Permaculture page 3
Recent
developments
at Kailash-Akhara, Adi Yoga Retreat Center,
Phu Rua, Loei, Thailand.
By David
Perkins (Dharmadeva) – Farm Manager and resident
permaculture designer and educator at Kailash-Akhara.
This
report provides an overview of many aspects of
creating a retreat center and living sustainably using
the principles of permaculture. Short updates will be
given regularly to keep our wider community informed.
See Part I and Part II if you haven’t already.
First
phase of building is now complete
After a year
and a half of construction in the core area,
painting was completed just before an opening
ceremony and party to celebrate the annual
festival of Guru Purnima on the full moon in July.
Four buildings make up the core area: The
Temple/Training Hall, Dormitory, Kitchen-Dining
Room, and Bath House with composting toilets. We
are now practicing, sleeping, cooking, eating,
showering, doing laundry, and recycling our poop
in shiny new surroundings – a level of relative
luxury compared to the stripped-down facilities we
began with.
Fruit from grey water
Water from
personal bathing, washing dishes, and laundry, is
dirty, but it is far from being waste. Our system
for treating this ‘grey water’, as it is called,
is to feed it to thirsty plants in a feature of
the landscape known as a ‘banana circle’. We have
6 circles, each with 6 – 8 banana plants, and 1 or
2 papaya trees. To begin this system, a shallow
pit is dug, about 2 meters diameter, which is then
filled with food scraps and cut vegetation to
provide the extra nutrition needed by these heavy
feeders. Then, a shower stall or dishwashing
station can be placed directly in the middle of
the circle, or greywater is piped from sinks to
the circles. The first ones were planted at the
beginning of 2008; now, 15-18 months later, they
are producing fruit in abundance. We have cut the
first few bunches, and I just counted at least 9
more coming along… at this rate we’ll be enjoying
fruit and giving away our surplus for many months
to come.
Electricity from the sun
This
is an off-grid site. We have kept our need for
electric power to a minimum by smart design, and
currently the extent of our need for electricity is
low wattage lighting for 2 buildings, charging
laptops and phones, and running the occasional power
tool. Photovoltaic panels have been installed on the
south-facing roof of the bath house, with the juice
being stored in deep-cycle batteries, and supplied
around the site through a 700W inverter. It’s a
system that is sufficient to meet our needs for now,
with potential for future expansion.
“There’s no such place as ‘away’”
It’s a favorite quote of mine, and we
have inevitably been forced to answer the problem
that it points to: after reducing, re-using and
recycling as much as possible, where do we throw
stuff away? In a remote rural location like this,
how do we responsibly handle the need for waste
disposal? The local custom is to use designated
spots on the side of the road, as a dumping and
burning ground. Not satisfied with adding to that
situation, we created our own on-site landfill. 2
pits were dug by excavator, 4 x 3 x 3 meters deep,
which swallowed up all the construction debris,
leaving some room for future ‘dump runs’. When
burning is necessary, a homemade incinerator gives a
useful second life to an oil drum, and it helps us
burn as hot and clean as possible.
Swales
We continue to work on establishing a
system of swales for passively harvesting rainwater
– not only in tanks and ponds – but also in the soil
itself, by means of infiltrating runoff. We now have
around 1,100m of swales on the land. The initial
excavation work was completed in 12 days in April,
and was followed immediately by sowing seeds and
planting the pioneer species. The vegetation grew
rapidly with the early rains, and is doing its job
to stabilize the disturbed soil and minimize
erosion. The heaviest rain we’ve had so far was 35mm
in 2 hours. That certainly tested the swales, which
performed well, filling to about 60% capacity, and
infiltrating completely within 24 hours. Rainwater
will now more effectively hydrate most of the entire
site (about 25 acres/10 hectares) rather than race
to the bottom of the hill.
Food forest
Following
the
guidelines for creating a food forest, we are
planting plenty of nitrogen fixing trees and shrubs
in amongst the tree crops we want to grow. The crop
trees we’ve planted so far include: guava, mango,
jackfruit, star fruit, tamarind, pomegranate, and
mangosteen. Not forgetting of course, the one tree
generally regarded as having the greatest number of
uses, the coconut. We are looking into good sources
for more crops, namely coffee and macadamia nuts.
It’s early days – we still have a lot of planting to
do, and it’ll be a while before we taste the
rewards, but as the saying goes, “the best time to
plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time
is now”.
Rehabilitation
of areas heavily impacted by construction
After 18 months of
building, there are some areas that are showing
the scars left behind after construction work.
Specifically, hard compacted soil where roads
where carved by repeated driving. These traffic
patterns made sense at the time, but now that
major construction is done we don’t need roads
between our buildings – we need footpaths and
attractive landscaping. The first step in this
transition is a kind of permaculture first-aid.
Small swales were dug to intercept the excessive
runoff from the hard bald ground. A thick mulch of
rice straw was applied all over, and footpaths of
woodchips were laid. Shrubs that will tolerate
these poor conditions are being planted, whose
roots will help break up the compaction. A nice
touch is that the small swales are now planted
with flowers that we’ll use in ritual offerings,
thereby keeping a supply of fresh picked flower
heads at hand on the way to the temple
.
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