, “As long as I rest every day, I can even do a range of non-strenuous tasks, and I’m delighted.” When she wasn’t busy building, she was also the publisher and editor of Maize, A Lesbian Country Magazine, and in the ’90s, she self-published a book for her friends, The Wimmin of Our Dreams. She also wrote songs for her CD, Country Dyke Songs. When LC printed the topic Our Lesbian Sheroes (Jan/Feb 2014), a reader wrote in about Jae, calling her one of our foremothers “who should be acknowledged and celebrated.”
Jae was multi-talented! But her greatest gifts were her welcoming attitude toward every woman, and her wise, spirit-full philosophy. Many women were blessed by her Light. And we’ll all miss her! Donations in Jae’s memory can be made to the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization Woman, Earth & Spirit, which sponsors Outland and Maize. Send a check to them at PO Box 130, Serafina, NM 87569, or donate via PayPal (paypal.me/womanearthandspirit).
–Lee Lanning, Santa Fe, NM
Sept/Oct 2025 Lesbian Connection
Outland (& future incarnations)
Since the 1970s, Lesbians have been starting women’s land communities all over the country, a form of “living feminism” in its various manifestations. In their gatherings and publications, many of them identify as “Landykes.”
https://wemoonland.org/what-is-womyns-land/
Outland, a women’s land in New Mexico, United States, was founded over 30 years ago by Jae Haggard, editor of Maize, the lesbian country magazine and communication hub for women living or interested in living on Land, and her partner at the time, Lee. “There have been about two permanent residents and a very large rotating cast of women who come and go,” Claire explains, “there is a community surrounding this land, too, many women come back over and over again, but not many live here for years.” While only lesbians can become permanent residents, the land is open for all women to visit.
https://afterellen.com/living-on-womens-land/
A Life Well Lived.
See Also:
https://kpfa.org/episode/womens-magazine-august-9-2021/
https://slfaherstoryproject.org/shewolf-dedicated-to-lesbian-lands/
https://d3uvtyeskjuxka.cloudfront.net/resources/Sinister%20Wisdom%2072.pdf
