Liveloula

Honesty (Judaspenning) our first flower in spring

Spring is in the air

Haha and I thought that I would write a weekly blog from this year on.
Well, there has to be room for improvement, no?
The wonderful weather we’ve had the last weeks is to blame for the delay.
Whenever the sun comes out, it feels likes spring instantly. It’s not just us that feel like that, the birds too started singing their spring songs, the big black bees and butterflies have come out, even the lizards are out again. Our first spring flower is the honesty and our plum tree shows big buds, ready to burst.

After the PDC, Steven made 8 cold frames (little greenhouse boxes on the ground with lids). We filled them up with pots with seeds and then dived into the garden tasks.
We’ve seeded different type of lettuces and cabbages, peas, beet roots, parsley, spinach, cilantro, leak, carrots, turnips, radishes and so on. Yay, I’m getting so excited with all these new and fresh plants for the coming season! In the fall we already prepared most of the beds of the vegetable gardens for this coming summer and now Steven is giving them a final clean up and fresh mulch and then next month we can start planting the plants that I’m now seeding in the cold frames.

We finished cleaning up the neighbours pear and apples orchards and have loads of material to start weaving beautiful fences. The one year old pear shoots are amazing for that, some are up to 3,5 m long! Besides the flexible long shoots, we’ve also dragged back tons and tons of various wood cuttings that our neighbours would otherwise have burned in their orchards. They are very happy not having to clean up their orchards and wasting time burning al the cuttings. We feel wealthy as hell. After processing we are well stocked on firewood for next year and we have been chipping loads of wood to mulch under our fruit trees.
Win, win, win.

We’re not only cleaning next doors, we’ve also caught the spring cleaning vibes and started to sort out and reorganize our kitchen, campervan, house and our storage rooms. This winter, mice discovered that we have all yummy things around: noodles, seeds (I have to find more mouse proof seed containers, my seed collection was severely eaten and trashed…), the rubber pipets from my pharmacy storage and as cherry on the pie, Steven caught a mouse inside the open spaghetti package that was inside one of our drawers! So we’ve declared war to the mice.
For a while now our creed has been, ”that we respect all life, but not all of it is welcome in our house”.

Contrary to this declaration of war is our new diet. We’ve seen the movie ‘Earthlings’ a couple of weeks ago and it made us think, again, about our food consumption and in particular the consumption of meat and dairy products. Seeing the horror in this industry and the damage it brings to our world, made us decide to not partake in it anymore. No more cows with broken legs in little cages for our milk, butter and yoghurt and no more sausages from ulcerated pigs that were never allowed to move in their cages and had their ears and tails clipped of as a baby without anesthesia.

How is it that we’ve come this far, that we tune out for these things that we actually all know.
Just because a piece of bacon tastes so good… !? It’s not that we won’t eat any animal products anymore. It’s a matter of finding a trustworthy source. If the animal has a good life, is treated well, we will have the dairy and eat meat once in a while.

Luckily spring has arrived and we have wild weeds in abundance, so for anybody concerned about our new diet, don’t worry, we’re grazing around the garden! Moooooohhh!
These wild weeds contain a good amount of vitamins, calcium, iron and most of them have detoxifying qualities which fits this time of year. It is for a good reason that our Christian fasting period, in as far as it is not predated by something pagan, is held during the end of winter, beginning of spring. Greece’s most famous spring ‘salad’: cooked dandelion rosettes garnished with olive oil, lemon juice and a little salt. Kali orexi!
And another one, ever made spinach pasta? Well, instead of spinach, stir fry some green tops from galium, chickweed, shepherds purse and nettles through your pasta, very yummy! Also, all of these you can eat raw in a salad.

Now the weather is changing we’re getting ready to welcome volunteers again. We’re expecting a couple soon and more people from April. A good reason to celebrate and make a campfire from all the broken wooden crates that Steven is getting rid of, during his spring cleaning rage! So, in general a good time to come and visit us, celebrating spring. Who’s first?

