Some cool things I did this spring…

Intro: “Low tech – high purpose” Post-modernity is going to be essentially low tech and high labour. Whether we want it or not. There is just not enough energy and resources for it to be otherwise. I skip further explanations: it has all been said already: Ivan Illich’s seminal work “Tools of conviviality” is the best you can read on the subject (and in general). With this in mind and with the goal of shaking myself off from the yoke of senseless alienation, I set off to a few ecovillages and farms this summer. I am reporting here in random order a few of the things I experienced in these places. I wish, dear readers, to give you some insight on what will the “first-world problems” be in society only a few years from now. Hopefully, you will also end up empowered and refreshed by this read: with a bit of creativity and the exchange of knowledge between ourselves, we can find solutions to all our basic problems and find a real sense of achievement. Boodaville Boodaville is a centre for permaculture education in a remote location 3 hours from Barcelona. It consist of 2 small stone houses (under construction), an open air kitchen and some other installations (dry toilets, water catchment, terraces and vegetable garden) scattered around a small piece of land surrounded by woody hills. It’s still in the making, as currently there are only 1-2 long term volunteers living there continuously over the summer months. More people come during weekends (i.e. the founder Anna), or for shorter periods to help out or during specific events (courses and retreats). Being so small and “basic”, Boodaville is a great place to really make a difference, sharpen your practical skills and live in contact with the “marrow of life”. Bulding of a toolshed The first time at Boodaville, my mission was to build a small sturdy cabin to keep all the tools protected from the elements. There were two of us, with no electrical tools and using only recovered materials. Starting from an already existing scaffold, we built 2 sidewalls using recovered wood plank, fixed them to the frame using nails and plastic braces and covered them with sturdy plastic sheet for more waterproofing. We then went on taking apart the existing roof which had lost its effectiveness and replaced that with some recovered corrugated plastic boards which we fixed both to the frame and to the upper part of the wall the structure was leaning against. To avoid water infiltrating from the back of the structure we connected a plastic sheet to the boards and then dug a ditch upon which to lay the plastic sheet to evacuate any water in the event of heavy rains. The ditch was then filled with a packing of stones and buried so that everything was firmly in place. The cabin has no front wall but a simple tarp curtain. After a few months all still works wonders! The second activity I was involved in during those few intense days was the setting up of a massive tent. Nothing too complicated, but as we run out of tent-posts we had to fabricate our own with an axe. Restoring the soil… and solving a fly emergency! A month after my first visit I went back to Boodaville to join a hands-on permacourse. We now were a team of 6-8 people on site, working on various tasks in a period leading to the big annual Boodaville festival, so the place was now bustling with activity. At the very moment of my arrival an emergency was ongoing: the place was literally infested with flies! A shitload of dung had been delivered the week before for use in the fields, but was left aside due to the presence of contamination in the form of small plastic crumbles throughout the material. We found a way to separate mechanically the parts of dung most contaminated and placed them in a hole in the ground for future treatment (the idea from Marc, the permaculture teacher, is to add those plastic-eating bacteria which were the subject of a Nature article not long ago!...if we can get hold of them…). Moving in only 2 days huge quantities of soil, we buried the rest of the dung in the fields and covered with earth and wood branches. This compost-in-the-ground technique is expected to restore the soil within a few years, as all the organic material is able to store high amounts of water. More importantly, the fly emergency was now a thing of the past. Another compost pile was set up on the back of the kitchen. The pile was working really well, as measured by the “first test”- when I sunk my fist into the pile and could not resist the heat for more than 5 second, meaning that the temperature is around 45°C (I was then told that someone for some reason had vomited in the compost… ecovillage life!). Compost was well balanced in terms of carbon and nitrogen matter and turned every 2 days for aeration. I was surprised to see the high rate of decomposition in comparison my compost pile in Brussels! Marc had added of good dose of lactobacteria (grown by leaving outside a bowl of cold rice wash for enough time) which were now feasting in the mix, enhancing aerobic decomposition. Dry toilet work Being “human manure” a great fertilizer, under a holistic perspective this work can be reconducted to the soil restoration effort. However, due the enormity of the task (shoveling shit), it deserves a chapter in itself. The goal was to put the 2 different dry toilets onsite back to working condition. The first