This is the ninth issue of my free newsletter. Your feedback is most welcome!
First, my apologies to all for having missed the month of July! True story: I had ordered a laptop from Gateway in mid-June, and UPS managed to lose it. Meanwhile, I had moved to North Carolina early in July. The replacement laptop arrived in Berkeley in early August, where my good friend Dennis downloaded my old files onto it and sent it to me in North Carolina; it arrived right in the middle of my second Permaculture course, and finally I have a chance to catch up on nearly two months’ worth of emails!
EARTHAVEN ECO-VILLAGE
Earthaven is an off-the-grid, developing Eco-Village in Black Mountain, North Carolina (about an hour’s drive from Asheville). It’s a very hard-working community. Folks in their fifties and sixties toil in the hot sun at home-building, with the help of twenty and thirty-year-old apprentices. Young men in the Forestry Co-op fell and mill the trees which are used for construction, slowly clearing homesites and agricultural land. There are also three young families struggling to earn a living and raise their children (aged two through nine). Two of these families are voicing a desire for more acreage to farm; Earthaven is far from self-sufficient in food production, and local organic food is not always easy to come by.
As I mentioned in the previous newsletter, Earthaven is organized into neighborhoods, the most populous of which is where most of the first residents settled (the “Hut Hamlet”). Some of the buildings there are temporary structures like yurts, and only a handful have their own kitchen facilities; instead, most Hut Hamlet residents share a common kitchen and showers. There are abundant gardens throughout the Hut Hamlet, and one young family owns chickens, two goats, and two pigs. Yes, some people do eat meat here. In fact, a vegan family left when meat was first introduced into the Hut Hamlet kitchen a year or so ago.
There are about 50 “full members” here, not all of whom live on-site, and quite a few young people who are apprentices or interns just for the summer months when they can camp in tents. Homes vary from woodframe to strawbale; there is a cob building under construction called the “House of Oneness,” and a magnificent Council Hall where most meetings are held, as well as the “Night Owl Café,” where evening celebrations and other events occur.
Huge work parties with up to 75 people have been happening, bringing in many folks from outside the community to pitch in free labor. The biggest, most successful of these work parties was to help build the “B & B” (bed & board), a large building designed to house an extended family (Mary, her sister Patricia, her husband Lynn, and the sisters’ 85-year-old mother Fran) on the ground floor, short term renters on the second floor, with the top floor for community activities. As in an old-fashioned barn-raising, many women cooked up a storm and a tremendous amount of work was done; in the evening everyone celebrated with a keg of beer. Mary had tears of joy and gratitude.
Evening activities may include committee meetings, drumming circles with dancing and singing, saunas, the occasional video, or a women’s circle where intimate sharing occurs. On Sunday mornings a young woman leads some gentle yoga followed by a “Sweat Your Prayers” dance session (with inspiration from Gabrielle Roth)—music and dance in alignment with water, earth, air, and ether. Afterwards, Michaeljon and I host a “sarvice” (as Michaeljon likes to say) at St. Francis’ Falls, across the trail from our homesite. We call in the six directions, meditate, offer prayers, and share.
DAILY LIFE
On my second night here, I had a lucid dream (knew I was dreaming, and began directing the dream): I was trying, awkwardly to skate uphill through mud, then when I realized I was dreaming, I began to fly instead!
My daily life patterns are about 90% different from what they were in Berkeley. Instead of rattling around in a too-large house with distant housemates, I’m crammed into a tiny camper-trailer with my new friend Michaeljon. Instead of spending hours a day on the computer, I went through an involuntary 45-day computer fast (probably a great blessing). From a fairly sedentary indoor lifestyle punctuated with walks outside for exercise, I’m now doing hard physical work at least half a day, most days. Now I pee in a bucket to dilute and use in the garden, and poop in a composting toilet. In Berkeley I rarely interacted with people outside my age group, while here there are lovely connections with youth who are radiant with idealism.
Is it a “simpler” lifestyle? Not really. In order to make just one trip into town per week for shopping, laundry, etc., and without refrigeration, some rather intense planning is involved. I am grateful for the wild greens, such as plantain, sorrel, lamb’s-quarter and clover, to supplement our salads. There is the problem of mice getting into everything. A daily chore is to check the Havahart mousetrap and deport the mouse as far away as possible. The social complexities of ecovillage living are pretty intense too. I have yet to develop a plan for a livelihood without the necessity of commuting (but there are some possibilities coming my way). City life, though, had become too much craziness for me. I was all too aware of the difference between my lifestyle and my ideals. I wanted to experience living off the grid, and getting out of gridlock—the traffic I used to endure on Sunday afternoons just to escape to nature’s beauty for a weekend or a day.
