Integral land-based design
Design
Here I connect my Survey with my Analysis in order to design my upcoming projects in more detail.
1. Project Overview
1. I will start with the most important and relevant issue in agriculture: soil. It is the basis to grow food. Without deeper knowledge of soil I have no foundation to build on, so it is more or less indispensable to gain these understandings before I go on.
2. In order to promote ecological regeneration in human cultures, it is important to know alternatives to conventional knowledge and methods that already exist. In the future I want to build skills in natural building including insulation in colder climates, sanitary systems and everything which is important for the every-day life of people. In Steyerberg I have the opportunity to design a sanitary system for a camping area and to learn a lot of practical implementation. I will be also involved in building a soil-greenhouse and a fixed dome-yurt.
3. During the last year I developed a passion for bees and I feel the need to learn a lot more about them. To my delight bee-keeping is going to start in the permaculture area in spring 2016 and I will assist and learn as much as I can. I want to get to know how to integrate bees in an ecological system and how one actually can create a biotope for bees.
Project Timeline
2.Detail planning
1. SOIL BUILDING
Because soil is such a huge topic I want to understand the basic principles of biological processes. I divided this project in two parts in order to specify it a little more:
In the first part, which is only a relatively small amount of the project, I want to gain knowledge about soil in general, because it is the prerequisite to implement practical work. The first part has a lot do with research and reading and I am also trying to put a lot of active experimentation in.
In the second and more specialized part I want to attend myself to humus and topsoil, especially to actively building it with the help of compost and Terra Preta. For me building topsoil is a very urgent issue. Here I am going to do active-experimentation, self-forage and interviews with experts.
After the initial phase I am going to implement certain things like starting my first Terra Preta heap and producing charcoal by myself. At the same time I am going to replenish the implementation with more theory. This way I can test how the theory works in reality.
I want to compare, through research and testing, different production and usage methods for Terra Preta in theory and practice.
I will have a lot of support through a Terra Preta production workshop and a Terra Preta congress with a lot of experts in September here in Steyerberg.
My plan is to work on this project steadily without defining a definite end in the beginning. I want to work on this project in active learning weeks and/or days.
Through that very agile and adaptive project, which is completely designed by myself, I want to widen my specialized knowledge and gain skills in documentation, research, project management, collaboration with others and ecological design such as future-compliants fields of application.
2. PRACTICAL BUILDING SKILLS
My other project is to build skills on handcraft and designing ecological buildings. In that project I am involved in several building-sites. I am going to design a simple sanitary system for a campsite, which is only used in summer. It consists of a compost toilet with a sink, a solar shower and a natural sewage treatment plant (Reedbed), which processes the greywater from the shower and the sink.
I am also going to participate in a earth sheltered-greenhouse workshop. Especially in this Workshop I will learn a lot of practical skills and gain deep insights in the theory of earth-sheltered greenhouses. To a certain extend I will be involved in building a dome-yurt in the permaculture kids area. Here the main focus is to shingle the surface of the dome and to build a clay wall inside.
My goal is to learn practical permaculture design and build helpful handcraft skills.
3. NATURAL BEE-KEEPING
It is my aim to keep bees in a natural and alternative way, because I want to contribute to their survival in nature and take an active role to inform people about the role of bees in our ecosystem.
So in this project I decided to focus on bees.
Here in Steyerberg they are going to start beekeeping this spring and I am going to be actively involved in preparing the beehives and in the constant documentation of the bees' health. This experience will hopefully allow me to get deeper insights in all the necessary interventions a beekeeper has to do in the course of the year.
I am going to learn an alternative method of beekeeping: a bee 7-Star: We are trying to make bees immune against the Varroa mite through back-breeding the bees towards building smaller cells. With small cells the mite does not have the perfect environment to grow and the bees are actively defending themselves against the mite. In the long run the bees will regain their independence from humans through this form of beekeeping, because they do not depend on humans anymore to defend the mite for them.
With this form of beekeeping one has to do a lot of documentation and observation in the beehive and it requires a lot of participation in the life of bees. As beginners, we always have to collaborate with others who do the back-breeding of bees.
We are also designing and planting a biotope for bees, which has a huge potential, because it is almost on the edge of a forest and therefore a great place to increase biodiversity.
Furthermore I would like to immerse myself in the theory of beekeeping and creating biotopes for bees. I also have the aim to join the network of the “Flowering Landscape”, which encourages people and farmers to grow food plants for bees.
In addition I already visited a workshop where I learned how to weave a basket for bees.In the long run I want to get more experienced in weaving a basket and maybe offer courses or sell them.
Goals for all projects:
- Design each project in more detail! And get more familiar with design processes!
- Find a way how to learn theory, so that my knowledge is quickly available → encourage Reflective Observation & Abstract Conceptualization thinking (see Kolbs' Model)
- Find best-practices in my Learning methods: How to balance Action and Theory
- Good timely combination between all projects is important →Time Management