permaculture – Permaculture as a Path to Peace

… A seventeen day work camp of pure enrichment.

by GAIAAugust 20, 2019August 20, 2019Leave a comment

Take a moment and picture yourself in a peaceful place up in the mountains surrounded by rolling green hills and tree filled valleys where the sun rises and sets in the warmest gradient of colors. Now, lets make this image in your mind even better by adding a great purpose to bring knowledge, connect people, and engulf yourself in the surroundings and you’ve landed in Boževce, Kosovo on GAIAs permaculture estate.

I joined this workcamp to be productive with my summer time, with no expectations and ready to build; and I received so much more out of it. The workcamp was dedicated to permaculture education and focused on natural building and sustainable living.

I arrived there on the 1st of August with great excitement along with several other volunteers from diverse countries such as France, Austria, Spain, Belgium, Jordan, Czech Republic, the Netherlands, the USA and a native from Kosovo. From the nearest town we took an adventurous rocky road climbing higher and higher away from amenities until we reach this quaint, small village of Boževce with less than 100 habitants. The atmosphere was so humbling and collective from the start. All volunteers would sleep in shared tents during these 16 days and we would use a compost toilet, an outdoor shower functioning by mostly rain water and have no cell service; and we were all ready to dive right into it!

The coordinators did such an exceptional job with organizing the camp. Our schedules were clear and feasible with our days starting at 7:30-8:30 with breakfast and then followed with a briefing where our duties and roles were assigned in teams and any questions or suggestions were welcomed.

The first few days were dedicated to getting to know each other, becoming familiar with the property and learning about the principles and ethics of permaculture along with natural building. We learned so much in such a short amount of time; it was exhilariting to take it all in. The staff was so informative and welcomed all questions with no hesitation. I feel one successful aspect during camp, for me, was being taught something in such a condensed way and then putting it right into practice afterwards. We learned about reed beds and it’s function of filtering grey water; then proceeded with making one at site. We also learned about the making of a compost and why we have them and then created one too. The trust in the volunteers to get things done from the staff was so encouraging for the work. We watched a film on the building of a straw bale house and was given some books for further references on the subject of this project we were about to endeavor on. One activity that really stuck out to me during one of the educational sessions was when we were given the task to design a house plan with the new knowledge we had just ingested on building with natural materials. I thought this was extremely fun and even helpful for us, as volunteers, to get creative and really understand how GAIAs permaculture project is impactful.

As the days got hotter, given that it’s the middle of summer, the team agreed upon waking up earlier to get work done without heat exhaustion and dehydration getting the best of our bodies. The high energy and diligence of the volunteers to continue working on the house continued strongly. We worked long days and very hard on getting the straw bale walls up and plaster them with a mud clay mix as a sealant. One unanimous feeling we all shared was the immense gratification of seeing physical progress being done by the end of each work day.

I always considered myself to be a city kid growing up north of Boston, in the US, and before this camp I had no previous experience with real camping and being part of this project truly taught me a lot. I joined feeling eager and curious and left feeling completely empowered and equipped to take the lessons I learned there and to integrate it into my daily life. Living so minimally for the past couple of weeks really showed me how small changes can make big impacts. I’m grateful to have been a part of this experience with such a successful organization. I’m looking forward to sharing my knowledge with others I encounter and mimicking the sustainable lifestyle that this camp has set as an example for me.

Celina, August 2019

Urban Permaculture Garden in Mitrovica

by GAIAJuly 28, 2019July 28, 2019Leave a comment

When I was looking for a volunteering opportunity, I wanted to do something in relation with nature.

One can say that by getting involved in GAIA, I have found this opportunity. And this is true. But my mission takes place in a city, with its labyrinth of concrete and macadam … so I had to find a way to bring some nature closer to me.

A garden is obviously the best option. As I moved into our new house with my fellow volunteers, we were told that the small patches of grass that bear the name “garden” (“yard” would be more appropriate since we can find concrete paths between the patches of grass) should not be planted with anything. Disappointing! But we were resilient in our requests, and after a bunch of times going to our landlord’s to drink tea, eat pite and advocate our desire for nature, we won our case. Now we can plant the grass!

So, I began to think about an intelligent way to set up our small corner of nature. I had just attended some brief lessons about permaculture and I had been watching a substantial number of videos on the subject, so I wanted to apply some of these principles. As our house is not necessarily intended for volunteers to stay on the long run, and also because my permaculture knowledge is still quite limited, I would not dare saying I’m doing permaculture here. Rather, I tried to design the garden in an intelligent fashion, so that it looks nice, gives us a yield, and be, as much as it could, a mini-ecosystem.

