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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For the living, food is a master course in survival and well-being. Our community members strive to learn how to grow and prepare soil to cultivate vibrant, nourishing plants and animals, demonstrate a healthy balance between work, relaxation and celebration, and continue to develop a cooperative management approach to various goals of self-sufficiency. Medicine is the other power course, which we’ll shine a light on in future issues.

We are food people. What we eat, what we grow, what we trade, what we know about our food, and the ways we share food and food stories, are a big part of our lives in community. At Earthaven, organic food self-sufficient practices are a dream in the process of fulfillment, albeit with a long way to go!

We’ve yet to build our long-dreamed-of community center, with multi-purpose spaces for dining, workshops, parties, classes, games, a place to share more of the lifestyle we’ve dedicated ourselves to. Connected to soil, seed, animal life and recycled resources, little by little, folks learn and apply the learning.

Meanwhile, we eat together at weekly potlucks and cookouts, at celebrations, and in a few neighborhood kitchens that provide more intimate spaces. Recently, Marybeth started a “Sunday Soup ‘n Somethin’” supper group, mixed up from neighborhoods across the community. This idea is likely to go viral in the months to come.

This holiday season, folks were attentive to ways of sharing food. At the Bizarre Bazaar before the Winter Solstice, folks sold holiday food. 

On Christmas Eve, Monique and Juan Pablo organized a spectacular dinner party at the White Owl, where Rachel and the kids provided warmth and welcome. River Otter served chicken dinner on Christmas Day at the Hut Hamlet Kitchen to guests from around the community. A surprise ice storm had most folks staying home New Year’s Eve, gathering momentum (one hopes) for more food-focused events in the near future.

Using opportunities to build our food culture with nourishing social connection and opportunities to work, learn and grow together, we learn to care for the soil, discover best varieties, best seasons, best preservation and trading partners. By learning its energetic and nutritional value, by seeing how our food heals and sustains us, we grow stronger. By storying the food and paying respect to its goodness and purity, by remembering what we know of where it came from, we carry on the good work.

The learning will go on, while the concentric circles widen around the essential goal—a human and planetary resilience that promises to fulfill our dearest and most tender needs.

photos, from top:

  Darren in the cornfield.

  Cornelian Cherries.

  Chrismas Eve at the White Owl.

 Michaeljon delighting Heron at the fish pond.

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On Monday, September 11th, we turned 23 years young, managed a small parade in the wake of Hurricane Irma weather, and packed the White Owl for a community lunch and some good old socializing! Then on Saturday night, the 16th, nearby Celo-community-based gypsy jazz band Carpathian Spruce lit up the Council Hall with their wild and celebratory style, while friends and neighbors joined members for a whirl of a celebration!

Many changes lie ahead for Earthaven in 2017 and ’18, as most of our neighborhoods turn into linked, separately owned, residential parcels, and we pursue an updated way to manage our Village Center.

As you read this edition of our newsletter, please picture us thriving through the changing process and coming out feeling robust and ready to keep growing. It’s a big change from our original all-in-one vision and, though more complex in some ways, it may actually be a reasonable template for other groups considering coming together to protect land and nature.

Photos from top to bottom:

Birthday cake crafted by Tricia Baehr

Early Permaculture Design Class site map of the Earthaven neighborhood now known as Bellavia Gardens.

Determined members carry on the Founding Day parade tradition, in the wake of Hurricane Irma’s soggy weather.

below: Whirling away at Saturday night’s 23rd anniversary dance party.

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On Sunday, April 30, we celebrated Beltaine, or May Day, the holiday mid-way between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice, which celebrates the full flowering of the powerful energy of Springtime. In lighting the Bel-fire together we take part in an ancient and universal ritual of community healing and intention. These sacred magical fires were found in cultures from Europe to China, from Africa to the Middle East, and across Native America.

Maypole dancers at Earthaven, 2017

Native peoples on this continent had a version of the Maypole to celebrate the awakening springtime before the season of the planting of the corn. For both young women and young men, it was symbolic of their commitment to care for and nurture each other and the Web of All Our Interconnected Relations, honoring the gifts each brings.

Early European Maypoles used strips of red and white cloth ribbon. Their entwining represents the union of the creative forces that rise within us, and was considered a spell for the healing and balance of the community. There is no Christian equivalent for Beltaine; it is “the people’s holiday,” established in nations around the globe as the ultimate workers’  holiday.

River Otter (aka Melissa Lemoing) is our Outreach Coordinator, among her many other gifts and talents. Let her know if you’d like to come for a visit, at least by Beltaine next year!

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The annual parade down Another Way stopped to celebrate completion of the stone-and-crystal side walls built on the Second Bridge by Travis and Gaspar. Birthday cake at the White Owl and, for many who didn’t know Founder Valerie Naiman, her fascinating story of life on the way to Earthaven and beyond

Reflecting on these 22 years, members offered these sentiments and wishes:

A Great Dream

Dear Earthaven,

I remember conversations of the dream of you before you were born. From the news of your birth I packed my bags to live closer.  I have been nourished deeply as I’ve witnessed the ups and downs of your growing maturity, and a freedom that has a life of its own. I give thanks for your influence on my life and am forever grateful to be a member of the tribe.                                               Love, Tara

The Joy of Participation

Earthaven is the place where my dreams about community have been coming true in community, full of delicious gifts and profound challenges to my way of living and being. What a blessing!   ~ Arjuna

(left) Tara and Arjuna, friends since ’97.

