Hickory Nut Forest Eco-Village

 Today, after a brief visit to downtown Asheville for a delicious vegetarian Reuben and pumpkin spice decaf lattes (we eat out at restaurants or cafes only about once a week on average), we drove up winding mountain roads to the town of Gerton, North Carolina in order to visit the Hickory Nut Forest Eco-Village. We even crossed the Continental Divide on the way up the mountain!

From it's website, Hickory Nut Forest is a project described as "a unique eco-friendly community close to Asheville with plans to combine land conservation, green-built homes, organic gardening and renewable energy from wind, water, sun, and geothermal sources. Here, you can be part of designing a 'net zero energy homes community' that creates more renewable energy than it uses."

Another exciting aspect of Hickory Nut is the creation of a retreat/conference center which sits along a rushing mountain stream on the site of an old grist mill, with a basement yoga room located just alongside the stream. While we were visiting, we were also able to witness how the team is beginning the process of reconstructing several centuries-old log cabins on the site. It is obviously a labor of love, and the timber recovered from the ancient cabins is beautiful and enormous.

 As far as the sites for the homes is concerned, they are magnificent sites along a ridge overlooking the valley below, and the homes themselves will be certified green, using the best low-impact and healthy materials which will be conscientiously sourced. Water conservation, super-insulation, passive and active solar, geothermal and other technologies will also be employed in the building process, and waste water will be recycled using various cutting edge permaculture methods.

 The land surrounding the conference center is lush with tall trees, rhododendron and mountain laurel---a varied forested landscape. Adjacent to the conference center site is an organic orchard and garden which uses permaculture principles and may evolve into a form of community supported agriculture or similar project.

The Hickory Nut model is very captivating because part of our life's vision is to live close to the land in community, and potentially being part of a retreat center is very attractive to us based on a life-long dream of working and living in a retreat atmosphere.

While we are not currently in a position to buy a plot of land and begin the process of building a home in an emerging eco-village, we can see that the community that will emerge at Hickory Nut is one we will be sure to watch as it finds its feet and comes to certain fruition. We wish everyone at Hickory Nut the very best, and we hope to visit again to witness what will certainly be a transformative ripening of the vision behind this community.

Crest Mountain

Due to serendipity or perhaps Jungian synchronicity, we were invited to attend the second meeting regarding the formation of a new ecovillage/cohousing community in the Asheville area known at The Villages at Crest Mountain.

The Villages at Crest Mountain is a "developer-driven" sustainable eco-community that hopes to serve as a model for the entire country. Rather than begin with a group of residents who hash out all of the nitty gritty particulars over a number of years (as is done with most new cohousing neighborhoods), this community is being developed and designed by several developers and consultants with input from residents who are buying into the project. Avoiding the endless committees, subcommittees and interpersonal struggles faced by so many newly forming communities, this particular community is already in motion, and new residents will apparently have ample opportunity to influence design and governance decisions along the way, and decision-making will most likely be made using the techniques of sociocracy. 

Impressively, a permaculture consultant (who also happens to be the founder of Earthaven Ecovillage) has been hired to develop the landscaping, orchards and gardens. Rather than high-maintenance lawns, most areas will consist of low-maintenance edible plants and other flora and fauna that provide either food or natural beauty.

The community will also make use of ultra-energy efficient building techniques, including "hempcrete", a mixture of lime and industrial hemp that offers excellent insulation and high resistance to moisture and mold.

We are very interested to see how Crest Mountain develops, and we plan to keep in touch as we continue our search for community. The Asheville area has a great deal to offer, and some of the smaller units at Crest Mountain may prove to be affordable and attractive for those of modest means like ourselves.

Straw Bale Truth Window at Earthaven

Here's another straw bale "truth window" that was just too cool to not photograph!

Earthaven Ecovillage

We just spent two incredible days at Earthaven Ecovillage, which is located in the lush mountains less than an hour east of Asheville, North Carolina.

