Once upon a time Earthaven hired a forester, Shawn Swartz (who used to be a Full Member and live here with his family), to guide us towards a forest plan. The plan is designed to inform, instruct and guide us in making choices about how to (or not to) relate to the various forest species we live with.

The first step is to agree on priorities. What’s most important—protection, product, aesthetics, wild life or education? If we manage for protection, will we also get enough firewood? If we manage for product, can we also prioritize restoration? Or the health of one product over others?

“Keep in mind,” Shawn advised, “no management—meaning the elimination of human intervention—is also a management strategy. Leaving a healthy stand alone might be the best choice, but letting the forest take care of itself can also mean letting nut-bearing hardwoods die off, while rhododendron and red maple take over.” We decided protection and product are equally “most important”; if we manage for product, we intend to do so in ways that maximize forest health.

To do a forest inventory, you have to literally take one. The idea is to get a “snapshot” of the forest, a picture of which species are doing well. How tall are the trees? How much timber is there? Are the stands of mixed age and species? What’s in the understory?

To get a fair inventory of the species in our forest, we worked with samples: one “point” for every six acres. With 240 acres designated to remain forested, we had 40 points to march to. March? More like crawl and beat a way through the thickets! And a whole lot of up and down as well, from ridge to ridge, across slopes and gullies. We’d note the parameters of all trees within range of a point: diameter, height, species, regeneration on forest floor, snags, and presence or absence of invasive species. At one point there were sizable trees, the biggest a northern red oak, diameter 17.9 inches. The understory included pipcissiwa, magnolia, silverbell and cat briar.

And so it went—eleven species in all (chestnut oak, scarlet oak, northern red oak, maple, tulip poplar, sourwood, birch, pine, hemlock, locust and black gum in various groupings) plus thickets of rhododendron and/or mountain laurel. Diameters ranged from 1.2 to 38 inches. Except for a point where there were quite a few two-and three-trunk chestnut oaks (trees that grew together and became one tree at about breast height), Shawn said no doubt this place was logged about 80 years ago.

At the last point, Shawn did a site index, an index of productivity based on age and height. He had record sheets and knowledge of what to record and why. If a tree might have logs, he would ask someone to “get the logs of that tree Marie (or Darren or Gaspar) is on.” Someone would pace off the 66 feet and measure with a special tool called a Biltmore Stick. Sometimes an experienced eye was used to estimate logs, especially where it was impossible to sight the base or if the tree had kinks, bends and flaws. Thanks to a leading teacher, or a teaching leader, we learned by doing.

The post Doing the Forest Inventory, by Alice Henry appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

Johnny McLeod is our resident tree climber. He loves hanging out high in the canopies, often overlooking some amazing vistas here in our Blue Ridge Mountains.

He started his climbing career in Arkansas some ten years ago and brought his skills to our ecovillage. These skills are much needed around here where trees and houses sprout out of the ground side by side.

We need trees cut for so many reasons. The biggest reason is solar access. Most of our buildings have a passive solar design as well as a large photovoltaic system to support  electricity needs. Another reason to cut trees for sunlight is ever growing gardens. South facing slopes have been chosen for houses, photovoltaic systems and gardens. Of course we use wood to build structures; we aim to use as much of it from our land as we can.

Johnny also loves to cut firewood. It’s his obsession really. After a long day cutting trees he comes home in the evening to work at his hobby of cutting firewood! Luckily he got himself a hydraulic splitter some years ago and that makes it all go much faster.

The community has already been hard at work through this spring and summer to get enough firewood split and put up for our long and recently snowy winters.

So the next time you come to visit us, keep your eye out for a tree-climber. He has our one-year-old with him on some of these woodsy adventures. If only they made baby ear protection and little chainsaws!

Mana Vermeulen-Mcleod and her husband, Johnny, the Tree Climber, are raising a family at Earthaven. Mana says “Right now I’m a stay-in-the-woods mom and I’m so glad to raise my boy surrounded by all this natural beauty. When my kid(s) are a little older I’ll get back to what I love doing—creative carpentry.”

