This week my wife and I took a rather large leap in the dark. We did something that many people dream of; something that many more think is daft or even dangerous: we sold our house in Bristol and bought a 10-acre woodland in Somerset. Which in itself is only semi-daft, it's the next bit that makes people think we're either visionary or deranged: we're going to run the woodland as a communal shelter for people facing a period of personal crisis.

We haven't made the leap without a vast amount of preparation. We've spent the last five years visiting and living on similar communities, sometimes staying for weeks or even months at a time. We've discussed the idea with enthusiasts and sceptics so often that we know all about the ideals and brutal realities of communal living. We've surveyed 15 or 20 woodlands and have, for what it's worth, read all the books. I myself wrote one about it a while back.

But we wouldn't be going anywhere if we hadn't had the great fortune of finding a community that is exactly what we hope, in a tiny way, to emulate. The Pilsdon Community near Bridport in Dorset was set up 51 years ago. It was based on Nicholas Ferrar's Little Gidding and on the radical monasticism of the early Christian church. It's still very similar today to what it was in 1958: a working farm where 25 or 30 people live together to work the land and reflect on their lives. It welcomes all-comers, particularly those on the margins of society: wayfarers, refugees, those struggling with mental illness, addiction, bereavement, penury or separation. It might sound like an explosive cocktail of characters, but if you go there it's hard not to be blown away by the beauty, peace and serenity of it. Although everyone is united by some kind of sorrow, it's a surprisingly cheerful place. There's a lot of banter and laughter. Nobody there feels like a "charity case", even though it's a place where people are gradually putting their lives back together; where they start to heal and become whole once more.

It's difficult to put into words quite why we want to try and do something similar. In part it's because it feels to me as if old-fashioned charity is at the far periphery of our life. We have a few standing orders to worthy causes and put a small cheque in the post, or do a soup run, once in a while. But that sort of charity seems increasingly to me like carbon offsetting: a way to cleanse our conscience, to make us feel better about the fact that actually we could keep living just the way we want. It's a sop, nothing more. I want charity, in the old cliche, to begin at home, to be an integral part of our lives – not just something we do with loose change once in a while.

We're also doing it, funnily enough, for our children. Friends who are sceptical about our project are aghast at the prospect of us taking such a risky step with tiny daughters in tow. And we know that, despite all sorts of safeguards, they will be exposed to the rough end of life. But we've never wanted our children to be brought up surrounded by the most privileged in society. If anything, we hope for exactly the opposite. We don't want to pretend life is a breeze and insulate them against suffering. We want them to see it early and learn what might be done to mitigate it. Over the years we've met many children brought up on comparable shelters and their maturity and humanity, their gentility and empathy, are astonishing. The hope is that our children, too, will learn about vulnerability when they're still living in a warm, loving home; that they will, over the years, begin to learn about addiction, displacement, bereavement, poverty, prison and so on. That, to us, seems much more important than A-level results or a good degree.

And I suppose I say that because I'm very sceptical about the modern, gated, defensive definition of family. While I believe passionately in the importance of family, I think the two-generational nuclear family – "two up, two down" – is an abnormal sociological departure of the 20th century. It is one of the primary causes of rampant consumption because every little unit of human beings has to buy all the appliances and expensive gadgets and toys, many of which are only used once in a blue moon. The nuclear family has created an epidemic of depression and stress because there's simply not enough time for two adults to do all the work to earn the money to pay for the nanny to do shopping to feed the children and so on. The modern, narrow definition of the word has turned the family – once a castle of inclusivity – into an excuse for exclusivity. Nowadays the phrase "I've got to think about my family" invariably means "screw you". I've come to believe in another F word, which seems closer to the older, almost Mediterranean, sense of family: fellowship. As William Morris wrote in A Dream of John Ball, "fellowship is heaven, and lack of fellowship is hell: fellowship is life, and lack of fellowship is death".

We are also making the leap because I have a very weird job. Being a freelance writer is, in many ways, wonderful. It's an immense privilege to be able to sell your words. But it's often a lonely, isolated, self-indulgent career and – with all due respect for writers – by no means the most noble of vocations. Every week I talk to friends who have saved lives in hospitals, or who have saved lives metaphorically in schools, and I envy them their jobs. I even envy them their hours: writing is such an intense activity that I can rarely write for more than four or five hours a day. All writers, the honest ones at least, say the same. And even if I did sit at my desk for longer, I just don't think I would have enough to say to the world; and I'm not sure the world would want to listen. So I find myself in the opposite position of most of my peers – having no disposable income, but having disposable hours. I was looking for something social, altruistic, physical and stimulating to do with my afternoons and, strange as it sounds, communal forestry just seemed to fit the bill.

