Earthaven Ecovillage Experience Week
Live, Work, and Learn at Earthaven
2022 Dates TBD
Note: Registration is closed for 2021. Consider Earthaven Ecovillage Visitor Weekend in September or check back in early 2022 for next year’s program.
Earthaven Ecovillage Experience Week is a residential service-learning program that immerses participants in the life of Earthaven Ecovillage.
Our ecovillage provides the ideal living laboratory for a whole-life skills curriculum—a place to see regenerative systems in practice, food production in action, and community living on a personal level. Participants connect with the people, businesses, and farms of the Taylor Creek Watershed community for a hands-on, skill-building, life-changing experience.
The Earthaven Ecovillage Experience Week curriculum encourages participants to examine sustainability through social, ecological, economic, and eco-spiritual lenses. The learning journey weaves large-group discussions and classes together with intimate hands-on experiences in the village and farms alongside community members. SOIL instructors, together with the community at large, support participants to build important skills, foster awareness for global issues, empower the self, increase connection, and develop the resources required for daily life.
Curriculum
Classes, discussions and activities will explore the following:
Organic Food Production and Natural Buildings
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Green homes (tiny houses, stud-frame, cob, straw-bale, earthship)
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Small-scale farms and home gardens (permaculture gardens, integrated farms, compost)
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Service-learning projects and farm harvest work parties
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Nourishing, local, sustainably-grown, organic, and wild food
Renewable Energy and Off-Grid Utilities
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Off-grid renewable systems in practice (photovoltaic, micro-hydro, radiant-floor heating, hot water diversions, wood-fired boiler)
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Biochar, a charcoal fertilizer with energy-positive production
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Development of energy alternatives to meet the world’s impending energy crisis
Resilient Community and Regenerative Culture
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Earthaven and other successful ecovillages and land-based endeavors (both rural and urban)
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The three-legged stool of sustainability—the social, environmental, and economic factors necessary for sustainable projects to succeed
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Earthaven legal structure and governance 101
Personal Growth and Empowerments
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Personal goals and resources through Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects
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Connection to yourself, others, and the natural world
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Designing an authentic, meaningful, and responsible life in the modern world
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Earth-based spirituality at the Summer Solstice celebration
In addition to classes, discussions, and activities, you’ll enjoy meals and rituals with community members as well as the option to participate in yoga, meditation, and hiking.
2021 Program (for example)
This week-long program consists of expert lectures, fireside conversations, community celebrations, hands-on projects, journaling, tours, and interactive activities to provide an intimate, well-rounded, and powerful learning experience.
Friday
1:00–3:00 Arrival, Camp Setup
3:00–4:00 Welcome and Orientation
4:00–6:30 Tour of Earthaven
6:30–7:30 Dinner
7:30–9:00 Opening Circle
Saturday through Wednesday
7:30–8:30 Breakfast
9:00–12:30 AM Session
12:30–2:00 Lunch and Independent Time
2:00–5:30 PM Session
5:30–6:30 Independent Time
6:30–7:30 Dinner
7:30–9:30 Evening Activities
Thursday
7:30–8:30 Breakfast
9:00–12:30 Final Session and Closing Circle
12:30–1:00 Lunch and Departure
The Group
This program is primarily designed for adults. However, mature young adults under 18 years old are also welcome. Please contact SOIL to discuss the enrollment of passionate individuals under 18.
We welcome families with children to attend and will do our best to support you and your children, however we are not able to offer childcare. As much of the content involves focused, sit-down presentations, attending with a young child will likely mean being less able to participate fully in the course.
Logistics
Food
Delicious, omnivorous meals are prepared by talented culinary artists from the Earthaven community. Vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free options available. Snacks and beverages (tea, coffee) are provided. Participants are invited to help with meal clean-up. Many hands make light work.
As much food as possible is sourced from Earthaven and its surrounding farms and gardens, with some ingredients sourced from local grocery stores. Our meals are created with seasonal, local, fresh, wildcrafted, humanely-raised, and organic ingredients.
***If you have dietary needs beyond the ones listed here, please be prepared to bring supplemental food to support your nourishment and well-being. Our kitchen simply cannot accommodate all diets.
Program Specific Info
Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are included, Friday dinner through Thursday lunch.
Instructors
Earthaven Experience Programs Faculty Diana is author of Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities, about forming successful communities and ecovillages and Finding Community: How to Join an Ecovillage or Intentional Community. She speaks at conferences, offers consultations, and leads webinars and workshops internationally on starting successful new intentional communities, how existing communities can resolve conflicts and become more healthy and thriving, and sociocracy, a self-governance and decision-making method she finds especially effective for communities.
Diana Leafe Christian
Earthaven Experience Programs Faculty Chris has cleared his own farm field, designed and built passive solar homes using the wood from the trees he has killed (including his own Microhut), held leadership positions at Earthaven Ecovillage, raised turkeys, grown vegetables, co-founded the Forestry Cooperative, designed and installed multiple off-grid energy systems, and a few other things.
Chris Farmer
Faculty and SOIL Co-Founder Lee is a sustainability professional with twenty five years of experience envisioning, designing, and living innovative solutions to organic food systems, intentional community, and sustainability education. She’s been living in rural, land-based community since 1995 and at Earthaven Ecovillage since 2000. 
Lee Warren
Earthaven Experience Programs Faculty Dimitri is a naturalist, natural builder, and naturopathic doctor, one who teaches that wellness comes from cultivating a deep connection to the natural world. His other passions are nature awareness, foraging for food and medicine, gardening, and supporting bonds that engender a tightly-knit community.
Dimitrios Magiasis
Co-Director, Co-Founder, Faculty Throughout the last two decades, NikiAnne has been immersed in community and in service to a wide range of educational endeavors focused on nature connection, personal empowerment, and community resilience. No matter what she’s teaching, NikiAnne is always on the same mission: to raise awareness of our whole selves – gifts, passions, blind spots, shadows – and help those whole selves find and fill niches in their communities.
NikiAnne Feinberg
Assistant Director, Bookkeeper, and Faculty Carmen is dedicated to learning how to be human on this planet at this time. She considers herself a generalist and has owned and operated a pasture-based poultry farm; worked on construction crews building passive solar, off-grid houses; and supported many small businesses with online marketing, administration, and bookkeeping.
Carmen Lescher
Earthaven Experience Programs Faculty, Farmer, Cook Liz has been getting her hands dirty in Western North Carolina since 2004. She runs a small subsistence farm at Earthaven, tending to a variety of animals and plants, including milk and beef "cows," pigs, laying hens, broiler chickens, turkeys, livestock guardian dogs, as well as grasses, cover crops, and silage crops of many varieties. 
Liz Díaz