Meeting at Warung Bambu on 23 Aug 10

The meeting took place at Warung Bambu, Pemaron, 3pm-5pm.
Participants: Beate and Nana, Tanya, Susanne, Ibu Widi, Wayan Ardika and myself. We welcomed John Palmer as a new participant.
The main subject was to organize a marketplace in Lovina for local organic products like fresh vegetables, herbs, homemade preserves, traditionally manufactured arts and crafts, recycled products, natural cosmetics etc. and for sharing information about healthy and sustainable living.
The following issues came up:
Where, when, how often
Conchita is asking the permission of the members of the Rotary Club for the use of their meeting hall. The market will take place every Saturday from 9am to 12am. The starting date and the details still have to be decided with the members of the Rotary Club.
Certification
As it might be difficult to get organic certification all products for sale must state their origin with producer name, adress and phone number and it should be possible to visit the production or growing site.
Who, what
We made a list with products to start with:

• Pegasusfarm: herbs, vegetables and seedlings
• Susanne: aloe vera, seasonal fruits
• Gaia Oasis: aloe vera, eggplants, salads, basil, rucola, lemon grass, honey
• Beate: Bali rice, Bali Asli products, Neem Oil
• Wayan: cocoa powder, oranges in May/June, compost, eggs, honey
• Justin: natural cosmetics and mosquito repellents

As soon as place and start date are fixed the organic market will be announced to the public by local newspapers, flyers, round letters, information boards, websites etc. If you want to take part in the market as a seller please contact one of the participants.

organic Bali rice on the left side

• Nana provided a rice tasting of his organically grown Bali rice and the conventional rice where we could see the difference with our eyes and smell it with our taste buds. The Bali rice takes 140 days to ripen while the conventional rice is already ripe in 90 days.
• Susanne informed that the Indonesian government currently imports rice and garlic from China which is cheaper than the local rice and garlic and gives the local farmers a hard time. So watch out what you are buying!
• Wayan informed that the quality of the cocoa beans of our region is very good according to some german chocolatiers who tasted them.
• Beate wants to know how F1 Hybrids are made and how they work.
  
• Nana mentioned that the flavour of fruits from plants which get seabreeze is often more tasty.
• Please have a look at the website of Embun Pagi. It is a newly opened Permaculture Education site 40km from Kuala Lumpur where you can join the 72h Permaculture Design Certificate Course from 23 Nov to 5 Dec taught by Greg Knibbs and Chakra Widia from Bali.
• By googling for "organic indonesia" I just found the website for all things organic in Indonesia which I added to the link list.

Our next event will be an excursion to Green Leaf Farm in Bedugul at the end of September. Details will be emailed.

Meeting at Pegasus Farm on August 6, 2010

Mark explaining the life of soils under the Bamboo Pergola at Pegasus Farm

After more than a year we met again at Pegasus Farm where for some of us the journey into the Permaculture adventure started. Tanya and Gede were our hosts and invited us to sit under a lovely shaded bamboo pergola. As usual Beate guided us through the gathering not losing the red thread. We were quite a croud, 5 people from Gaia Oasis, Beate with her gardener, Burgel, Burkhard, Anne with her son Jens and Wayan with his wife, Susanne and Marylin, Klaus, Gina from Sananda Center, Annette and Nyoman, Conchita from Lovina Pages and myself with my gardener Kadek and last but not least Mark Garrett from Australia who offered to join us and share his knowledge about Permaculture Design with us. Everybody was very interested to learn more about soils, the different qualities, its life and how it can be built, taken care of and improved.

