Latest poster for the summer camp! (update: also in Spanish)

A group of us are heading to site in May to start site preparations. Please get in touch if you would like to join us.

Plans are rapidly developing for Open E Land Camp 2012, which will probably be in mid August. If you’re interested in coming or contributing, please fill out our survey.

As we all know, industrial agriculture is entirely dependent on fossil fuels. Modern organic agriculture can do away with fertilisers and pesticides, which pollute our freshwater and damage the environment, and can even match the productivity and profitability of conventional agriculture, but is this enough to deliver resilience in the face of climate change and energy scarcity?

Just 15 crop plants provide 90 percent of the world’s food energy. Most of these are annuals, grown in enormous monocultures which need the earth to be prepared at the start of every season and to be replanted at the end. We have developed breeds to suit the needs of industrial agriculture, but at the cost of disease susceptibility and loss of biodiversity.

Forest gardening is a different approach to agricultural production, where complex polycultures are designed to operate in three dimensions. They can be massively productive, support a huge biodiversity and with their emphasis on trees and perennial crops require very little maintenance. Robert Heart, inspired by tropical forest gardens, adapted and popularised their application in temperate climates. Now there are many mature projects across the world, including some nearish to Open E Land (and some, further away) and an impressive urban forest garden project has recently been launched in Seattle.

Martin Crawford’s forest garden is amazing. Here is a brief video of him introducing the ideas:

There’s recording available of him taking a tour around his garden too:

A forest garden seems the ideal project for Open E Land – an interesting applied permaculture project to experiment with, looks after itself most of the time, low overall maintenance, and a great learning and teaching resource. I’m reading Martin Crawford’s amazing Creating A Forest Garden book and hope to establish a nursery when I next come to site and start planting what could be come the basis of the future forest garden.

Our geodesic dome is currently covered with tarpaulins. These are difficult to secure tightly against the wind and will probably wear out as they rub against the structure. One suggestion was to cover the done in hessian and cement. Although cement isn’t the most eco friendly material, we wouldn’t need very much and it would create a durable, waterproof covering.

After a bit little bit of googling I came across a discussion of burlap crete. This post gives some pictures of a substantial project using this material:

The main issue seems to be getting the concrete to set quickly enough. If the concrete flexes before it sets then it never strengthens and starts to crumble. Professional versions of this immobilise the setting concrete for 24hr with an inflatable air bag (this seems to be their patent on the use of spacer fabric).

This post describes skipping the hessian and going straight to cement on chicken wire, (and this adds the advice of going one segment at a time). Our dome is about 60m^2, which would be a little over €100 euros to cover in 13mm sized mesh. If we used say 15 25kg bags of cement (about €50?) we’d be clocking up about 375kg of CO2, but when this is compared to 650 kgs of CO2e per square meter for a modern eco development it makes our 27 sq m dome look pretty efficient.

Update (13/3/12): more information about ferrocement at www.ferrocement.com.

Lots of plans in progress for Open E Land over the summer. Updates will be posted here, but to get involved in the discussion and planning please join our mailing list.

You can subscribe to the list with a google account and this link, or by sending an email to open-e-land+subscribe@googlegroups.com.

Posted a couple visualisations based on the 3d map to the Site Info page.

We learnt a lot on our expedition to Extremadura. Most of the really useful stuff, like where the local spring or where the useful shops are, we got from talking to people but we also got some really useful online resources too.

Daniel build our stove with the materials we had at hand, but this is a really useful guide to making wood burning space heaters. Ours is designed to be a cooking stove as well, but it’s clear it could benefit from a heat exchanger as described in the guide.

We were hoping to cover our dome in straw and render it with earth and lime, and this fabulous straw bale building guide was huge help as was this guide to earthen renders,
but a number of factors pursued us right now was the the time. One of them was winter is not the time to buy straw – of the people we found on Agrodigital and Milanuncious wanted a 5 tonne minimum order at 600+ euros.

We managed to find powdered “aerial” hydrated lime (“Cal Aerea Hidratada CL-70-S”) at our local building merchant in Montehermoso, which after consulting this guide to lime products looks like it might be right stuff. Would be be great to hear any other experiences of sourcing or using lime products in Spain.

We were hoping to cover our geodesic dome in straw and clay, but some advice from the European Strawbale Building list persuaded us it would be a good idea to focus on a different structure, or at least delay the rendering until the weather warms up.

I did some larger tests of the earth on top of the hill from near the dome. A soil separation indicated around 20% sand, lot of silt and an uncertain level of clay. The first image is subsoil soil mixed with water and allowed to dry for a day. The test sample is about 50cm x 50cm by 5cm thick.

The sample was not completely dry and clearly showed large amounts of cracking. The second test was the same soil but mixed with about 30% sand. The sand came from one of the areas of exposed sandy subsoil, from the which the clay and silt had been washed out. The washed sand was still quite dark but was very gritty and the noticably changed the texture of the earth and water mix. Unfortunately this sample also cracked:

I also did a soil separation test from an area on the on side of the hill, near the toilet. This showed an around 20% sand and an excess of silt and almost no clay. It’s hoped the earth on the flat ground at the bottom of the hill by the stream will have more clay.

Also, a quick picture of the fruit trees which were planted down on the flat ground. If you’re visiting Open E Land please water!

There’s also a large patch of potatoes planted nearby – look for the stake in the ground, and rocks to mark the plantings.

Well, that’s it. Base camp established, minimum infrastructure built, site inhabitable.
Me and Chris have now left the site.

We didn’t get a hexayurt or greenhouse built, but that was more for not being able to easily source materials (mostly due to transportation issues, somewhat for language, partly for apparent lack of local availability) than time constraints.

We were working with two models in mind; a) people come in while we’re there and take over the build, or b) no one in their right mind even begins to think about being out on the land until closer to Summer.
I, for one, am not really that surprised that it’s turned out to be B.

We’ve had a couple expression of interest for build workshops already, including one from a strawbale builder, and possibly from the local Earthship guys. We’re starting in on the planning of a camp there, probably round Juneish. Exactly when people start drifting out to the site and take up the reigns depends on who wants to do what with what’s there, and when.
Also depending on this is the actual social/community model under which the thing operates, in terms of decision making, membership, technological aims etc. Might pay to start thinking about this now.

For a full breakdown on the site and it’s resources, see here.

Daniel, for the time being, signing off.