2013.04
Post date: May 2, 2013 6:57:02 PM
Stella 1 June 13 - have been slowly adding things here. I can't believe we're about to start summer ... wow!
Resting a Little
If you have noticed us a little absent recently it's because we rested a little after two mega-conferences, EcoNova, www.en.EcoInversion.net,
& then we designed the 'live' part of International Permaculture Day, www.Live.PermacultureDay.org
Both were amazing in terms of getting to know & interviewing the most advanced activists of change that we know of, in order to make them known to more people, & we got incredibly inspired!
Thanks so much to Jose, Pepa, Carlos, Rebecca, Bella & Gillian ... the tiny team which made these big things happen!
So we worked quite hard during all of April & much of May (& on top of that, at home we had some people draining our energy with dramas - see below), we ended up very tired, even as we were also VERY satisfied with the great resources we have co-created with & for the 'World Changers' network.
This one was the first interview we translated to spanish! With a GENIOUS of regeneration, John Liu
"Love is a verb. We have to let our love call us to action."
Lierre Keith
All part of the huge programme we did for www.Live.PermacultureDay.org
There were others translated to spanish, for eg. the interview with Sergio Alvarez, secretary of Gaia Tasiri, our association, & Diana Petrochelli from Argentina - a permaculture friend of mine, a very lovely & interesting woman.
These last two with interesting feminist facets, which have been a recent topic for other reasons:
Interviews with Stella
Recently an american permaculture designer who is writing an article about women permaculture designers for Permaculture Activist, because she started realizing how much sexism she was facing in her work (in this movement), which surprised her.
She loved the great resource that we've been compiling in the e-book (in english, does anyone want to help us creating it in spanish?) http://bit.ly/SexismPatterns
Also recently I was interviewed for Wiser Woman of the Week (see next blog entry)
The Designers Manual
in Integral Permaculture
I keep adding each week to the e-book, although mostly in the english part ... I'm loving it so much, as am investigating many thing & learning all the time. This is my main project at the moment & it fills me with enormous satisfaction every day.
One of the privileges of being an editor of the e-book is that you can see the recent changes ... so do sign up if you aren't in that group! :)
Am thinking about how I can get to writ the 'paper version', as the idea is starting to enthuse me, & part of the design of the e-book is to serve as a draft for this, starting small.
The EcoVillage Project
The March newsletter is about to come out ... as usual, the time to do all these admin-type things is scarce, so when it's finished I'll put the link here ok :)
The e-book is moving so well because it's especially stimulating to live with Jose who is also investigating on his own account also, so we talk about integral permaculture lots, whilst we eat, do routines in the farm, in our work meetings ... total immersion in what I most love in life! So this is already a part of my integral ecovillage dream becoming reality, and first real proof that it's really possible, and through the online course as part of our entry procedure.
The enormous contrast between our relationship & others we've had with people who have wanted to be part of the project, but who weren't at all focused on really experimenting with integral permaculture, is really impressive. & it keeps confirming how incredibly effective all the models we teach really are (especially in Module 1) when they are applied.
Integral Systems on the Farm
All of this apart the physical site, which is becoming more beautiful & fertile each month (Jose is going crazy with the animals, we've never had so many & so much variety), even though the building works have also created a lot of chaos, which has been tiring to deal with, on the other hand.
We've already got our first sheep giving milk (& sheep milk is really amazing!) ... the other ones due to give birth soon, we hope ... also thanks to our handsome ram which we finally returned to our farmer friend Felo (who's got some 200, between sheep & goats).
Whilst this enormous ram was with the girls there was no way we could take them out for walks ... but now they are more free, & they've joined another 4 sheep that Jose brought recently in order to fertilize the farm & cut the grass all over.
Since there are a few people in the spanish group who are also doing animal systems, we started a support / study group there.
Basically we're putting into practice the work (see links in the e-book) of Savory, Salatin, etc. ... & designing mini-systems of these adapted to our terrain, & our particular combination of animals, climate, plants, etc. Very exciting!!
Evolutionary Relationships
See explanation of what these are in the ecovillage web.
