Support our Ecovillage project!

We are Eva, Sacha, Jacques and Sjaak, a group of young people from all around Europe, who decided two years ago to start an Ecovillage in the region of Burgos, in Spain. For us, this project gives the possibility to live the dream of an alternative, sustainable and environmentally-friendly lifestyle. We are living in an abandoned village in the mountain, and want to restore and give it life again. In the past 2 years, we have implemented different projects, such as extensive cattle farming, biodynamic garden, homebrewed beer, and forest management. We are since a few months certified organic, and are highly motivated to keep on developing our life's project! The financial side is of course a big part of it, being the limiting factor for many project's development. We are now starting this funding, in order to develop the following projects: - restoration of the historical village's bakery - buy a greenhouse for the garden - reforestation / agroforestry / arboretum - water management Here is a little description of all of them, a bit more detailed: Restoration of the historical bakery One of the old ruins in the village used to be the communal bakery in the old days. It is a small building of 3 by 5 meters. The walls are still standing up to a meter and a half, but the roof is entirely nonexistent. We want to rebuild the walls, put a roof on it, construct a big wood oven and complete it with a little inside kitchen! With this bakery we will provide ourselves of our daily bread, and will we be able to host cultural and educational events where we can feed the visitors with our own produce.  Greenhouse for the garden A big part on the way to full self-sufficiency goes through food independence, and thus food production. A vegetable garden has been initiated in spring 2016, based on permaculture principles. 10 raised-beds have been implemented, and a solar dryer of 20m2 of drying surface has been constructed, for food conservation purposes. We are growing mostly rustic/forgotten types of vegetables, and would like to make some trials with more exotic species. Nevertheless, we live in the mountain.. The garden is at 800m, and the winter season is pretty wide, with frost until end of May... In order to be able to use the full potential of our lovely garden, and have veggies all year long, we really need to get a proper tunnel-greenhouse! But it is pretty expensive…  Reforestation / Agroforestry / Arboretum Based on our principle to live in a sustainable way in harmony with nature, we oblige ourselves to give more than we take from our environment. However, to fulfill our basic needs we depend on the same natural resources we are trying to replenish. We heat our houses with firewood and expand the village using locally sourced natural building materials. In addition, we want to continue decreasing our dependance on the food industry by planting fruit and nut trees in an agroforestry system. Therefore, we see it as our responsibility to stand up for what is right and plant trees to expand the forest and improve the biodiversity of the whole mountain. Considering the fact that all the surrounding lands in the valley are packed with conventional monoculture, there has been a massive depletion of resources for the last decades, if not centuries. This is detrimental for the soil, water, vegetation and wildlife. To counter this negative impact we dedicate ourselves to plant trees. Using native species and especially beneficial non-invasive exotic species, we will enhance all these aspects, improving quality of life for all living beings in the mountain and further downstream.  Water management In the area we live in, like in many areas in Spain, the summer months are almost completely without rain, and at the start of summer the valley turns from lush green into a dry area with a hard solid soil. Therefore, we would like to establish a water management system  which would make the melting waters of spring being soaked up by the land as much as possible, instead of having a spring flood which is eroding the mountain, leaving the valley dry in summer. By doing this, we hope to set an example for the region by having a green valley while the surrounding lands are all dried up and yellow. We have implemented these existing techniques on a small scale during the last year and have seen an amazing result with this, and now would like to scale it up to provide our gardens and fields with sufficient ground water whole year long.  Adding to those ''basic-needs projects'', we also have a lot more to develop (implementation of workshops and events, creation of association, website, ...)! Those projects' costs are estimated to be around 2000 euros in total, which would then allow us to speed-up their implementations, and help supporting the idea that another world, based on the respect of the environment, sustainability and sharing can exist! We will update with you through this page how your support has been used, and hopefully in a few weeks we can present you our website, with more information about our activities :)