In the past five days, lectures have been held in the office of UG Nešto Više in Mostar and on our experimental farm in Humilišani, with practical work in the field of permaculture. Over twenty participants actively participate in the course. Many topics were covered, from the fact that the second day of the course Ivan Gregov took us through the basic principles of PC, and zoning the system, reading the landscape and determining the key points. and Damir Šeler told us about permaculture thinking about agriculture, soil texture and structure, interventions in the system, and then we studied composting and a hoeless garden. On the third day we learned about observing patterns in the pristine parts of the farm, about the edible wild plants that abound, and everywhere. We also watched some great videos with Damir and talked about the miraculous possibilities and creative permaculture solutions, as well as the forest gardens. Then Ivan and I started a block on water, and a little more specifically went into the issue of storing rainwater. We ended the evening with Shauberger and solutions based on his remarkable observations. On the fourth day, we continued with interesting topics: water (making lakes, aquaponics, separation and recycling of gray water using the so-called reed bed or swamp bed, recycling of black water – compost toilet). Then we moved on to permaculture construction: an overview of nice materials, examples of construction with natural materials, creating green roofs on sloping roofs, passive household heating … On the fifth day we talked a bit about the concepts of entropy and energy balance. We went through the details of the types of photovoltaic systems, and paid attention to the advantages and disadvantages of stand-alone and network systems. The next topic was wind turbines, followed by bio-mass energy (mass oven and rocket stove heater), and the use of compost and bio-gas as energy sources.
We then covered very interesting topics of alternative economics and urban agriculture, and discussed various examples of food growing in cities, including Cuba, which employed over 400,000 people through permaculture approaches to urban agriculture in the 1980s.
Lots, lots of interesting things to hear and learn!
We will continue in the coming days
see more photos here