Survival of the weakest

We settled on the idea of a woodland shelter, rather than a traditional farm, for simplicity. I've lived on farms and know what a colossal amount of work, stress and paperwork is involved in looking after livestock. I didn't want vets' bills and, now that our children sleep well beyond 5am, I certainly didn't want crack-of-dawn milking. When you have livestock you can rarely, if ever, go away and that's a real issue if half of your family and friends are in Italy (I'm married to an Italian). A deciduous woodland just seemed so much simpler and, to my tastes, so much more aesthetic. You can, if necessary, just ignore it, just let it be. But when you're ready, it will provide all the fuel necessary to heat the house and cook the food. Being a (very amateur) chair-maker, I will find in the woodland all the raw materials for legs and spindles and so on. The woodland will provide building materials and, judging by the huge clusters of nuts and berries there at the moment, a surprising amount of food.

But most of all we're taking our leap in the dark because we've belatedly realised that the sermon on the mount might actually be a manifesto for life, rather than a few nice ideals to take out for a spin on a Sunday morning. We've come to believe in the survival of the weakest, not just the fittest. William Vanstone once came out with the great line that the Church is like a swimming pool: all the noise is at the shallow end. We felt called to the deep end, to the place where it's more quiet, more dangerous maybe, more radical.

Which is why the accusation I frequently hear levelled at communal projects – that they're ghettos, full of slightly demented escapists who can't deal with the real world – seems to me completely misplaced. In a few cases (especially the newsworthy, extremist ones) it's true: there are communities that are isolated retreats, places that build metaphorical moats around themselves and their own paranoia and end up becoming doolally cults. But all the communities I admire (and I'm talking about L'Arche, Emmaus, Toc-H, Camphill, Nomadelfia, Pilsdon and so on) are actually far less ghettoised than the real world: these are the places that throw open the doors to those who are normally excluded. These are the places where there is true plurality and radical hospitality, where the uninvited are welcomed and given a place at the table.

And that, perhaps, is why I'm not overly obsessed with self-sufficiency. Admire it as I do, self-sufficiency has always seemed to me to have a whiff of the ghettoised retreat, a heavy hint of mighty-me-against-the-world-ism. Whilst we keep chickens, bees, geese, grow our own veg and all that malarkey, we're actually more interested in interdependency than independence. We're more interested in creating ties than in cutting them. Maybe it's just that I prefer the less alliterative shared- or group-sufficiency.

The need to belong

It might all sound very ambitious, but we're going to start very small and very slowly. We're going to move into the Hansel-and-Gretel house in the woods, with its thick beams and many fireplaces, and see what happens. We'll probably only have a guest or two to start with. There's enough land, and enough outbuildings, to accommodate many more, but we want to take the time to get it right. We've got enough links with local and national charities to get referrals, when we're ready, from near and far. But getting people who want to come and stay won't be the problem. The problem will be how we find the food and, especially, the time for them.

There are all sorts of issues that will need addressing as the shelter evolves: leadership, ownership, finances, rules and so on. I have a fairly good idea about some of them, but not all. As regards leadership, I've always been more convinced by communities that have a wise, humble, collegiate leader than ones where every decision has to be approved by a whole load of cliquey equals. So I'm pretty sure that the place will need a leader, and I'm sure that that person isn't me.

I'm also pretty sure that it will have to be a dry house, and one where people will be asked to leave if they become in any way violent.

We're well aware that there will be many difficulties in the early years as exalted idealism crashes into grubby reality. But I'm hopeful that we'll be able to make ends meet by offering accommodation to a variety of people beyond those facing personal crises. There may be paying guests who will want to learn the kinds of things we can, between us, teach them: chair-making or beekeeping or Italian cookery or creative writing. We expect to end up hosting Italian students needing to learn English, or even Brits wanting to learn Italian. We should be able to make a bit of money selling firewood and chairs and charcoal. And I'm not giving up my day (or, rather, morning) job. But as regards the legal structure of the place, for the moment it's just a big family home and we take our lead, as always, from the lady who wears the pantaloni.

I hope no one will make the mistake of thinking that we're unusually strong or pious. We've got more than our fair share of weaknesses and have both gone through enough troubles to know that we need a woodland shelter as much as the next man, woman or child. In fact, we can only afford this one because of a few bereavements of our own. So it's not really about us nobly helping the needy, but about us recognising our own needs: the need to find a pace of life that is more natural and peaceful. The need to open our doors to providence. The need to return to the land and rediscover what monastics used to call the "laborious leisure" of manual labour. The need to give up our belongings to get something much better in return, the holy grail of modern life: belonging. If other people have similar needs, and if we can meet them mutually, the shelter might have some chance of success.