Bring It Home: Day 2

More Photos from the worksite:

LiAna and Kim, Legacy Project captains working on bird houses for the grounds.

Ashevillage volunteer, Justin working hard!

Lots of planting being done.

The results...

PdC UpdAtE... WaTcH tHe vIdEo

We completed the 2nd weekend of our 6-weekend Permaculture Design Course this month and have organized into 5 design teams. Each team selected a challenging design project to tackle. It's exciting that even though these are student design projects they aren't just hypothetical. The design site hosts are all very actively interested in implementing the designs! We have a nice selection of projects - everything from public to personal and urban to rural. Permaculture design techniques can be applied everywhere and permaculture ethics can be applied to everything. So cool. Design projects include: Randolph Learning Center, a school for middle and highschool aged kids; a model site on AB-Tech campus; a Burton St. community project of Asheville GO; a single mom's Habitat for Humanity home, and a 7-acre horse farm. Here's one of our visionary PDC participants, Asheville City Councilmember Robin Cape, talking about Permaculture.

Natural Plaster Finish goes up in AVI Bathroom

AVI residents can now primp in natural beautiful style! We recently finished the walls & ceiling in the AVI bathroom with a natural plaster. Our recipe: 1x Clay 1x Wheat paste 3x Aggregate (marble dust, mica, sand) Water & colored mineral pigment to taste ...Plus 1/4 cup powdered milk per gallon of paint Steveo, Lloyd and natural building intern, John, got a download on how to make and apply the plaster by our in-house expert, Janell. The plaster turned out beautifully - light yellow with sparkly mica flecks. It looks great with the dark slate tile. But here's the thing, exposed earthen walls where wet towels might rest on them wouldn't hold up very well in the long run. Our solution: watered down Elmer's Glue...seriously! Janell had seen this successfully used as protection on an earthen floor and exterior wall at Pun Pun in Thailand. Last year, we experimented with this recipe as the final coat on AVI's exterior, over earthen plaster, and it's held up amazingly well -- even through torrential downpours. So, that's what we finished our clay-painted bathroom walls with. The recipe? 4 parts water x 1 part Elmer's. We added extra pigment, taking our walls from a soft yellow to gorgeous Mediterranean ochre. If you want to learn more about this, we have a 2-Day Natural Finishes Workshop November 13 & 14. Check out our Calendar of Events over there on the right. Right over there --> Go ahead, click it. You know you want to. :)

2009 Season at AVI underway

Things are ramping up around here. This last week we welcomed our resident permaculturist, Shawn, and his family to the AVI house. Shawn is designing our site master plan which we'll be implementing throughout the summer. We also welcomed Lloyd, an AVI resident, who arrived the same day to round out our core team of sustainability superstars: Steveo, Keri, Ira, Michael, Janell, and Meesh.

Ashevillage Institute core team meeting

Meetings, meetings, meetings are the order of the day. It takes a lot of planning and organizing to run this show and make real and lasting change. AVI core team meeting, website development meeting, strategic planning meeting, volunteer orientation meeting, Permaculture Design Course meeting... phew! Good thing we have a sweet and stellar cast of characters, nourishing wild and fermented lunches and plenty of organic dark chocolate to get us through!

Volunteer meeting with bikes, barrels and burdock under the apple tree