Our year review in pics and some words...

January 

The new year started with a good amount of snow. To supply our neighbours, Re-green, we decided to create a new big vegetable garden. This is the time of year that farmers start clipping their trees. They burn almost all the wood right away, so we started to collect this to use for fences and to stock up wood for next winter.

Niki made our first sign

we started working at the land up to transform it in a new veggie garden

harvesting wood from the neigbouring orchards

February
The crowdfunding for the new communal house was launched. After clearing it was now time to start digging and sifting out stones from the soil from our new vegetable garden. We got loads of snow again and enjoyed nice winter walks.

upcoming plans for a new communal house with....HOT water!

we have dug out the whole 14 x 12 meter 50 cms deep to get rid of all the stones that are in our soil

filling up our swails with small wood for the sponge effect, absorbs water and releases this when needed

winterfood: brussel sprouts

last year we had 4 times snow, 3 times 40-50 cms

March
The first preparations for the communal house started, clearing the building plot from cipres trees and tree stumps. We also continued working in our new vegetable garden. Britta en Stassos visited and helped us.

preparation for the build of the new communal house, taking down a couple of cipresses, Alekos, a farmer that we know from the other village, came for the biggest one, 20m! high

April

Liveloula got her first 'official' volunteers. Sara and Raf, bike nomads, arrived and stayed for the rest of the year. Beginning of the month one last snow shower fell on our head and the next week it was summer! The real building works started. The communal house will have warm water to have hot showers, hot water for the kitchen and washing up. Furthermore there will be a dining area, 2 workshops and loads of storage room. The making of the new big vegetable garden kept on going. 

sometimes the soil isn't soil...but a chalk rock

and then the chain saw is needed for making a new veggie garden

spring preparations

beautiful flowering Honesty (Judaspenning)

we made a fence around the garden to protect it from the badgers that regularly visit our garden in summer to find earthworms in our humid irrigated soil

the landmeter is to make sure our swails are level and the water will distribute evenly over the whole  line

Sara and Raf arrived on their bikes in April and stayed the whole year!

our onions are coming up nice in the first row, potato holes are made in the second

the last snow in the first week of April

wild plum blossoms in April

Star of Bethlehem, a very happy spring flower, bulb, stem and flower are edible and also used for the bach remedy

enthousiastic boxer/pitbull Vega came with Sara and Raf

redoing thee roof above the campervan, because of many, many leaks

installing a black plastic barrel to have warm water in our outside shower

taking care of my seedlings

okay, it doesn't work on cloudy days...

clearing and setting out the lines for the communal house

digging out the trench for the foundation

May

Liveloula welcomed more volunteers and visitors: Kimberly and Federico, Sean and Sonja, Sophia and her father, Joanna, Koen and Thibo and Tiina. We lived with 8-10  people at Liveloula, a record! Slowly, but steady the place behind the campervan turned into a building site.

the up right poles to carry the roof go first as soon as the trench is dug and leveled

We adopted a goat for a day, she was injured during labour early March and never got back on her feet again, she had a dislocated leg and was laying in her own pie and poo now for 1,5 month. The owner, an old granny from the village didn't know what to do with her and nobody wanted the goat anymore. We gave her a beautiful last day. It was warm and sunny spring weather, she stayed in our cipres forest with loads of attention, fresh grass and dandelions.

and then salvation...

Mimos likes to sit on your back when you are weeding

Tiina is working on the fourth bed, the first three vegetable beds are ready and turn green!

family visits, Thibo is helping out too

in the meanwhile we had one day help from Albanian workers for the stone foundation and then it was time to start making the roof

poles and beams for the roof 

floor boards as ceiling

ceiling done! we can work in the shade from now on

June/July

Volunteers are coming and going and also the nice spring weather was inviting for friends  to come and visit. We welcomed Quentin and Morgan and Marie, Kaat and Terrence and Saartje, Jozefa, and Alexi and Anton, Christa, Alex, Manos and Charlotte. Leah and Stu arrived to stay for 1/2 a year and can now be called part of the family, they decided to stay permanent. There were weeks that we were living with 15 people at Liveloula, the 2015 record! There was loads of work in processing cherries into wine and marmelade. The build of the house continued and also we helped setting up a concert for the village that was organized by Re-green together with the cultural board of Seliana. Although there was a lot of work, once a week we would take a break and went down to the sea to have a swim.

sifting stones for the pebble sub floor of the new house

levelled sub floor

the snake, the beds next to our meander coming from the little pond, with poppies and Jerusalem sage

the nursery cuddled up around the tree

papaver somniferum

hollyhock

the famous pizza parties at Re-green

Jozefa with Anton

Quentin and Morgan

cherry picking

and crushing them to make cherry wine, this gives our special aroma!

cherries, cherries, cherries

Sara and Vega on the beach

after a nice day at the beach enjoying good food at Trapeza

leveling and bordering the path around the house, patisson plant in the back

digging and shoveling, the main works at Liveloula...

bathroom wall poles are coming in

the bath room comes in the back corner

like this, the babysitter can help out too

front door in the making

busyness around the workshop

processing St Johnswort flowers

coffee breaks

Sara's sour dough bread, yummy!

roof tiles coming up, we did the whole roof in one day!

flowering 2 meter high fennel on the right

Stu and Leah, our new Liveloulians!

