Earthaven Internship Program
A Six-Week Immersion in Ecovillage Living
September 21 – November 2, 2024
Earthaven Ecovillage
Near Asheville, NC
Have a sense that the track you’re on doesn’t quite fit? Longing for meaningful and purposeful work and wondering how to be of service to the healing of this world we are in? Maybe there’s a life you are longing for that you don’t have words for yet?
We don’t have all the answers, those are yours to find, but we do have mentorship, experience, and inspiration to offer.
Welcome to the Earthaven Internship Program! This program will immerse you in the radical social and ecological experiment that is Earthaven Ecovillage life, while being a part of an intimate cohort of interns for six weeks, gaining practical land-based skills while connecting with the people and projects of our off-grid, permaculture-based intentional community.
Whether you are taking a break from school, considering your options for stepping away from mainstream culture, or beginning the journey of creating the life you long for, this experiential service-learning program is designed to be an opportunity for meaningful contribution and relevant skill-building while experiencing what it takes to live in connection to the land in an rural community.
This experience has made me realize that although I have reduced my worldview to accommodate what I thought were the limits it had to offer, magic is real and it is cultivated by a community of people and the land who value gratitude and the expression of that gratitude.
Explore a Passion-Driven Life of Meaning, Purpose, and Connection in a Community Setting
At Earthaven, we envision a world where self-reliant, yet interdependent and ecologically aware people engage consciously in their local and global communities. We believe that these committed folks will make informed and responsible choices for their basic needs (food, shelter, water, medicines), understand their impact on the world, and their sacred place of belonging within it. Together, they will forge real connection with themselves and others, experience the richness of interdependence, and ultimately contribute to a more sustainable and equitable world for all.
We haven’t actualized all of these goals just yet, but here at Earthaven we strive for that vision in all aspects of our lives.
Most importantly, we are inviting your collaboration. This project we call Earthaven Ecovillage requires deep dedication in the form of physical and energetic energy investment. We need your help in carrying this big dream into the future. Fresh eyes, new ideas and inspiration are valued alongside physical contribution.
Are you one that we have been waiting for?
You may not feel ready for this season of your life. Worry not. This season of your life is ready for you. Know this, dear soul. A place has been prepared for you in the season now upon you. You are the honored guest. Even if you don’t realize it, you have been prepared for this time and circumstance. If you were not prepared, the season would not have arrived. Soul seasons do not follow your calendar. They follow your soul. Where you are tender, pour some Love on it and proceed. Your season is here and it wants you. Want it back. That’s the signal that brings forth its fruit…
Explore Homestead and Off-Grid Living
Most of the week you will work directly with villagers on a variety of their projects, including animal, vegetable, or orchard agriculture, natural building, and village infrastructure. Heart, mind, and body working together in such a way that you can rest with a deep sense of satisfaction and aliveness when the day is done.
You will also learn about the DIY infrastructure that supports our village, neighborhoods, and homes, including off-grid power, water, and waste systems, and roads and trails. Earthaven provides a rare opportunity to experience a wide variety of these systems – from hut scale to village scale, from no tech to high tech, and from decades old to brand new. If you’re interested in off-grid systems, learning about our systems could save you a lot of time and money from learning things the hard way.
Come be in your body and experiment with rural life!
My SOIL experience provided me with a new way to look at energy, food production, and the cycle of life including the consumption patterns of these basic building blocks of life.
Get a Feel for Community Life
Be part of the Earthaven community by attending village and neighborhood potlucks, coffee and trade, and seasonal celebrations. During the weekends, you can just be a villager and enjoy living here or pick up some side work if you need a few bucks. We have internet available when you need it, but we don’t have cell service. Life at Earthaven is an opportunity to reclaim being in the now, and the depth of experience and connection of being attuned to the living world.
Participants will share a common hearth in the Wheelhouse neighborhood, forming their own nested community life by sharing meals, social activities, hearth-tending tasks, and your experiences. The Wheelhouse is its own permaculture laboratory inside of Earthaven, emphasizing a family atmosphere and simplicity. You can stay inside the group house or camp in their campground in a tent or van.
Twice weekly check-ins with both lodging and program hosts offer a supportive environment in which to share experiences and unpack the week, providing a mirror for your life in community.
