“Hello friends. My name is Morgan Caraway. My better half Mary Jane and I built an earthbag house near Asheville, NC (some info about this technique at EarthbagBuilding.com), a cordwood bath house and recently completed an earthbag sunroom addition. We also built our own yurt, set up a rainwater system, built our own micro solar electric system and have learned a lot about sustainable living in general.
We have a vision for a sustainable, loving “blueprint” community. I am seeking co-creators and folks that would like to invest in or donate land for the future of humanity. It would be small, most likely less than 10 groups of people (families, friends, etc). Each group would have a nice sized piece of land to build and do projects on, also this would give them some space when they aren’t feeling social. The two guiding priniciples of the community would be to, #1 – respect the Earth and, #2 – to respect your neighbor. People could live how they see fit as long as they don’t hurt the environment or anyone else. There would be a large community building that would be the social hub. There could be everything from child and elder care to parties and classes at the community building. One of the most important functions of the community would be to share the knowledge we have learned with others. There would be quarters for visitors to stay and learn. To buy in, people would only pay for their share of the land cost and a small fraction towards the common area.”
Source: Fellowship for Intentional Community
A Sustainable Life
Hi Owen,
Are Morgan and MJ still working on this? Last month I went to the Cal-Earth Institute in California for their open day. I’ve been considering Brevard, NC as the place I’d like to buy and build and then I ran across a couple of blogs and such that tell about Morgan’s story and Asheville is in the same general area as Brevard. I also, love the idea of a community with like-minded people; however, his blog (asustainablelife) doesn’t seem to be working. Is it possible to contact him?
Not sure what happened to them. That is a very popular area for ecofriendly building, so I’d at least go and check it out.
I am so glad I came across this post! My husband and I live about 2 1/2 hours away from you guys in Greensboro and we have been doing tons of research to find something like what you are starting. We have been putting together plans for an earthbag home as well. I would love to talk with you about how things are coming along and what possibilities there may be for us to join you guys in the future. Please let me know how I can get in touch with you guys personally. Thanks!
Can u tell me how much that house cost?
You could build something like this for around $10,000, maybe less. Costs vary a lot from place to place. It’s much less expensive to build in rural areas with few codes.
Hi, I’m totally agree with you, I’m looking for places where to work in natural buiding for others to keep learning differents methods and ways of live colaborating in differents projects like this, I’ve colaborate in building strawbale house, cob, adobe and superadobe or earthbag house, so if you need some help, let me know, all my support for your projects, let’s change something!!! :) rous_as@hotmail.com
A warm hello from the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia Canada! This is a brilliant offer and an excellent opportunity to “go Green” and live off the land. It will be communities like this that will be a shinning example of what sustainable communities can be and studies will show a decreased impact on our planet… Building with natural materials and practicing Permaculture and learning to recycle “things” properly will be not only adventurous and advantageous but plain and simply put, “smart”!
I first learned of this by researching a man named Michael Reynolds, the principle biotect and creator of the Earthship Concept and watched a film called Garbage Warrior on youtube… Man! Im excited for you folks, best wishes!
I really believe ideas like these will shape the future. I want to be part of it.
Morgan is one of my best friends, we’ve thought about moving up to Asheville with them. Morgan and MJ are such friendly, kind spirits, it’d be fun for anyone thinking about moving to the Asheville area to join them.
Young at heart and hilariously irreverent they’d make for some really fun neighbours.
I thought of you right away and wondered if you knew each other. Thanks for personalizing this.
This sounds like an amazing opportunity. I am very interested in investing in a community such as this. We recently bought land in Texas, and are still getting things together to build our earthbag/cordwood hybrid home, but a community of like-minded people is an even more amazing way to live according to our principles. I would love to get involved and invested :)
It’s better to email them directly. They may not see this blog post. Plus, your email address will get picked up by spammers. Let me know and I’ll delete it.
Oh, yeah can you block it? :/ I guess I didn’t really think enough about putting it out there. Thanks :)
I edited your post to prevent spamming.
My own thoughts and dreams…
The first link goes to a sustainable community directory where you can search for a group with common interests. I wrote about my goals/dreams in a previous blog post about tiny homes in an orchard. https://naturalbuildingblog.siterubix.com/tiny-house-ecovillage-in-a-fruit-orchard/
I saw, I don’t miss a single one of your posts. I recently got some land in Suwannee County, FL about 8 miles from the guy that started the website about building an envirodome here. It’s a nightmare. I may still just sell it and leave the country. Or at the very least, build a minimum and spend most of my time in another country and come back here only when I have to… America sucks…