Josepha, Alexi and Anton visited us for a couple of weeks

wooden frames for the windows are giving the house more and more the look of a house

a visit from the permaculture design course group

making creams

preparations of the breads that we sold at the panagiri, Greek festival 

the breads filled with wild a mixture of wild herbs and spices

and sweets: homemade cherry pies and lemon bars

our shop with jewelry, soaps, creams and oils

our storage, halfway summer, cherry wine and marmalade

onions bend down to dry before harvest

big onion harvest, enough for the whole year, making of preservatives included

Liveloula's jewelry

flowering onions and red amaranth

a lot of window frames!

August
Rita, Leandros and Aurora moved with their camper van to Liveloula! With them also a stream of mostly Portuguese visitors/volunteers arrived at Liveloula: Nadia, Diogo and Raul, Ines and Joey. Big works on the house continued: a lot of wood construction, start of insulating the walls. Aurora was baptized in the river near the waterfall and we enjoyed another festival in the village, this time folkloric Greek music.

woohooh the bath is coming in!

Charlotte, great gardener, beautiful woman and potter from France

Aurora never got too little attention :-)))

slug love

Ilektra's birthday :-)

mixing clay, water and perlite to fill the gap under the bathtub

professional carpentry made by Raf

Charlotte and Chenny are insulating the walls with straw dipped in clay water

Leah is spreading out the clay dressing over the straw

Diogo's hidden talent?!

now a beautiful frame, later on a kitchen wall

peeling bark from the natural woods used for the building

Ines applying straw clay insulation

our beautiful red sunflowers

the first cob plaster applied on the wall

drainage from the shower

installing the boiler

more cob plaster with Diogo

preparation for the baptism

cheerful Raul

gathering near the river for the baptism

Aurora was oiled and baptized with the water from the river, after this everybody could come and make a pledge to her

off course, grilled fishes after a Portugese(/Greek) baptism

front ready for insulation

September
We finished the insulation, made the floor inside the house and continued cobbing on the outside. Now the boiler is hanging, the rest of the warm water system was ready to be designed: solar collector and rocket stove. Lutgard and Bernard came to visit us.
Stu discovered the magic of drying and dried everything he could lay his hands on. ;-)

drying station in front of the house

cherry tomatoes

Stevens hand next to a zucchini

explosion of greens in our vegetable garden

cabbages in the front, then tomatoes and more cabbages to the back

corn and amaranth, brussels sprouts behind that

flowering lettuces

Lutgard, Rita en Aurora

endless tomato harvest, combi plant tagetes in the front

Chrysanthi walking her sheep

furniture is taking shape

wall between bathroom and kitchen

group effort, making the perlite cob floor in one day

Steven making the solar collector for our warm water

will it work...?

our first pedal powered washing machine!

corn drying in front of the house

October

We welcomed volunteers Marta and Michael, who stayed 3 weeks at Liveloula, also Stephane, Maria and Giorgos came to tadelakt our storage room.. The rocket stove that was welded by Leandros was cobbed in and the cupper pipes of the warm water sytem go around it to warm up the water that will heat up the water of the boiler. 

cobbing inside the house started, here Leah is working in the bathroom

more corn drying

lovely salad ingredients from the garden

toilet is taken!

making babies for next year?

reminders

with Michael a lot of music came too and everybody, included Mounie was enjoying that a lot

One of Marta's incredible salads for lunch

practicing the Liveloula song that was composed by Michael

Marta made a beautiful calendar for us, the main elements were playing, thankfulness and enjoying the little things in life

and it was walnut season off course, Michael came up with the idea to go and collect walnuts with the wheelbarrow, wow, amazing idea

A very nice, healty, yummy beautiful liveloula bread baked by Marta

November

Preparing the garden for winter, ongoing works on the new house: filling and testing the hot water system. There were puppies born at regreen and the first edition of the Seliana championships were held. Mieke and Jan came to visit us.

Aisha got puppies

their favorite place to sleep

and to hang out

Marta and Michael moved to regreen to also gain experience there, but the music continued

Seliana championships, a decathlon organized by M&M

Leah trying to earn as much points as possible in 'feed the car': throwing cipres apples through the window of a broken abandoned car

Steven as referee

in the front Stu and behind him Joni Lyn and Tomas in the race to fill the big drinking glass with spoons of water 

Marta in the race to get the best time in a trail without loosing the little pillow on her head

the games were played near the church next to regreen

Raf and me were team pusty

Leah and Stu trying to keep a walnut between their foreheads

Stu working at the solar collector frame

December

It was beautiful weather until the end of autumn and not too cold, so we decided to lime plaster the house before winter to protect the cob walls. The house got closed just before christmas and we finished the bathroom with a tadelakt plaster. Adam and Steven started to dig the second big vegetable garden.

again a group effort, plaster the whole house in two days

spatula, spatula, spatula

keeping away the sun from the fresh, wet plaster to prevent it from drying too quick

first tadelakt wall in the bathroom

window frames are prepared

and glued togeher

front door is in

inside shelves start to pop out the wall

the west side, opening window is from the bathroom

window looking out from one of the work spaces, view to the apple tree and the campervan

finished look with plaster and windows

almost...a few windows still

done, windows are in, house is closed and ready for winter!

the communal house by night

Thanks to all of you for sharing, working, laughing, living at Liveloula!