Earthaven is where the human community is bonding with the Earth in a manner capable of healing the devastation of the past and inspiring a new grandeur for the future. At Earthaven, even for a brief while, we experience what it is to return to ourselves.
What to Expect
This program is about learning by working and living within a community.
As an intern, you will be exposed to a diverse range of lifestyles, businesses, and cottage industries pertaining to agriculture and education that range in purpose, size, technique, application, and style.
We’ll get into a rhythm with our weekly schedule.
| Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | |
| Breakfast | |||||||
| AM | Independent Time | 9–noon Workshop 1 |
Independent time (Community Market & Social) |
9–noon Workshop 2 |
9–noon Workshop 3 |
9–noon Thriving in Community Class |
Independent Time |
| Lunch | |||||||
| PM |
Independent Time (Bi-weekly Community Council) |
1:30–4:30 Workshop 1 |
1:30–5:30 Earthaven Service Project |
1:30–4:30 Workshop 2 |
1:30–4:30 Workshop 3 |
Independent Time | Independent Time |
| Dinner | |||||||
| EVE | 8–9 Check-in |
Independent Time | Community Grillout & Potluck | 8–9 Check-in |
Independent Time | Independent Time | Independent Time |
This program is primarily designed for adults. However, mature teenagers under 18 years old are also welcome to apply with or without a parent/guardian. Unfortunately, we are not able to accommodate young children at this time.
Mentorship and Hands-On Workshops
On top of the whole ecovillage being a learning playground, the specific service-learning environments will be in the homes, farms, gardens, and neighborhoods of residents, and working alongside a variety of skilled and creative people as the service-learning leaders for this internship.
Each service-learning leader will lead on the same day of the week for all six weeks for continuity and consistency. The projects and your skills can continue to deepen and build upon the previous week’s understanding and knowledge base.
These projects will be physical and hands-on. Most days will be learning by doing, while you grow an understanding of the why’s and how’s. There will be shovels involved, so come prepared to experience the joy and effort of working with your body!
Friday mornings we’ll take a break from the physical work for some ecovillage education — exploring the history, organization structure, and functions of the multi-entity Earthaven project. As the oldest ecovillage in North America, you can learn through the tales of our successes and failures. Friday afternoons are open for your self-learning or other emergent activities.
The schedule includes plenty of independent time for integration, socializing, and taking care of life.
Mentors and Workshop Leaders
Holistic Pastured Animal Systems with Elizabeth Díaz
This project will provide hands-on experience with aspects of pastured animal agriculture.
- Working with cattle, pigs, and poultry, including feeding and watering, rotational grazing, and health checks
- Learning the basics of keeping a family cow
- Farming grass, including maintaining pastures, rotational grazing, annual and perennial forage tending, and compost building
- Using agricultural by-products, such as skim milk, manure, spent brewers’ grains, and other organic matter, as agricultural inputs, for example to feed animals, compost piles, and the soil
- Practical, including permanent, semi-permanent, and tempory electric fencing to support rotational grazing
- Making and storing butter, bone broth, and other nutrient-dense animal products
- Optional: Humane harvesting (slaughtering and processing) of broiler chickens (or possibly a large animal, such as a pig or steer)
Elizabeth has been getting her hands dirty in Western North Carolina since 2004. After graduating from Warren Wilson College in 2006 with a made-up degree in “Social and Activist Theater,” she began pursuing a life more deeply connected to food and other basic human needs. She began a love affair with cows in 2010 while work-exchanging on a neighborhood farm at Earthaven. Since 2013 she has been running a small subsistence farm operation in the community, where, along with the support of many others, she tends to a variety of animals, along with the plants and land that feed them.
Natural Building with Adam Klaus
This project will cover the process of building a modern integrated natural home for Adam and his family of five.
- Construction using place-appropriate materials and building techniques
- Finding the balance between natural materials, re-used materials, and purchased materials
- Milling trees into lumber for use in the house
- Applying natural lime plaster for exterior finishes
- Human-scale design and social implications of architecture
Adam has decades of experience as a builder, with a focus on natural building. He has designed and built a rustic log cabin, a modern stick-frame home, a traditional timber frame dairy barn, passive greenhouses, and many smaller structures. He enjoys the process of working with the resources of a given site to create buildings that are beautiful through their harmony with the natural local vernacular.