I started to observe how the garden is lit by the sun throughout the day, determine the hottest and coldest zones as well as the sunniest and darkest. I ended up with the following sketch.

Screenshot_20190724_174210 (1) — Zoning of the permaculture garden

While I was drawing this sketch, we started growing seedlings. Thanks to the cooperation of my grand-parents, we could get non-hybrid organic seeds delivered from France. We built shelves that were put in the house behind the big patio window – this turned out to be a perfect greenhouse. To facilitate the transition of the plants between inside and outside, we built a small greenhouse that was put outside and hosted the seedlings before being transplanted in the garden.

20190516_084505 — Greenhouse and seedlings

I priviliged tomatoes in the most sunny area, of course. We also planted pumpkins, zucchini, butternuts, bush beans, leeks and chards. In terms of herbs and flowers, we have parsley, basil, savory, dill, rucola, chamomille, sage, lovage, morning glory, snapdragon, everlasting, scabiosa, marigold, dahlia, cornflower, sweet peas… We did some well-know companion planting: tomatoes with basil and marigold ; pumpkin, butternut and zucchini with beans.

Of course we are not using any artificial product to fertilize, fight pests or intempestive weeds… we do everything by hand and we use black soap and nettle manure.
Now we are waiting for the harvest of vegetables, enjoying herbs in our dishes, the view of our flowers and looking eagerly at the ripening tomatoes …

20190724_075412 — Morning glory and vertical herbal garden

written by Hugo, a member of GAIA’s Mitrovica Team.

Did you know that a drone can be considered as important as queen bees?

by GAIAJune 22, 2019Leave a comment

Drone is the male bee that does not sting and plays an important role on the process of nectar and pollen collection and has a life spam that can be a few days longer than the worker bees.

This and many more interesting things we are learning in this workshop of more than 20 people from different countries with Yasemin from Turkey as our teacher who is feeding us endless information on how the old bee kingdom is and how it functions and the importance it plays in various ways that are connected to or daily life. Not to forget to mention that they are that old that could have been here with the dinosaurs and the circle of what they do is a never-changing one.

We have two more days to continue bee-dancing and learning more interesting things in the stunning green Bozevce with a very nice weather this weekend.

This is one of the first workshops on this topic organized by GAIA who will continue workshops on this and different other topics connected to permaculture.

Biology students helped us with observing wildlife

by GAIAMay 31, 2019May 31, 2019Leave a comment

“Look, I found a lizard! It must be a Lacerta viridis, with a blue and shiny head!” On normal days, you don’t hear sentences like this in Bozevce. But recently you could hear them a lot. Well, those two days were absolutely not normal when we had some biology scientists here doing research. A group from University of Pristina and University of Konstanz (Germany) spent some days here as part of a research seminar. This is the whole story:

Our property here is surrounded by nature. Now in late spring, everything is growing and blossoming and we sometimes get lost in belly-high green grass when we take a walk with our dogs. And of course, also all the wild animals now are out of their wholes, finished their winter rest and enjoy their life outside where they can find sun, warmth and food now.

For us it is quite important to know which kinds of animals are living at our place or close to it. Of course, on one hand, this is because of our personal interest – we appreciate the diversity here a lot and like to know which bird is singing here and who is digging a hole there. But, on the other hand, those wild animals are an important factor for the design of our permaculture property. Some animals can prevent damage of pests, some others can support growing of plants. Maybe one of the birds nearby likes to eat the caterpillars which are attacking our fruit trees at the moment. Maybe one of the insects we find can support plants in our garden. And maybe some little rodent likes to eat plants of which we have too much at the moment.

These are all little connections of the whole circle of permaculture and life here. If you know about them, you are a lucky person – but finding out about them takes time. “Observe and interact” is one of the twelve core principles of permaculture. We are trying our best to fulfill it, but after two years of working in this place the project is still at its very beginning. Sometimes, “observe and interact” the area outside the property moves a little bit into the background behind more important tasks like renovating the houses, woodwork and giving the garden a structure.

That’s why we were very pleased to host a group of biology students from University of Pristina and three scientists from University of Konstanz (Germany) here in Bozevce. Our friend Liridon Hoxha from the non-governmental organization “KEERC” (which stands for “Kosovo Environmental Education and Research Centre”) asked us if he could send one of his research groups here.