Some facts about soil to keep in mind:

• In the tropics 80% of the plant nutrients are held in the foliage. Therefore crops can only be sustainable if these nutrients are used from tree leaf-drop and root mass.
• We are not feeding the plant, but the beneficial biota and microorganisms in the soil which later release the nutrients in plant usable form. Grow your soil! Encourage soil life!
• Bare soil is damaged soil. Always cover soil with mulch. Grow the mulch you need around the gardenbeds and chop and drop. Good mulching plants are lemon grass, vetiver grass, comfrey, canna lillies and legumes such as pinto beans (ask Beate for seeds).
• Grass and fruit trees compete with each other for nitrogen. Prevent the grass within the area of the trees drip line by mulching or planting a ground cover such as marigolds or pinto beans.
• Why is it important to know the pH of your soil? The pH is a measurement for the acidity - alkalinity of the soil. It ranges from 1, very acid, to 14, very alkaline, with 7 as its neutral point. The pH-Level influences the availability of nutrients to the plants. At pH 7 all nutrients are available. At a lower pH, which means more acidic soil, some nutrients such as phosphorus, calcium and magnesium become less available and can manifest in plant deficiencies. The same happens with a more alkaline soil. Usually in the tropics you find acidic soils.
• How to test the pH of your soil? There are easy test kits available in Australia. If anybody knows a provider here in Bali, please let us know.
• How to bring your soil towards pH 7? As a general rule mix in compost and mulch heavily. For specific situations analyze your soil well and observe the plants if they show any diseases or deficiencies. As a fast cure use foliar spray of seaweed extract or liquid manure.

For more details on soils there is a specific chapter in the Permaculture Designer's Manual of Bill Mollison.

Some questions were raised regarding treatment for pests and diseases. Try not only to treat the symptoms but also to find the cause, very often an imbalance in the system. Nobody knows all the answers. Go and try, come back and tell!

Beate's red tiger compost worms from Temesi have been very busy and turned all the cow manure and food scraps into worm castings. What to do next with them? Just put everything on a plastic sheet into the sun. The worms will retreat to the coolest spot. Take away the worm castings and put the worms back to their container with new cow manure. Worm castings are excellent for seedlings.

Conchita will write an article about our group and the meeting in the october issue of the Lovina Pages.

Marylin offered 2 DVD's about Permaculture to the group. She will also take orders for things that are only available in Australia.
There will be another meeting in August at Warung Bambu to discuss and organize an organic market in Lovina.
The meeting in September will be an excursion to design the new site of Beate in the village of Manuksesa.
Detailed information and dates of the events will be sent by email.

THANK YOU Mark and all the participants for contributing time, interest and sharing knowledge!

Excursion to Temesi on June 18, 2010

Beate had organised an excursion to the Temesi Waste Recycling Plant near Gianyar and offered to drive us there. She is a great example for Permaculture fulfilling so many functions in one person! Thank you, Beate. Burgel, Burkhart, Gede and Komang from Villa Manuk and me joined the group. Thank you, Burkhart for navigating us there through the maze of Bali's roads.

our group with our compost guide

huge pipes are aerating the compost heaps

After an early babi guling lunch at a Warung we reached the plant around 11am. David, the enthusiastic, crazy and persistent heart of the project, greeted us and a skillful employee took us on a tour. We were very impressed by the sheer size of the plant and the little smells. In a big open hall several huge heaps of organic waste lay in a row. 40 tons of waste are daily delivered from the region of Gianyar to the plant. The drivers have to pay an entrance fee. At one end of the long hall workers from Java sort the waste into organic and non-organic. They are paid 40000Rp. per ton. The bigger parts in the organic waste are shreddered first and then put together with the smaller parts onto a heap. This is the first heap in the row. All heaps are aerated several times every hour and after 2 weeks turned over to the place of the preceding heap. The last heap of the row is sieved and packed into bags. The rest goes through the process again. Some of the mature compost is mixed with cow manure and then granulated to be used as fertilizer. The plastic which was sorted out is recycled into various products like shopping bags and woven storage boxes.

end of the composting process: sieving machine

After the tour David offered us some time for answering questions and sharing some insights like:

• How the plant covers its costs.
• How soil analysis is done by measuring pH, connectivity (mineral content) and content of organic material.
• How the diseases of coklat and banana trees probably can be healed by the microorganisms contained in compost.
• The principles of aerob vs. anaerob compost.
• How the kyoto protocol works by selling CO2 credits.
• How difficult it is to sell the compost because many farmers already forgot how to use compost. The price for a 20kg bag high quality compost is 20'000Rp.

