A churning in my soul and a restlessness in my heart signaled to me that I needed a change. I felt the strong call to move to a self-sustaining embodied community from my smaller spiritual community in California.

The three years I spent in Cali were a time of silent retreat and spiritual initiation. Now, I was craving to be warmly engaged with the world through relationships and contributing to a larger vision and mission in a conscious and deliberate way. My chapter was closing in California. I trusted in the void that was my next steps —  the free fall of endless possibility.

Then I found Earthaven and felt pulled to register for the Earthaven Ecovillage Experience Weekend.

When I first arrived in Asheville and we were driving up to Earthaven, I could feel the crystalline energy of the Appalachian mountains, and so much joy and expansion filled my heart and body. Everything was screaming yes! I was pleasantly surprised by how Earthaven was literally in the middle of a forest! The land felt well loved, alive, and thriving compared to the crisp grassy land of California.

There were around 30 people at the Experience Weekend, including a large group who were thinking about starting an intentional community in Ohio. Little did I know that we were going to be creating our own ecosystem during the weekend and that I would connect on many different levels with the people there. I met some incredible people, and we shared stories, songs, visions, and our hearts. I felt an instant connection to the facilitators — NikiAnne, Farmer, and Becky — and their embodied essence and passion for Earthaven. It felt expansive to know that I could grow in this environment where body-based practices, grief and ritual, and connection to nature are celebrated and embraced.

I felt grounded and connected to the land through our hikes together from each neighborhood and I loved exploring the possibilities of how people choose to build their homes and live on the land. The food was delicious and prepared with such love and intention. I loved that the meals were inclusive of everyone’s dietary needs, and created from quality and sustainable whole foods, with some grown on the land. We went on a wild foraging walk with Dimitri; I learned all about the abundant native friends growing on the land and tasted their sweet and intricate notes. I gained knowledge about the building of eco-friendly homes, the governing system, how Earthaven has made consensus decisions for 27 years, and the history and stories of the people.

I knew I had found home when I felt a sense of belonging to this group of people who carried the ultimate vision of a regenerative culture that is receptive to the changing needs of its people and the land that is so cherished and honored. I felt my own growth edge would be challenged here and sensed the expansion that would come with being immersed in this level of connection.

All the stars aligned, you could say, and now I am working for Earthaven’s educational nonprofit two months in, steeping in the unfolding of rich relationships, and joyfully sharing my heart and gifts with the community. I feel so incredibly blessed that Earthaven has welcomed me with such open arms and willing hearts.

The Earthaven Ecovillage Experience Weekend is a great way to become immersed into an intentional community. It gives you a snapshot into what life is like at Earthaven if you decide to make the move. I highly recommend the Experience Weekend or Experience Week if you are interested in gaining a realistic understanding of the challenges of living in a community, as well as basking in the immense abundance and richness that come from building relationships and being together through all the facets of an ecovillage.

Upcoming Offerings:

Earthaven’s School of Integrated Living (SOIL) offers the Earthaven Ecovillage Experience Weekend twice this year: May 27-30 and October 7-10. There’s also a new Earthaven Action Week following experience weekend so you can extend your visit and interact more with the Earthaven community.

I look forward to meeting you there, and giving you a little taste of the embodied essence of Earthaven!

Much love,
Jillian

The post Jillian’s Experience Weekend Adventure appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

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I pulled that from Wikipedia. But the concept that humans are creating an entirely new geo-ecological epoch is a big deal. Our destabilization of the life support systems may change the planet so significantly that it takes millions or billions of years to recover.

That’s why so many people are looking at models for life-giving, planet-focused, integrated systems for life, love, work, family, and home.

Earthaven Ecovillage, with our land-based life, is just one of many approaches to new ways of being. Come spend a week with us to see what we’re up to regarding these “new ways of being.”

Earthaven Ecovillage EXPERIENCE WEEK is an opportunity to live with us and immerse yourself in our village. Our curriculum includes:

• Organic food production
• Natural Buildings
• Renewable Energy
• Off-Grid Utilities
• Resilient Community
• Regenerative Culture
• Personal Growth
• Deep Connections

Read all the details about Experience Week. If you can’t make it this year, please keep it in mind for next year or check out our Visitor Weekend in September. And thank you for being part of our global virtual community.

The post Are We At The End Of The Experiment? appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

About ten years ago, many of us watched a YouTube documentary called The Secret of Eldorado and got wildly excited about the possibilities of biochar.

Biochar is a kind of charcoal made by burning carbon in a way that produces a stable amendment to increase soil health. There are exciting studies going on about how it can be used to mitigate climate change.

We’re experimenting with it on a very small scale. You can learn more about it in this video featuring my dear friends Courtney Brooke, Dimitri, and Zev.

You can learn how to make biochar at Earthaven Ecovillage Experience Week in June. We hope to see you here.

The post Making Biochar appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

(Transcript from video)

Hey there. I’m Robbie Wheelock. And I was a participant of the Earthaven Experience Week. Being from Asheville, and being from school at the time, that was something that I felt would be a good supplement to the education I was receiving. There was a lot of hard learning that you do about the reality of communities and also with sustainability and what not. And that was my interest in school: sustainability.

And so I saw Earthaven, because it’s nearby. I wanted to take this chance to explore what it can really look like.

I got a lot more from that Experience Week than I was even looking for. Which is really a wonderful thing. And it was wonderful being out here because of that. Some of the things I took away from my Experience Week…..

First of all, I got the things I was looking for in terms of how the community operates and how it stays fulfilling itself, in terms of energy, in terms of roads and infrastructure, in terms of housing. So that was the hard concrete stuff that I was hoping to get out of the Experience Week.

But it turns out that I ended up getting alot more than just that. It turns out that community is a lot more than just that. That’s something that kind of woke me up during the Experience Week; how much goes into making an intentional community like this work.

It’s more about the…..The glue that holds it together really is the experiences.

You’re going on hikes with people, and you’re learning about plants, and you’re getting to enjoy these sweet wineberries, and your getting to eat flowers and so you get a connection with nature and not just with humans and development.

You get to learn that there’s more to a community in terms of celebrations. And, in terms of the knowledge that each other has to offer. Because everyone here does something a little different but they all contribute to the whole.

And so, I think all those experiences together, with the hard knowledge that I learned from all the little courses that we took, that really made me take away something that will last far longer than buying a book.

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