Eastern United States

Earthaven is an aspiring ecovillage founded in 1994 on 329 acres in the mountain forests of Western North Carolina, about 50 minutes from Asheville. We are spiritually diverse and value sustainable ecological systems, permaculture design, elegant simplicity, right livelihood, and healthy social relations. We have both vegetarians and omnivores, and some of us raise livestock for food. We hope to become empowered, responsible, ecologically literate citizens who model bioregionally appropriate culture for our time and place.

We intend to become a village of at least 150. We use a modified form of the N Street Consensus Method for decision making, and have paid for and own title to our land. We have a homeowners’ association to manage our common lands, with housing coops and LLCs owning our residential areas. As of 2021, we have 70 adult residents. We have built roads and bridges, community buildings, members’ homes, multi-household residences, gardens, constructed wetlands, and off-grid power and water systems.

We are developing a small village-scale economy. Some of us work in small, onsite businesses or nonprofits, including Useful Plants Nursery; Culture’s Edge, an educational nonprofit and its School of Integrated Living (SOIL). Some of us offer services such as carpentry and home construction, consulting, house cleaning, home care, child care, and healing arts. Others telecommute or work in town.

To further Earthaven’s mission as a learning community dedicated to sharing our resources with the public, the School of Integrated Living offers in-person and online workshops and tours.  We welcome students and other learning groups, and support homeschool parents of children at Earthaven and nearby. We are seeking hardworking, entrepreneurial people, including but not  limited to organic growers and farmers; people with solar power, electrical, plumbing, and mechanical skills; and healers, artists, and families with children.

Hickory Nut Forest is an eco community near Asheville in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Located on over 100 acres in beautiful Hickory Nut Gorge, we are a sustainable community where adults and children live and work among caring neighbors, sharing their inspiration and enthusiasm with each other. As well as protecting the land’s biodiversity, we are growing vegetables and fruits, designing green homes, and using renewable energy from water and sun.

We have kept the special places wild for all to enjoy: cascading streams, tumbling waterfalls, sheer cliffs, and distant vistas. Over 15 miles of hiking trails exist to the adjoining 800 acres in the Florence Nature Preserve. Chimney Rock State Park is down the gorge with another 3500 acres of waterfalls and cliffs.

Laughing Waters is our community center and gathering place as well as a retreat site and educational center. We host workshops, weddings and private retreats. We have a large fire circle for bonfires, potlucks, and social gatherings.

Hickory Nut Forest has 20 lots. Community members purchase their own lots and design and build their homes. Community members may serve on committees to help with particular community aspects: land protection, trail building, renewable energy, growing organic foods, and green building. Currently, 6 homes have been built, 3 are being designed, and 9 lots are still for sale.

In addition to the magic of living in the abundance of the Blue Ridge Mountains, we are a 25-minute drive from Asheville, NC which is a cultural mecca. Restaurants, arts venues of all kinds, farmers’ markets, and opportunities for environmental activism provide an urban experience if and when the residents of Hickory Nut Forest want to participate in these types of activities.

We are continually expanding and growing and invite you to visit and learn more!

Headwaters Garden and Learning Center is built around a shared ethic of land stewardship, reverence for nature, mutual support and respect, and a sustainable life. We strive to build a resilient web of relationships between our community, ourselves, nature, and spirit. We want to cultivate food, energy, and our human spirit to honor all our relations, and thereby eliminate impoverishment and exploitative relationships with Earth and humanity.

Our shared work on the land, in our neighborhoods, and in our local and global community will build a healthy environment to support our children and grandchildren for many generations to come, and we aspire to make all our decisions with future generations, all beings and relations, peace, and justice in mind.

We have received a permit for eight homes, and seven homes are now completed or under construction. It is a condominium form of ownership – people buy a home site, not a lot, and build their own house. We are also structured as a community land trust, so the housing here will be permanently affordable.