As a souvenir we all got some red tiger compost worms.

View from Sari Organik Restaurant in Ubud

Our next stop was Ubud, where we walked through the rice fields to Sari Organik, an organic farm with restaurant. We had a delicious lunch with wonderful view over the rice fields. Then we visited the organic garden.

Solar drier at Sari Organik, Ubud

On the drive home we discussed about promoting walking and setting up a website for trecking in Buleleng connecting existing information and documenting new discoveries.

Meeting at Warung Bambu on May 15, 2010

The Meeting was held at Warung Bambu from 3pm to 6pm. Burkhard, Johann, Beate and partially her husband Nana, my friend Teres from Portugal and myself shared the following topics and experiences:

Evelyn about Mind and Life Conference in Zurich, Switzerland, about Altruism and Compassion in Economic Systems:
I was very excited to be at the same time in Zurich as the Dalai Lama and having the opportunity to participate in the above Conference which was accompanied by him. The Conference was held as a dialogue in 5 parts on 3 days between leading women and men from the fields of Economics, Neuroscience and Contemplative Sciences such as Philosophy and Buddhism. On the detailed proceedings of the conference please read this blog and find information about the Mind and Life Institute here.
picture
My highlights from the conference:
When I studied economics in the eighties, emotions and compassion were explicitly excluded from economic laws and the whole science was based on a egocentric view of the human being which only wants to maximize his own benefit. This view is changing. Finally altruism and compassion start to be included into economic science.
It is not only talking. There exist already many projects which are based on ethics, compassion and generosity like

• the barefoot college in India, which trains grandmothers from Africa and India as solar engineers within 6 months
• the Forma Futura Invest company which invests and manages funds based on 180 criterias including ethical and ecological ones
• big banks who suddenly invest in microfinance projects. ok, they do it because they realize that these projects are successful.

The conclusion that we are all connected and therefore everyone counts and is important. Start with yourself and be the change you want to see in the world.

Evelyn about her visit of Tamera Healing Biotope in Portugal:
Tamera is an experimental and educating site for the building of peace villages worldwide. It is located in the Alentejo, a very dry region in southwest Portugal, on 134ha of land. Currently more than 200 people live and study there. A part of the project is the permaculture design for a village with 300 people. The main issue in this region is the water supply. With 600mm/year there is enough rainfall, but due to mismanagement like overgrazing and roads built in the valleys the water runs away too quickly leaving the soil dry and causing erosion. Tamera asked Sepp Holzer, a permaculturist from Austria, for help and he immediately envisioned a landscape with connected lakes where the water can slowly sip into the earth. 2 years ago they started with building dams, moving the road and terracing the land around the lakes. Thanks to heavy rainfalls in the winter the lakes are already filled, the terraces are planted with various fruit trees and guilds of veggies. It looks like a miracle. Many wild animals are already attracted to the lakes. The river which usually went dry in summer runs now all year round. Yes, it can be done! Please find more information about Tamera on their website.

Beate told us that for a Visa to Germany you have to apply now at the embassy in Jakarta instead of Kuta. She went there and had a great time shopping.

Beate told us about her experiences from the participation at the Earth Day in Ubud. The theme was "what are you doing to make the world a little better". Many locals took part and were very motivated. Beate made valuable contacts. Her highlight was riding an electro bike through Ubud. She suggests that we take part next year with our group.

Beate has contacts to a group who wants to find and build trecking paths in Bali. How exciting to walk around Bali by foot. In the Algarve in Portugal they just finished the Via Algarviana, a walking path through the countryside to promote a sustainable development of the region.

BIWA wants to sponsor a digital mammogram machine at the cost of US$ 69000 for breast cancer diagnosing. Teres mentioned articles and studies that this does not prevent breast cancer. The only way to prevent breast cancer is a healthy lifestyle. So instead of investing money in an expensive machine it is probably better invested in promoting and educating women in a healthy lifestyle.

