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!

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Clear creek water is flowing musically in my direction, over the rocks below the bridge, upstream of where I sit. It follows the stream banks toward the confluence, one of several sacred spaces tended here and there by faeries, elves, and the occasional nature worshiper. I place a special rock on the altar and then just chill out on a hot afternoon.

Weeks ago, Rainbow and I went to visit the Peace Garden, sat on the bench like I’m doing now, and imagined a “Refresh the Peace Garden” party. That got me eager to welcome Moe and Juanpa back from Argentina and propose a date. Kaitlin, the sacred site steward of the Peace Garden, was all about it. I was excited to think of the kinds of art projects and landscape sculptures that might result in a new gathering among the boulders and the bamboo.

At the last Peace Garden work party that I attended, about a dozen folks spent hours in this shady and slightly hidden retreat space behind the hedges, rerouting overflows, rearranging sit spots, cleaning up fallen branches, stopping to appreciate what a lovely thing it is to make an art project out of a chosen responsibility! Juan Pablo hung the swinging bench I’m sitting on, so that it faces the oncoming flow, facing exactly where the creek rushes through the giant culverts. You have to really sit here to appreciate it!

Drinking in, through all my cells, the perfection of this place, it’s actually possible for me to put aside the temptation to dwell on the thoughts and reflections that weave through our intentional lives in this ecovillage. I’m looking forward to another work party here soon, such a graceful way to balance all the mental and emotional efforts our minds and hearts take on to keep this complex boat afloat!

In a place like this, where a wooden bench dangles above a flowing creek, the view and the sound actually soothe the remaining tension of an after-meeting concern. I return to stillness; balance is possible.

Where is your peaceful place? Please share in the comments.

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I asked around the village to see what other villagers are reading. Deborah Clark recommended Helen Zuman’s book Mating in Captivity, A Memoir. It’s about her experiences in the Zendik Farm cult, which she didn’t know was a cult until she was in it for a while and discovered that her autonomy and self-worth were being eroded by the cult leaders. You might call it a cautionary tale of someone who was very interested in community life and looking for love, but found a distorted version with the Zendiks.

Deborah reports “I’ve actually read the book twice, and it’s really well written — she conveys what happened and her process with a satisfying balance of juicy description and economy: never a wasted word. Somehow she clearly speaks her truth while maintaining some objectivity, portraying the cult leaders as humans and not monsters. It was particularly interesting to me because I had read about the Zendiks and was curious about their ‘community,’ and also knew someone else who had gotten out (he was there at the same time Helen was). It was especially juicy the second time I read it, because by then I had gotten to know Helen as a dear friend, but I think the book would be of interest to anyone who is interested in the topics of community, cults, and personal transformation.”

Spoiler alert: Helen survived the cult, did some good healing and processing, or as she would say “composting” of her experiences, and went on to be a successful writer, activist, and entrepreneur, and now has a regular podcast called Chocolate Church.

Bruce Johnston is reading a book called Shame: How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country by Shelby Steele.

Bruce reports “The book is about how America’s ‘culture wars’ began in the 1960s, when America finally became accountable for its treatment of Black Americans, and then for imperialism, sexism, and so forth. The book argues a schism in American life has come from that awareness and the loss of moral authority that white America experienced as a consequence of that awareness. The book contends that this cultural war has prevented sensible policy in many areas of life and has generated an avoidance of principled discussion around sensitive topics like race and gender, mostly because American institutions still feel that they lack the moral authority to do so. I recommend it because it is a point of view on these topics that I rarely hear: unconventional, delightfully practical, humanistic, and relatively free of ideology.”

And our elder Arjuna da Silva is reading a book that’s 50 years old, but not yet known — The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. She says that it’s a radical and amazing investigation of the more likely evolution of human thought and consciousness based on ancient texts that have apparently rarely been seen in these lights. She recommends it for people interested in evolution, consciousness, or healing.

What are you reading? If there’s a book you’d like to share, please share it in the comments.

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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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Some Earthaven neighborhoods are balancing collective and personal ownership issues by forming housing cooperatives. While used in other parts of the country, housing co-ops are new in our region and could be a reasonable model for other ecovillages, especially in rural areas.

One of the last neighborhood “pods” to get involved in the land-ownership revision, folks at Bellavia Gardens finally took a look at the details and dimensions of this “restructuring” process, which Council has been working on for several years. Here’s what we learned.

Entrance to Bellavia Circle in the lush heart of summer.

After restructuring, our Homeowners Association (HOA), of which our neighborhood “pods” will all be members, will continue to own most of our land for us, meaning the forest all around, the Commons, and much of the agricultural areas. But instead of bearing the burdens of caring for residential parcels, the HOA will pass the baton of “ownership” and responsibility to residential pods incorporated in a couple of formats.

