For the living, food is a master course in survival and well-being. Our community members strive to learn how to grow and prepare soil to cultivate vibrant, nourishing plants and animals, demonstrate a healthy balance between work, relaxation and celebration, and continue to develop a cooperative management approach to various goals of self-sufficiency. Medicine is the other power course, which we’ll shine a light on in future issues.

We are food people. What we eat, what we grow, what we trade, what we know about our food, and the ways we share food and food stories, are a big part of our lives in community. At Earthaven, organic food self-sufficient practices are a dream in the process of fulfillment, albeit with a long way to go!

We’ve yet to build our long-dreamed-of community center, with multi-purpose spaces for dining, workshops, parties, classes, games, a place to share more of the lifestyle we’ve dedicated ourselves to. Connected to soil, seed, animal life and recycled resources, little by little, folks learn and apply the learning.

Meanwhile, we eat together at weekly potlucks and cookouts, at celebrations, and in a few neighborhood kitchens that provide more intimate spaces. Recently, Marybeth started a “Sunday Soup ‘n Somethin’” supper group, mixed up from neighborhoods across the community. This idea is likely to go viral in the months to come.

This holiday season, folks were attentive to ways of sharing food. At the Bizarre Bazaar before the Winter Solstice, folks sold holiday food. 

On Christmas Eve, Monique and Juan Pablo organized a spectacular dinner party at the White Owl, where Rachel and the kids provided warmth and welcome. River Otter served chicken dinner on Christmas Day at the Hut Hamlet Kitchen to guests from around the community. A surprise ice storm had most folks staying home New Year’s Eve, gathering momentum (one hopes) for more food-focused events in the near future.

Using opportunities to build our food culture with nourishing social connection and opportunities to work, learn and grow together, we learn to care for the soil, discover best varieties, best seasons, best preservation and trading partners. By learning its energetic and nutritional value, by seeing how our food heals and sustains us, we grow stronger. By storying the food and paying respect to its goodness and purity, by remembering what we know of where it came from, we carry on the good work.

The learning will go on, while the concentric circles widen around the essential goal—a human and planetary resilience that promises to fulfill our dearest and most tender needs.

photos, from top:

  Darren in the cornfield.

  Cornelian Cherries.

  Chrismas Eve at the White Owl.

 Michaeljon delighting Heron at the fish pond.

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On Monday, September 11th, we turned 23 years young, managed a small parade in the wake of Hurricane Irma weather, and packed the White Owl for a community lunch and some good old socializing! Then on Saturday night, the 16th, nearby Celo-community-based gypsy jazz band Carpathian Spruce lit up the Council Hall with their wild and celebratory style, while friends and neighbors joined members for a whirl of a celebration!

Many changes lie ahead for Earthaven in 2017 and ’18, as most of our neighborhoods turn into linked, separately owned, residential parcels, and we pursue an updated way to manage our Village Center.

As you read this edition of our newsletter, please picture us thriving through the changing process and coming out feeling robust and ready to keep growing. It’s a big change from our original all-in-one vision and, though more complex in some ways, it may actually be a reasonable template for other groups considering coming together to protect land and nature.

Photos from top to bottom:

Birthday cake crafted by Tricia Baehr

Early Permaculture Design Class site map of the Earthaven neighborhood now known as Bellavia Gardens.

Determined members carry on the Founding Day parade tradition, in the wake of Hurricane Irma’s soggy weather.

below: Whirling away at Saturday night’s 23rd anniversary dance party.