Burkhart informed us that in Lovina from now on only cow shit is allowed as fertilizer for rice.

We talked about how the meetings could be improved so that more people get interested and take part. The next meeting will be an excursion to the Temesi waste recycling project on Friday, June 18.

A visit in Sambirenteng. Minutes of the meeting on 15 April 2010

Last week a small group of us (Annett, Nyoman, Beate, Johann, Pak Suwenten and me Burgel) went to visit the building site of Holiway in Sambirenteng, north east coast Bali. Thank you Maria and Stefan for inviting us!
It's a large plot of land, a part will be built up with villas and the other part with bungalows. The concept is to create a place for "holidays with sense" in an environment friendly surrounding. Therefor buildings like seminar rooms for different kind of seminar and body work, swimming-pool and installations for waste water treatment and alternative energy are planned.
First we inspected the land protecting wall towards the sea. "Geotextil", a 100 year lasting material, is put in layers in that way, that soil is not washed away (and it even catches sand towards the land). To hold everything large volcanic stones are put to a wall with a slope. It is important to arrange the stones in the right way, then it will last a long long time. No concrete at all is added. For better protection vetiver grass with its very long roots is planted in a long line the whole length of the retaining wall. Hopefully the place is not too salty for this excellent land protecting plant.
Besides "geotextil" another interesting materiel is used there: a kind of styrofoam with both sides covered with thin aluminum. This is used as roof isolation to keep the coolness inside the rooms and to reflect the heat from the sun. Air conditioning is planned for the rooms, so with this isolation for sure energy will be saved.
Electricity from solar energy is planned for machines and devices which are used during day time, such as washing machines and pool pump. So, no need for batteries.
Johann recommended "Solahart" to make hot water with their solar water heater. The cheaper product line from Solahart is called "Handal".
For the waste water treatment they use the system from "IndoBio". 5 houses are joined together for one 3-chamber-system. One chamber has aerob bacteria, the other one anerob bacteria and the last one is with ozone. In the end the water is 95% cleansed and it will be used to water the garden. Too much toilet paper causes problems to this system. Unbleached toilet paper can't be found in Bali.(Does someone know where? Please tell us!) Therefor toilets with integrated hygiene "wiping" with water in stead of dry cleaning with paper are already ordered. Hopefully the future guests and owners will understand.
A nice lunch filled our hungry bellies before we were leaving this interesting site.

Bali, Greece, Africa, trees everywhere!

Remember the beautiful story by Jean Giono, The Man Who Planted Trees, which Norm gave to us to read during or Permaculture seminar last year? Well, there are people who turn fiction to reality.
Please watch the following inspiring video about a man who planted one million trees in his homeland Ethiopia.
I started also, here in Paros, Greece :)
My warmest wishes to all of you

Permaculture-Excursion to the Bukit on 23rd of March 2010

On the 23rd of March a few of our club joined an excursion to the South of Bali to learn more about Solar-Energy.
Thanks to the kind invitation of Florian Nitsch from Contained Energy to meet in the R.O.L.E Foundation we all visited for the first time this place with great Education, Awareness & Assistance Programs. We were specially interested in the Eco Construction and Organic Agriculture.

At first we got information about solar energy, solar dryer, biogas and how to produce small torches from Jatropha oil. Sitting in the shadow on the top of the site in the nice ROLE café (with amazing view!)we enjoyed to discuss in detail all our ideas and question we had concerning solar energy. Thank you Florian for all the useful information and your time.
solar dryer

 

 

 

torches made of jatropha oil and kapok
 

We finsihed our visit in the R.O.L.E foundation after we got a guided tour through other parts of the area where we could visit the Spa and got explanation about Aloe vera, also very interesting the weaving program and the Organic Agriculture Site.
For sure it was not the last time we have been there.

Afterwards we visited the office of Solar Power Indonesia. Without having an appointment we were very lucky to meet the Engineering Manager who gave us also valuable information.