The Candle Factory at Earthaven Ecovillage

Written by Courtney Brooke on April 18, 2021. Posted in Businesses, Village Economics, Village Life.

(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.

Candle, Candle Factory, Mentorship, Paul Caron

Courtney Brooke

Courtney Brooke (she/her) is an ancestor who was a Social Ecologist, Regenerative Designer, and educator whose work aims to reconnect people with a sense of belonging to place. Her work in the world aims to address the root cause of today’s overwhelming ecological challenges – that humans are starved of a sense of belonging to the places they live. Courtney Brooke was raised on a small farm in North Georgia, and has been guided by a lifetime of living close to the land. Her greatest teachers have been the Appalachian Mountains, the land of Aotearoa, and Selu, the Corn Mother. She holds a degree in Ecology from the Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, and has 10 years of experience facilitating earth-based education, ecological landscape design, women’s rites of passage, and cultural healing. Courtney Brooke has taught and facilitated environmental education curriculum, Deep Ecology, Permaculture Design Courses, hands-on craft and farming workshops, and Holistic Management to a wide range of audiences in nine countries from toddlers to adults and everyone in between. Deeply committed to spreading the healing that comes from belonging to the places we live, Courtney Brooke is passionate about designing learning opportunities that celebrate life. She lives at Earthaven Ecovillage where she tends the land, raises food, participates in communal ritual agriculture, swims in wild water, enjoys the mysterious blessing of being alive, and tends her own wild Hearth. She loves cooking home-grown and wild foraged foods, playing her flute to the sunrise, running on mountain trails, making compost piles, crafting from natural materials, and bringing people together to create beauty that feeds the holy.