The fifth annual Earth Harmony Festival, with the tagline, “Experience the Lifestyle of the Near Future”, will take place from October 1 to 2, at Avalon Organic Gardens & EcoVillage, in Tumacácori. Avalon Gardens has been flourishing since 1989 and is now the largest ecovillage in North America, with more than 115 change agents from around the world living on 220 acres in the beautiful and fertile Santa Cruz Valley. Their annual Earth Harmony Festival is a culturally creative, vibrantly entertaining and excitingly informative weekend where they showcase a new paradigm society of enlightened cooperation, shared resources, regenerative culture, honest communication, selfless service, proactive global stewardship and compassionate care for humanity and the earth.

Avalon Gardens is a 220-acre “Garden of Eden” that provides locally-grown, organic produce to residents of Santa Cruz County through a community supported agriculture program. Located adjacent to the Tumacácori Mission in the Santa Cruz River Valley south of Tucson, the area has a long tradition of being both a melting pot of different cultures and a spiritual gathering place for new-world seekers and sages. Nestled between the sky-islands of Southern Arizona, the valley below has come to be known as the “palm of God’s hand”.

Avalon Gardens’ founders, Gabriel of Urantia and Niánn Emerson Chase, created the Earth Harmony Festival to share the vision unfolding at Avalon Gardens and to inspire others to pursue a lifestyle of positive global change through sustainable living on all levels. Festival organizer Amadon DellErba says, “This festival is really about showing people that a new way of living is possible. We want to educate and inspire others to change their consciousness around what it means to be truly sustainable. The culture here at Avalon reflects a physical reality that models the intrinsic values of environmental, social and spiritual sustainability.”

The festival weekend is filled with educational speakers; EcoTours highlighting the many sustainable practices of the EcoVillage; yoga; higher-consciousness live music; dancing; delicious and vitalizing foods; a kaleidoscopic interactive Kids’ Village; a Locavore’s Vendor Village; and camping under the celestial skies.

The popular EcoTours provide an in-depth look into organic gardening; permaculture; rainwater harvesting; grey water harvesting; heritage crops and heirloom seeds; poly-culture and food diversity; composting; solar and wind energy; green building techniques, incorporating natural materials as well as upcycled and recycled materials; watershed management; and Arizona’s largest Food Forest.

Live music for the festival is provided by Global Change Music Nonprofit Record Label, with performances by: TaliasVan & The Bright & Morning Star Band—a nine-piece performing CosmoPop spiritual vocal music fusing rock, jazz, Celtic, folk and world styles in an interuniversal and interdimensional experience, with lyrics that address the sufferings of our times and give hope for a better world to come; VansGuard—an eight-piece conscious folk-rock band aligning spirituality, familial bonds, humanitarian and ecological concerns and fine song craft to create a global paradigm shift through music; Starseed Acoustic Ensemble—a six-piece alternative folk world blend of melodies and harmonies that cry out for true peace and planetary unity; and Ellanora
DellErba & The Israfel Awakened Band—a five-piece, led by a captivating singer/songwriter ahead of her time, that brings ballads of life’s journeys in a country style with a cosmic twist, imparting a sense of love, hope and eternity.

Yoga classes will be offered by SanSkritA DellErba. Trained in Hatha/Iyengar yoga, SanSkritA is a sensitive teacher with a deep understanding of asana practice, pranayama techniques, proper alignment, modifying poses and adjustments, prop use, anatomy, sequencing building blocks, working with different body types, hands-on adjustments, ayurvedic health and much more. SanSkritA’s approach is in expressing yoga as an art form, where the body is the medium and each asana takes the practitioner to a new level of personal discovery.

Entrance to the festival is free. Donations for activities and EcoTours are encouraged to help foster the EcoVillage’s many prototype projects for creating a more sustainable, environmentally conscious and equitable world. The Earth Harmony Festival thrives on partnership. Donors and sponsors make the festival possible and help support Avalon Gardens Internships, the Personality Integration Rehabilitation Program and Homeless Is Not My Choice—nonprofit programs which assist individuals from diverse backgrounds in various levels of healing, training and education to actualize their dreams and talents.

Camping is available by donation. For more information, to become a sponsor or vendor and for camping reservations, call 520-398-2542 or
visit EarthHarmonyFestival.org. See ad, page 10.