In short, our visit to Earthaven Ecovillage was mind-blowing. Earthaven is a veritable model for sustainable living which was founded in 1994, and we could see from the outset of our visit that this is a community that truly walks it’s talk.

Combining earth-friendly, sustainable building techniques and a village design including small clustered neighborhoods, Earthaven demonstrates that people of good will and intention can live close to the land, create systems and buildings that have the lowest possible environmental impact on the earth, and provide a safe haven for those who wish to live out of the mainstream, but nestled in the heart of a thriving community on 320 acres of Blue Ridge mountain forest.

The folks at Earthaven seem to promote and foster earthy and intelligent ingenuity, and a number of cottage industries have achieved relative economic success, including the harvesting of local timber, an organic nursery, and an apprentice program.

This geographic area enjoys four distinct seasons, each of which generally conforms to the equinoxes and solstices, as compared to New England where the winters seem to last for four or five months and the summers are unnaturally brief.  There is generally adequate sun and rainfall, with only a small amount of snow that rarely remains on the ground for more than a few days.

The buildings at Earthaven are built using many sustainable and energy-efficient technologies, including cob construction and straw bale, and every building sports an array of solar panels to harness the sun. There is also one Earthship at Earthaven, a home constructed out of old tires that are filled with dirt and stacked one on top of the other. The spaces in between the tires are then filled with glass bottles and other recycled materials, all of which is then covered with a thick coating of natural stucco. Earthships are very energy efficient due to their thick walls, requiring little in the way of heating during colder weather.

The community has its own “stream-powered” hydro plant that converts the energy of a rushing stream into usable power that is stored in a bank of batteries, further supplemented by a nearby group of solar panels. The energy harnessed from the stream can provide power to several shared buildings, including the trading post/office and a nearby residence where a number of members live.

Relying largely on solar panels and passive solar, the sun plays an important part in Earthaven’s energy needs, although generators are used in extreme circumstances. Only one home at Earthaven has a flush toilet, whereas all of the others rely on composting toilets. On-demand hot water heaters, ultra-efficient washing machines and other state-of-the-art technology further add to Earthaven’s endeavor to have the lowest possible environmental impact.

 

The community grows a great deal of its own food, and several members raise chickens, goats and dairy cows. Grass-fed milk, medicinal plants, honey, eggs and biodynamic vegetables are available, and several root cellars assist in long-term food storage.

Our host, Arjuna, carries a wealth of knowledge about both the community itself and its environmental and building practices, and our two-hour private tour was thorough, thoughtful, personal, and very informative. We were consistently blown away by what we saw and heard, returning to our rig to digest it all over a cup of tea and a snack.

Earthaven considers itself “a living laboratory for the sustainable future”, serving as a model ecovillage, a center for education vis-à-vis communication, economy and ecology, a spiritual sanctuary, and a place to foster what they call a “regenerative culture”. The residents of Earthaven use a local currency, barter for goods and services when possible, and continue to build skills in governance, group process, and healing.

Towards the beginning of our tour, we realized that a beautiful (but small) apartment/condo is currently for sale for less than $25,000 in a gorgeous building near the center of the community, and it is very tempting to consider building a life here at Earthaven. If we were indeed interested, there is an understandably involved and lengthy application process for prospective members. We were also happy to learn that our application for membership could indeed include Tina since there is no quota for the number of dogs in the community, thus she would simply be a part of our family application for residence at Earthaven.

For anyone interested in community, sustainable building, ecological living, or models of living outside of the mainstream, a visit to Earthaven is something not to be missed. We know that there are other ecovillages out there, but Earthaven is the first one into whose orbit we have floated, and we definitely leave feeling entranced. 

 

Solar Panels

We are very grateful for the high-quality photovoltaic panels that live on our roof. These panels can charge a set of two deep-cycle marine batteries that we can use to run all of our power for many, many hours. We can also choose to charge a third battery that lives next to the engine battery under the hood.

These solar panels and batteries allow us to "boondock" anywhere we like, with our own mini sun-powered electricity.