Category Archives: Bio garden

Cleaning up in the garden of Priapus

Allgemein, Bio garden, HU Windeck, Poultry keeping
Cleaning up in the garden of Martas Home
Cleaning up in the garden of Martas Home

In greek mythology Priapus was was a minor rustic fertility god, protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens … and more… We enjoyed the warm summer days in 2019 to clean up the garden of Martas home, our german home unit. Again powerful family members where helping Antje and Corinna to clean the area around the compost pile and the chicken area.

refurbished compost pile
refurbished compost pile

In the history of Familiafeliz the house of the dragon was the first property and project, but the big plot in Germany hosted the first of our gardens. Here we planted the first fruit trees, prepared beds and havested salads and vegetables. Also it was the place to develop the chicken population based on Araucana , Amrock, Brahma, Sussex, Wyanddotte and others.

We developed a brave and healthy population by mixing these variations and preselect new generations of high productive females and strong males.

Martas Home - Fruits of the work
Martas Home – Fruits of the work

Even if nowadays most off the garden activity is happening in east spain in the colorgarden, the source of knowledge and joy was coming out of this garden in Germany.

And still the chicken unit in Germany is the oldest social community activity and involve several families (customers of fresh eggs) from the village and around.

If you want to visit Martas Home check out the next german information day on the front page or apply for volunteering here.

new compost management in our homeunit in Germany

Bio garden, CASAdelDRAGON, color garden, HU Cervera del Maestre, HU Windeck, Poultry keeping

It is not a big deal to report on the implementation of a compost pile. I becomes bigger if we focus the stories behind.

In our case in Germany we “share” the space with another family living on our property and over the years we collected a reallly big pile of compost. Beside of the effect, that we reused biomass for our own vegetablle garden we gave sometimes our population of chicken access to the pile. They contributed with a lot of tasty eggs and cleaned the pille from nearly all snaill eggs.

One problem of acceptance in Germany – even in little villages – is to have chicken at all. The sound of the cock, the always escaping “gang” of bantams (little chicken) and daily little troubles with animals expanding the challenge to host them beside close neighbours.

The combination of vegetable garden, chicken and compost is an advantage and we like to establish a similar circle in our spanish homeunit.

First of all we need beside our compost doctor David more people willing to move biomass to a compost pile. Second we need a group of people interested in gardening and using this bio mass. Third we need people interested in having chicken and hosting them in a common task.

first raised bed in the german garden

Allgemein, Bio garden, HU Windeck

After mounting more than 25 raised beds in the spanish color garden we started to create a first prototype in our german home unit garden.

Corinna started to collect some old natural stones. They are part of the local history. During World War II, our village was shelled and a grenade destroyed a barn made of natural stone. The stones are scattered everywhere in our garden and therefor they are a relic of this war.

We filled the lower part of an ibc tank with this stones.

And we charged the box with soil from the garden.

Finally we used some special soil for planting vegetables.

And we planted some salads.

And we are happy about the result after 2 month…

harvesting the sweet

Bio garden, HU Windeck

In 2018, 2017 and 2016 we planted more than 300 fruit trees in the spanish home unit. 20 years before we planted around 20 fruit trees on a small plot in our home unit in Germany.

Planting a tree is a magical work. It opens doors for a sweet future and connect people with their future.

It gives future generations food and shadow and wood. These trees are older than the young strong workers on the fotos. For us it is amazing to see new generations taking the fruits of these trees.

Together they harvested the fruits from a cherry tree.

And prepared a lot of jars of sweet delicious marmelade.

Like tobacco brown tells in her TED talk, creating a garden is creating a social space for happiness.

Felling trees in the german home unit

Allgemein, Bio garden, HU Windeck

Winter time in Germany is a chance to develop the garden area. Even “bigger” works are useful. After 22 years and some damage due to winter storms it was time to fell some trees.

 

With the help of friends and neighbors we decided tofell a large fir and two birches.

 

Now we have a lot of wood for winter evenings.

Windecks new chicken runway

Bio garden, HU Windeck, Poultry keeping

windeck-chicken-runway-0
Jens and Corinna preparing a new way

In the home unit Windeck we have around 50 chicken. They have to pass a small – and often wed – area in winter to reach the green grass area near the bio garden.

 

windeck-chicken-runway-1
stones and ceramic rests for foundation, in top concrete steps

Now it was time to fix that. It was not comfortable to walk in this muddy ground.

 

windeck-chicken-runway-2
In balance, finishing a step…

Jens and Corinna used old concrete pieces to form a stable way from the poultry stable to the garden. Nice to have this activities of making the right way in both home units at the same time. In the spanish home unit it was the first step to the entrance of the sculpture garden.