For people interested and ready to watch the movie 'Earthlings', let me know, I can send you the movie. If anyone has the sequel 'Unity'. I would really like to see this movie too.

Our coldframe park!

Competition with the honesty

Last time going down we decided to make a detour and enjoyed spring views in the valley next to Egio

More, more more

2 more coldframes!

Cilantro seeded in pots

Steven is the pot maker master and YES we had already weather like this (not established yet unfortunately, today I'm wearing 2 jumpers and I'm freezing)

seeding carrots!

Oops, what happend there, yay, organic shapes

The sunday markets started at regreen

The first cabbages, lettuces and peas where ready to plant


Our little pond with camomile and chives on the edges


frogs decided our little pond is an excellent nursery

After a day warming up the earth, putting mulch on top to keep the energy of the sun trapped in the soil

The last weeks our chickens were suddenly very often on the menu of our neighbouring predator birds...so we have a guard now to watch over them!

Thanks to Leahs clothes donation!

chickweed

galium

shepherd's purse

Snow, snow, snow, frost, frost, frost. This winter will be booked as the most snowy frosty winter until now. I think we’ve had snow 7 times now, the amounts ranging from 5-25cm’s. No, these aren't huge amounts of snowfall, but the snow stayed long enough to take hostage of our garden now for a whole month. Writing that down, it doesn’t sound so long knowing that it’s actually winter… I was probably spoiled too much the previous years with sunny winter days, preparing new vegetable gardens in my t-shirt. Anyway, the weather does mess up some of our older plans, most of them garden projects, that we had hoped to finish before the end of February and then…our new planning from March should start.

Well, being sentenced to days indoors, next to warm stove does have its benefits. We've had a lot of time to look over our plans and work and talk things through to the detail so that we exactly know what we’re going to do as soon as the sun comes out and melts this icy snowy layer that is now stretching out over our land.

Making those plans, the warm stove, we’re doing all that in our finished kitchen! Early November the floor went in and that was the final job to get the house finished. It’s so nice to cook and do the washing up with the view over the mountains and seeing the birds just a few meters away sitting on the old sunflowers to peck out some last seeds.

I’m trying to look back at the last year finding out what made it different than the other years, which memories paint a smile on my face and which ones I have learned from.
I’ve learned a lot, that’s for sure. Mostly about myself, through interacion with others. About how I wish to organise the next couple of years, what I want and need, and more so, what I don't want or need. Me and Steven tried a couple of ways of opening Liveloula to others over the last summers, from giving serious hard working volunteers responsibilities and a say in our project to sharing everything we've built up until now with a couple that expressed a wish to stay. Who would have guessed that in the end it turns out not to be that simple?
Without going to much in details, we came to the conclusion that we don’t like to be a community, but would like to have a community of good neighbours. Difference? Having your own household and privacy, making your own decisions and taking your own responsibilities, having friendly, sharing neighbours close by.
For a good talk over a cup of coffee, to receive advice and knowledge about the things you don’t know, to exchange goods, together to clean up the garbage that is dumped in and around the village, to plan how to reopen the school, to gather to go and pick excess fruits from the neighbouring orchards, to turn the harvest into juices and marmalades.
Here’s where the numbers make a difference!

Just like nature works in cycles: expanding, increasing, taking a break in winter, birth, growing, shrinking, renewing, reinventing, .... So this number of people teams up to make projects happen, to find joy, happiness, love and care,... And so that same group of people breaks up once in a while, for the individual to refocus on itself, to find balance, inner answers, peace and stillness. We need both for wellbeing.

We are blessed to be in such a team, a very motivated group of people that share the same ideas.
The past 2 weeks we sat together with a group of 17 (9 permanent residents) that would like to become this community of neighbours. Under the guidance of senior permaculture teacher dr. Rod Everett and Mill Millichap, we've used permaculture principles to guide us through the jungle of all the feelings, thoughts, visions, expectations and connections. At the end we know each other and ourselves better than before and we also know that there is a long but exciting road ahead.