Michaeljon’s homesite is above the valley where the “Hut Hamlet” lies, a good steep fifteen minute walk uphill. Below the homesite is Rosy Branch Creek, with its little waterfall making a pleasant sound. At night, there are a few fireflies flashing their lights, and always a loud chorus of cicadas. Tall white pines shade much of the area. Twelve inches of pine needles and bark mulch feel wonderful under bare feet. Our compost is completely odorless, and our kitchen and shower graywater percolates into a small garden with a few flowers in front of the trailer. The main garden plot is large, but we’ve planted just a few things this late: carrots, broccoli, lettuce, spinach, kale, chard, arugula, and winter squash. Michaeljon has a bumper crop of lemon basil, which the deer don’t touch, as well as plenty of forget-me-nots, marigolds, gladiolus, dahlias, and young fruit trees. One day while I was working in the garden, a white-spotted fawn walked boldly toward me, daintily cropping vegetation, and got within 10 feet as I stood stock-still. I was both charmed and chagrined, for two days earlier a deer had nipped off the top of our one tomato plant. Now, a fence is in place!
As I was starting the insulation work, a house-wren called loudly from just outside the window. Looking up into the beams, we spotted a nest, and on closer examination with a flashlight, tiny fluffs of baby wrens peeping from it! A week later, the fledglings were gone, and we carefully scooped out the nest and placed it on the altar. A good omen for the new home!
The biggest priority is building the home, and we finished putting in cotton-batt insulation two weeks ago (R-32). A skylight went in last week; still to come are sheetrocking, plastering, floor, composting toilet, shower, kitchen, root cellar, water cistern, pond, and photovoltaic system (not necessarily in that order). The loft bedroom is now habitable, and we use the trailer for cooking and showering mainly; there is already a composting toilet outside too, and I enjoy using my “solar shower”—the black plastic bag with a hose that warms in the sun and then hangs from a tree outdoors. We have no electricity, and for me one of the biggest challenges is living without refrigeration, using only coolers with jugs of ice from the collective, hydro-powered freezer down the hill. We are blessed with spring water, from a spring Michaeljon discovered years ago and tapped. Up the road from us is a manmade pond with a small waterfall flowing into it, a joy to hear and behold, but it is rather shallow and muddy for swimming. Mostly, I enjoy a dip in the village swimming hole or along the creek in other inviting spots.
It’s been a pretty dry summer for these parts, and I’m told there’s been a 3-year drought, but to me it feels like a lot of rain and thundershowers—balm to this skin-thirsty Californian! Fifty to sixty inches of rainfall would be normal, but so far this year it’s about half that. Global warming?
PERMACULTURE
Upon arriving here, I began studying Permaculture, (“permanent culture”) with the first week-long course in early July and the second one in mid-August. Although I’d had some exposure to the subject, I was thrilled to discover that, as it’s taught here, Permaculture is truly a systems view which brings together many strands of my own life interests from alternative energy to organic gardening, stream protection, appropriate technology, and living in greater harmony with nature’s ways. Seeing all aspects of culture as connected, we started by looking at six interlocking threats to the life on the planet:
1) Global warming: even if we stopped ALL CO2 production today, we’d have temperature increases for the next 30 years
2) Persistent pollution
3) Unsustainable infrastructure: in the U.S., the average bite of food currently travels 1200 miles
4) Erosion of indigenous cultures worldwide
5) Increasing disparity as wealth concentrates in fewer hands
6) Failure of agriculture: topsoil loss, desertification, genetically modified organisms, terminator seeds, giant agribusiness, rainforest destruction.
We have reached global limits and must create a regenerative culture which will restore soil fertility, stop consuming stored energy (fossil fuels, trees, etc.) and live off current income, growing food where people are.
In permaculture design, ethics are primary: care of the earth, care of humans, equity in distribution of surplus, recognition of the intrinsic worth of all beings. Instead of turning earth, trees, animals, and people into commodities for exchange, we can meet our real needs by using less. When our real needs (which include social connection, contribution, and creative expression) are met, we are less likely to get hooked on vicarious entertainment and materialism.
Permaculture makes the best use of nature’s resources and biological systems: letting earthworms and chickens do the work of tillage, not tractors; planting species to attract beneficial insects, not using pesticides; building soil through mulching and composting whatever’s on hand. We built garden beds using partially-rotted wood from an old pile, some old cardboard, clay and soil from a pond excavation project, and trimmings from tree stumps that had sprouted new branches. We learned to dig swales on hillsides to prevent erosion and retain the water higher in the landscape.
NEXT: More on Permaculture; Learnings from Nature
