July 2009
ORGANICVISION Newsletter No. 2
Discovering the beauties of Belgium: Kasteel Nieuwenhoven
Kasteel Nieuwenhoven is the first eco-village in the Belgian Flanders region. It is part of the Global Eco-Village Network, linking communities that attempt to become models for sustainable human settlements - away from the waste, pollution, competition and violence of contemporary life. http://gen.ecovillage.org/about/index.html Nestled in the green outskirts of Sint Truiden (a little town 45 min. away from Brussels), this over 1000 year old castle is surrounded by 20 hectares of woodland, lakes and farmland. This is the home of a community of currently 10 residents (between 2 months up to 51 years old), who are supported by friends and international volunteers building up permaculture gardens and food forests, hosting visitors, organising events and much more. Working there as volunteers, we had the chance to meet and discuss with Jeanne Hoogenboom, the founder of this unique project, and David Yekutiel, a resident.
Interview with Jeanne, founder of Kasteel Nieuwenhoven, Belgium and David, resident
ORGANICVISION: Nieuwenhoven? What did you do before founding Kasteel
Jeanne: First I was a fruit farmer for 10 years, then I worked in the HoReCa (Hotel, Restaurant, Café) and after that I was coaching for 20 years, about consciousness and a lot about creativity. Now all these experiences are coming together.
July 2009
ORGANICVISION: What inspired you to set up Kasteel Nieuwenhoven? Jeanne: There were no religious or philosophic reasons for it. I just felt it was the right thing to do. I lived in similar places before and my family was always a bit different, my mother already worked with healing and herbs for example. I hardly ever lived by myself in a normal apartment, I prefer living in communities and in nature. Four years before buying this property, I started with a group of 10-15 people, who wanted to buy land and start this project. But when we started to get closer to buy it, they all backed out for various reasons. And in the end, nobody was left, so I decided to buy it by myself. Once I bought the land, the group was helping a lot, several people from the group started to live here. ORGANICVISION: What were your financial resources? Jeanne: We want to set up as a co-housing project for people from 0-70 who want to work and live together. In the beginning I wanted to take up a credit at a bank for that, so I made a business plan together with a friend, asking all kinds of people to read it through. In the end there was somebody who wanted to lend me the money to buy the property. David: Actually the vision for this place is get an own internal economy running. Like in Findhorn, Scotland. http://www.findhorn.org/whatwedo/community/community.php There are autonomous economic subsystems, a dozen of separate businesses e.g. for training/seminars, forestry, solar heating etc. They circulate their money inside the community. This is how you create wealth. In main stream economies the money just streams through. The people buy the products in the supermarket and the money goes off to the corporate headquarters. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Findhorn_Foundation ORGANICVISION: How did you find the location? Jeanne: I looked for 4 years for a place, visiting hundreds of places. But this one, as soon as I saw the wall, I knew that is it. It was not even on the real estate market back then, people who knew I was looking for a place told me about it.
July 2009 ORGANICVISION: Would you consider yourself an organic farmer? Jeanne: Yes and no. We are building up a project here. We are building on the concept of organic farming, but it is much bigger, it is not just about the land. I am convinced that there is more in the world than you can see. For me that is consciousness. I want to make a place where people can live it, search for it. We call our place the “Gate to inspiration”. We do not want to change people, but inspiring them. Looking and listening to nature and organic farming is an important part of it. One year ago I did not even know what permaculture is, but when I found out about it, I knew that we have to integrate it in our project. Permaculture goes deep. It is also about looking at yourself. ORGANICVISION: How did you learn about permaculture? Jeanne: I had somebody working in our garden who wanted to go to a permaculture course in the Netherlands. I just told her to make the teacher come to Kasteel Nieuwenhoven and that is how we got to know Taco Blom, who is now living here and teaching permaculture. And we have David, who is the permaculture systems consultant, integrating permaculture principles in our everyday life. He is a trained biologist, zoologist. “Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and perennial agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in the natural ecologies. It was first developed by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren and their associates during the 1970s in a series of publications. The word permaculture is a portmanteau of permanent agriculture, as well as permanent culture.”1
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture
July 2009
ORGANICVISION: What kind of plants do you grow and what kind of animals do you have here at Kasteel Nieuwenhoven? David: We have 4 horses, 1 donkey, chickens, alpacas (relatives of lamas) and several hundred kinds of fruits and vegetables. For years and years they grew only corn on the field. Now we have different varieties of pears, apples, prunes, cherries, walnuts, hazel, chestnuts, lentils, turnips, carrots, pastinaks,… – this is principle of permaculture. If one year something knocks out the turnips one year we have carrots to eat. And everytime we go somewhere, we bring new plants with us!
