Springhouse

Springhouse is an intergenerational, vitality-centered learning community located in Floyd, Virginia

The Springhouse community envisions a world where all life thrives. We believe that taking care of life, one person at a time, can eventually bring the larger culture we live in back to health. Springhouse practices and shares the Sourced Design principles: take care of vulnerability, cultivate personhood, build beloved community, learn from the Earth, and love and serve others. We practice the de

sign to create a culture that takes care of Life through education, media, and a global network. Springhouse is supported by the contributions of its community members, and those who support our shared vision. No one is turned away from our offerings for a lack of funds. The Springhouse campus is located in the Appalachian mountains of southwest Virginia on unceded land originally stewarded by the Yesah (also known as Tutelo-Saponi) and Occaneechi Peoples. We honor the Monacan Nation, who hold federal recognition and are present in this region today. We acknowledge our inheritance in this place, at this time - both how the wisdom we teach has been passed down through many teachers and traditions before us; and how we benefit today from legacies of oppression. To move toward living in a world where all life thrives, we commit to facing the injustices of the dominant culture as an ongoing part of our curriculum. We commit to core values of connection, trust, creativity, resiliency, integrity, and individuality as Values in Action that take care of life in ourselves, each other, and the Earth. We practice Sourced Design in our community, and gratefully share these principles with others who seek to take care of life in our world.

08/29/2026

Week in Review: 
🚣 Springhouse staff set out on a boating adventure on Claytor Lake, rowing the Wanderer with four oars and high spirits. It was a great success!

🤗 We kicked off the new season with our Family Orientation meal and gathering, welcoming our families back and spending time together in community. 
🌿 Our garden fence is coming together beautifully, thanks to so much generous help from our community. 
🐝 We are deeply honored to be part of Spikenard’s Learning from the Bees conference, contributing an art installation. We started printing the “hive” this week with carved linoleum blocks. Learning from the Bees Spikenard Honeybee Sanctuary  
🥘 Our community work days and potlucks continue to be a highlight of our weeks, gathering together as an intergenerational community around wonderful food.

08/26/2026

The garden is alive in all its forms… with the fluttering of butterflies. 🦋

The passage of marmots in the middle of a labyrinth of worms on a dry carpet of leaves. 🍂

In a white blanket of the sky and multiple hands that touch and kiss the earth with their feet. 👣

In all its forms, in all its seasons, here is the life of a garden under the mirror of the universe. ⭐️

We are so grateful for the community support in building our garden fence! 🙏

08/24/2026

Happy Wayzgoose from the Springhouse print shop, Sourced Press. The printers celebration, Wayzgoose, is traditionally held on Saint Bartholomew‘s Day, August 24.

Stay tuned for our Wayzgoose celebration date and information. In the meantime, read a short story from Ian about his new project in the print shop.

“I have spent the last couple of weeks creating a font library in the print shop. I wanted a way for us to connect more with the type and be able to express ourselves more easily through their character and shape. On the way to the press, a community member and I dropped half of it in the floor.

Devastating.

That moment of deciding what to do; go in or give up, is what I love about physical projects. They force us to confront ourselves and our patterns in concrete and measurable ways. We were able to keep going on the project and rebuilt our type one piece at a time.

Now that it is finished I find myself looking to the library for what font might best express the feeling of the words I am typesetting. How lovely they all are and how different.”
- Ian Stabler

08/21/2026

Highlight of the Week: ��

We gathered for our Trustee–Staff Retreat & Seasonal Community Reflection this past week.

We started with a shared meal before heading together to Floyd’s Small Town Summer concert. With trustees from across the county, we got to experience the particular magic of Floyd through its music and community gathering. ��

We then turned inward to explore what governance means in our community, and spent time with our friend Jeffrey engaging in writing exercises that invited us into deeper conversation, creativity, and connection.��

On Saturday we invited in our broader community for a season reflection to discuss what is alive at Springhouse. ��

It was a rich week of reflection, connection, and conversation.

08/18/2026

This summer, our staff has been exploring the disposition of commitment, what it means to be informed, courageous, and intentional in the ways we show up for our work, our community, and our lives.

We gathered in the woods by the spring for a staff retreat of dialogue, ritual, and intention-setting, and time in the print shop, taking time to consider how these facets of commitment are alive in us and where we want to deepen them. We then came together with the wider community to share a meal, and, naturally, ended the evening dancing.

