Folks from all around the village cheered in response.

A group of homeschooled Earthaven residents ranging in age from 10-13 (and a mom) have spruced up, stocked up, and re-initiated the retail shop at Earthaven.

The young folks have been learning inventory, purchasing, cash handling, stock rotation, accounting, merchandising, customer service and teamwork, all of which has been a part of their hands-on learning curriculum.

Julie’s organic ice cream bars, organic chips, and chocolate seem to be the most popular items, but we carry from apples to Zevia sodas, to personal care items, books, camping gear, and more.

We are also open in cyberspace featuring handmade goods from our very own ecovillagers.

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Three years ago, Earthaven rented its first central office at the Trading Post. It served as our office, Internet café, information center and snack depot. This month we move the office to the Council Hall which helps us save money (rent to the Trading Post) and also centralizes our records in the same location as our meetings.

Suchi and Paul load the Taylor Water Stove from the outside.

Another fantastic change is our new Taylor Water Stove, which sits outside and is fed by wood stored nearby (no more messy ashes or hauling wood inside to deal with). We now bask in the warmth of radiant floor heat, which keeps the building at a constant temperature.

An intimate “lounge” outside the office invites us to enjoy videos, get online, or play a board game in our (ahem) free time.

Kimchi sits in our beautiful new office space.

But maybe the biggest change has been an addition onto the Council Hall which houses a flush guest toilet and a small kitchen complete with propane stove, plentiful hot water (the Taylor provides this too), and a place to wash and store dishes and other kitchen basics. It was a challenging project, as the builders had to adjoin it to the load-bearing straw bale wall and connect electricity and plumbing to a system laid down twelve years earlier. Yet Thanksgiving and Solstice, as well as other small parties have been easier and more joyous due to our indoor facilities.

Ohbeeb and Sue playing a game in our new lounge.

As a result of all these changes, not only has the office moved, but Yoga and Qigong now take place there as well as our weekly, Tuesday morning “Coffee and Trade.” Potlucks are more fun in the cozy Hall and our newly improved “one-room-serves-all” facility continues to be a great location for classes and celebrations of all kinds.

Suchi Lathrop, an Earthaven member, shares a household at the Tribal Condo. She gives tours, is on the visitors committee, created the Peace Garden, and has been a leader in social organizing. She started the Coffee and Trade event as well as the weekly happy hour, and has helped run the Trading Post for the last three years. Her current project is a workers’ cooperative building a code kitchen.

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Suchi has been living at Earthaven since 2002. She began searching for community after her partner died, hoping to find social connections and a cooperative living situation.  Now, eight years later, Suchi is intensely involved in community life.

Suchi gives tours, is on the visitors’ committee, created the Peace Garden, and has been a leader in social organizing. She also started the Coffee and Trade as well as the weekly happy hour, and helps run the Trading Post. “Hospitality is my passion,” she said. Recently, Suchi became involved in starting a workers’ cooperative to build a code kitchen that can serve guests.

When she’s not busy organizing, Suchi spends her time maintaining her share of the household at Tribal Condo. She also enjoys reading, studying, and walking the land.  “If you wanted to imagine a perfect retirement this is pretty close to it,” she said. “As a Quaker, this appeals to me because we live simply here. We are very close to nature.”

Before coming to Earthaven, Suchi was running an Independent Living program for people who were developmentally challenged. She also spent time as a librarian and an electrician. “I wasn’t passionate about any of those jobs,” she said. “If I had it to do over again I’d be a psychotherapist.”

Suchi is currently studying Nonviolent Communication, Body-Centered Psychotherapy, and Zegg Forum. Everywhere she looks there are new opportunities to learn. “This is a beautiful community,” she said. “It’s very diverse and it’s very dynamic. It’s never dull.”

As much as she loves life at Earthaven, Suchi admits that there have been some challenges. “There have been difficult times. The thing about community is that you go through it instead of flying away from it. It’s hard to imagine living anywhere else.”

Davene Wasser came to Earthaven in April 2010 with her son Eli and husband Jamie to simplify her life and live more closely to nature. She is a writer, editor, educator, and artist. After ten years of researching community, Davene is thrilled to be living her dream.

The post Member Profile – Suchi appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

          Thanks to the fine volunteers who staff the Earthaven Office & Trading Post — and especially Kimchi Rylander, Earthaven’s new Administrative Coordinator — our community is becoming better organized in all the “Air” ways. Kimchi’s goal is to meet our need for ease, clarity for all of our committees with Airspinning functions. She also hopes that working in the Earthaven Office/Trading Post will offer an excellent opportunity for members, work-exchangers, and interns to contribute their gifts and talents.