ORGANICVISION: Can you tell us, how you organize the work at Kasteel Nieuwenhoven? Jeanne: Two years ago I started this project. In the first year, I took the responsibiity off all the tasks by myself, i got a lot off help from other people. Now there are people who take up tasks, farming, administration…we are growing now to a system of autonomous subsystems that interact with each other. Like a tree in a forest. David: Or take the story of two watchmakers who each make the same watch out of 1000 pieces. One watchmaker makes the watch out of 10 units that are each made out of 10 subunits. So whenever he gets disturbed, he does not have to start from zero. The heart of permaculture is taking the way systems work in nature and modelling our systems on it. The habit of the industrial society is very different from that. Despite the better technology, we work more and more. Hunter and gatherers society spend 3-4 hours a day on food/shelter. Most of the time they relax, like animals. So let things take care of themselves. When you are stressed, your intelligence goes down.
July 2009 ORGANICVISION: What are the difficulties you are facing? David: There are challenges every day! Put people from different cultures and backgrounds together and sometimes it is wow and sometimes we are so complementary and sometimes it is a madhouse, different ways of doing things, cultures and people clashing. ORGANICVISION: Do you follow any kind of training in organic farming or where you look for advice? David: The internet is a tremendous resource. Moreover we invite a lot of experts to tell us about particular issues. Then we are also part of the European Network of eco-villages, that provides access to information and communication between the projects, it supports legislation, access to funding. They do various events, there are workshops. ORGANICVISION: Do you want to become self-sufficient one day? Jeanne: That comes very close to our vision. I do not know if we can completely achieve it, but we do a step towards it every day. ORGANICVISION: What are the next steps? Jeanne: We do not know yet in detail. We have a plan, but it includes the flexibility for change. You have to know that you are ignorant, so we need to stay flexible. ORGANICVISION: Thank you for the interview and lots of success, Jeanne and David! http://www.kasteelnieuwenhoven.be/
Literature on permaculture:
David from Kasteel Nieuwenhoven recommended us to read “The Essence of Permaculture” by the Australian David Holmgren. Together with Bill Mollison they wrote many publications, becoming the founding fathers of permaculture. To see permaculture in action check out: http://permacultureprinciples.com/videos.php There is also a good magazine about permaculture. Find out if your library has it, otherwise order on http://www.permaculture-magazine.co.uk/
July 2009
Have you ever heard of transition towns?
…We had not - before our stay at Kasteel Nieuwenhoven! There however, we met a guy who was building up his own Transition Town group in Gent (Belgium) and he was more than enthusiastic about it: “Why wait for governments to make us find a way out of the unsustainable, fossil fuel based, industrialized, and centralized way of living? It is not in their interest! So we need local solutions to find out how our community can respond to the challenges, and opportunities, of Peak Oil and Climate Change. Like Transition towns!”, is how he summarized it. To better understand the principles of the Transition movement, he showed us a video about “The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil”. An amazing film portraying Cuba´s transition in the 1990ies from a highly mechanized, industrial agricultural system to one using organic methods of farming and local, urban gardens. The trigger for all this was the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, that cut Cuba's imports of oil by more than half and food by 80 percent. This film tells of the hardships and struggles as well as the community and creativity of the Cuban people during this difficult time. We can just absolutely recommend everybody to watch it! http://www.livevideo.com/video/mercofspeech/CD893609A0CB495D9A9C F04AC9E4AEFF/power-of-community-how-cuba-.aspx To know more about the Transition Town movement or get involved, go to: http://transitiontowns.org/Main/HomePage|
Meet our friend from the Bighead-Farm in the US!
A young organic farmer from the USA, Karen Warner, who has just started up her own farm, contacted us recently. She shares all the joys and worries of organic farming on her blog: http://bigheadfarm.wordpress.com In the next newsletter you will find an interview with her!