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
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
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.
Volkmar Schultz – former member of german parliment
Now, more than 30 months after publishing the final draft of the charter of familiafeliz in english we are happy to publish the slovenian version .
We didn’t expected a specific growth of the community at this time, nor we do now. But we where hoping that this document would help us to spread the message of a contemporary alternative living community and its values and goals.
We invited a lot of guests in the last years to have a closer look to the reality of our community. We didn’t overastimated the PROs and we didn’t underastimated the CONs of our living reality. Even by showing the weakness of the community and the limitations of its members we tried to create and to maintain the social space for personal happiness.
Again and again we saw people coming, full of illusions about sustainability and just checking ressources and looking for their own benefits. Even we donated accommodation and food to people, who where not willing to donate this to others.
We maintained this open door to be able to find people to share this contemporary idea of living together in a weak community with powerful members.
We enjoyed a lot of discussions about communty life and social values and even the charter was a lot of times a useful reference for this.
In fact, it works! – After all this time we – the members of familiafeliz – still feel very comfortable with this charter and its implications for our daily life. We have no tendency to change it. Even some very critical comments from visitors made us more sure about its values.
Also we noticed that our way of life is still inspiring for some guests. Especially the international background of these guests motivates us to spread the message of how we could organise people in peace and happiness into the world. Quoting an old friend and politician, it make sense for us to publish now the slovenian version of this charter. Maybe we find some slovenian people interested in international and decentralised communities. So we send this message in the bottle (by using social media).
Very grateful we say thank you to Nina for the translation. With her professional background as a translater for the European Commission and her social skills and her profund questions she opened another door for us to spread the message of a community in which the currency for interaction is donation. As we received Ninas donation of this translation we will donate it to the slovenian community, to people looking for another way of life, with pleasure.
Raum für die Kunst is our creatve art space in Germany. We enjoy a social art work with you on 30.09.2018. We start at 11 am. After 1 pm we invite you for a brunch in the garden.
This arts show is featured by lifebusteR (art collective).
In July 2018 we moved some electronic components from Spain to Romania. Computers, routers, digital cams and other little devices we collected from friends in Germany and Spain. The idea was to re-use the things in education of the ApEAL summer school and other activities of this NGO in Bucharest.
First of all we like to say “thank you” to the donators, like Kim and Martina and Heide. Also we are happy for support by moving the box (Jens) and picking it up in Bucharest train station (Casa Mica staff manager).
We hope that this tools are useful for further projects in the little villages around Ciocanesti (31 km from Bucharest and the hotspot of the yearly summer school.
On one side we think the world is already full of devices and e have to think carefully if another usage in education really makes sense. In case of the ApEAL projects we think yes. Some of the children there have no daily access to Internet and IT – based education. For some of them the summer school is a nice chance to practice their english.
To work time by time with electronic parts like computers motivates also to get deeper in understanding english and electronic stuff. Some of the kids startet to develop the website of the NGO ApEAL.
Therefor the message of the right foto is a motivation for all of us. We will continue to figure out projects with this private engagement to empower children in Romania.
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.
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.
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.
In most cases “art” is something special, extraordinary, something beyond the “normal” context. Even contemporary art focusing on high benefit is usually not part of daily life. Familiafeliz is a contemporary living community and art and culture are very important for us, like health, happiness and tasty food.
After 22 years in a pinky bathroom it was time to renovate the installation and to think about a new design.
First of all we unmounted the old installations and replaced old fittings and tubes.
A new bathtub and a new toilette was installed.
White was selected as basic new color.
Instead of a shower tray we have now a flat floor. The little carrot is a very special detail and a reminiscence to our old friend Edgar Brons, artist, graphic designer and cartoonist.
As contrast to the strong geometric wall tiles Antje and Corinna started a mosaic inspired by “water”.
The spiral was Corinna’s favorite in the new shower.
The white wall tile pieces are combined with spanish colorful ceramic pieces from Pais Valenciano (the region of our second home unit).
Finally the mosaic was grouted with white mass.
The new bathroom is part of the old house in Windeck and a hint to the transition of this place.