Small Animal Agriculture with Rachel Fee
This project will provide hands-on experience with aspects of pastured small animal agriculture on a homestead scale.
- Developing and maintaining habitat for small animal agriculture with the goals of minimizing inputs and building soil fertility
- Tending an integrated site that includes forage trees, pasture, and annual vegetable production
- Learning the basics of animal husbandry concerning dairy goats, pigs, rabbits, and poultry
- Optionally slaughtering and processing small animals and poultry.
- Philosophically exploring the sacred intersections of farming, animism, ecology, grief, love, and deep belonging to place.
Rachel is a trauma-informed clinical herbalist turned small farmer who has a never ending curiosity around how we can sustain ourselves in concert with nature. She came to Earthaven in 2017 with her four children, now teenagers and young adults, who participate in a family farm with an egg CSA, goats, and pigs. She is driven by her passion for homegrown food and the sacred work of growing and raising it in right relationship with the land, and sharing that joy with others.
Village Infrastructure with Brandon Greenstein & Joe Dofflemyer
This project will tend and improve Earthaven’s off-grid infrastructure systems, including water, waste, power, access, and buildings.
- Repairing community buildings
- Tending roads and trails
- Creating solar access
- Processing firewood
- Monitoring and managing water and power systems
Brandon works with chainsaws, hand tools, heavy equipment, construction projects, water systems, and most everything having to do with the practicalities of ecological design. He lives at Earthaven in an off-grid duplex, practicing community, partnering, parenting, and philosophizing about existence and how to optimize it. Brandon is the Organic Growers School Consulting Director and Sustainability Coach, providing support services to farmers, homesteaders, gardeners, and those seeking sustainability solutions.
Orchard and Forest Garden Management with Debbie Lienhart & Griffin Abee
This project will improve the maintainability and expand the uses of the campground orchard.
- Managing the orchard understory, potentially making biochar
- Planting nut trees and berry bushes
- Improving orchard hardscape, including paths and potentially campsites
- Tending the village cemetery with villagers
- Processing fruits and nuts, and optionally making mead
Debbie comes from a long line of orchardists and plant breeders. She fell in love with forest gardens during her permaculture design certificate program and leaves a trail of fruit trees behind her. She moved to Earthaven Ecovillage in 2007 and has been involved in governance, promotions, and partnership culture, and was a partner in the Useful Plants Nursery for eight years. In 2008, she and another villager started developing the campground orchard. Her current interests include growing fruits and nuts, and stewarding the orchard cemetery. She is drawing on her technical and management background to develop and promote SOIL online learning programs.
Griffin moved to the Earthaven area in the fall of 2002. She began learning about permaculture, natural building, living off grid, fermentation and community living. In 2005, she bought an acre of land near Earthaven. Over the years, she planted fruiting and medicinal plants and built a tiny house with the help of dear friends. Being raised by parents who owned a garden center, Griffin grew up with a passion for growing plants. In 2006, she began an edible landscaping business and planted thousands of useful plants around the Carolinas. In 2009, she earned a degree in Sustainable Development and Appropriate Technology at Appalachian State University. Currently, Griffin lives in Earthaven with her family, teaches yoga in the village, and owns a small wine business called Alchemy Herbal Wines.
Annual Vegetable Market Gardening with Leon Birstein
- Creating an inch of topsoil every year through cover crops, mulch, and soil science
- Cultivating, harvesting, and processing corn into masa, cornmeal, and grits
- Cultivating mushrooms and harvesting sweet potatoes
- Growing in hoop houses and the greenhouse
- Keeping bees
- Growing turmeric in temperate climates as a cash crop
Leon has been farming the hillsides of this mountain valley for nearly 30 years. His main crops are Ohio Blue Clarage dent corn, sweet potatoes, shiitake mushrooms, turmeric, honey, and his beloved 20 varieties of bamboo, but you can find everything from kale to persimmons and pomegranates on his 10 acres of permaculture performance art. He is a generalist of the highest order, fluidly moving between farming, mechanics, carpentry, forestry, earthworks, electrical, and more. He loves to talk about just about everything, but has a special fondness for the intersection of evolution, history, and geopolitics.
Empowered Community Living with Becky Boisvert
This Empowered Community Living workshop will run all six weeks of the Internship and cover subject matter ranging from: Community Communication Tools to Shared Decision Making and on to Tending the Collective Nervous System, among others.
