Day two of a four-day plaster party on our new house (Chris and I will be moving into the middle floor)

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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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We are saddened to report that Earthaven Member Brian Love passed away in March of 2015. Brian contributed enormously to the agricultural and technological development of our community, contributed countless hours of creative design, planning, management and physical labor to land-based and building projects across the village, and was an active leader in numerous committees and Council. Among his many notable achievements at Earthaven, he leaves behind the beautiful farm and home created in the Gateway neighborhood. His official obituary is available here.

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Shearing the Sheep

Skirting the Fleeces

The Fleeces

The Shearers

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1-Aesthetics: Let’s face it. Little baby lambs are cute. There is nothing quite like walking by a big beautiful pasture full of lush green grass and mama sheep with tiny new lambs.

2-Wool: The Gateway sheep are sheared twice a year, in the spring and fall, and the wool is available for sale to Earthaven residents and friends. Just imagine wearing a hat knit by one friend from yarn spun by another friend with wool that was grown right in your own back yard!

3-Pasture Fertilization/Integrated System: Gateway is one of several farms at Earthaven and the sheep are one piece of a farm system working towards sustainability (while realizing that we have a long way to go.) Sheep, chickens, turkeys, winter storage vegetables, bio-fuel, house building, solar energy and human connection are some of the many pieces involved. Poop makes great fertilizer.

4-Education and Radical Responsibility: Two Earthaveners slaughtered one of the Gateway lambs to serve for the Thanksgiving dinner served in the Council Hall. One had experience with animal slaughter and the other was excited to learn. Both were taking radical responsibility for their food by being a part of the death that gives them life.

5-Meat: The lamb meat was roasted in the oven at the Village Terraces common kitchen while we listened to food songs on WNCW, drank wine, and prepared stuffing and gallons of gravy. The meal was a sort of pre-arranged potluck and folks could choose to purchase (at cost) turkey and/or lamb. YUM!

6-Haggis: “Made from all the parts of the sheep the English won’t eat” read the sign in front of this dish that many of us have only heard about in old stories. This version was made by one of our Dutch members using the organs to create a surprisingly (to me) tasty treat.

7-Head Cheese: No it’s not cheese, and Yes it is made from the head. A molded gelatinous ring making good use of even more parts of this animal that would often be discarded.

8-Fiddle Strings: A friend heard that a sheep was being slaughters on the land and called to ask if he could have the intestines to make fiddle strings. The request was of course honored and perhaps he will honor us with some of his music in the future.

9-Testicles/Stretching Our Comfort Zone: The testicles, batter dipped and fried, were served as an appetizer before our incredible dinner. My mind was a bit squeamish (ok, repulsed) at the thought of eating testicles, but I certainly wasn’t going to pass up this rare opportunity. I pushed through the discomfort and was rewarded with a superior taste sensation. I mean really, batter dipped and fried? You can’t go wrong.

10-Stock: After dinner the lamb bones came back to the VT kitchen where they spent 24 hours simmering on the stove to create a rich delicious nutrient dense stock. We love to use this for soup, cooking grains, or mix it with miso and drink it. We also pressure canned a round of it to use in next Thanksgivings’ gravy.

One more

11-Hide: The lamb hide is currently undergoing the tanning process. You just might see it as apparel at next years’ dinner.

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Springtime at Gateway Farm this year means our fifth lambing season is upon us! It is that magical season when you can walk into the field at dawn and find a just-born lamb, tottering up onto its delicate legs, and with great determination, stumbling towards the teat.

Our sheep are Icelandic and, true to their hardy breed, they birth on their own in the pasture and often bear twins. Fifty-nine lambs have been born at Gateway since 2008, and this year we expect that our current flock of 30 (19 adult ewes, 10 yearling ewes, and 1 yearling ram) will double.

By May, the pasture should be full of frolicking new lambs, each one a marvel of tiny hooves, budding horns and soft, curly wool. For now, we eagerly await our first birth of the season.

Caroline Williford has been a shepherd since the sheep arrived at Gateway Farm in 2008. She came to the valley in 2004, and has worked with The Southeast Women’s Herbal Conference and Red Moon Herbs at Earthaven. She is an arts administrator, videographer, choreographer and dancer, and likes to experiment in many an art form.

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Farmer and NikkiAnne in front of the MicroHut (Farmer’s residence at Earthaven) at Gateway Neighborhood. Photo taken Summer 2010.

On Tuesday night, Nov. 16,^,

Earthaven member Chris Farmer (often called “Farmer”) threw a farewell dance party in the Council Hall and said goodbye to Earthaven . . . at least for now.

