Visit at Moon River Lodge

Pioneering for ...

... their future

Sometimes when our high-flying enthusiasm hits the ground we need a little refresh from friends or likeminded people. So I took the chance, when I was in Kuala Lumpur for a Visa Run, to visit my Perma-Buddies Billie and Peng Keat from Melbourne at their project site Moon River Lodge in the Sigar Highlands. I boarded the new ETS which took me in a little more than 2 hours from KL Sentral to Ipoh, a city which emerged out of the tin boom of the 1880's. Billie with a car full of kids picked me up at the station and we headed strait towards Moon River Lodge which is located near the Cameron Highlands. On the winding road we passed many commercial plastic tent farms who export their fresh produce like vegetables, strawberries and flowers to Singapore. Good short term profits but not sustainable as they depend on cheap oil for earth moving equipment, carry in fertilizers, run the pumps for the irrigation systems and carry out the produce to the markets. They just use the cooler climate and don't care about the soil. With Moon River Lodge and Sigar Highlands as projects based on permaculture ethics and design principles Billie and Peng Keat are the pioneers in the region.

Commercial Farms in the Cameron Highlands

Many family members, friends and volunteers are involved in the project and I meet some of them. Peng Keat's mother Nancy supervises the earth works for the access road into the jungle and organises the kitchen crew. Peng Keat's father and Mr. Loo share their knowledge about seeds and growing veggies with me. From Tom, who is visiting with his girlfriend Julie for the weekend, I learn about his turtle protecting project on Tioman Island. It is a vibrant and inspiring atmosphere amongst all these people and I feel welcome and accepted like in a big family.
Billie takes the visitors on a tour around the lodge. Food and flowers are growing everywhere. The passionfruits are abundant and taste like heaven. Lots of leafy green delicacies to pick just outside the open kitchen. A herb spiral, covered nursery and tomato beds, chicken shed, rabbit hutch, worm farm, composting area and tool shed complete zone 1. A little further away is the area for the children's garden, easy to oversee. Some of the mandala- and keyhole-beds are already laid out. Lots of cuttings covered in compost are waiting to be planted by the volunteers who will arrive the following Monday. Later we follow one of the workers on a treck along the little river into the bamboo jungle to a water fall. After one day city jungle in Kuala Lumpur it is a blessing to be here. In the fresh mountain air and with nature's night tune I sleep like a baby.
Sunday is family day. Kid's playing, sharing delicious food and interesting stories, going again through the garden, observing, taking my time and some pictures. Then the family leaves and stillness spreads over the place. The Weekend is over.
Monday is snake day. The workers catch an impressing python which is injured at the back. After breakfast I hike the 9km long trail around the valley of the Moon River Lodge. I collect some nuts and seeds I have never seen before. The trail is quite challenging, lots of ups and downs, but also rewarding with its many view points. After 3 hours already tired and a little worried whether still on the right trail I stop and look around. The sun is already shining hot and nothing is moving. I lift my foot, look down and freeze. Just in front of me lies a 1.5m snake across the trail taking a sun bath. It is definitely not a python, but what then? Better stepping back first and then guessing. I take a picture and then I throw a piece of wood to give her a chance to escape. She takes the offer and slowly winds into the bushes.
In the afternoon Peng Keat brings two volunteers from Holland, Sofie and Stefanie. Together we start sheet mulching the mandala beds and planting the cuttings. The day and my stay ends with a tasty dinner at an Indian Restaurant in Blue Valley. It is Tim's birthday. Delicious roti and roti tisu and many colourful little bowls of yummy-yummies.

Just outside the kitchen: Zone 1 facilities

Trail into the Bamboo Jungle

Wild Vanilla climbing up a tall tree

Snake sunbathing...

Seeds and nuts collected on the trail

Volcanoes: Are you ready?

Just imagine you live in a village near Gunung Merapi.
If your village is within 20km from the peak you will have to evacuate. How do you leave? What do you take with you? Where do you go? Which route do you take?
If your village is outside 20km of the peak or the way to evacuate is blocked you will have to seek shelter from raining ashes and stones and hot gases and rivers becoming mudflows and other hazards. Where do you shelter? What do you need in your shelter for the next days, weeks? What do you need to protect yourself when leaving the shelter? Imagine there is still a lot of ash and debris and toxic gases. How do you keep informed and in contact with the outside world?
The following links might give you some answers:
- Current reports of the activity of Gunung Merapi from PVMBG (Pusat Volkanologi dan Mitigasi Bencana Geologi)
- Eruptionblog of Eric Klemetti, a passionate volcanologist
- Desaster preparation from FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency, USA)

Stay alert and prepare!

Opportunity

Have you ever dreamt of living in a tropical paradise? This is the chance to make your dream come true! Great opportunity to learn about Permaculture in a tropical climate, to join in Balinese village life or just take a break from a stressful lifestyle. JUST DO IT!



Greetings

We will be returning to New Zealand end of October for one year and would like to rent out our beautiful home in Kayu Putih, Buleleng. It really is a peaceful place set at the end of the village in the hills above Lovina, surrounded by beautiful gardens and if you are here in mango season we have a whole organic mango grove you can help yourself to! Only a ten minute drive from Central Lovina.

• two bedroom
• two bathrooms (one outdoor)
• upstairs space which could be used for study or storing etc.
• beautiful balcony with sea views overlooking east java volcanoes, beautiful sunsets
• hot water
• set on one and a half hectare of organically farmed land full of fruit trees and vegetable gardens, also four horses available for riding.
• including full time house maid trained to western standard who can bake and cook great food
• 2'500'000 Rp per month

Please contact Tanya on +62(0)81 264 703 085 or email to pegasusonbali@gmail.com.
Find more details and pictures on our website: www.pegasus-organic-farm.blogspot.com

Thank you and kind regards to everyone

Tanya & Gede

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.