Mailroom manager redmoonsong notes that our mail is being delivered to boxes in the mailroom trailer by Nicolette, just as it was before getting our new mailboxes on Another Way. Soon we’ll see additional mailboxes in the trailer, shelves for packages, a desk for sorting mail, and a place for visitors to pickup handouts and articles about Earthaven. As weather permits, the outside of the trailer will be washed, primed, and painted so it will provide, as redmoonsong says, “a blank canvas for the next phase.” (To offer ideas and help, see redmoonsong.)

Diana Leafe Christian, who lives in Earthaven’s Forest Garden Neighborhood, is the community’s Airspinner for 2010.    dianaleafechristian.org http://www.EcovillageNews.org

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Finally, an Earthaven office! And, in addition, an internet and coffee spot with goods from our neighbors, a warm place filled with information and other enticements. This comforting venue now exists and just the thought of it brings some kind of shift in our collective energy, much needed after a challenging year and cold winter. Our creative staffing includes 20 weekly hours of approved community service hours and 20 hours donated by the managers and another community member. Thanks to Jen, Cealleigh, redmoonsong, Jack, River Otter and Kai, and many others who helped with the details of getting set up.

Now, at the end of week four, the work goes on! The possibilities keep expanding for this small and lovely space. Right now, visitors stop at the Trading Post at the end of the tour to chat with members and pick up additional Earthaven literature. Here’s where about-to-become Provisional Member Mana McLeod connects with her courses from Gaia University, and where Suchi, one of the managers, plays Scrabble with a neighbor who stops to drop off her honey, dried shiitakes, and umeboshi plums. At the administrative level, we are also here to have an ongoing update of our database. Meanwhile, members come to pick up eggs from a local farmer, and our gifted craftspeople can showcase their wares. Upcoming events, committee and Council minutes, and other important announcements and information are posted inside and outside. The “News of the Neighborhoods” section is beginning. We hope to increase the amount of information posted to include jobs needed and labor available, housing needed and available, and so on. We post ways people can earn community service hours (LEAPS) and items for sale/barter/giveaway.

In the ideal future, we will double in size so that office and internet space are separate from socializing space. We are open to many other ways to serve the community in the future. As we plan to renew our lease, we have begun to think about bringing our mailroom nearby.  Can we centralize and coordinate rides to town? Post general messages, needs for assistance, interest groups forming, etc.?

Please stop by.  Our spring hours are Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 10-6; Saturday 11-4 and Sunday 11-2.  Meetings and small events can be scheduled for times we are not open. Come check us out.

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After the Hepatitis A outbreak last Spring, the Health Department informed us we needed an approved water source – a borehole well – in order to be open to the public, host campers, and hold classes and events. These activities are essential to Earthaven’s mission, so Council has approved expenditures for drilling the well and connecting its bounty to those sites used by our visitors.  After much time spent preparing and, of course, waiting, we had the well site above the new campground approved and access to it ready for the heavy rig to drill it.

Farmer, Geoff, and Alice witnessed the operation.   The rig was something else. Suspended on hydraulic jacks with a 40 foot tower holding the motor running the drill, it had a rack of fifteen 20-foot-long hollow drill rods. First a 12-inch hole through the clay was drilled; then they switched to a 10-inch bit at twenty feet, hitting water and soft bedrock at forty feet. After another fifteen feet, they got to hard bedrock. They had to place steel casing at least five feet into hard bedrock, and then pour cement between the casing and the borehole, in order to seal out all debris and surface water.

Just to remind us that big expensive machines are not perfect, a few glitches held up the drilling. The bit got stuck in the hole; it took about a half hour of juddering to free it. Then the hammer drill bit jammed, and another half hour of mechanical bashing did nothing. So they applied a mammoth, powered monkey wrench which promptly broke, flinging an iron jaw at the mud bank. Fortunately no one was in its path.

Finally, a 6-inch bit was used to continue drilling into bedrock while pouring bentonite plus cement between the casing and the borehole. At 5:45 pm, they were 170 feet into the ground and were getting a trickle of water. Meanwhile cement and bentonite were flowing out of openings between the casing and borehole as fast as they piped it in: it would have to settle overnight.