“I’m leaving for the indefinite future,” he told friends in the packed Council Hall.  “I may be back, and I’d like to come back, but I’m not making any specific plans about it.” He’ll be living in Santa Barbara, California, close to his sweetheart, an environmental activist and former Earthaven work exchanger. Farmer has been an Earthaven member for 13 years.

Chris Farmer (left) with Brian Love.

One of Earthaven’s earliest advocates for agriculture, Farmer is co-owner with Brian Love of Gateway Farm, as well as their business, ArtiSun Construction. He co-founded the Forestry Co-op (1998- 2004): felling trees, mastering timber-framing carpentry, and innovating the use of a geopolymer concrete substance as well as a wall-truss system with wood milled from thinner trees.  He built a timber-framed 12’ x 12’ x 12’ “micro-hut” with chip-slip walls in the Hut Hamlet, and later built a similar hut in Gateway neighborhood in the hybrid natural/conventional style he and Brian innovated.

Farmer has stimulated and entertained Earthaven members, friends, neighbors, and visitors with his “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” “Clueless Honky,” and “Open-Source Mythology” raps. (See videos.)

Farmer in a large goodbye hug at his farewell party.

Farmer was Earthaven’s Firekeeper (president) in 2007, where he lead us in dealing with state officials re water quality and distribution standards. He has served on Land Use/Site Planning committee and on the ad hoc Council Document committee, and is one of Earthaven’s best facilitators.

We’ll miss you Farmer. We wish you all the best!

Earthaven member Diana Leafe Christian is an internationally known ecovillage activist, author of Creating a Life Together and Finding Community (New Society Publishers), and publisher of Ecovillages newsletter. Click here for her website.

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2010 was a year of delicious bounty.  Natural factors such as the intensity of last winter along with the mildness and wetness of the following spring gave us fruit galore. In personal orchards, on farms, and in the wild, we had our pick of tasty fruits from May until even now in late October. Strawberries, juneberries, Nanking cherries, blueberries, jostaberries, blackberries, wineberries, currants, gooseberries, figs, muscadines and scuppernongs, apples, persimmons!  Yummmmm!!!

Many folks supplemented their own garden produce with a share in Yellowroot Farm’s CSA.  The CSA provided 15 shares a week for 22 weeks.  Shares included beets, carrots, lettuce, escarole, turnips and cucumbers in the early season and later included tomatoes, okra, peppers, potatoes, garlic, more greens, and plenty of sauerkraut and kimchee (spicy, fermented, Asian sauerkraut).

Bee Happy Farm, run by Marjorie Vestal in the Bellavia neighborhood has been very busy establishing a large  thornless blackberry orchard which produced enough fruit this year for mead-making. In addition, Marjorie has been implementing a sizeable garden on her homesite including mushroom logs, herbs galore, more fruit, and a small pond.

Gateway Farm’s sheep flock produced 30 fleeces, 8 pelts, and 300-350 pounds of lamb. Unseen to customers, but another high value crop, Gateway also produced 1500, 50-pound bales of hay from an off-land lease nearby.  Fall is the annual stock-up-on-squash time. Gateway raised 2000 pounds of a variety of squash and 100 pounds of onions. We’re looking forward to fresh and as-local-as-it-gets turkeys for the holidays.

Many villagers got their pasture-raised and free-range eggs from Imani Farm this year. Pictured to the right are new chicks (came in the mail but being raised by a momma hen who adopted them upon arrival.) Imani also grazed their upper pasture with their second year steers. In the lower field Imani grew plenty of blueberries and about 1000 pounds of tomatoes (see our blog entry).

Jonathan Swiftcreek is an avid food producer, preserver and forager, always open to learning new forms of reverence towards food. He is a new member of Earthaven as well as the Village Terraces Cohousing Neighborhood and a participant in many of Earthaven’s farms. He and his partner, eli will be first-time parents in April.

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Yellowroot Farm in the Hut Hamlet is up and running again, with seedings for what will become lush and vibrant biodynamic vegetables. (See “Yellowroot CSA Begins Second Year”)

In late April, Cailen Campbell’s goats, April and Luna, had their kids, and now moms and kids are sharing a pen in front of the Tribal Condo in the Hut Hamlet. Cailen, Lee, and Mihaly rotate the grazing of their animals at various sites around Earthaven, including the Village Green, the fallow side of Yellowroot Farm, and the “New Lumberyard” site near Gateway Field.

