First
part of September - Redesigning future plansAutumn 1998
End of August - Visit at Steve’s place
Angela and myself spent the last week of our trip to Brittany at Steve’s place in Kerzello. We had lovely fruit and vegetables from the garden (especially the chips) and helped a bit with the work on the house (knocking down a stone wall and plastering the kitchen walls with clay plaster enriched with hemp chaff). How relaxing can Permaculture be...
First
part of September - Redesigning future plans
When I left London for Germany my intention was to move to a village near Trier. In Wintersdorf, my family owns an old house on about three hectares of land. It would have provided an ideal setting for a permaculture project. The concepts I developed at the end of the 72 – Hours – Design – Course were a first gathering of ideas which should have led to an overall design for the house and land. Possible projects included a Forest garden, an education site and a camp ground. I worked on further drafts for house and garden in Wintersdorf, before various new furture considerations blew every hope of starting a long-term project at the beginning of September. At the time, all my thoughts and ideas for the next couple of years had circled around this site. I had to find a new solution for the problem. The next definite future event was that Angela would move to Germany in summer 1999. Since she would have to find a job, which could end up being anywhere in Germany, and since I didn't consider to stay in Wintersdorf in the long term, I decided not to start my own project before then. That meant that I would have about one year ahead of me during which I would not start to develop an own project.
Through the following weeks I worked out a new plan. I would stay for the next year in Wintersdorf, studying philosophy and psychology in Trier. I think that both subjects are good tools for permaculture – philosophy for questioning conventional patterns and psychology to design healthy environments for the psyche. There are some useful systemic approaches. While studying, I would start a permaculture database for my own use and for everyone in need of information, get into contact with other people involved in permaculture and German permaculture projects, work myself through some theory books and start teaching introduction courses. I also decided, that in spring, I would travel to Australia, where I would visit permaculture projects and get some hands on experience as a Wwoofer.
19/9
- Visit at Zentrum Prinzhöfte
Zentrum Prinzhöfte is probably the best known and established permaculture project in Germany (apart from the GEN in Steyerberg). Ben and I went there for a day and a night on our bike trip through Germany. Prinzhöfte is a community open for everyone to join. The entire project is designed according to permaculture principles and includes their own greywater cycle, a herb, fruit and vegetable garden and as their main project, an independent primary school. The local LET system is based here and various cultural and educational activities are organized by the project. We got a guided tour of the whole place and were able to ask many questions afterwards.
The pedagogic approach of the independent primary school is based on permaculture principles, systemic ideas and "Freinet" methods. That means that the school wants to be understood as a playground for diverse, systemic interactions between people, the environment and the learning process. Pupils are enabled to learn at their own pace, alone and with others while trying to establish useful +/+ relationships (with other people, the environment and their own learning habits). Last year, the school was officially recognized by the school authorities.
Prinzhöfte is also home to a greywater systems company who install small or broad scale systems of their own design, and to a herb business which sells remedies and kitchen herbs.
October 1998 - Networking
In October, I finally moved to Wintersdorf. Throughout the month I tried to establish a useful information network on permaculture. I sent off about 160 postcards, wrote many e-mails and spent hours surfing the internet. The result wasn’t what I had hoped for but in the end, I managed to contact some people from the German Permakultur Institut e.V. – the main permaculture association in Germany. I got flyers and information from a lot of permaculture-related organizations, some of them useful, a lot of them rather not. At least, I managed to get hold of detailed information about most of the main German permaculture groups, magazines and suppliers. This information formed the basis of my permaculture database which contains at the moment about 100 addresses.
While networking, I also worked on a translation of about 20 minutes from the Global gardener video soundtrack. Even though most Germans understand some English, very few are able to grasp Bill Mollison's accent. I recorded the German translation on MD, taking care to synchronize it with an excerpt of the video. This enables me to show the most interesting parts of the video at my permaculture courses.