When I was in my teenage years, I lived across the street from a playground and baseball park. I would walk almost every day around the park with my two dogs, and admire the beauty of the trees flourishing there — especially one weeping willow tree. She was nestled into her own little alcove among the chaos of the baseballs flying around, and the laughter and shrieks coming from the playground swings. There was a bench next to her to start a conversation with her and to marvel over how her branches fell into cascades of teardrop leaves that enveloped and held whoever was near.

I felt like she was the embodiment of my soul.
Like I was those branches.
And in some ways, she reflected back to me my grief and my gifts that I had yet to discover until I was an adult … when I would have some roots to anchor into in order to be present with all that would unfurl inside of me.

This weeping willow tree reminds me of one of the goals that Earthaven strives towards:

Goal 13: We recognize elders as the trunk and children as the fruit of our village tree, and collectively prioritize what all the parts of our “tree” need to thrive. 

All parts of the tree are valuable and vitally needed for our necessary expansion and growth. The children are the fruits of our labor, the accumulation of our wisdom, and the future of shaping our world. They are the next wave of presence and consciousness and awareness that our planet desperately needs for solutions, change, and hope.

And so my hope is that they may know and be seen in their gifts and be celebrated with unconditional love. That they may be held in their expansion and contraction by us — the parents, the elders, the friends, the family, and the mentors. My prayer is that we invest in them and nurture them so that they may burst like ripe fruit with their juicy sweetness into our world.

How are you investing in the next generation? 

I invite you to have the ultimate intentional community family experience this summer with us. Earthaven Ecovillage Experience Week this July 31 through Aug 6 is a deep dive into the embodied essence of Earthaven and its members through events, work days, and classes to further your understanding of community living.

Simultaneously, bring your kids to Eco-Explorers Adventure Week from Aug 1 through 5, our summer program where they will experience community with other children who love nature. This program is also available as a day camp for those of you that would like to commute.

Be your part of the tree … because we need all to thrive.

Your tree hugging friend,

Jill Lacasse xx

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Gabriel: I am really excited because the village school is moving to a new location. We’re going to be out here in the forest gardens. Behind me, right here is the forest garden. An area that’s been through a million different iterations, different teams, lots of people taking care of it over the years, and it’s been in and out of being well taken care of, this beautiful idea, this beautiful vision of this permaculture food forest, different levels and layers, different kinds of food growing in different places. It’s always seem to just not really get taken care of the way that it needs in order to be as beautiful as it could be and produce a lot of food.

I was out there one day just looking at it and thought about how if the kids were coming here every day and basing their school program here and finding projects that they’re interested in, things that they’re interested in getting into and growing some food and some of the garden beds and taking care of the fruit trees. Just be here every day, learning about this place and loving this place and taking care of this place.  Then not only would the place be getting taken care of. But the kids would be learning about that relationship and learning all the different skills that are involved in that. All the different things they need to get done here, all the different things that they can practice as far as working with the land.

And so that’s the idea. I’m excited to land here with them and see what they get into. Hope it can be really good for them and for the community also.

Part 2

Being Here in a Good Way

All right. Let’s imagine that today is the first day of school, which is coming up on Monday.

Hopefully, things will be a little more put together. We’re going to meet out here in this driveway on the first day of school for a good old fashioned driveway fire. Probably be a fire right around here somewhere. I’m going to talk to the kids and tell them about this place, about what we’re going to be doing, what we’re going to be talking about, what we’re going to be learning.

Also just talk to the place in front of them, talk to the place and the trees and animals that live here. Tell them that we’re coming in and we’re probably going to change things and destroy some things and mess up some things by accident or on purpose. Take some things and ask all of their permission and help and support and guidance to be here in a good way. Hoping that our being here can teach the kids to relate to a place in a way that’s beneficial to the place and that all of that taking and destroying and serve that purpose.

Greeting Each Day

So anyway, let’s check it out. We’ll start here. Then, we’ll travel down the road and across the bridge into the forest garden. Every day, the kids will meet back up there where we had our fire, and they’ll be hanging out, waiting. Then when they hear the conk blow, they’ll come walking, gently, quietly with their backpacks, walking up this road.