They came here in the beginning of May for two days and explored the reptiles and amphibians around here. We were invited to join their trips and to learn about those animals. Lizards, snails, tortoises, newts and salamanders – we found so many of them around. We learned how to differentiate different types of lizards and how to distinguish the gender. – and to learn about everything else they knew because Karsten, Lorenz and Gregor from Konstanz could give us information about almost everything that was moving around our feet and flying in the sky. They distinguished 60 different types of birds at our place alone from hearing them singing! In the pictures, you can see that we found a lot of different reptiles and animals:

This visit was a big step forward for us in getting to know our surroundings better. This means that “observe” now is done more, so we will see how we can “interact” based on this new information. Anyway, no hurries, permaculture is a development which goes step by step. We were really happy to have this visit and are looking forward to eventually host similar camps in the future!

Antonia, May 2019

Introduction to Permaculture – workshop in Bozevce

by GAIAMay 16, 2019May 17, 2019Leave a comment

The first time I heard about permaculture was actually last year during my volunteering with GAIA last year.

When I started to read permaculture books, the main topic that I was interested for was how to set up a garden and mostly how to build an efficient and smart property. Almost one year later I’m back again to Kosovo for a workshop on permaculture, but this time with a real PERMACULTURE TEACHER!

And I was not alone, we were 20 people from different countries with different jobs and different ways of thinking, but with one common goal: learn more about what permaculture is.

Despite what I was thinking, permaculture is much more than gardening or building smart; it’s kind a way of living.

“It depends“ was the sentence you could hear in every time and in every situation.

Because yes, in permaculture it depends . You need to adapt your strategy to your environment, take into account every advantage or disadvantage you could find in your surrounding and apply different solutions to different problems.

The permaculture can be defined through 3 ethics and 12 principles which we should take in account if we want to improve our daily life.

Observe and interact Catch and store energy

Obtain a yield Apply self-regulation and accept feedback

Use and value renewable resources and services Produce no waste

Design from patterns to details Integrate rather than segregate

Use small and slow solutions Use and value diversity

Use edges and value the marginal Creatively use and respond to the change

I can’t really define what permaculture is in 3 lines, but the two guys (B. Mollision and D. Holmgren) who created it did it from these two words “permanent & agriculture”, which when mixed give “permaculture”.

Oh, and I forgot to tell you, one of the best and important value I found through those 3 days is to take care of people not only about your garden!

Earth Care People Care Fair Share

permaculture ethics

One of the GAIA’s project that I was involved in was 3peas project which was basically bring peace through permaculture. Since almost 2 years, volunteers from the entire world are working in the small village of Bozevce to build a place where it is possible to gather people from different backgroudns around the same table to learn about permaculture.

How permaculture is connected to GAIA’s Project?

In GAIA Kosovo we believe that we can change the world by small and personal actions, so what can be a better example than using permaculture to grow our food, collect water, reduce our waste, save our energy and care about people and future…

Max, May 2019

International Permaculture Day 2019

by GAIAMay 5, 2019May 5, 2019Leave a comment

On this day of International Permaculture, we celebrate its diversity and use around the globe.

Permaculture initially emerged as an antidote to short-term agricultural practices and its socio-ecological and economic consequences in Australia in the 70s. Its evolution was significantly driven by the transnational spread of environmental and peace movements as well as the accessibility of scientific reports on the limits of growth on our planet. Be assured, you will have a hard time pinning down the meaning of permaculture. It has attracted the attention of a diversity of minds from across the world and spread with a determinacy found in the streamline of a river. Some like to refer to it as “a revolution disguised as organic gardening.” What is crucial to the self-conscious development of permaculture is its adaptability to any context.

From May 4^th-6^th GAIA has been gathering its volunteers and friends from across Kosovo, Serbia, Germany, France, Austria and Australia amidst the rolling hills of Bozevce for an introduction to permaculture by Pippa, a permaculture teacher who is originally from Australia.

Applying permaculture design principles to our volunteering work for GAIA means an engagement in an ongoing learning process about the people and the environment. The majority of us work for positive social and environmental change within Kosovo and Serbia, yet we face different challenges and needs. In the past few days, we have been able to expand our personal and group understanding of the different volunteering experiences through the application of Holmgren’s 12 principles and different analysis strategies of permaculture. Together, Pippa’s insights into the practical and ethical richness of Permaculture equipped us with practical tools and inspirations to contribute to permaculture’s pursuit of transforming destructive realities into more regenerative ones.