Liveloula will also expand further this year. We were given a big piece of land from a very sweet older woman from the village. She inherited it from her uncle and her children are not interested in it. It’s neighbouring, actually completing the triangle of our land and we are planning to make a big chicken coop there that can hold 60 chickens and land to grow more vegetables. The idea is to make a rotation system, so that the chickens scratch and prepare and enrich the soil with their manure for the next year. Also we would like to finally give some love and attention to the abandoned fruit trees on our land, create more dry storage spaces and build a greenhouse.

So, we’re certainly looking forward to this new season of work, to the sensation that we've got muscles in all corners of our bodies, to sun tanned skins, soil under our finger nails and blissful resting in the evening with a good home grown meal followed by lots of laughter and music.

If you are interested or know people that are interested to come help, learn, teach, share and enjoy with us at Liveloula please let us know.

Below the long awaited year review of pics and my promise to write more on this blog!
Filakiaaaa!

winter turns to spring

enjoying spring weather in March

Frederik Weeding

the second big vegetable garden was created in spring

with a ramp up

a fence to protect our plants from digging animals

lettuce, cabbage and onion are alreadynicely growing in April

combi growing of lettuce, cabbage and poppy's

Los making mulch

crystal dew drops in the morning on our patisson plants

wood crafts made by Stu

June: Saint Johnswort!

looks of the kitchen before the last transformation

making new beds with cardboard soaked in donkey poo water, worms love it!!!

shredding straw en leaves to make mulch

chiporo with orange, cherry's and more

preparing the beds for summer

row by row the new vegetable garden grew bigger

spring salad: wild weeds from the garden

birthday pancakes with cherry chocolate cream topping!

Freddy can't wait to get birthday pancakes

preparing the potatofield

Katarina came for a visit and helped digging the small trees out

early morning chicken move with coffee on site

happy chickens

green explosions in April-May: rain and warmth

flowering mustard, chard, rucola and borage

in July we had our first chick born in Liveloula

rows full of onions, lettuce, broccoli, white cabbage, brussel sprouts, tomatoes

Nasturtium and tomatoes, good combi in your salad

beginning of July, the red amaranth is shooting up

July: tomatoes getting the right size, now we are waiting for them to turn red

wild perennial tomato, beautiful, but very prickly

chards, borage, low beans, rucola, cosmos

three sisters experiment with sunflowers instead of corn: not a great yield, next year again with corn

kohlrabi craziness

now I understand why the species is called SUPERschmelz....

beautiful pointy cabbages

beautiful flowers coming out the orchard and beesmix

loved by everyone: our patissons/UFO's

amaranth is flowering and making seeds

a twisted pointy sweet pepper that still needs to turn red

the crazy spontaneous visit from friends who made a tour through the village with their music

the most crazy of them all!

Aurora is the greatest lover of party's, music and dancing

a nice cool place in the shade

Stu in the workshop

Then in October, the final task for completing the kitchen: Leah and Steven are applying the floor, I'm not quite sure what they put in the mix....

washing up and workspace in the kitchen

cob, alys, recycled kitchen doors and wood ornaments :-)

the dining area with a little window in between the hallway and the kitchen and some wood elements

area for the cooking stove to come in

spice rack!

even before we started using the kitchen it was already claimed by some pumpkins and plants

linseed beeswax finish to waterproof the working area's

2 spontaneous dogs....

kitchen installed,just before all the cold, snow and frost

view into the garden, can't wait for spring, when the walnut turns green again!

many delicious meals!

place for pots and pans

after all the plants will be gone in the back will be the soap/oil/tincture making working area

Steven finally got his shredder, so our swails will be filled up nicely with woodchips this winter and start soaking up all the winter snow and rain

our winter cabbages

in November still full with borage, not only a perfect combiplant, bee attractor, beautiful, but also a very tasty plant for food (leaves taste a bit of spinach)