Commitment to Vision

Living at Earthaven 22 years ago, in a 1967 Airstream, when there was only a dilapidated hunting cabin and an outhouse, was a commitment to vision. Members began to camp and we built a tiny prototype Council Hall with a post & beam yurt frame, and an iron ring for the center of the roof symbolizing our union. Last year the community disassembled the old frame and mud walls, and I was thrilled and grateful to be presented with the ring on Founding Day this year. The ring and I both have a few dents and rough spots, but are strong and re-purposing. ~ Valerie

(right) Valerie gets her ring back on Founding Day.

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Everything is soooo green!

This view of the Village Green from Council Hall Plaza in May has lots to say about how much warmer and earlier Spring and Summer came this year. Still, it’s hard to complain about beautiful weather. Down on the Green, ball game lovers of all ages congregate on weekends and after potlucks for soccer or volleyball or for tossing corn sacks and frisbees. The courts move around to minimize wear and tear on our one big lawn for outdoor picnics and celebrations as the beautiful weather carries on.

Behind the camera in the shot of the Village Green (above), old-timers, new members and students have all worked side by side several times a week rebuilding paths, evolving the stone seating and gardens in the plaza outside Council Hall, and upgrading infrastructure for the outdoor dining scene.

At right, John and Juan Pablo wrestle the concrete bottom step into place at the entrance to the storage container kitchen. 

Sue Stone (below) continues to glorify the view with flower beds that practically glow!

Green is a color of the heart, where the green meme of caring and sharing presides. This season’s cusp from Spring into Summer, with its peak at Summer Solstice, has been showing us in dramatic ways how love can survive and spread through many years of community life, its promises, its challenges, and its rewards. May the blessings of Summer abound!

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Our annual Ancestors Feast brings members, residents, friends and neighbors together in the Council Hall to highlight stories of beloved friends, family and teachers who have gone before us.

When we all gather for a feast in the Council Hall, it takes all our tables arranged in a tight crescent to fit us around the altar. We get to mix with folks we may not see much of. At one table, Aidan sat next to (clockwise) Amelie, who sat next to Chuck who was across from Mary, Dorien, Sue and Geoff. Earlier, we sat silently in a contemplative mood of pictures of our ancestors and our memories of them.

The Ancestors Feast is a unique and treasured annual event many of us look forward to each yer. We offer a special bow of appreciation to Kaitlin Johnston for organizing such a beautiful and sacred event for us!

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After some time as a private residence and then, well, kind of sad and empty, the White Owl is once again being used for special events, including a Middle Eastern-themed feast and supper club with chef Carleigh O’Donnell, shown here forming pita bread, with chef’s helper Jenna Payne checking the garbanzos.

This first of a soon-to-be monthly event (next one: Ethiopian on January 24th) was by reservation only and limited to a small, first come-first served group. White Owl resident and host Art Meyers is offering the venue to members for special events like these, as he and his family make plans to expand the space available for them. Here guests are awaiting table service and other royal treatment!

After a sumptuous dinner, topped off with pomegranates and dates for dessert, and toasts to an elegant future, folks retired to the sofas for more intimate conversations.

A few weeks later, Carleigh and Jenna offered a Sunday brunch, and all available seats were quickly taken! Here’s Chuck getting tea while folks worked out the seating.

And here’s Brandon Greenstein, who ran the White Owl years ago, getting a hug from Carmen Lescher, who returned to Earthaven recently and says she’s here to stay!

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Both for the alliteration of it, and because the way we do things is so often not the way “it’s done,” our annual holiday crafts-and-goodies bazaar has been called “bizarre” since it’s beginnings. This year, after so many years organizing it, I was able to organize the Bazaar and have it set up and taken down in half the time as ever before with, of course, the help of a new cadre of Earthaven elves.

We love our bazaar and there’s nothing bizarre to us at all about all the homemade, hand-built, humbly priced treasures we wait all year to snatch up for our friends and families, and for our own use and delight as well. From handcrafted salves, lotions and tonics to chocolates and cakes, potions and power drinks, with upcycled clothing and jewelry and more, neighbors and residents flow in and through the transformed decorated Council Hall.

Earthaven co-founder Michaeljon Drouin visited One Stone Community neighbor Otter Malone at his jewelry table.

Pripo and Rainbow Teplitsky, from nearby Rosy Branch Farms, at her upcycled clothing “booth.”

Geni Stephenson of Full Circle Farm (literally next door) sells creamed honey, felted decorations and—this year, at last—her pottery!

Amakiasu returned to live at Earthaven with her husband, Abdullah, who baked up a storm for the Bazaar, including the best sweet potato pie in WNC!

River Devil—oops—River Otter is Earthaven’s Outreach Coordinator, Campground Manager and wearer of many other important, non-devilish hats. In her spare time, she’s a massage therapist, jin shin jyutsu practitione, and a popular resident herbalist.

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