A Hipitat at the Farm Ecovillage Training Center in Summertown, Tennessee USA

Is this cute or what? Its builders call it a “hipitat” (as in “hip habitat”). It’s only one of the cool things I discovered a couple of days ago when I dropped my kids off for their summer jobs at the Farm Ecovillage Training Center near Summertown, Tennessee. I took a quick half hour to look around the grounds and was super-inspired by what I saw. There was way more cool stuff than I have room to put here, so you can click to see more photos if you like.

According to director Albert Bates, the Ecovillage Training Center (ETC) is a “whole-systems immersion experience of ecovillage living, together with classes of instruction, access to information, tools and resources, and on-site and off-site consulting and outreach experiences.”

Not sure what an ecovillage is? The ETC website explains: “An ecovillage is only different from a traditional village in its ability to be sustained indefinitely into the future. In all other respects, it may have all of the features people in the industrial world have come to expect, like electric appliances, refrigeration, and videogames.” And indeed, the ETC is a pretty comfortable place.

I especially enjoyed seeing the Green Dragon, a gigantic cob meeting hall reminiscent of Tolkien.

Yes, it’s made out of cob, but no, not corn cobs. “Cob” is clay and sand and straw mixed together with water and kneaded into “loaves” that are piled up to make a house or bench or oven or whatever. The super-cool thing is that you can basically sculpt your house, making rounded walls, built-in shelves and benches, arched doorways, etc. Some years ago I edited a great book on cob construction, called The Hand-Sculpted House: A Practical and Philosophical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage. The book was written by thegranddaddy of cob construction, Ianto Evans, and his partners at the Cob Cottage Company.

Building the Great Green Dragon is a learning project for students, so progress is deliberately slow. But I look forward to the day the place opens its doors and the dragon comes alive—the ETC’s diverse international group of students mingling, making music, and dancing inside this magical place they’ve built together.

To see more photos, go here.

A window in the Green Dragon, showing a pond beyond.

Can you imagine this massive fireplace with flames coming out of the mouth?