In 1994, our non-profit, Global Village Institute, created the Ecovillage Training Center at The Farm. Since then we have trained tens of thousands of people from more than 60 nations in subjects such as permaculture, midwifery, solar electricity, carbon farming and natural building. Our trainings have been widely replicated, and since we are never one to stand in place for long, we've decided to
move on to the NEXT BIG THING. We've begun a major overhaul of our site to create more and better opportunities for interaction with the general public — including you! The Farm is the oldest ecovillage in North America, but it lacked a place where visitors can stay and experience what it has learned. Fifteen years ago we broke ground on a “living and learning” facility we called The Ecovillage Training Center. With a mere shoestring of funding, mostly small donations and volunteer work, we scratched out the core elements for a useful visitor experience: a rustic dormitory; wooded campsites; examples of strawbale, cob, earthships and geodesic domes; solar showers and organic gardens. We made outdoor classrooms to show student groups the practical elements of permaculture, edible landscape and appropriate technology. We built a hostel for overnight stays that is within the comfort zone of most visitors, a world class vegan kitchen, and soaring artistic expressions that celebrate some of the best work of our generation. Since the mid-1990s, hundreds of students have received permaculture design certificates and learned skills with which to construct ecovillages of their own. There are too few bathrooms and showers, a weak internet connection, buildings that date from the early 1970s and are falling apart, and far many more people who want to come and visit than can be housed and fed. What was needed is a giant upgrade. Tennessee’s most famous contemporary eco-architect, Howard Switzer, designed a new building with dormitories, dining area, carbon-sequestering auditorium and industrial kitchen. With classrooms and workshops built below grade to eliminate the need for air conditioning, this 18000 sq-ft building, when finished, will be solar powered, straw-, clay-, and biochar-walled, with roundpole post and beam framing, a living roof, bamboo floors, and carbon-minus winter heating. Constructed wetlands reclaim all liquid wastes, while composting systems and cradle-to-cradle recycling recover all solid wastes. It is LEED-Platinum all the way. A second, smaller facility will house our biofuel and energy production laboratory. Visitors can relax in the comfort of our Prancing Poet dining hall, share home brews with friends in the Green Dragon Tavern, stroll the grounds of The Farm and explore the trails of our nature preserve. But to complete this work, we'll need a few more crazy visionaries like us; people who share the dream and want to show it. It is not a world based on avarice and war, but on love and understanding. Ours is a vision of peace with nature, of becoming partners with butterflies, birds, and those with roots in the ground; of living in harmony with all our relations. What We Need & What You Get
We want your participation, and we invite you to visit and stay a while, but what we really want is to have a larger effect on the world.
