Almost two years ago, my friend and Earthaven member Delphi Dofflemyer saw a need to support female business owners. She gathered five village women to begin a journey that we’ve been on together ever since. We formed our Women + Business Circle to support each other with business development, inspiring and encouraging each other along the way.

We meet monthly to check in about our businesses, what we are doing in our lives, and new directions and to receive support and feedback. We have had a few day-long retreats to have more time to explore new ideas, have photo shoots, and feed our inspiration together.

For many new business owners, offering their gifts to the world can feel daunting. Especially as women living in rural Appalachia, finding opportunities and inspiration to continue to put yourself and your gifts out in the world can feel hard. This circle of women has been an amazing gift in my life. It gives me a space to explore what I have to offer and how I want to offer it.

Having four other women who can give me feedback in real time is invaluable, whether it is about the specifics of text on my website or the big picture of my offerings. Hearing the journeys of the other women in the circle — about their exploration of business and how they offer their gifts — is so connecting and feeds my own inspiration. We have found many ways, both large and small, to support each other’s journey.

It is such an honor to witness each of these women’s journeys. Hearing from each woman monthly, through her ups and downs in business and in life, has helped me to honor their work deeply. It’s also been an amazing reflection for me to see where I am on my own journey.

Here are our businesses:

Medicines of the Womb

Delphi Dofflemyer

Rooted in ancient wisdom and weaving together Maya abdominal therapy, traditional uterine massage, and holistic breast care, Medicines of the Womb offers botanical medicines, education, bodywork and self-care rituals for the sacred feminine.

www.medicinesofthewomb.com

IG & FB @medicinesofthewomb

Alchemy Herbal Wines

Griffin Abee

Offering ancient plant medicines in modern times; inspired by the bees, the seasons, and a long history of female brewers concocting special formulas to support and celebrate their communities.

www.alchemyherbalwine.com

IG & FB @alchemyherbalwine

Priestess of Cycles

Kaitlin Ilya Wolf

Providing guidance, support, and facilitation for earth-centered ritual and ceremony, including rites of passage, women’s circles and Red Tents, and personal ritual. Kaitlin will support you on your journey of grounding your life in ritual and spirit. She is also teaching Growing Women’s Circles or Red Tents for the School of Integrated Living and offering a Red Tent for Earthaven Ecovillage Experience Week.

www.priestessofcycles.com

IG & FB @priestessofcycles

Tantric Life Coach

Mana Vermeulen-McLeod

Using the principles of Tantra to guide people on the path of the Householder. This spiritual path allows for the Mundane to become Sacred within a person’s everyday life. Based in breath work, somatic awareness and mindfulness, this path allows for a re-awakening of one’s own deeper body-based knowing.

IG & FB @tantramom

Elements Naturopathic Medicine

Dr. Monique Mazza

Providing whole-person primary care medicine that is reconnecting to the healing vitality within nature, community, and oneself. She is also teaching Soil Health=Human Health: Feeding that which feeds us for Earthaven Ecovillage Experience Week.

www.drmoniquemazza.com

IG & FB @drmoniquemazza

Through meeting to support our businesses, we have also found new ways to connect as friends and community members. Living in community, there are so many aspects of life that are interwoven. The web we are weaving through the Women + Business Circle is holding more than “just” business.

Meeting regularly with a group of people to support each other in business or other ventures is an amazing way to build community. We’d love to inspire more Women + Business Circles to be seeded. Please reply to this email if would be interested in learning more.

In community,
Kaitlin Ilya Wolf

Earthaven Ecovillage Member
Priestess and Ritualist
www.priestessofcycles.com

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Earthaven is unlike almost every other North American ecovillage I know of, because it’s a village within a village. Our 329-acre property is surrounded by adjacent and nearby neighbors and friends who participate in and contribute to our developing ecovillage life and culture.