An inveterate adventurer, Becky (she/her) has grown to see life itself as the adventure. That life is made richer in community at Earthaven where Becky, her daughter Willow, and her co-parent Sanne moved in 2018.
Becky loves taking lofty creative visions and bringing them to life — whether her own or others’. In her first career as an educator, she taught at an arts-integrated charter school, mentored gap-year students in India and Guatemala, and created a holistic middle school. Since then, she has produced two documentary films, coached individuals and couples toward greater wholeness, and begun holding mediations.
Becky is excited to bridge and share the life she is devoted to creating at Earthaven Ecovillage with the greater world.
Every instructor and member showed a great deal of intense passion in their work, inspiring me to know what their life entailed as well as find my own passion.
Service Learning
Service learning combines formal instruction with an active, physical, service component. We promise to minimize the “school” part and keep things practical with engaging and interactive content and an immediate opportunity to apply what you have learned.
Our programs are grounded in real-life opportunities that make learning deep, long lasting, and fun. Learning can take many forms. Whether learning to knit from a classmate, milking a cow, discovering moon-cycle planting, or resolving interpersonal conflict, participants learn in ways that are applicable, embodied, and repeatable.
Service learning prepares you to use your knowledge for the good of the whole and equips you to address social problems in a group context. In this way, learning becomes a more holistic approach to living, thinking, and being of service.
This is an experience of learning that goes far beyond the traditional interpretations I’ve encountered, that understands life as a process of learning, and learning as connection.
Your Labor Helps Make This Program Possible
This program is very different from the rest of our programs because it balances getting things done, providing a community experience, and education.
We created this longer internship program so that a small group of participants can really experience reciprocity by living at Earthaven while contributing their energy to support projects in the village.
Some of the work will be sequentially on a project, learning a task or technique and then gaining muscle memory doing it over and over again. Other kinds of work might include the sacred mundane maintenance necessary for the village to run smoothly. The cost of this program reflects this balance of instruction time and work time.
With this model, we’re offering a per-day cost that’s about half that of our other programs. In order for it to work financially, we rely on participants being truly helpful and getting things done.
If you’re looking for a less vigorous ecovillage experience, consider our Experience Week or Experience Weekend.
This experience was highly rewarding through the work we accomplished, the stories we heard, and the interaction with Earthaven community members.
Please note: this hands-on internship program includes real work
Learning by doing means that your body gets into the work of building, farming, and gardening. You’ll be shoveling, hauling, walking longer distances, bending, stooping, getting dirty, and working in varied weather. We will honor the boundaries of each body’s own physical abilities, but everyone will be expected to work hard. The work will not often be glamorous, but it will be rewarding. We like to laugh and get to know each other, and we also need to make real progress on projects.
If there’s serious inclement weather on the horizon, we may play with the schedule a bit so we are learning indoors during a deluge, and outside again when it passes. However, we will gather and work in gentle rain, wind, and hot sun. Before you apply, be sure that you’re up to the physical and mental challenge of working hard outside for three and a half days each week. If you have physical limitations, please make sure to mention them in the application so that we can discuss whether this program will be a good fit.
Community of Practice Culture
At its heart, this internship is about relationships and being of service to something greater than ourselves. The program is based on a belief that if we take care of the whole, we will be taken care of. Guided by the wisdom of the natural world, we start from where we are, with what we have, with who we are. If this isn’t your personal belief, we invite you to try it on for this program.
Learning takes place in a “Community of Practice,” in which we explore, make mistakes, and grow together through our relationships. This program is designed to encourage and support personal transformation and lifestyle changes through hands-on learning experiences in a community-centered learning environment and culture. Rooted in personal integrity, close community interaction, and regular work at one’s “growing edge,” we welcome mature, fully engaged, critical-thinking participants who are committed to learning, healthy living, participatory decision making, and community building.
To successfully embark on this transformative adventure together, we ask that you carefully review the program details to ensure this is the experience you’re looking for at this time in your life. Please note any questions or concerns to discuss before you register.
What an incredible group of people, creating so many interesting and vital projects. It was great to have a chance to participate in the actual work: to learn more deeply about what it means from at least a few different perspectives to live at Earthaven; and to be able to contribute, in a small way, to this inspiring constellation.