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The annual parade down Another Way stopped to celebrate completion of the stone-and-crystal side walls built on the Second Bridge by Travis and Gaspar. Birthday cake at the White Owl and, for many who didn’t know Founder Valerie Naiman, her fascinating story of life on the way to Earthaven and beyond

Reflecting on these 22 years, members offered these sentiments and wishes:

A Great Dream

Dear Earthaven,

I remember conversations of the dream of you before you were born. From the news of your birth I packed my bags to live closer.  I have been nourished deeply as I’ve witnessed the ups and downs of your growing maturity, and a freedom that has a life of its own. I give thanks for your influence on my life and am forever grateful to be a member of the tribe.                                               Love, Tara

The Joy of Participation

Earthaven is the place where my dreams about community have been coming true in community, full of delicious gifts and profound challenges to my way of living and being. What a blessing!   ~ Arjuna

(left) Tara and Arjuna, friends since ’97.

Commitment to Vision

Living at Earthaven 22 years ago, in a 1967 Airstream, when there was only a dilapidated hunting cabin and an outhouse, was a commitment to vision. Members began to camp and we built a tiny prototype Council Hall with a post & beam yurt frame, and an iron ring for the center of the roof symbolizing our union. Last year the community disassembled the old frame and mud walls, and I was thrilled and grateful to be presented with the ring on Founding Day this year. The ring and I both have a few dents and rough spots, but are strong and re-purposing. ~ Valerie

(right) Valerie gets her ring back on Founding Day.

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After some time as a private residence and then, well, kind of sad and empty, the White Owl is once again being used for special events, including a Middle Eastern-themed feast and supper club with chef Carleigh O’Donnell, shown here forming pita bread, with chef’s helper Jenna Payne checking the garbanzos.

This first of a soon-to-be monthly event (next one: Ethiopian on January 24th) was by reservation only and limited to a small, first come-first served group. White Owl resident and host Art Meyers is offering the venue to members for special events like these, as he and his family make plans to expand the space available for them. Here guests are awaiting table service and other royal treatment!

After a sumptuous dinner, topped off with pomegranates and dates for dessert, and toasts to an elegant future, folks retired to the sofas for more intimate conversations.

A few weeks later, Carleigh and Jenna offered a Sunday brunch, and all available seats were quickly taken! Here’s Chuck getting tea while folks worked out the seating.

And here’s Brandon Greenstein, who ran the White Owl years ago, getting a hug from Carmen Lescher, who returned to Earthaven recently and says she’s here to stay!

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          Overall, we were pretty cozy and content, and we know that the White Blessing is just what the water table and the soil need for extra nourishment. There hasn’t been much snow here in many years. Oh, but then the thawing—paths and roads as mushy as mud stew. Gravel patches to get through the worst of it are all we can expect until the roads do their own version of “mending” and are solid enough again to let repairs last.

Arjuna da Silva is an Earthaven founder, Culture’s Edge president, and former Airspinner. She is coordinating the Natural Building School and Fundamentals of Permaculture workshops at Earthaven this summer.

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We’ll remember you. Remember us. We love you, Vedanta. Phrases painted into the collective painting that began the night after Vedanta died, March 22, and was completed on his birthday, April 14 (now officially Ananda Vedanta Music & Art Day) at a “hippie” bash at the White Owl.

It was a beautiful night, and most folks stayed outdoors around the fire, drumming, dancing, remembering the flute music we’ll miss, and the man who brought so much passion for music and art to our community. While some of us danced, and others munched some of Vedanta’s favorite foods, another group watched a video of the 1997 (first annual) Guru Purnima Celebration. That event celebrates the teachings of all spiritual masters, and for years Vedanta and friends held weekend “meditation camps” on the land and shared the meditation techniques Osho designed for stopping “the monkey mind.”

Kimchi was with Vedanta during his illness and death, and was able to set up a continuous slide show tracing his life from his younger days of global travels, through his developing artistic career and, finally, to his body’s end in Florida. A follow-up event in July was also celebrated to honor family members from afar, as a long line of family and friends poured handfulls of Vedanta’s ashes into a hole into which a beautiful Asian Persimmon tree was prominently placed at the foot of the Village Green. A colorful painted banner inscribed with the encouragement to “Enjoy your journey, Vedanta” was hung across the mural he played a major role in creating for the Forest Garden’s greenhouse.

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