QIVC, established in 2000, is a community of about 30 people, of all ages, living close to the land on 135 acres of forest and pasture in the upper Hudson Valley. We strive to live spirit-focused lives that are simple, sustainable, and joyful, benefiting from and enjoying our close connections with each other and the land.
We welcome diversity of all sorts, and there is no need to identify as a Quaker.

The community is composed of a variety of green homes including straw bales, slip and chip timber frames and passive solar energy. Many of the residents use organic farming methods and support nearby farms through Community Supported Agriculture shares.

Self-governance in the community is based on Quaker processes and using our 5 guiding intentions:

1. To live in worship, increasing our mindfulness, spiritual focus, and God-centeredness by intertwining our daily lives with others who share these intentions

2. To create a village setting that values and engages participation by people of all ages, expands our experience of family, and supports our expression in the world

3. To create wealth that embodies integrity and Truth by carefully examining our engagement in the current economic order and stepping away from its destructive elements

4. To live in unity & harmony with the earth by considering the near and far environmental impact of our actions while striving for thrivability

5. To include a good measure of joy, fun, creativity, and service in our lives

To create a micro-society with a high quality of life by providing holistic education to all generations, financial sufficiency by creating our own businesses, secure environment and where everyone can explore their full potential.

Our Story:

In 1984, 30 families and 15 individuals from diverse professional backgrounds embarked on a new adventure. They sold all of their personal assets to invest in what is now known as La Cite Ecologique: “The Ecological City”. In the following years, we grew our organic garden, became a living-learning center and began our alternative school which was approved by the Educational System of Quebec.

In 1991, Kheops International was founded in Quebec, Canada as our wholesale business. We only sold three Glass Art products: pyramids, incense holders, and candle bases. In 1994, Kheops International opened its USA division in Florida with members of the community. We remained there for nine years with due diligence in increasing our product selection.

Through this time, it became apparent that if we were closer ‘to the parent company’ in Canada, we could better serve our customers and decrease our eco-footprint. Also as an Ecovillage, we consistently prioritized the wellness of our members. In doing so, we realized that it would be better to relocate in a place that will enable us to grow our food and develop our own alternative school. The search for a new location continued until we found the perfect location spot in Colebrook, New Hampshire.

In 2003, we purchased 315 acres of land in the North Country region and established the Cite Ecologique of NH Ecovillage. In 2007, we started our organic gardens and schooling group, our two centric focuses.

Today, we continue our mission of perpetuating an awakening of consciousness that allows for the spreading of peace throughout the world.

Rocky Corner cohousing is committed to creating a balance between independence and         interdependence.

The community consists of privately owned, self-sufficient homes and a common house, which includes   facilities for shared meals and a variety of other community resources.

Our neighborhood is pedestrian centered.

We maintain a balance of private and community life with respect for individual and family needs for quiet, autonomy and privacy.

We are dedicated to fostering a friendly, open, vibrant, mutually supportive atmosphere.

Our communications, relationships, actions and behavior are honest, direct, respectful, nonviolent and caring.

We are committed to equal access to power in decision-making. Our primary way of attaining this goal is by using sociocracy.

We strive to create a neighborhood that is supportive and inspiring for individuals and families.

Our community promotes the physical and emotional health, safety and security of our members and guests.

We make space in our lives for play and artistic expression. We encourage continual learning, skill sharing and teaching.

We seek out and are open to new ideas and to all interested people who share our vision and values and are able to share fully and fairly in community responsibilities.

We do not exclude people on any other basis.

Rocky Corner is multi-generational.

We support people of all ages to enter, stay and participate in the community throughout their lives.

We value children as members of the community and encourage their participation and leadership.

We actively sustain our community and maintain our property by sharing work and responsibilities.  

Our community is planned, designed and managed by the members with attention to aesthetics and in a manner that supports our vision.

We work cooperatively for mutual benefit. We make ownership as affordable as possible.

We serve as an active member of the wider community.

We engage our neighbors in the greater community by inviting participation in our play, in our art and in our work, and as formal advisors to our community’s self-governance.