toilet’s design was basic (toilet bowl mounted on chairs placed upon buckets – user to cover excretions with dirt after each use) requiring labour-intensive but straightforward emptying techniques. We dug a hole in a strategic place and filled it with the content of about 30 buckets and then covered that with earth, carton and branches. The mixture of humanure and earth will be left to compost for some more time. The buckets were put back in service. The design of the second toilet was -to put it mildly- quite crazy. Under the toilet bowl there was a washing machine drum, which was then flushed into a big barrel with a mesh connected to another big barrel. In theory, as the matter decomposes, it shears off in small pieces that can then be collected downstream of the mesh from time to time and used as fertilizer. In reality, the whole system was a big solid block of hardened shit, most of it mummified (as we found out later). What did go wrong with the decomposition process? My guess it’s that the whole system was too dry, mainly due to evaporation driven by very high temperature of the big black drums straight under the sun. But what’s worse is that this titanic masterpiece was not designed to ever be emptied! We had to take apart most of the mesh and do a lot of unbolting before being able to get the material flowing out using flying kicks and pickaxe blows. As for the previous case we collected the material in a hole waiting for nature to do its course. Plumbing works The rainwater collection system consisted of a flexible 10 cubic meter tank placed behind the kitchen. An inspection of the water showed it to be contaminated with algae (slight greenish tint). This was in a way surprising because despite the high temperature promoting plant growth (dark tank directly exposed to sunlight), the container material is completely opaque. How can plant life develop without light? We determined that the water could be used for 2 purposes: irrigation and washing up. Therefore we proceeded in connecting the tank to the terraces down below (using food grade black HDPE pipe) and to the sink in the kitchen (pipe out from the sink to the field was grey water non-food grade pipe). Digging work (40 cm deep) was exhausting but lasted only one day. The idea for the future is to treat the grey water before sending it to the fields by means of a sand filter followed by a pond containing “soap-absorbing” plants.

Door making At the beginning there was a hole in the wall. Then our resident woodsmith Rob led the creation of some wonderful doors from scratch using traditional methods in which the pieces interlock together all by themselves. The frame for the big door was quite tricky to make as Rob decided to have a double beam on the top (the shape of a roof, instead of just a straight beam). All joints were cut using a circular saw (powered via electric generator) to do a series of precise transversal cuts. The material between the cuts was then shaved off using a hand scalpel. Sharp corners were taken out by hand giving a fantastic aesthetics. Then the frame was treated with a flame to burn out surface roughness and give a dark color. Wire brushing and applying teak oil gave a smooth finish. Once the frame was made and fitted it was anchored to the stonewall using rivets. The door was then made using 2 sets of planks positioned in a cross way and then screwed together. All these operations require high precision and holding the pieces tightly in place using clamps. Day after day, slowly but steadily, those handmade doors came alive! Pity I was not there to witness the final result! 4 Linden farm 4 Linden farm is a nice complex of unconventional houses/caravans built/restored using traditional techniques by the architect Andreas and his team of people. The place is a sort of community where several residents live and work in the farm. All sort of animals are present at the farm, as well as AirBnb guest and short term volunteers. During my 3 days there I had the chance to work first hand on insulating walls of a garage using an old technique based on clay and straw. The procedure is pretty simple and all materials are practically free and recyclable. The first step is to make the insulation material: large amounts of clay are loaded in a bath tub and covered with water, lumps need to be broken by hand or by electric mixer until the mixture is smooth enough. Then, using a specially designed watering can (with a hand made water spreader at the top) the slime is poured between layers of straw. Each time a layer of straw of about 1m2 surface is covered with the slime, it is then thoroughly mixed and then redistributed in order to add a new layer. If there are too many lumps in the slime you will know straight away, as the watering can (exit pipe of about 1 inch) keeps blocking. Wooden planks were then screwed at the walls of the garage to create the enclosed space into which to fill the material. The material was progressively added in horizontal layers and each time pressed using a T-shaped wooden tool. We managed to make the material and cover a whole wall in about 2 days. After 48 hours of drying, the wooden planks can be removed and the insulating wall should stay together. Once again, I could not witness the finished product, but I was told that after they removed the planks all worked marvels (once again!). It must be me doing things right