On one hand I couldn't be happier, more satisfied, comfortable & at the same time challenged (to grow - emotionally am making quite big jumps & discoveries which are improving my life a great deal, all the time) with my relationship with Jose, especially in seeing how both of us grow & learn from the various difficulties we come across - which are always quantic jumps in collective intelligence, when they are managed in a really integral way.
It is really very beautiful, and one of the most stimulating & illuminating things I know, since with each "personal" pattern that we discover / erode, we manage to understand something more of the mechanics & history of the destructo-culture - so I hope one day to find the time to write about some of our experiences (we have a private wiki for the EcoVillage where we document all this but it would need to be edited when we get to write our book :)
But on the other hand I could not be more disgusted by the huge falls in collective intelligence with the very boring (because they are so stereotypical, it's always the same story, like a broken record ... ) drama-trauma & nasty games - of gossip, negativity, blaming & simply amazing maligning - the sewers* of humanity, in short - that we sink to when we do the usual & popular habits that we use by default when we aren't able to use any of the constructive tools & models we propose in Module 1, People Care.
* (inappropriately processed shit ... big pity when it can so easily be turned into wonderful fertility with the right technology!)
Or even 'remember' what it means to do integral permaculture, really, which has brought us to re-design constantly how to 'filter' for that 'spark' or passion of the integral scientist that we're looking for in order to do the great action-learning project that we vision, of this wonderful manual, as a base of the EcoVillage.
The little group (& course) of ExpandAMOs (created precisely for people who wanted to expand their practice with Module1) was crucial in 'reminding me' & to have some of the more concrete & vital support which is essential when things get a little crazy. So I encourage anyone who is facing personal struggles on the 'people-care' level, & especially with yourself, to enroll!
It's really brilliant to have such a close support-group which is so clear & focused on this part of our challenges as integral permaculture designers in action.
Winter 2013
I had a draft of this blog here since january but only with the photos ... now (end of may) getting round to finish it.
This was our christmas tree, a cactus with very sharp needles & the decorations were of aluminium paper (from the rolls we used to buy during the building works) wrapped in a fine red material (so they're red but they also shine)
& inside each one there was a wish for the new year, & all of us here made some wishes for the tree.
Above you can see an aluminium paper angel, & below a mini-nativity scene & father christmas.
I've always had a lot of fun designing little things like this, of beauty & ritual ... one thing that I remember I loved in doing the integral incubator a few years ago when we launched Integral Permaculture & I went to Boulder, Colorado to see Ken Wilber) & design it with his team there) was how Salzman, my main teacher, talked about ritual from an integral perspective, as an incorporating of the purple meme in a fun way to our lives, since in level 2 of the spiral we start to be able to see & use all the memes with their particular characteristics, & all becomes much richer yet again ("juicier" as he repeatedly said :)
The Green Ray
This is a view of the sunset that we have on the patio every night.
I don't remember who told me that there's a game that consists in looking at the sunset whilst we think of our vision, the best that we can imagine how we want for our lives, or a particular desire that we have .... & then if we manage to see the green ray, just before the sun disappears ... then our wish comes true.
Other multi-functional & fun mini-ritual that we do sometimes do is to meet on the patio of the house & tell our wishes or how our day has been, in a very relaxing & meditative way ... as its difficult to not jump to other states of consciousness with the spectacle we have in front of us.
Fermented Food
Making fermented cabbage (I love chukrut!) & experimenting with adding whey ... as we have a goat-herder friend nearby who lets us have 35 litres of whey every week, we are investigating how many things can be used ... & there are lots!
New Puppy
Boli was born as only son of Iris, Julio's rat-catcher dog. Now he's bigger but in this photo (he's hiding behind my neck) we took in the car on the way to the market where we were going to look for a home for him ...
... at the end we didn't find a satisfactory one (where we'd be sure he would be treated well) & it was such fun to have him on the farm (he's so incredibly playful!), that in the end I kept him. He follows me everywhere whilst I work in the farm, he's learning to catch chickens which occasionally get out of the fence, taught by Fisco (his father) & he wakes me every morning with his desperate jumps to climb up the bed to get his first cuddles of the day.
We called him Boli because when we found him, Iris had fattened him up so much with all her milk that he was a totally round chubby ball ... with legs.