I first realized this when I first visited Findhorn, a large, well-known, 60-year-old intentional community and ecovillage in northern Scotland. The early Findhorn community, founded in 1962 in rented trailers on a 15-acre mobile home park, is the original village. Over the years the wider ecovillage developed out beyond its borders as former community members moved nearby and new people moved to the area specifically to contribute to and participate in the new spiritually oriented, ecologically aware culture Findhorn was developing. (Short video of Findhorn Community. )

The original community, the Findhorn Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization (now about 50 members), soon bought the mobile home park, The Park. Approximately 450 Findhorn-affiliated friends and neighbors live in various degrees of proximity to the Foundation, renting mobile homes or bungalows in The Park or living in several adjacent housing developments, including the Field of Dreams project and East Whins Cohousing. Others live in the small fishing village at one end of the peninsula, or in Kinloss, a larger village on the other mainland end of the peninsula, and in the small Scottish city of Forres, three miles away. Another Findhorn Foundation property, Cluny Hill, hosts educational events in a former hotel two miles past Forres. Many of these Findhorn villagers run businesses with a product or service, or a nonprofit with a mission, that resonates closely with the Foundation’s values. These include a wind generator co-op, a dairy co-op, a car co-op, a health food store, a credit union, a Waldorf school, and an Earth-restoration project helping to reforest the Scottish highlands.

While Findhorn had 60 years to develop this way, Earthaven started becoming a village within a village in the last 15 years or so. Members of our ecovillage family include, like Findhorn, former community members who moved next door or nearby, people interested in membership who didn’t end up joining us but still wanted to participate and live nearby, and longtime Scots-Irish neighbors who visit often and share their Southern Appalachian homestead lore. Other village members are visitors, especially people who attended Earthaven’s School of Integrated Living (SOIL) educational programs, like Earthaven Experience Week, so drawn to our values and culture they rent homes onsite or nearby. Many have become dues-paying members of our Earthaven Community Association along with most Earthaven members.

I believe Earthaven is one of the few communities in North America like this. Some former members of Sirius Community in Massachusetts live nearby and attend weekly dinners. But Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in Missouri, which is similar to Earthaven in many ways, has no friends living nearby because their neighbors, mostly retired Mennonite dairy and soybean farmers, don’t offer rentals.

Wonderful neighbors in our village family include Leon Birstein and Geni Stephenson, who’ve been integral parts of our lives since our earliest days. Geni brings fresh produce and other homestead products from their organic farm to our weekly Coffee and Trade farmers market, operates a pottery studio some of our members use too, manages five small rental units adjacent to our property for new people considering Earthaven membership, and opens the Zendo on their property for morning and evening meditations. Leon, who built the Zendo and their homestead, runs the farm with another neighbor, Jonathan Greenberg, innovates useful ways to run a homestead (which many of us copy), and serves as an electrical, plumbing, and general homesteading expert for many of us.

Tricia and John Baehr and their children have contributed in numerous ways, John providing physical labor in various community workdays, and Tricia, a superb cook, hosting various village celebrations, catering various celebration events for members, and offering educational cooking and baking classes for kids. Tricia co-produced, hosted, and catered our Forest Garden Party one summer evening, where we wore forest-themed costumes and danced with the fireflies. She also wrote, directed, and produced a wonderful children’s play with Earthaven and neighbor children. Bob Broadhead participates in workdays, manages an onsite trout pond with one of our members, and hosts the coffee bar at the Coffee and Trade, and Seraina Broadhead is a Board Member of Culture’s Edge, Earthaven’s 501(c)3 nonprofit; hosts a study group on eldering for our older folks; and in a widely attended ceremony was inducted as a village  “Elder in Training,” to enthusiastic applause and cheers.