Two neighborhoods have decided to pursue becoming religious societies, finding those more aligned than housing co-ops with their values and needs. Bellavia Gardens will have just enough Full Earthaven Members (five) to comply with the requirements for cooperative associations in North Carolina. Other neighborhoods with fewer members are joining together to start their co-ops and may branch off in the future.

left: Medicine Wheel Collective will become a religious society.

Not everyone has been excited about these changes (putting our NVC education into intensive practice!). In addition to slowpokes like the Bellavians, other challenges to accomplishing restructuring included determining which agreements would have to be amended and which can remain the same. Our commitments and understandings regarding residing on, sharing and co-owning Earthaven land have had a searchlight review and updating in preparation for becoming a federation of neighborhoods.

Earthaven Association comprehensive site map before restructuring

Much intensive and dedicated work was accomplished by Council’s Strategic Transition Group (STG), which Kimchi Rylander organized and nurtured these last few years, and which has guided the process to its maturity. Hats off also to Patricia Allison, Bob Lienhart, Debbie Lienhart, Martha Harris, Sue and Geoff Stone, Alice Henry, Norm Self, Carmen Lescher, and with a great bow to Dimitrios Magiasis, who kept interpreting for the rest of us what was happening in conversations between legal counsel and the STG team!

All in all, what has been a laborious and sometimes bewildering process has created a new way of organizing ourselves that we think will be more appropriate and supportive of our similar but also distinct neighborhood personalities.

      Visitors Map showing some Earthaven neighborhoods.

Stay tuned for updated information here and on our website about ways to continue to connect with us, including visiting and tours, work exchange and other short-term residency options, educational and economic opportunities, and membership exploration. To twist the African Ubuntu saying just a little bit: “we are because YOU are!

Arjuna da Silva helped found Earthaven in 1994 and is a member of Bellavia Gardens Neighborhood. 

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Over a hundred people from all over the US gathered at Earthaven, June 4-7, for “Restorative Circles in Our Communities,” a conference with Restorative Circles (RC) founder Dominic Barter and facilitator/trainers Karl Stayaert and “Duke” Duchscherer. All three, as well as others at the event, have shared Restorative Circles and other ways to come to dialog in conflict situations, some internationally, including Brazil, Nepal and the Ukraine. The conference was sponsored by Earthaven’s affiliate non-profit, Culture’s Edge, and hosted by members Steve Torma and Arjuna da Silva.

RC is a “restorative justice” approach to addressing conflict within the context of the wider community. Used in schools, court systems and other organizations and agencies in more than 25 countries, it was developed by Dominic Barter in the 1990s in Brazil to help resolve conflicts in the high crime-burdened favelas of Rio de Janeiro.

The first two days included a focus on the importance of setting up conscious restorative justice systems in our communities, and an in-depth exploration of the three phases: pre-Circles, Circle, post-Circle. ‘Semi-simulated circles’ serve as practice sessions and are a key component in the learning process. On Friday night, Dominic spoke to over 120 people in Asheville about walking toward conflict. The last two days of the conference were filled with Open Space session organized by participants.

One highlight of the conference for many was the final “Financial Co-Responsibility” meeting, called “money
piles.” While people paid fees for food and lodging, there was no fixed conference fee. Instead, sitting in a large circle in the Council Hall, surrounded by a good half of the participants, Arjuna, Steve, Dominic, Karl and Duke, as hosts and presenters, candidly described their financial situations and how much it had cost them to put on and participate in the conference. Participants were asked to contribute as much as they could toward the
expenses, given the benefit they’d each received being part of the conference —a radically transparent experience which was quite emotionally moving for many in the room.

As the total of contributions made up to that point was matched to the total costs and requests, an ever-increasing pile of cash-filled envelopes and IOUs was placed in the “money pile” in the middle of the floor. Additional online contributions via computer were also being made, as the group began allocating the “pile” to the various expenses and organizational and presentation services on the list.
As it turned out, everyone received more than they had asked for!

Dom said one of the best things about the conference was his opportunity to be a listener and a learner.

Steve, Arjuna and the conference Staff, including Jerry, Abdullah, Sara, Gaspar, NikiAnne and several others in minor roles, reported some serious levels of satisfaction at their debriefing meeting.

Comments and evaluations from participants were delightfully positive: folks felt well cared for, well nourished, and saturated with possibilities for a more just world of restorative communities. Arjuna also reports the spread of interest in RC locally, in Asheville.

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Over 30 people participated in a work party in the Bellavia Gardens Neighborhood on Saturday, February 26.

Earthaven members, guests and work exchangers pulled together on beautiful sunny morning to clean up after the construction of “Leela,” the naturally built home of Arjuna da Silva.

Volunteers ranged in age from 5 to 79.

Leela has been a favorite attraction for Earthaven visitors for more than five years. Numerous natural building workshops have been given using Leela as a demonstration site.  Friends came out to put their love into action also by cleaning up and preparing the neighborhood commons for fruit trees and shrubs.

