There are challenges to forming a harmonious community. But one thing everyone can agree on is the importance of food.
While the local food movement encourages us to shop within a hundred-mile radius, at Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage, we have the opportunity to produce hundred-yard food. If we wanted to, we could plant raspberry ‘sharing’ bushes between neighbors yards, spiral herbs outside our kitchen doors, alternate apple and peach trees along the driveway, and dangle grapes and kiwi from the Common House trellis. And if knowing your farmer is key to food security, being your own farmer (even for just a blueberry bush or apple tree) is even better, because then we know what it means to generate life, food and community.
The 
The permaculture philosophy of dynamic preservation turns out to have ancient roots in Sicily. Last December Joline Blais surveyed a Permaculture site near Caccamo founded by noted Australian sustainability gurus Julia and Charles Yelton, as well as a reconstructed citrus garden originally cultivated by the ancient Greeks of Agrigento.
It almost seems like cheating for Italians to declare Castelbuono an ecovillage. In this medieval town in the mountains of northern Sicily, the houses are already made of heat-exchanging stone and residents already walk everywhere through winding cobblestone streets. A donkey picks up recyclables and food compost headed for local farmers.
At the 2010 
Still Water Co-Director Joline Blais plants the seeds of sustainable gardening at the 
This internship is for a Native American student interested in learning more about your own culture’s gardening methods and permaculture gardening and how to weave the two together. The Internship will involve one day gardening in Dedham, Maine (4-5 hours in the garden, 1-2 hours on the lake–swimming, canoeing, etc), as well as researching your own garden traditions and finding out how to integrate the two together. When Europeans came to this continent they often clear cut forest and planted their own crops. This form of gardening is about making peace in the plant kingdom–learning about polycultures that integrate European and Native types of edible and medicinal plants. 
On 2 May 2010, Joline Blais gives a Permaculture walkthrough and workshop for University of Maine students at the 