Rocky Corner members are involved in a broad variety of activities and organizations in the wider community.

We are devoted to preserving, protecting, nurturing and regenerating the natural environment.

We are committed to learning about and adopting practices that minimize consumption of energy, water, and other natural resources.

We strive to balance farming and community life with the preservation of wildlife habitats.

We consider the Rocky Corner community, the wider human community and the health of the Earth when making decisions and choices.

Living Well Community is on 126 acres of land on the Deep River in the rural town of Franklinville in central North Carolina. The land is beautiful with a variety of ecosystems and a pubic greenway on the property parallel to the river connecting the community to adjacent towns.

The community’s Concept Plan has residential, business, event space, farming, and conservation components. Our four core values of health/wellness, sustainability, honoring the sacred, and service to the greater good, influence our choices and decisions as a community.

We are developing strategies for creating a resilient, sustainable community long term and sharing these strategies and ideas with others.

We are part of the worldwide Camphill movement and the only Camphill community in North America for children. We offer residential and day academic and prevocational programs, as well as therapeutic care for children in kindergarten through grade twelve. We also offer a Transition Program for young people ages eighteen to twenty-one.

Students participate in a full range of conventional and holistic therapies along with prevocational programs, community-based instruction, entrepreneurial ventures, and care for animals and the natural world. In addition, students develop meaningful relationships with peers and staff who reside both on- and off-campus.

The Camphill School was formed when Downingtown Special School and Donegal Springs, curative homes for children that began in 1954 and 1961 in Pennsylvania, merged. After an extensive search for a location to house an ever-growing number of children and live-in volunteers, a beautiful fifty-seven-acre farm in rural East Nantmeal, Pennsylvania, was purchased in October 1963. All around the world, more than one hundred Camphill communities in over twenty countries take different forms. Every community, however, is dedicated to social renewal through community building — with children, youth, and adults with disabilities. The Camphill ideal is to engage all the members of each community in meeting their own needs, as well as those of the community at large, to whatever extent their abilities allow.

We are currently looking for individuals who would be interested in joining our community for 3 – 12 months as a Live-in Volunteer. Volunteers live and work in our community in extended family-like settings with residential students and faculty. They guide a group of neuro-diverse children through daily functional and academic learning goals, and any challenges they might encounter along the way

Springhouse build regenerative culture by creating vitality-centered education.

Seven years ago, from the rich community and landscape of Floyd, VA, and the care of those who deeply longed for a more vital and creative culture, Springhouse emerged. Now with a vibrant and devoted community to tend to it, Springhouse thrives as an exemplar in vitality-centered education.

Springhouse was founded in the Blue Ridge mountains, on Tutelo land, in 2014 by Dr. Jenny Finn, Joe Klein, and Ezekiel Fugate. The school was originally located at the Floyd Ecovillage, moved to the Floyd Center for the Arts, and then was given a location (formerly the Blue Ridge Chinese Medicine Clinic) to use permanently in 2018; an 11-acre farm in a structure built by local builders and woodworkers. Springhouse had start-up financial support from the Bauers Wall Foundation and the Kalliopeia Foundation, as well as receiving income from tuition in our 7th-12th grade school. Springhouse is reimagining the economics of this educational design, and currently receives income from tuition, grants, and fundraising.

Springhouse envisions a regenerative culture where all people are connected to the vitality within themselves, their community, and the Earth. Our mission is to awaken a vitality-centered education that empowers people to courageously respond to the world’s emerging needs. Springhouse offers a day school program for 7th-12th graders, coming of age programs for pre-teens and teens, and personal development programs for adults that strengthen our communities. Springhouse is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization and is governed by a Board of Trustees, directed by a Head of School, supported by a highly dedicated staff, and informed by an Advisory Council.

At Springhouse, learners actively engage in experiences oriented around vitality, like building a 22-foot sailboat, getting to know community and place by taking a 48-mile walking trip,  or organizing community conversations on race. They know that becoming more vibrant and courageous people is what the world needs.