Deborah Clark & Lyndon Felps, Wheelhouse Hosts
Lyndon and Deborah are carrying on Patricia Allison’s legacy by offering The Wheelhouse as a cooperative residence supporting Permaculture education. Lyndon owns and operated the Useful Plants Nursery and Deborah is an artist.
The Group and Application Process
We will be welcoming up to fourteen participants into this program.
This program is designed for adults of all ages and stages who …
- Want to generate knowledge through firsthand, direct experiences
- Are exploring options for their next life phase
- Question mainstream culture and are looking for alternatives
- Wonder if they would be happier living in a community setting
If you are interested, please fill out an application. (There’s no cost to apply.) We’ll schedule a short interview so we can answer your questions and confirm that the program is a good fit. If it seems like a good match, you’ll receive a letter of invitation and be able to proceed with enrolling in the program.
Nothing in advanced-level education has prepared you for this experience! Get ready to leave what you know and step into a firestorm of techno-, anthro-, bio-, socio-, politico-consciousness.
Pricing
Young adults (18 – 25): $1,950 – $3,400
Regular pricing: $2,600 – $3,400
BIPOC: $1,700 – $3,400
What’s Included
Tuition includes three meals/day, snacks on work days, camping (tent or van), instruction, materials, and Earthaven fees.
Indoor accommodations, arrival and departure transportation, and participation in The Re-membering Retreat are available for an additional cost. The Re-membering Retreat takes place September 26-29. Participants may join the retreat for a reduced cost. Separate registration required.
Personal expenses, such as laundry, medical expenses, personal entertainment, health & travel insurance, supplemental food, and any other personal items, are not available through the program.
Logistics
Food & Cooking Details
Food is included in the tuition. The Wheelhouse meal plan for the Earthaven Internship provides three ample and nutritious meals each day as well as snacks. The meals will be prepared by the intern cohort themselves on a rotational basis, with support from a resident and member of The Wheelhouse. We can accommodate most common dietary choices/restrictions, such as vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, and dairy free. Although the meal plan includes meat for those who eat omnivorous diets, The Wheelhouse kitchen is vegetarian, which means that any meat prepared or eaten just needs to be elsewhere. There are a couple meals a week that will be hosted outside of The Wheelhouse in which meat will be included (for those who eat meat) and there will also be meat snacks such as jerky and salami to eat on-the-go. Regardless of your dietary preferences, protein will be available throughout each day.
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 a very specific diet, need extra snacks or special comfort foods, please prepare to bring or purchase these supplemental foods for yourself. On personal days, you will have ample time to take a trip into town for groceries. You’ll have an opportunity to share about your dietary needs in the application and interview process.
*** Although we would like to know if you have any allergies, we cannot provide an anaphylactic safe meal. There is always the chance of cross contamination.
Lodging
Several accommodation options are available at Earthaven Ecovillage and in the surrounding area.
The Wheelhouse Campground
Camping at The Wheelhouse campground is included with the program. The campground is in a quiet area near The Wheelhouse. The campground includes space for tents, hammocks, vans, and small RVs. There is cold running spring water. No electricity or internet is available in the campground, but is available nearby in the Wheelhouse.
Sleeping bags and pads are available for rental for $45/set for the program. Cleaning supplies to clean mats are available before and/or after use. SOIL launders the sleeping bags once a year.
Indoor Lodging
Shared and private indoor lodging is available in The Wheelhouse. Space is limited and available on a first-come-first-saved basis.
Shared Indoor Lodging
Cost per person: 42 nights $160
Private Indoor Lodging
Cost for 1 person: 42 nights $360
Cost for 2 people (shared bed): 42 nights $680
Location
This program takes place at Earthaven Ecovillage. This permaculture-based community offers a unique living classroom where participants will engage with the natural world, eco-infrastructure, and the intimate experience of rural community living.
The Wheelhouse
The hearth for this program will be The Wheelhouse. Designed as a permaculture demonstration and teaching facility by permaculturist Patricia Allison and her family. Her work is continued by The Wheelhouse Collective, who will be hosting the program.
The Wheelhouse features a vegetable and perennial gardens, a campground, and the nicest group kitchen in the ecovillage. The Wheelhouse is located about a quarter mile from the Village Center near the sauna, swimming hole, and labyrinth.
Have questions? Check out the FAQ.