Since last we wrote, several neighborhood pods have formed legal entities and received deeds to their neighborhood parcels. Most pods are incorporated as housing coops, with one non-profit ”spiritual society.” By next newsletter, all Earthaven pods should have their deeded parcels, and clarity between Homeowners Association responsibilities, pod responsibilities, and the budding Earthaven Community Association (ECA) will emerge.

The ECA will focus on our community’s social infrastructure, inviting new levels of membership and contribution. We look forward to more ways for many of our readers to participate—keep your eye on our newsletters and the Earthaven website for updates.         

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above: This year’s first snow, about 8” in January, was poetically beautiful and rather quickly gone.

 Monday it gets warm, up into the 70s, and by Wednesday it freezes after midnight. Again. Cold wind slices through the sun’s bright warmth and we lean out of its way; next, it’s gone and we’re pulling off sweatshirts. If snow doesn’t come again, which it might, we’ll be wading in the creeks by the end of the month!

This exquisite weather is nonetheless worrisome because of how the disrupted patterns may cause even more disruption—and also because the huge climate mutations going on all around us ask us to direct our attention to what we can do to support ourselves and others in environmentally and socially useful ways. So far, our lifestyle choices strongly support renewables and movements that resist the continuation and expansion of fossil fuel extraction.

left: Quince bloomed early at the Earthaven neighborhood called Dancing Shiva.*

We wish all our readers a healthy and encouraging Spring. We hope many of you will come visit, take a tour, enroll in a workshop, get your Permaculture Design Certificate and definitely drop us a line to share news from your neighborhood.

Here at Earthaven, residential neighborhoods are reinventing themselves as “pods,” slightly more independent units of interwoven legal entities that have most of the same ecological and unitary guidelines as before, but are taking more individual responsibility for designing their purposes as embracers of the Earthaven vision.

Amidst so many changes within and beyond the community, we continue to treasure our opportunity to learn and practice conscious connection to life, land and each other!

*Dancing Shiva is dedicated to teaching Tantra—an inclusive spiritual practice—to all folks and, in particular, the queer community, through workshops and individual retreats in the U.S., Mexico and Costa Rica, and through satsangs and written material. For more information, email dancingshivatantra at gmail.com

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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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