Friends and neighbors serve on Earthaven’s committees, serve in community roles or part-time jobs, or offer classes. Allie Bales serves on our Care Team, Alinahh Ever and Chelsea Spitzer are on our Racial Equity Task Group (and Chelsea was a teacher for our youngest children at The Village School). Chris Ehart is barbeque master at our Tuesday night cookouts, Jason Dionne helps on our Council Hall wood furnace crew, Danu Macon served as our Labor Project Coordinator. Arturo Chaves teaches Cumbia, Merengue and other Mexican dances, Kayla Birstein teaches kickboxing, and Michelle Dione taught Middle Eastern dancing in our Council Hall. Jonathan Greenberg and Sarah Nolan-Poupart cover shifts at our onsite farm, and Karen Budd is the SOIL registrar. Other friends provide garden and farm products, delicious snacks, and homemade crafts at our weekly Coffee and Trade farmer’s market or our annual Bizarre Bazaar — Peggy Austin Malone, Otter Kaase, Chrisa Hickey, Alinahh, and Rainbow Teplitsky.

Longtime area residents Alvin Lytle, Thrisa Murphy, and Lois and Reid Murphy, whose Scots-Irish-descended families have lived in our southern Appalachian mountains for generations, have each brought benefits and local wisdom to our village life, and Alvin, a local organic farmer, offers organic farm products at every Coffee and Trade.

Other neighbors who regularly contribute to or have done so in the recent past, and who regularly attend our social events, include Chris Heath, Brent Hickey, Ed Hickey, Linda Bark, Pripo Teplitsky, June Lytle, Rio Fiore, Sarah Anne Amunson, Ben Kassahun, Luke Cannon, Juniper and John O’Dell, Thomas Doochin and his partner Paeonia, Jane Ware and Don Miller, and Faith Butterfield.

We can never forget Randy and Sally Frazer, who lived here long before Earthaven was founded, not only kindly invested in our Earth Shares Fund in our early days to help us get started, and generously gave us a donation too.

We are so lucky. Thank you all so much!

The post A Village Within a Village appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

Decades ago, Brandon Greenstein and friends initiated the “Bizarre Bazaar” at the White Owl in Earthaven Ecovillage, as an opportunity for folks to display, demonstrate, share, sell, trade, or give away the fruits of their labors in a variety of arts, crafts, and entertaining offerings. This heartful gesture has become a community feature ever since! Fresh food, handmade baskets, jewelry, clothing, hand-knit and crocheted accessories, jams, beverages, medicines, and more have continued to show up through the years. Most of us look forward to the brief, energy-packed afternoon together, our mid-December extravaganza in the Council Hall.

Last year, I heard a neighbor say, “I love bringing my latest inventions to the Bizarre Bazaar, just to see what I should focus on for the coming year.” A friend who brings his year’s accumulation of healthy blessings told me, “I’ve done the Bazaar for four years now, and it really does make a difference in my holiday economy!”

It seems that, for us Earthaveners and many of our neighbors, getting dressed up and sharing in the excitement of trade and the purveying of our homemade, homegrown, and upcycled goods, elbow to elbow in concentric circles of tables in the Council Hall is a ritual with multiple blessings. We remember to do what we do best and share it. Folks display and offer samples of new items and ideas since we last met. We can chomp and slurp as we sell and trade, wandering to each other’s tables over and over again, considering deals we might make and changes for next year, as we meet new sellers and customers every time. It’s even got me creating a table of my own, where I can upscale houseplant arrangements in adorable thrift store baskets and pass the profits on to our Village School. One of my favorite opportunities is when I’m able to offer original art work from close friends and former neighbors now living as far away as France!

One day, this may well be the main way we offer and access many of our basic needs, beyond the bulk items in our pantries. For now, the pleasure of shared commerce in an old-fashioned style keeps us looking forward to and showing up on that special Saturday in December every year.

This year (2022), the Bizarre Bazaar happens on Saturday, December 10, from noon to 4 pm. And you are invited!

The post What’s so bizarre about Earthaven’s bazaar? appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

(Transcript from video)

Elderberry Mother Plant and Rootings

Lyndon: Hello everyone. This is a rooting that we did from a plant called the Magnolia Elderberry. It has nothing to do with magnolia plant. It’s just a variety name. We keep them in water for a while and change out the water two or three times a week. It’s the easy way to germinate roots and then we change up the water three times a week. Keep them in a bucket then they grow roots. You see the amazing little white thingies? Those are the roots… then go back in the bucket. After they get roots we put them in pots and we grow them up.