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I walked out to the farm at 7:30 to collect the petals, even though the instructions said to wait till the dew had evaporated. But Andy needed some ice for a few hours’ storage of the day’s harvest, and I figured it would only take another half hour for the sun to capture the dew. Once there, I saw that there was no way the sun’s rays of light or heat were going to reach those roses so soon. I would have to give them at least another hour.

An hour later, of course, I’m in the thick of a focused conversation with a young neighbor who is probably in need of more support for the enormous project he’s taken on than he realizes. (Aren’t we all?!) Then there are two intense phone calls, one after the other — the first from a friend whose husband is almost ready to discard his cancer-wracked body, the second from a neighbor I’ve been trying to get together with for weeks.

The roses! The roses! my thoughts chirp at me in between concentration on the words I’m hearing and saying.

Though it’s almost ten-thirty by the time I get back to the roses, I’m relieved to find it’s still not too hot at the farm. The roses are intensely more fragrant than they were shortly after sunrise! I start at the northeast corner and navigate the rugosas climbing along the fence, looking for the dropped petals that show me which blossoms are ready to focus on their hips and have their petals fully removed.

While gathering petals into my basket, I notice chubby black-and-yellow bees buzzing and hopping from flower to flower, doing their bobbing bee-dance among the pollen-rich pistils and seeming to be especially drawn to the darker pink blooms. Occasionally, my fingers brush their furry backs as I reach over the stems they’ve chosen to reach the ones calling to my harvest-lust. They are totally undisturbed by me, and suddenly I’m aware that we are companions in the same field, doing our modest parts among the fruits of abundance, each participating in the gifts of the rose in our own way. The sun is our companion, too, as are the whistlers and peepers in nature’s symphony that carry on all around us.

Working harmoniously at our own paces, we enjoy the blessings of non-competition: I’m not interested in their pollen, and they don’t seem to need the falling petals.

My intention, not nearly as grand as theirs, is to learn to make rosewater, and then rose oil. A quick Internet search told me there are nutrients in roses which, when applied to the skin or used internally in the right way, have powerful if subtle affects that are not just aromatic. I remember that decades ago I drank rose wine with a friend who got it from her landlady, who made it from the roses that grew in their street garden on a city block in San Franciso. It was delicate and deliciously fragrant.

Today I’ve chosen the simplest of rosewater recipes, seeking to understand the basics of rose processing before I think about how to embellish them. My harvest fills half my largest heat-loving bowl with fresh blossoms that press down to a cup’s worth, and then I pour two cups of boiled springwater over them, teasing the petals under the water with a hand made bamboo spoon. That done, I place a white china plate over the bowl, which sits for twenty or thirty minutes while I start this story. Then it’s time to get a whiff.

Oh, wow — I have two cups of pale raspberry pink rosewater to share and use. Refrigerated, it will keep a week without additives, and a dropperful of good vodka would preserve it for a month. I decide to keep this first batch unadulterated, touching, feeling, sniffing, tasting and rubbing it on my skin, with the intention of using it up within seven days. I fill two half-cup jam jars with it — one for Julie (who, with Andy, consented to let me have the petals), and one to sprinkle on my dying friend.

Next time I go to work among the bees and roses, I will follow instructions for making rose oil, which requires an elementary distilling operation. Using ice and the boiling water to distill the rosewater, the process is supposed to float a fraction of an ounce of rose oil on the rosewater’s surface. Now that’s alchemy! Mixing rosewater and rose oil with other oils and creams that moisturize and nourish could become a regular homemade blessing for those of us enamored of the roses, thanks to Andy and Julie and those friendly, pollinating bees!

Arjuna da Silva is a founding member of Earthaven and of Culture’s Edge. She is a consensus and group process trainer and facilitator, and offers counseling and Alchemical Hypnotherapy to neighbors and friends. Her earth-and-straw building, Leela House, is nearing completion. 

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In February of this year, Farmer, Brian, and Mike finished the first phase of a small, two-story house (18′ x 20′) in the Lower Rosy Branch neighborhood for long-time Earthaven member Ivy Lynn. The dwelling has a foundation, floor, walls, roof, windows, and doors, and covered with a coat of earth-plaster, which means it’s closed-in and weather-tight. Ivy and the builders will finish the second and third phases of the building over the next several years.

And in May, Arjuna da Silva will get more help building her two-story natural-built home in Benchmark neighborhood. The roughly 900 “round foot” house-in-progress has a timber-framed structure, rubble-trench foundation, walls of adobe brick, cob, clay straw, and strawbale, and a brick- red metal roof. Most walls on the first floor are built, with openings for windows and doors. Arjuna will host 4-5 interns over the 18-22 week natural building season, helping build as they learn natural building techniques from Steve Brodmerkel, Mollie Curry, and others. For more information: www.thenaturalbuildingschool.org. All buildings at Earthaven are south-facing passive solar buildings, heated by the sun. They’re off the grid, either powered by individually owned photovoltaic systems or Earthaven’s micro-hydro system, and most have metal roofs for roof-water catchment. See Natural Buildings.

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