Join us at the Springhouse at these upcoming events:
Community Work Days & Potluck, August 19 | 2:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Sacred Dance, August 19 | 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
Community Work Days & Potluck, August 24 | 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Print Shop Open Studio, August 24 | 3:30 PM - 6:30 PM

08/14/2026

Highlight of the Week: The Wanderer is back!

We want to build a culture at Springhouse that doesn’t just create beautiful things, but takes good care of what we create—especially the things that bring us alive.

Six years ago, we set out to build a 22-foot sailboat. For a year, we built the hull, sewed sails, learned the craft, sang sea shanties, and dreamed together. Then we launched her and took her on an epic sailing trip on the Chesapeake Bay.

It was one of the most life-giving projects we’ve ever undertaken at Springhouse. People of different ages working side by side, making something beautiful and difficult, learning, singing, and discovering what we could create together. And now, six years later, we’ve pulled her out of the barn and are getting ready to row and sail again. :heart:

There is something meaningful about caring for what we have created together—tending the things that once brought us alive, and making space for them to live again in new seasons. We’re not entirely sure where this boat will take us next. But we’re excited to find out. 🛶

08/12/2026

Come to me with beauty,
I require it to stay alive.
~Maire Saaritsa

***

Jenny's Letter to the Springhouse community this month:

I am called to speak of beauty this month, and I, like the poet Maire, need it to stay alive.

When it comes to beauty, words fall short, so I will keep it simple.

Strawberries
Andrew’s smile
Andy’s hello
Lizzie’s bright blue eyes
Fur under my hand
A warm egg from the hen house
Approaching a door with singing behind it
Tears rolling down my face
Salty sea air
Crashing waves
An old tale or a song
A feather found by my Mom
My Dad calling my name
Playing the piano
Green chili
Mist on the mountain
Rain approaching
The fawn running with its mother
This song: https://lnkd.in/exxwbHDT
The fire I feel when I say no or yes and mean it
Dancing

I could go on. I know you could too.

Being alive is beautiful.

I bow down to everyone and everything that woke me up to the beauty of my life, and to all that continues to call me awake.

We need places that keep us awake to beauty. Places that remind us of the gift.

I am grateful to be in one of those places.

See you in autumn.

With love,

Jenny

https://springhouse.org/2026/08/letter-from-jenny-august-2026/

08/11/2026

🌾 This past Saturday we celebrated Lammas, or Lughnasadh.

Lammas is a cross-quarter day, right in the middle of summer, a time to celebrate the season, the first harvest, and all of its abundance.

We celebrated with the traditional ritual of making baking bread and soup. The community came together to make and bake the bread with locally milled flour by Tom Maxie from Gracious Day Grains, a sourdough starter from Lizzie Finn, a clay oven built built by Ian and Porter, vegetables from Riverstone Farm, and many hands in the shaping and breaking.

What is one part of summer that you love? ☀️🌻

In Harvest, BY SOPHIE JEWETT
Mown meadows skirt the standing wheat;
I linger, for the hay is sweet,
New-cut and curing in the sun.
Like furrows, straight, the windrows run,
Fallen, gallant ranks that tossed and bent
When, yesterday, the west wind went
A-rioting through grass and grain.
To-day no least breath stirs the plain;
Only the hot air, quivering, yields
Illusive motion to the fields
Where not the slenderest tassel swings.
Across the wheat flash sky-blue wings;
A goldfinch dangles from a tall,
Full-flowered yellow mullein; all
The world seems turning blue and gold.
Unstartled, since, even from of old,
Beauty has brought keen sense of her,
I feel the withering grasses stir;
Along the edges of the wheat,
I hear the rustle of her feet:
And yet I know the whole sea lies,
And half the earth, between our eyes.

08/07/2026

Highlight of the Week:

Part of our intergeneration community includes toddlers and babies! Staff and our families met this week to plan for our youngest learners care and wellbeing for the year.

Photo credit: 𝓒𝓪𝓼𝓼𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓻𝓪 ✨ & Sarah Merfeld Stabler

07/31/2026

Highlight of the Week:

Meet our new cob oven made this summer!

Join us as we try out the oven by baking bread at our Lammas celebration. ☀️ 🍂 🥖

Saturday, August 8th; 9:00-1:00 pm

Address

144 Silver Maple Lane
Pilot, VA
24138

Telephone

+15406514673

Website

https://springhouse.org/

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