This tarp here is the camp for our saplings program that’s our younger children, 6 to 8 years old. We have four of them with Chelsea Spitzer as their teacher. This will be their home base beneath the great grandmother hemlock tree. Really cozy little spot. The beautiful view of the field.

Over here is the growing area of the forest garden. It’s wide-open playground for our imaginations, for growing things, for taking care of the land. A lot of work that needs to get done, a lot of really kid friendly jobs out there.

Already the taking and destroying has begun, bringing the tractor through here to bring sand and materials and build things. Hopefully, we can find a way to take care of this tractor tracks and mud.

So, the older kids will walk past the saplings camp and come up the road here.

Hopefully, every day will be as gorgeous as this day, probably in its own unique way. Some of them in a rainy way.

Over here on the right. This is our hearth or fire circle where we’ll meet every morning, have circle time, lay out some blankets, and sit and check in. Start our day. In some quiet and some sharing.
It’s like a little Cathedral of trees.

Part 3

Our Hearth

So this spot where we’re standing is the exact same place that for many years there was this thing that we called the pirate ship. It was this bizarre assortment there was like half of an old piano right here. There were the prow was kind of in here and there were several different decks and layers. Then was this crazy roof made of all different kinds of metal and other kinds of roofing like layered together and it was attached to all these trees and weird ways. And there were bells and spots you could go under and cabinets and kids used to play in here. Way early on in my time at Earthaven I used to take kids out here doing child care. We would play and hang out and it was all funky,  dangerous, and crazy. These buildings are all built around the same time.

Then at some point the pirate ship got taken down and a lot of these trees were dying because they had weird metal and stuff in them. So I took down some trees and we put some sand in here and this will be our hearth.

The Classroom, Round Table, and Math Circle

Let’s go look at the classroom.

This is a part that I’m really excited about. I had this vision, this idea, of… we have 12 students and myself, so we have 13 people and I was just thinking how can 13 people sit at one big table. So, I made these tables for the school and they’re arranged so that you can sit anywhere without interfering with the legs and it’s big enough for 13 people to sit together.

This table is primarily going to be for our math circle. Math circle is a way of teaching mathematics that is really participatory and democratic and it opens up the kids to thinking about complex difficult open-ended problems in a collaborative way, working together.

You can see if you come over here, you can see that this chalkboard is a little low for me. Most teachers would put their chalkboard up here. That’s because this is the kids chalkboard, you know, the whole point is that to get them up out of their seats working things out on the chalkboard, working things out, trying things out, and then having conversation with each other.

Math Circle: How did I make this table?

This is why I wanted to have it as a round table. It’s like king Arthur and the knights of the round table. Like putting everybody in the same ball game together so that they are talking to each other and it’s not just me and them.  I’ll be sitting at one of these chairs like everybody else and working it out.

The first problem that we’re going to do in our math circle is going to be all about how did I make this table. What’s the geometry of this table? How would you construct this exact shape? What are its features and yeah how would you build it? All the different math involved in making the tables

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Courtney Brooke: It’s a beautiful Wednesday morning garden session over here at the Gateway neighborhood. That’s some little garden gnome over here…

Good morning yarrow! Good morning snapdragons! Good morning oregano!

Sam: Wow! Like a little special plant kind of in the mix you know what this plant is right here?

Naia: What?

Sam: That’s  a little carrot so we’re going to let it grow. Just it’s so small but you can start to see its little carrotness kind of poking out of the soil there….. yeah……so we’ll let it grow…….

Naia: It’s okay we can eat it when it grows…..

Courtney Brooke: What’s this, Naia?

Naia: Kale!

Courtney Brooke: Kale, wow….and what’s this?

Naia: Uhhh, Chickweed!….

Courtney Brooke: Do you like eating chickweed?

Naia: Uh huh….

Courtney Brooke: Me too. should we eat some?

Naia: yeah……

Sam: What’s what’s your idea about how to use the chickweed later today Naia?

Naia: Like put it in this smoothie……

Sam: Put in the smoothie for the kids play group today….

Naia: yeah!

