Winter Wonderland at Avalon
January 2008:

It's snowing at Avalon Springs! We get a few inches every year, making the land into a spectacular wintery paradise!

Major Use Permit Application Submitted!

Mid-December, 2007:

With wide eyes and a big grin, the Lake County representative paged through our 3-inch-thick Major Use Application last week. "He looked impressed," said Michael Woods of the core council, who was there with David Arkin and Andy Wojnoonski of Arkin-Tilt Architects, and Kirsty Shelton, our planning consultant. These three walked the county rep through the comprehensive plan that lays out Avalon's entire development plan, from earth-friendly water and energy systems to earthen guestrooms and community buildings.

This submittal is a major milestone for Avalon. The application itself is the result of two years of research, conceptualizing, and design work at the hands of our Avalon Design Team, the core council, and the resident community. While we have been in touch with the County of Lake since the very beginning, this application begins the official process for building the project.

The County of Lake is not as overtaxed as Napa and Sonoma, and we are hopeful that our permits will be cleared soon so that we might break ground as early as this Spring!

Congratulations to everyone - supporters of Avalon - you are making this happen!

Check out our New Greenhouse!

No time wasted this winter! We've erected a beautiful new greenhouse for propagating new plants and growing warmer climate varieties... click here to see the photos!

Fall Update from the Avalon Gardens

September 26, 2007. Our gardens are in full bloom. And we are celebrating our harvest season at our monthly Plurks on Sep 29-30th and Oct 27th. Fall Garden Update here...

Avalon Introduces Membership Plan

July 14, 2007. After over 9 months in development, the Avalon team introduces the Avalon Gratitude Plan. If you'd like to participate in the co-creation of Avalon Springs, you can now join us by becoming a Member of the Avalon Gratitude Plan. This is just one more way you can join us in co-creating the change we all wish to see in the world. Read more here...

Avalon Gardens Evolve!

July 12, 2007. Our gardens are blooming, growing, bursting, feeding, fragrancing, ripening and evolving.

Here's a picture album from our gardens. Please come and feast your senses.

Master Plan Delivered - Yippeee!

April 14, 2007. Our Design Team delivered our complete Master Plan for the entire land to us today. And it is absolutely amazing! We see the future!

We look forward to sharing it with you - all our friends and greater community - very soon.

Spring Equinox Update

March 21, 2007. Lots has been happening here at Avalon over the last few months. Our site wide Master Plan is ALL done, yippee... Our design team has been working very hard since November to create a world class permaculture based Master Plan. It's at the printer now getting printed and the whole Design Team is coming back here and presenting the whole Master Plan to us on April 14th. We are very excited and looking forward to it.

We are planning a Gardening Plurk (play and work party) here on the weekend of April 7-8th to get a lot of progress started in our new vegetable gardens. Hunter, Robert, Katja and Nancy setup a temporary greenhouse. We started a lots of seedlings in the last month. We are building garden beds, a deer fence, water pipe to the gardens. We are planning to plant vegetables and cover crops on the whole garden plot over the next few weeks... very exciting :-) We'll be eating lots of fresh organic food from our own land soon. Actually the first salad greens have already been harvested last week from our garden; and they were quite flavorful and yummy :-)

We are planning to close on the land in late April or May - as soon as possible now, after the Master Plan is delivered to us on April 14th.We just finalized the plans for the retreat center layout with our architects and they are now drawing detailed plans over the next few weeks. We are planning to get some renovation work started in April-May and then keep increasing the construction/renovation work through the rest of 2007 and then continue heavily till summer/fall 2008. We project that if plans stay reasonably on track this year, we can open the retreat center to guests by fall of 2008.

We are starting detailed system design work for the alternate clean/green energy/fuel production system for the full site. We hope to finish this design in the next 2 months and then start phase one of the system implementation this summer and fall.

Two-three additional Founding Members have signed in the last few months with small investments. We are in discussions with other potential Founding Member investors who might put in another $500,000 to $1 million in the next few months. We expect that we will close the doors to additional Founding Member investors in this ground floor opportunity after we close on the land in April-May. If you are interested in joining us at this time, now is the time to contact us and get the process rolling.

Partnership with Doug Bullock for permaculture Master Plan

Words of Insight on Avalon from Apache Teacher Maria Yraceburu

Click here to see Avalon's Plan for Clean Green Energy

Avalon Springs Completes Purchase of Land!

September 5, 2007. After two years of extensive due diligence and after living on the land for one year, we have completed the purchase of our land as of 2:26 p.m. on September 5th, 2007.

Avalon Needs You

July 21, 2007. Avalon is currently looking for a few "perfect fit" companies and individuals for the many positions to hold particular responsibilities during the implementation of our Master Plan.

Click here for a list of available opportunities.

Master Plan Complete

March 21, 2007. After 5-6 months of much hard work by the whole Avalon Team and the Design Team, we are very excited to report that the Design Team has completed the design work on the Master Plan. It's being typeset and printed now in Australia and will be delivered to us on April 14th. This is a major milestone for Avalon and we'll be very glad to have this master guiding document in our hands soon. The Master Plan will guide all implementation, construction and renovation here at Avalon. It will help us stay on track and true to our mission and vision.

Gardening Plurk Scheduled For April 7-8th

March 20, 2007. You are invited to come Plurk (play and work) with us on the weekend of April 7-8th as we get together to work on the Avalon Gardens. We'll be making some vegetable beds, building a deer fence, perhaps laying down some irrigation pipes/sprinklers and planting seeds and seedlings for garden vegetables... and of course we'll play and soak and make some music.

First Greens from Avalon Gardens!!!

March 19, 2007. Well... we ate the first greens from our gardens today. Very awesome. Juicy, fresh, flavorful and delicious. It's great to be eating and partaking produce from our own land and its energy. We are happy and looking forward to eating lots more of our own produce this summer as we plant our gardens as we speak.

Living Foods Kitchen Goddess Arrives

March 1, 2007. We have two new residents here at Avalon. Alaya and her daughter Stav have moved to Avalon as our newest residents. Alaya's passion is raw living alive foods and healthy creative food preparation. She's whipping our kitchen into shape and will be part of our Garden Team this spring/summer. Welcome Alaya and Stav.

Ecological Assesment Completed

February 9, 2007. Ecological Consultants to Avalon Springs, Scott Brinton and Jeremy Hartje, working under the directions of our permaculture Master Planners Doug Bullock and Scott Godfredson have completed a very detailed Ecological Assesment report for the land that is Avalon. We wanted to know what we have on this land - the plants belts, the species, the animals, the birds, animal tracks etc. And we found some insanely incredible information.

Click here to see the Plant Communities Map at Avalon.