We sell the plants. The thing about elderberries is they make these amazing berries that are really good for medicinal purposes, especially colds and stuff like that. You have to have two different kinds of elderberries. We have this very vigorous growing Magnolia Elderberry and we have the Nova. Somewhere around here we have a Medicine Wheel which comes from Earthaven but we don’t have it in this group.

I can take you over here and show you the actual mother plant those Magnolia Elderberries came from. This is the Magnolia Elderberry it was planted out of a pot around 2018.. it was about the spring of 2018. It was about this tall coming out of the pot. We planted it here in the ground and it’s to thicken off. I was like is this an unusual elderberry. Kind of a lot of them grow to this height but most are a little taller this. I measured it one day we got up here with a ladder. It’s got up to 11 and a half feet, I think it’s that was last fall,  I think maybe it’s even taller but it is an elderberry that came from the Piedmont. Either Chuck Marsh or Debbie Lienhart brought from the Piedmont probably a similar way.

Elderberry at Useful Plants Nursery

Courtney Brooke: Where can we get some elderberries like this?

Lyndon: At Useful Plants Nursery. We sell them Useful Plant Nursery in fact, which is where we are. But we take our plants on the road. We’re gonna take them to the herb fest, which is going to be May 1^st and 2^nd this year at the Ag center. If you’re going to the airport (Asheville airport) you go down the road a little farther and the Ag center is on the right.

Courtney Brooke: Okay get your elderberries… make elderberry syrup…  UPN (Useful Plants Nursery)

Elderberry (Sambucus canadensis)

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Transcript from Video:

Courtney Brooke:  Who have we got here? Sweet potatoes. Hello different kind of sweet potatoes!
Hello another kind of sweet potatoes. We must love sweet potatoes! Oh and what is this? sweet potatoes. What is this?

Saawwwwheat potato, sweet potato, sweet potato, sweet potato, sweet potato, sweet potato, sweet potato, sweet potato, sweet potato all the way to the end.

And over here this is the promise of turmeric and ginger.

Just cut off a little piece of the root, plant it in the tray, and it’ll grow.

These are all that turmeric and ginger. It’s quite a special thing Appalachian turmeric and ginger grown in the greenhouse.

And who do we have over here? Some kind of cucurbit maybe a cucumber.

And who do we have over here? Baby tomatoes hello.

More cucurbits. Some basil and a stand of peppers.

This is our greenhouse walking towards summer. These are all the summer starts and summer plants. We still have this celery growing here. We still have some of these brassicas growing here that we’re still getting some broccoli off of and some leaves off of.

And we got a little green bean patch going over there.

So that’s what our greenhouse at Full Circle Farm is looking like on the cusp of spring and summer.

The post Sweet Potatoes, Turmeric, Ginger, and more in the Spring Greenhouse at Earthaven Ecovillage appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

Father-and-son time climbing a mulberry tree

The post It Takes A Village appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

‘Round here we often talk about sustainability as three legs of a stool—environmental, social, and economic.

I’ve noticed that there’s a ton of interest, both inside and outside of our village, in two legs of the stool: the environmental (our homes, our farms, our food, our common areas) and the social (relationships, potlucks, conflict resolution, agreements, etc.).

But overall there’s less interest in how our economy works.

Is it because folks find economics confusing? Or boring? Or both?

The truth is that if we don’t find ways to create viable economies, then ecovillages and other land-based projects cannot survive.

Yet, as usual, we have to recreate these systems from the ground up. We don’t want to use the models of economics offered by our larger dominant culture. We don’t want predatory lending, or trickle down theories, or the rich-get-richer scenarios.

We want fair-share policies, and right livelihood, and living wages, and cooperative ownership models, and a world (and village) where everyone is thriving economically.

Are you also interested in envisioning a new story about time, money, and wealth? If so, join us for our online workshop, Village Economics at Earthaven Ecovillage: The Ins and Outs of Money and Wealth online workshop on May 8 from 3 – 5 pm Eastern Time.

