Urban Permaculture transformation

It’s done! We did it! All building projects are completed and the garden is growing uncontrollably! Check it out!

 

After picture taken on the 20th of June 2016! – (11month later)

Before picture taken end of July 2015

SHORT

Between summer 2015 and summer 2016 I had the pleasure to re-design and re-build the urban 690m2 home of my brother’s family in Berlin. The focus of the design was everything surrounding the house, lifestyle and behaviour changes and reconsiderations of resource and energy uses.

After an initial consultancy including an interview, I spend several weeks analysing the property and doing a lot of basic work in preparation of 2016th design installations. The design and implementation plan I drew up over winter.

Between April and June we build an entrance ramp and replaced and old stairway, we build wodden and stone retaining walls, a large insect hotel and a little bat house, created soil, created gardens, planted nearly 100 different vegetables and herbs, dismantled dysfunctional elements, replaced and repositioned others. We suggested many changes such as subscribing to a CSA, a solar system which was installed in Oct 2015, to go dumpster diving, to use a worm farm and to recycle all compost waste through garden composting. We have turned more than 75% of the available area into productive organic gardens, created a lot of soil, build a shed for tools and another one for bicycles and beautified eyesores. We created spaces for the children to play and plenty of places for wildlife to thrive. We have cared for the earth, cared for people and we now can share some surplus !

Enjoy looking through the images and feel free to comment. I am happy to answer questions !

Let’s make the world the way we want!

2018 in Images of Making … Building, Planting, Pruning, Harvesting, giving Workshops, making Designs, Growing Gardens, and much more
2019 shall be a productive year! With lots of trees to plant, gardens to create, people to inspire and support in their way for a lifestyle that contributes to peace and a future worth living for!

Living Tiny

Living nomadic has been a great adventure and enrichment to my life so far and I will always be a nomad.
I have experimented with all sorts of forms of living and redefined how simple one can happily live time again. I found that, to feel free and good about myself, I like to use and live with very few things on very little space. I lived out of my backpack for many years, lived and traveled in small cars, lived in communities and experimented with primitive living.
At present, I found Berlin to be great to work around the themes most important to me: Permaculture Design, Tiny house living, community, growing your own food…
As in most cities rents a high and apartment scares, plus – I don’t want to live in an apartment! For those reasons, I converted a playhouse that I build 6 years ago for my nephew, into a tiny summer home!
It has one 4m2 room and a 1m2 porch. Here it is:

Sitio – living on a Farm in South America

Living of the land and transforming an old family farm in rural Brazil into a Permaculture landscape.

THE LAND

BRAZIL

Permaculture in South America, sustainability in Brazil, exploring wild nature, experiencing rural life, trying to understand the contrast between the rich and the poor, working to revive an old family farm, working as Permaculture Designer in Brazil, getting to know Megacity Sao Paulo, finding out if Brazil could be a permanent home for me and so much more are some of the topics that interest me while living in Brazil …

Of course, after the first almost two month here, there are a lot of new stories to tell, to many to squeeze into one blog post so I will post a couple and split them up into chapters …

SAO PAULO

Sao Paulo is one of the largest Megacities in the world. The metropolis area has an estimated population of 35 million people.

Minhocão

A city highway build without much thought, creating a city canyon that funnels the noise of the traffic that turns the road into a noise monster, that forced the authorities to close the road at night and weekends. The public fought for the right to open the road during those times for pedestrians. People use the empty 3.5km long highway to bike, walk their dogs, play soccer and even for barbecues and some people even set up swimming pools and take a bath!

The salt of the earth

A master piece about a great man Sebastião Salgado.
As a social photographer he witnessed many of the horrors of our time. As he almost lost his hope in humanity he and his partner Lélia Wanick decided to reforest his totally degraded family farm in Brazil. Today there are more than 2.5 million trees and over 1000 old repaired spring lines. Together they founded the Instituto Terra.  http://institutoterra.org/eng/midiaGalery.php#

“The salt of the earth” -A deeply moving motion picture.

More about Salagado’s art here: http://www.artsy.net

KIMCHI – Formidable Vegetable Sound System!

The new song by the Permaculture band is out!
KIMCHI is the new single from Formidable Vegetable Sound System’s
forthcoming electro-funk-swing kids’ album ‘Grow Do It’ – Out Sep 2.
In the song Kimchi Charlie Mgees shares his most un-traditional recipe anyone could possibly make Kimchi!

“Have a cup of compost and harden de funk up!”

www.formidablevegetable.com.au

 

 

 

Dumpster Diving Denmark

Progressive – that is what most people think of Denmark but even if that may be true in some ways, we are seeing a quite other side of Denmark when, at night, we are looking through what supermarkets across the country throw out as waste.

After more than 6 years of going dumpster diving across 2 continents and over 10 countries, Denmark must be at the most extreme. I found that the richer the country, the more perfect food is thrown away! The picture we took here are from just one night at three medium sized supermarkets. What we took is a fraction of what was there. Every time it is the same scene. We find everything from vegetable and fruit to fish and meat, dairy products like milk and cheese, eggs, juices, cereals, breads, bakery goods even caned goods and ever so often things that haven’t even expired like yesterday 27 1l packs of organic rice milk!

The only good news, we met two other dumpster diving teams that night, middle-class women not quite the sub-culturists, that shared with us that it is a quite common thing to do in Denmark and how crazy the throw away culture in Denmark is. They have created a Facebook group in which they share food they find with people in need.

At least we have fun and save some great food from being thrown away!