Lee “Finch” Finks passed away on June 20, after several years of declining health. He was 80. He joined Earthaven in 2006 after retiring from a career as librarian and then professor of library science. He will be remembered for his warm, friendly manner; his love for family and friends; and his unstoppable sense of humor. His wife, Martha Harris, will continue their work for community and sustainability as a member of Village Terraces and Earthaven. He will be missed by many and deeply mourned by family and friends.

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You mix this powder with water in varying proportions to provide stain-remover, laundry booster, surface cleaner, and so on. It is excellent for cleaning and removing organic stains (such as coffee, tea, wine, fruit juices, foods, sauces, grass and blood) from fabrics, plastics, fiberglass, porcelain, ceramics, wood, carpets, asphalt, concrete, etc. Don’t use it on wool or silk, however.

Greg Geis, laundry designer, researched to be sure that Enviro-Oxy would be safe for Earthaven’s water.  After use, it breaks down to oxygen and baking soda. Sodium Percarbonate (Enviro-Oxy) is the underlying ingredient of Oxi-Clean products.

I was very pleasantly surprised to find out how effective it is for a variety of uses. Like Greg, I am a convert and use it regularly. It comes in one-cup bags, which last a long time because a little bit goes a long way.

When you get some for the first time, you can also pick up a printed sheet of all the ways to mix it and use it. There are also helpful instructions on the web. The enviro-oxy bags and the instruction sheets are in the product cabinet pictured here.

Below is a wider shot of Shangri-Laundry and the products cabinet. The products are self-serve: select what you want, put the money in a small envelope with your name, and drop it in the cash box on top of the cabinet. If you need change, go next door to the home of laundry manager Diana Leafe Christian.

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Chicken and songbird eggs alike are safe wherever Martha may roam. Martha relocates the snakes without harming them.

Martha with a snake as tall as she is.

Look at the wing-span of that snake!

Rubber gloves in case she gets bit.

Introducing baby Oakley to a recently-caught black snake.

Lest potential visitors are scared away by visions of black snakes, never fear. Black snakes are non-venomous hunters of both rodents and poisonous snakes. We enjoy having them around….except when they eat our eggs.

Thanks to Tessa Hovan-Bartalos & Lee Warren for the photos.

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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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We’d love to introduce you to our most recent members, with apologies to all who’ve come before and those after that we neglect to feature. There are so many things to write about, to update you on, that it becomes impossible to include it all. But here’s a little vignette or two about the great folks who recently jumped through all the Earthaven hoops to be full members and become official Earthaven siteholders with their own 99-year, transferable sitehodling leases.

First, meet Robert Carran. Robert’s a carpenter, builder, artist and musician whose latest art form began its quiet development at Paul Caron’s wood shop, located below the White Owl on Another Way. The wood shop is the anchor point for the proposed Earthaven College of Natural Building, and at the moment serves to help focus a variety of wood projects.

Robert’s been toying around with the wood lathe, turning out beautiful bowls and tumblers. Since he began working on his homesite in the newly designated Hickory Knob Compact Sites neighborhood, across the road from Village Terraces, he’s been doing his woodworking over there, too. The site was cleared, provided with power from the Village Center hydro station, and with the help of a couple of terrific work exchangers, a work shed and the frame of a future octagonal living space have gone up.

The octagon has posts each made from a different, distinctive wood, most of which were harvested right on site. Two years ago, before taking an extended time away from the community to consider the full impact of making a sincere commitment, Robert was the inspiration behind what was probably Earthaven’s most successful performing arts events, a terrific spoof about life at Earthaven entitled The Waltz of the Ogres. Council Hall was packed to the rafters that night, and the audience was elated by the insight and good humor that permeated the production. Multi-talented and committed to the vision of sustainable community transformation, Robert’s been pitching in at all levels of community endeavor. Welcome, Robert!

After Robert, the next Full Members to take the jump were Martha Harris, a lawyer living in Durham, NC, and her partner, Lee Finks, a retired librarian. Martha became a Full Member in April and Finch, as we call him, jumped in May. Martha’s still works for the State Legislature in Raleigh and so she and Finch commute to Earthaven most weekends, with occasional week-long stays, a schedule that will probably continue at least until the duplex they are planning to build at Village Terraces is ready for them to move into.

Meanwhile, they’ve both taken on a chunk of Earthaven’s administrative work and, as you can imagine, Martha’s familiarity with the law, and NC law in particular, is of immense assistance to us. On top of that, Martha stepped in as our bookkeeper shortly after she became a Provisional Member, agreeing to work for community service credits (leaps) just when we’d finally agreed to raise our annual fees in order to pay one of us to keep our records straight for a few hours a week. Since the fees had already been raised, the funds will be channeled into other, much-needed community management positions.

These days Martha is also helping us reconstruct our various legal entities to better support our vision and address our everyday reality. Stay tuned for exciting news on this subject. Finch, by the way, is waiting patiently for the time when he can help us develop our sustainability reference library for members and the public alike. Welcome, Martha and Finch!

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