Next day, in the rain: drill twenty feet, unscrew the rod from the drill, attach another 20-foot rod, drill, drill, drill. Finally, at circa 340 feet, they hit water. The usual deal is to drill another sixty feet to see if the fracture area will yield more water. It did; we ended up with twenty gallons a minute (our minimum need was ten) and a static level (where the water level is at resting state) only fifteen feet below ground level. This is good news, because we will need only a small pump to raise the water up to a holding tank. From there, we’ll run pipe down to the campground, the Council Hall, and the Trading Post.

The drilling cost, around $5,500, and the solar panels, pump, and pipes will cost another $10,000. We anticipate a total of close to $30,000 for labor and materials when we’re done. Most of our own labor comes from commmunity service hours.  This expense  is financialy demanding for a cash poor organization like Earthaven.  Please help us meet the growing demands from the public for day and overnight tours.  Your support is not tax deductible at this time, but still can help Earthaven community meet its mission. Many thanks  from the vigilantes: Farmer, Geoff, and Alice.

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During the school year, kids who attend the Forest Children’s Program can be seen scampering across the Village Green at least three days a week, while several, mostly older kids commute to schools in Black Mountain or to their other parent’s locale in Asheville.

Back in June, I became curious about whether these lucky younguns were going to stay around all Summer, or go off to other adventures, and here’s what I was told. In “the Brandon and Tanya family,” Brandon wrote: “Aleah [Tanya’s 11-year-old] has been visiting Kentucky and Missouri with her Dad, and will be going on a trip to Indiana and Massachusetts with us in July. Here one week and with Dad one week after that. Aurora [Brandon’s ex-partner Brandi’s 9-year-old] will also come on the trip to IN and MA; and while at home she is doing an outdoor leadership program called Task. (Willow, the baby, will, of course, accompany the family, as she approaches her first birthday in September.)

Mihaly offered this list on behalf of 7-year-old Tessa, who lives during the school year with her Mom in Nashville: playing troll under the new bridge, eating homemade raw ice cream, jumping on the trampoline, watching movies, building a fort, swimmin’ in the hole, riding bikes, sleeping late, picking blueberries, helping with chores and construction, massage nights, contra dancing, reading at bedtime, dressing up, playing cards, listening to her CDs, eating candy at the Trading Post, walking Bridgit (the Cow), collecting eggs, playing in the woods, double-slumber parties, writing in her diary, putting on skits.

Holly wrote from Main Street: “Rose is working one day a week at the Inn on Mill Creek, a B & B near Ridgecrest. She is also apprenticing with [our neighbor] Rainbow in order to learn how to paint murals, and going to the Thursday contra dances as much as she can. She practices her guitar every day. She was accepted into, and leaves tomorrow, for a program called CLIMBE (Center for Learning and Investigation in Mountain Backcountry Ecosystems), which is done through Montreat College. It’s a 6-day scientific backpacking expedition for rising 8th through 12th graders, in which they’ll hike from Mount Mitchell down to Montreat and test water quality as they come down. There will be 10 kids at a time and the program runs for 6 weeks total, so 60 kids were accepted from over 100 applicants from around the country. She is also helping around the house, working in the garden, and hanging out with friends at Earthaven. ” Holly continued: [Rose’s brother] “Eli is not doing much this summer! Aside from some EH and town playdates, he goes to work with me two days a week. It’s a little boring there, but he reads a lot. He has also done a math camp with the TLC director and math teacher. Both kids will likely spend some time in Indiana and Ohio with extended family this summer.”

We also got an update from Jill on daughter Mira’s behalf (although I’m surprised that articulate 8-year-old didn’t write her own!): “Mira’s first 2 wks at EH were great! She joined the Sister Stitch group, which inspired her to sew a purse for Fran, which was well received at Fran’s b’day party. Mira also enjoyed a great b’day celebration with Cory getting into the mud/clay pit!! Mira has been enjoying spending time with the other kids, bike riding, berry picking, going to the swimming hole, planting seeds, harvesting, picking up our harvest at the CSA, chasing the salamanders. She put together a 500-piece puzzle the A&A folks loaned her. She is a bookworm, and while Jill is at Qigong class, Mira is somewhere in the magic treehouse book collection off on adventures with the characters. Greg took her out on a library trip, and got her the new Peter Pan DVD. She has a charmed summer life, and we’ve only just begun. We make our rounds with dinner dates. Life is good!”

Seems like we got the goods on most of the girls, and on Eli, but we know our other fellas Gailen, Nick and Joshua, Cory, and Yeshua and Otus were out there swimming, picking berries, going to town with their folks, checking out the woods’ creatures, and playing lots of games, too.

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