Here’s to real wealth for all of our holistic movements.

The post Village Economics appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

(Transcript from video)

Paul: You can see how it shrinks down. This one here didn’t. The thin ones don’t shrink down so much, the deeper ones do.

Courtney Brooke: What are you all doing?

Paul: We’re talking about candles wax behavior.

Courtney Brooke: Wow! Look at that candle.

Paul: Yeah, okay let’s see….

Courtney Brooke: Here we are in the candle factory.

Paul: Okay so I am going to I’m pouring this wax back and forth in order to cool it off; so that it gets cool enough that the sand will not stick to it. I’m looking at its behavior as you pour it in how much it sticks to the sides etc and you can then tell. When it’s to the right temperature. And so I’m going to pour it in here, notice. How the sand has been shaped to a to a shape which is going to be a candle.

Courtney Brooke: Oh yes.

Paul: I’m going to pour this in like this and you can see down in there that the wax is not soaking into the sand. You can tell by the meniscus, by the edge, the round edge.

Stone: Meniscus. Is that what that’s called?

Paul: Yeah meniscus.

Stone: Thought it had another name.

Pau: Water in a glass or any fluid inside a vessel will have that.

Courtney Brooke: Wow, look at these.

Stone: Yeah this is my physics lesson as well as art.

Courtney Brooke: We’re having a physics lesson in the candle factory while making visionary art. Impressive.

Paul: So all this pouring and pouring back and forth is all in service of making this wax be the right temperature. So you can see now. You can see how at the edge is where it starts to cool the most and it starts to get flat looking not shiny. Lighting up. Well it kind of gets to where it’s not shiny…it’s not reflecting anymore. That’s because it’s causing the skin over the top, you can see….

Courtney Brooke: Look, get ready for this.

Paul: See those little spots

Courtney Brooke: WHAAAATTT??

Paul: Those are all like little places where it’s starting to harden and it doesn’t molecules…

Courtney Brooke: WHAAAATTTT???

Paul:…and spreads out.

Courtney Brooke: WHAATTT??

Paul: I’m going to do a couple pours of the same color just to get little lines in between the two layers.

The post The Candle Factory at Earthaven Ecovillage appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

(Transcript from video)

Paul: And it comes all the way from here to here.  It’s that one that that makes this be flat. And then you build from that. The pieces that are also fastened but come to where the leg is going to be. You know where…

Gabriel: And those, they just they just fasten into here?

Paul: Well, no, you have to you have to you have to fasten the top.

Courtney: Here we are at the village arts building, witnessing mentorship at its finest. Paul, the furniture magician, mentoring brother Gabriel on making his creative table for the children.
Because the news is folks, it takes a village.

Paul:  The spine down the center. I think that should be glued, screwed through, I mean…

Courtney: It takes a village to build a table of your dreams.

The post Furniture Building Advice & Mentoring at Earthaven Ecovillage appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

Transcription of The Spring Greenhouse at Earthaven Ecovillage: Our Hope for the Summer

Courtney Brooke:

Here we are in the greenhouse at Full Circle Farm at Earthaven Ecovillage in the early spring. Here it’s raining, it’s kind of cold outside and here is what we’ve got growing…..
We’ve got all this broccoli and celery that’s been growing here all winter….

And here we have all the hopefulness for the season… all the baby plants reaching their roots down and starting to come out of their shells longing to go in the earth

We’ve got beans and what else do we have here who else…

We’ve got some kind of cucurbit some kind of melon, tomatoes over here

We’ve got onions started from seed, broccoli, some cabbage and cauliflower here…
Some more brassicas all the way down that’s basically all brassicas there and then down here…we have… what’s this more brassicas

Got some more cauliflower here and some chard there and lettuce, celery peppers more onions more lettuce, more celery more peppers….

Yeah there’s a lot going on in here some that’s mysterious…it looks like some potatoes there and seed trees curious what’s going on there…

That’s what we’ve got going on in here some more chard, more kale, kohlrabi

Stay tuned to see how the greenhouse evolves over the seasons!

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