Recently a crew of loggers and farmers, including Brian Love, Mike Odel, Chris Farmer, Mihaly, Cailen, and work exchangers Galen Ballantine, Drew Hoffman, and Bruce Johnston, further cleared the New Lumberyard site and prepared it for grazing. The logs from the trees that were felled were milled as lumber for the Pokeberry Hill duplex at Village Terraces (see “New Buildings”), and the stumps were left in the ground. The pasture was fertilized with organic fertilizers and planted in perennial grasses and clovers. This one-acre site (called the “New Lumberyard” because it once was going to be a lumberyard), is ideal for grazing rather than crop cultivation because it’s on a slope and too steep for a tractor, has stumps, and is north-facing.

Last spring, Brian Love and Chris Farmer (known as “Farmer”) started their four-acre integrated-agriculture project, Gateway Field, by clearing four acres of forest, adding organic soil amendments, and growing and tilling under two “green manure” cover crops. Their next step is a grass rotational pasturage system with Icelandic sheep, and probably endangered heirloom breed turkeys and chickens. This requires a sturdy fence to protect livestock and provide a fixed point for attaching lightweight moveable fencing for when the animals are sequentially moved around the field in the rotational grazing system. This spring, with the help of Mike, Bruce, Galen, and others, Brian and Farmer built a 2220 ft fence around their field, using woven wire fencing attached to charred locust posts every 15 feet. They’ll soon add two electrified wires around the perimeter to complete the fence, and, perhaps as early as November, will bring in their small herd of sheep.

Last fall, Michaeljon Drouin and Andy Bosley converted an existing pond along Rosy Branch Road, just uphill from the hydro station, into a trout pond. They built up the dam so the pond would hold more water, and ran more water into it from nearby Rosy Branch Creek. “Trout need cool, aerated water to survive,” Andy says, “and raising the water level and increasing the pond size meant we could grow more trout in the pond.” In late March of this year Michaeljon and Andy stocked the pond with 200 3-to-5-inch rainbow trout purchased from a regional trout breeder. “By April some of the largest trout sited were already 7 to 8 inches long!” Andy reports. The plan is to begin harvesting the trout when the biggest ones are about 12 inches long, perhaps by mid-July. The trout will be sold to Earthaven members and neighbors, and Michaeljon and Andy will experiment with making smoked fish for longer-term preservation.

Michaeljon and Andy are currently arranging with the Forestry and Agriculture committee to create a second larger pond downhill from the first, in order to expand their aquaculture operation.

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The bright, creative thinking and dedicated, diligent work of Chris Farmer and Brian Love are the stuff of future Earthaven legends. Folks are always wanting to know what amazing things they’ve been up to. Considering their plan for Gateway Field, we will probably not be disappointed, as it promises to maximize their potential.

In these times, we need people with legendary resolve, tireless energy, multi-dimensional intelligence and a strong work ethic. While growing with remarkable success, Earthaven is still facing huge insufficiencies, not the least of which is a lack of inherited skills.

The homesteader skills of our great grandparents have been lost. Now, the skill a ten-year-old would have taken for granted a century ago, we must gain through trial and error. Of course, many people at Earthaven have resolve, energy, intelligence and a good work ethic (not necessarily in legendary quantity). Nonetheless, we have been slow in tackling the far-reaching problem of dependable alternative energy. Most of us have been entirely occupied with other important work, including the building of our own living spaces, that we often have just had to go on the hope that eventually someone with the right skills and knowledge would take it on.

Thank goodness, Brian and Farmer are doing just that! In their own words, they have already begun the intensive project of creating an integrated system where logging, milling, and building residues provide power for biofuel production… [with their] wastes…used as high-protein feed supplements for pasture-raised livestock [that]…fertilize the field…for vegetable cultivation.”

It will be a while before the whole program is in place and producing. In the eight plus years that Farmer has been at Earthaven, he has been doing what neede to be done while planning and preparing for this project. This time was not wasted.

Though Brian arrived on the scene just four years ago, he truly hit the ground running. His brilliance, exuberance, and physical endurance were just the support Farmer needed to renew his resolve. Helping him to make use of the things he had learned in his years at Eathaven.

In our last two issues, we wrote about our new “Sweat Equity” policy and also about “Sustainable Systems” (which focused primarily on Farmer and Brian’s work truck/power source). These articles described how these men established the foundation that would allow them to carry out their plans within the limiting context of a self-supporting, off-the-grid community such as ours. In the relatively short time since they signed their lease for the Gateway field, they have cleared the acreage, processed and stored the wood, acquired their water tanks, built an impressive barn, plowed under their first two cover crops, planted a third cover crop, and constructed a significantly-sized pond. Therefore, in spite of insufficiencies (or because they are so aware of them), Farmer and Brian are helping us to face a more promising future.

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