Many interns also choose to stay at the Research Center on weekends to work on independent projects, to spend more time in the garden or woods, or simply to relax and enjoy our beautiful rural setting. Thirty-five of our forty acres are forested. On approximately twenty of these, selective logging is done using sustainable forestry practices, while fifteen are protected in perpetuity as a wildlife area where no cutting is allowed. The remaining five acres encompass our buildings, garden, orchards, and meadow. A seasonal creek bisects our valley, and we are surrounded along most of our boundary line by forest land.
Interns live in our new strawbale dormitory an experimental eco-friendly, passive solar building.
This was the first element of our new campus, which is also incorporating other low-impact, ecologically sensitive building techniques as we construct our staff cabins. They want to learn how to live in ways that are more ecologically and socially sustainable, and to acquire specific practical and intellectual skills that will aid them on this path. Others continue their self-education elsewhere, but carry with them the groundwork they've laid here, the new insights they've acquired, and the experience of living in a dynamic learning community that they themselves now have the power to spread. In addition to the internship, we also hold occasional shorter courses, bring educational presentations to fairs and to schools, and offer consultancies. The Research Center is developing as a dynamic learning environment and demonstration site, where we are exploring and modeling ways in which people and planet can harmonize.