Courtney Brooke: Wow, that’s so special. Morning NikiAnne……

NikiAnne: Hey!……

Courtney Brooke: What are you taking care of?

NikiAnne: Reclaiming the laundry line from the elderberries.

Courtney Brooke: Wow, look at those beautiful elderberries…..Yeah.

NikiAnne: They like the sun but so does my laundry and in this space I want the laundry to win.

Courtney Brooke: Fair enough fair enough. Good morning birds! Hearing those birds songs!!!!

NikiAnne: Hey bee! You’re up early…. so cold out for you.

Naia: What???

NikiAnne: There’s a bee. Well i don’t even know where it went….

Courntey Brooke: oh honey bees…. honey bees….Naia, do you love honey bees? Do you love honey

Naia: Uh yeah!

Courtney Brooke: Yeah me too. Thank you to the bees!

Sam: Yeah, I kept bees for maybe ten years and the biggest and best honey I ever got was the summer that Naia was born. And then we still have that honey, so the the thought is like maybe every year of Naia’s life we can give her a dose of the honey so she can have the essence of the flowers that are blooming at the time of her birth.

Courtney Brooke: That is so special.

Naia: When I was a baby?

Courtney Brooke: Good morning Lena…

Lena: Good morning.

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Daniel Greenberg, who in 2015 was elected President of the Global Ecovillage Network, wrote his thesis for a Ph.D. in child psychology on the emotional well-being of children in intentional communities. He surveyed 235 or so intentional communities in the U.S. and personally visited about 30 of them to interview community members in person.

He learned that if a community was stable and didn’t have high member turnover, the children seemed to thrive in measurably higher ways than non-community children of the same ages. Children raised or living in intentional communities seemed more confident and competent than similar non-community children; they learned skills most people usually learn only as adults. They were also more verbally and socially skilled (and even verbally precocious) at earlier ages.

Daniel believed this was because the children had adult friends in the community who weren’t their parents, relatives, teachers or school principals or any other adult authorities, just friends or neighbors who spent time with them and showed them how to do things (like garden, cook, repair things, care for animals, etc.). He also found that, unlike in the “outside world,” different ages played together and seemed to like and enjoy each other.

If, however, a community had a high turnover, with many families moving away, the children did not do as well; they felt like brothers, sisters and cousins to each other, and found it emotionally wrenching to keep losing friends who felt like family. I’ve seen similar things in my own informal research into communities around the world, and by personal observation living at Earthaven.

At Earthaven, we see children roaming the property with friends of various ages, in a kind of “kids herd” paradise where every adult knows them, cares about them, and can look out for them. Paradise, indeed!

Diana Leafe Christian, author of the books Creating a Life Together and Finding Community, speaks at conferences, offers consultations, and leads workshops internationally on the tools and processes that help forming communities succeed, and on governance and decision-making in communities.

The post How Children Fare in Community appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

Nothing is what it seems at Earthaven! For example, once upon a time in this experiment to create a different kind of life, the testing of building styles—which calls for a lot of creativity—was a top priority. “Time is money” was thrown out the window; projects could take years to complete, if at all. This can get pretty frustrating, especially when it comes time to turn a little mud-walled experiment into a useful space, not to mention something it wasn’t intended to be. This is the ballad of the languishing Hamlet Kitchen Annex.

At last, several Earthaven women began to promote the importance of having more indoor space for children. It would be nice for us to have a space right near the Hamlet kitchen, and it might be also attractive to other families with children. If we built some play room, would they find us more child friendly? And come visit more?

The plan was made and approved to let the Three-(or Four-) Women-and-a-Toolbox crew (plus friends) turn the Annex into The Kidspace We’ve Been Waiting For. Once again, building construction seems to be the solution to life’s problems.

Three-Women and their friends can dedicate time to this project because we are all child-free. Four child-free people are creating a place for children, yes, but we’re listening. The moms, and child caregivers, and teachers are in the lead about how the kids’ space will be managed, and we’re looking forward to getting toys, books, and movable furniture in there once the work is done.

If you’d like to contribute to our kids’ fun and games, please consider donations of books, games, or even suggestions of your children’s favorites. Cash contributions also will be well used.

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