Friedland graduated from Reed in 1974, and a wealthy uncle put him in charge of an apple orchard south of Portland, Oregon. His vision for the farm quickly started to take shape: it would be a spiritual utopian community, a place for countercultural post-hippie freaks and seekers to explore new psychic dimensions and push the limits of consciousness. Jobs came down from Portland to help Friedland realize his vision?—?in fact, it was Jobs who set up the electricity in the barn, surprising Friedland with his advanced circuitry abilities.
All One Farm quickly became a “magnet for psychedelic pilgrims,” says Chris Lydgate. Upon arrival, visitors took Hindu names and slept in crude flophouses. Hare Krishna monks and acolytes were a mainstay, and they cooked elaborate vegetarian meals with rich with cumin, coriander, and turmeric. The visitors worked together picking apples, chopping firewood, and pressing cider. Free time was spent chanting, singing meditating and conversing about the best practices for pure, transcendent living[...]
Though its cast of residents was always changing, the farm was steadfast in its commitment to experimenting with mind-altering substances. In conversation with his biographer Walter Isaacson, Jobs summarized their shared attitude toward LSD, the commune’s drug of choice:
LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important?—?creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.
Jobs lived in a renovated chicken coop whenever he was around. His residency was episodic, and his recurring task was to whip the Gravenstein apple trees back into shape upon his arrival, pruning, raking, and patching up the trellises. According to legions of Jobs fanatics, All One Farm is where he acquired what his admirers call his “reality distortion field,” a special charisma that caused others to suspend belief in the impossible. Jobs said later that the name for his company, Apple, was inspired by Friedland’s farm. “I was on one of my fruitarian diets,” Jobs told Isaacson. “I had just come back from the apple farm. It sounded fun, spirited, and not intimidating.”