The first structure Earthaveners built together, called the Pavilion, was intended as a kitchen. Foreshadowing the design of the Council Hall, it was a yurt with round, straight walls and an experimental ferro-cement roof. Bamboo harvested from a Weaverville roadside made the purlins, and a wood fiber called excelsior was stuffed behind them. Not long afterward, we realized the flammable ceiling was a deal-breaker for a kitchen. That was 1995.

We went back to the tiny Mud Hut until the Hamlet Kitchen was completed a few years later, and in the ensuing years the Pavilion was renamed the House of Oneness, designated but rarely used as a meditation-yoga space, and then for childcare. I only remember using it for kids’ activities during the Bioregional Conference in 2003. Eventually, after the roof took a hit from a tree limb and the unmaintained interior began to slump, it became a barn for Yellowroot Farm’s adjacent field.

Enter Zev Friedman and his uncanny feeling for the meaning of things. Analyzing the changes in Earthaven culture, he began to call the deteriorating structure The House of Gathered Diversity. He proposed that we preserve the history and meaning of the structure by transplanting the surviving wooden posts to a new sacred space in the Village Center and building a memorial bench to preserve sacred space at the original site.

According to Zev, “this transformation ritually depicts the diversified direction the community seems to be taking, and it creates useful infrastructure to help maintain a sense of connectedness between different parts of the village as we enter the next stage of Earthaven’s life.”

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Thirteen Hut Hamlet neighbors recently established a chicken co-op, endearingly referred to as Posse Poulet. From these 50 or so birds, we have been receiving almost all of our needed eggs, and we’re looking ahead to a possible moderate increase in number of birds, including some ducks. We’ll also be slaughtering some of the older hens this fall for stew.

Working together, we get an integrated rotational chicken system with a manageable workload and cost for each household, as well as the fun of collaborating. We purchased 45 laying hens from Imani Farm (who decided to reduce their flock this year) and received several hens and another two roosters (one is now digested soup) from Black Wolf. With the financial structure and roles within the co-op set up by last spring, we made the leap and purchased equipment (such as electric fencing, materials for a moveable coop and feed containers) and then the birds in June. Since then, they’ve been rotated through three overgrown agricultural areas in the neighborhood. One of the areas the chickens cleared was around the House of Oneness, which will be deconstructed this season and salvaged for reconstruction as the House of Diversity in the Village Center (see related article in this newsletter).

Kimchi, another co-operative in the coop co-op, writes: “The chicken co-op has been a great way to experience and expand our connections with the land, the source of our food, and learn how to share with each other. What a gift to create rich relationships at Earthaven!”

We’ve also been experimenting with “alternative feed systems” such as black soldier fly larvae and red wiggler worm production, and of course we feed all of our seedy weeds to the birds, thus reducing weed pressure in our compost piles and giving nutrients to the birds. We’ve also been experimenting with using charcoal in their pen, nesting boxes and roost to absorb manure nutrients and odor and create biochar.

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