ONCE UPON A TIME

The weekend pasado we joined with our Permaculture colleagues in Biobio to catch up after a winter of hibernation and plan for the coming year. After 6 months of conversation through internet since our last meeting we decided it was time to meet face to face. Our last meeting was in the middle of winter where we held the first regional bioregional food cooperative trueke day in June. We agreed to meet at the beach to give us all the opportunity to get away, and to support the efforts of Fabiola and Richi in Cobquequra and Daniel in Rinconada.

We stayed over night in Concepción after the Feria in Valle Nonguen, loaded up the van with unsold plants, Daniel, tools and compost and hit the road. We decided to take the dirt road along the coast, a beautiful place, first along the Itata river and the giant cellulose tube, to the sea, in spring the greenest time of the year before the long summer dry.

This part of Biobio is relatively isolated, home to small subsistence farmers, surfers and occassional gringos. As we drove and planned the weekend we observed many small families working together on the land cultivating food, harvesting wild foods, moving animals and fishing...the constant work of surviving. These people may not be rich, but they retain the fundamental knowledge and skills of living simply, they have mych to teach us.

We arrived at the beach at the house of Daniel where he has extended his little home with a small earth room and green roof, a nursery for native trees and a vegetable garden. We changed nappies, and got out feet into the sand for a minute before heading to Cobquecura and Rucamar for lunch. In Rucumar we toured the property and cabins, a small farm on the coast among rock outcrops and old stone houses. Rucumar is home to Fabiola and Richi who are getting organised to live simply at the beach. They have established intensive organic gardens and are working on their family to get them in the permaculture mood and ready for a busy summer full of tourists.

We gathered at Rucumar with, Hans (a simple living maestro) from the beach, and Emanuel and Macarena (permacultors who are building a permaculture site in their home and running Apicultura course in Eluwn) arriving by motorbike from Cauquenes. Misty rain started, we our meeting under the shleter in the open air to redefine our intentions for 2010. We reviewed our actions from 2009, deciding that we needed to refocus, to make sure existing projects like the regional food cooperative were functioning, and to create strategic events for the next year that will expand the network and create practical manifestations of sustainable living in our communities. 

As with any good learning community we redefined the purpose of our organisation as a regional branch of the Instituto Chileno de Permacultura charged with the job of maintaining the credability and professionalism of the permaculture movement in Chile as defined by Bill Mollison in the Academy Year Book. We elected a new coordinator of diffusion - Fabiola Salazr, a manager of events - Daniel Otero, and a new manager of our website - Ricardo Orellana, and carefully defined each role. We made an informal agreement to abandon formal meetings and to come together for more important and world changing things like living together in regional community, eating together, dancing and laughing. We continued the conversation late into the night with a few cold drinks and local food on the menu.

During the evening together, and in small groups we discussed important aspects of the Instituto like our relationship with the Transition movement, the international Diploma system, the Caordic Permaculture Institute, and Gaia University...how we as a learning community are making a contribution to sustainability in Chile. There was much cause for celebration, and we did. We brainstormed ideas for the financial system of the Institute in Chile, the website, a new system of empowering students to teach and design with a certification system, and the caordic model of bioregional organisations that we have created.

A hot topic of discussion was the possibility of regular events in the biobio region in 2010 to keep pace with our very well organised colleagues in Maipo, Aconcagua and Antofogasta, who have been a little suprise at our relative hibernation. Many new ideas came to our collective mind; baños for biobios  at local beaches for tourists with little mind to shit with conscience, regular public talks and world cafe style events in the big cities of Concepción, Chillan and Los Angeles, practical weekends implementing solutions in local communities, introduction to permaculture courses focusing on hands on practical, and the idea of creating a professional and compelling presence for the institute in various high profile events in the region including the annual organic feria in Yumbe where we hope at this event to establish an annual food trade event to parallel the anual seed exchange.

On the sunday we walked the beach and observed the landscape together, well some of us, and huddled inside Hans beautiful little house around the fire while it rained heavily. This piece of Chile is remarkable, a place I would like to set down some roots.

When the rain eased a little we got into action and put a final coat of mud on the side of Hans´s house. We shed some clothes, took off our shoes, gathered materials and mixed up some mud, straw, sand and water. We danced together in the rain a little, laughing and singing as we mixed the material with our feet.

With many hands making light work we smeared the mix on the side of the house, a thick sticky layer to keep out the cold and fit the house into the landscape. A flurry of activity later, when we were all shivering in the rain, we called it quits, and covered in mud, we did a final review, all 15 of us climbed into the van and went home, content.