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We’ve known for quite a few years that new members coming into Earthaven needed a lot more coaching about our history, plans, policies and practices than they were able to get through the normal course of a Provisional Membership. We’ve required and offered trainings in Consensus Decision-Making since we were ourselves trained by “the experts,” but putting on a program about the broader scope of permaculture and land use as we interpret it has been a daunting commitment to keep. At last, this year—thanks to Diana Leafe Christian, Lee Warren, and myself, we presented the now required and first ever orientation to the background and current application of permaculture principles and land use operations at Earthaven. It was a terrific hit!

          New and prospective members who attended the day-and-a-half event were awed by the comprehensive and hard-earned expertise that has gone into the documents and decisions about running our community literally from the ground level. Pieces fell together like a jigsaw puzzle as old and newer members took the journey from macro to micro view of Earthaven. Beginning with a sunrise walk on Round Mountain led by Chris Farmer, treating us to a long, clear view of our property from several miles away, the day was filled with introductory presentations on permaculture, the Earthaven Site Plan, “multiple intelligences,” the hard work of transitional living, and the shock and awe of land development (aka destruction before construction). Breakfast and lunch were served by our culinary artists, and the day moved towards its end with an on-the-ground tour of the Village Terraces neighborhood, where the enormous task of applying our values and experience has gone so well. A brief look at our formal land use and ecological documents closed the first day.

          On Sunday, we also began outdoors, with a silent walk to Hidden Valley, led again by Chris, who offered a brief history and catalog of our forest at the end of our walk. I led a short exercise in “making love” with the tree of our choice, and we walked back to the Village Center among what may now be a more distinctly recognized community of tree beings.

          Shawn Swartz was with us on Sunday, and he gave us an awesome semester-in-an-hour review of forestry and so-called sustainable forestry practices. (Shawn is now the Forest Warden at nearby Warren Wilson College, where he lives with Holly, Rose and Eli—hurray… and we miss them!)

          We barely had enough time to complete the program with a discussion of forestry and agriculture at Earthaven and then it was time to eat our prepared lunch before the upcoming Council meeting. We did make time for an evaluation segment, and here’s a sampling of comments:

“Lots of info about the meaning of living at EH. Of immense value!”

 

“Stimulating. Learned lots, including ideas for my garden and orchard.”

 

“Liked multidimensional aspects. Would love a series from our ‘experts.’”

 

“Inspired to do projects. Nice to integrate this after 2-1/2 years!”

 

“Appreciate all the work so far, the breadth of content, all the alternatives.”

 

 “Gratitude for so much addressed on such deep levels.”

 

“Very informative for here or elsewhere.”

 

 “Never have to be bored again! Feel motivated, but with peace of mind.”

 

“Best weekend I’ve had in a log time. I could handle two more weeks like this.”

 

“Felt particularly benefited by having already received my permaculture certification and been at EH a while, giving me a context for all this information.”

 

“Interested to hear about how much has changed.”

 

“Glad it wasn’t all documents and codes, but also spiritual and connecting.”

 

          Of course, our presenters have a list of potential improvements and elaborations. We will certainly plan to reserve a whole weekend for next year’s orientation!

 

          Diana’s presentation on ecovillage economics was held two weeks later. Her review of the global ecovillage world, what’s worked and what’s not in a variety of locations, and a look at what’s already happening at Earthaven contributed both inspiration and confidence for the continuing evolution of a “thriving local economy” here in our own extended community.

          Most segments of these events were recorded and will be available for review in a few weeks.

One final note: when the weekend was over, I left with a certain sadness, as if something very important was still missing from our offerings to new members. And then it hit me—we teach governance and land use, two essential legs of the Earthaven stool, to our incoming members, but we don’t yet have anything to say about the vast amount of experience and practice available to us in the spiritual and healing arts. As I bemoaned this fact, Lee pointed out that nothing prevents us from creating part three of our new-member orientation, and the list we’ve started gathering on this huge topic promises to turn into yet another exciting, member-led event down the road.

The post Orientation: Permaculture and Land Use at Earthaven…and More! appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

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.

The post Agriculture is Blooming! appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

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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