Projects
accomplished by July 2008
SacredSueños has been an opportunity for me, and for the many volunteers who've come through, to learn a great deal, especially through mistakes. There has been a great deal of trial and error, and will continue to be for much time to come. But regardless of the setbacks and revisions, much has been accomplished with such a low budget in just a few years.
Large
Projects
•
Adobe kitchen and tool room
Lacking
sand, it took some time to find a method to produce bricks using
the heavy clay subsoil on site. At the moment, the kitchen still
also serves as the library as well as contains a loft bed, but
in the future will be used exclusively as a kitchen/food processing
center.
•
The Center
The
first couple units of the center; a pole platform attached to
a cob storeroom supporting a second floor cantilevered pole
dormitory. The poles are from a nearby eucalyptus plantation,
and the cob is an experiment using dry sugar cane leaves as
fibre. The front (non-supporting) wall of the storeroom was
a different experiment using just shredded plastic garbage to
replace the fibre. This successful technique is now being repeated
with most of our cob work, reducing our waste by over 95%!
•
A wood and rubberized canvas yurt bedroom
• A cob bedroom
• Two pole bedrooms
• A garden shed
• An earthbag (cement lined) 2400L water tank with a sand filter
intake providing gravity fed water for the shower and irrigation
for gardens and orchard.
• A shower and laundry tub with solar hot water heater
• The installation of a small 12v solar power system
• A cob wood oven
• A composting toilet providing all the fertility for the orchard and trees
in the garden. The bucket and sawdust system is surprisingly
hygenic and odor free, uses no water, and has had astoundingly
positive effects on the trees.
• A greywater system for the kitchen sink which cleans much of the water and uses it to water a few garden plots.
• Two greenhouses providing hot humid and warm dry climates for increased plant diversity. The humid greenhouse is semi earth-sheltered and built with adobes to reduce costs. If the greenhouse were planted solely in tomatoes, 7 months of harvests would have paid for the entire construction (minus labour costs).
• A chicken tractor for eggs and garden bed building
Ongoing
Projects
A number
of projects have already been initiated, but not yet completed to
the scale or effectiveness desired
•
Digging out and cobbing or berming up rainwater harvesting earthworks.
We can have months without rain during the dry season, but when
it does rain, it can be very intense. We hope to divert as much
of the deluge during the rainy season, storing the water in the
soil as well as ponds and cisterns
•
Planting a shelterbelt and contoured alleycrops to protect the
garden, give it nutrients via leaf mulch, and provide food, firewood,
and other materials. We're focussing on little known native trees
and shrubs, though we're also introducing some exotic fruit and
multipurpose trees as well
•
Planting the orchard in time with the production of humanure. Most fruit trees are planted in .5 to 1 cubic meter of compost, quite a lot of toilet activity.
•
We had been forming low till raised garden beds, by concentrating animal manures, leaf litter, and kitchen wastes, and composting in situ, but now we are making intensive compost piles using different techniques, including vermicomposting.
•
Expanding the chicken tractor. More like a chicken train, this
mobile series of connected pens makes contoured level beds out
of chicken manure and grass added daily
•
Care of the animals, currently including two donkeys and a horse
(the logistics squad), the chickens, and goats
•
Apiculture. We now have three hives started, but it will be a
while before they grow and expand enough for sustainable honey
and wax production
•
We're slowly building up compost heaps of manures and organic
matter from the pruning, all collected on site, in the area that
will one day be the Social Project (defined below)
•
We’ve started working on another extension to the Center. The first floor will be storage for materials which we wish to recycle, while the second floor will be a library to free up the kitchen.
•
Planting and fencing a silvopastoral system. Using a diversity of mainly native multipurpose forage trees rather than grass monoculture, we want to show that you can house a number of ruminants (the mentioned donkeys and horse, and perhaps a few more goats for surplus cheese production) using a rotating pasture system.
Within
the next 4-6 years
Within this time, our objective is to complete the majority of development on the initial site of the project. The mission is to be self sufficient by this time, through the production of resources for our own consumption as well as surplus to be sold or traded. The following projects will be just some of what I believe we will as we accomplish this goal. More projects will be added, and perhaps one or two changed or disregarded as volunteers with different skills and interests pass through the farm.
•
Finishing the kitchen orchard planting and garden building. Though
most fruits won't be in decent production for some years to come,
the gardens will hopefully provide much of the kitchen food needs.
•
Building more greenhouses.
• Building more bedrooms.
• Finishing the rainwater harvesting earthworks and converting
some of the reservoirs into seasonal fish ponds.
• Producing and propogating medicinal and gourmet mushrooms.
We'll also be experimenting with mushrooms for mycorestoration
of soils.
•
Converting the composting toilet into a biodigester for the added
benefit of methane production.
The
Social Project
Once
the initial site has achieved a satisfactory level of development
(5-7 years), the focus there will shift mainly to maintenance, harvesting,
and value adding of products. This should leave much surplus labour,
especially for interns committed to learning about and applying
design techniques for the sustainable development of degraded mountainsides.
This surplus labour will be put to good use. Using all the experience
gained up until this point, and with the head start provided by
the compost heaps accumulated through the years, we'll begin the
integrated development of another site on the property.
The
development of a second site will be appropriate for a separate
project which will aim to support and reempower a disempowered sector
of society. What exactly this will be is currently still unknown,
but some ideas include a womens' shelter, a home and training center
for street kids, an addiction rehabilitation center, etc. Though
the exact design of the site will depend on what project is selected,
a few things can be envisioned;
•
Digging and planting a forest garden focussing on species diversity
and complex interactions, designing analogs of native ecosystem
successions.
• Digging year round fish and aquaculture ponds.
• Free range poultry.
• Building structures and technologies appropriate for the
housing, energy needs, and particular lifestyles of the future
residents, both facilitators and beneficiaries of the project.
Sacred
Sueños aims to have this site built and planted so it can
be leased for free to a selected social worker organization. The
first section of the farm will then continue as a permaculture and
appropriate technology experimental and education center
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