Author: iulia

Categories
Construction Earthbags Webinar

[Webinar] Building with Earthbags: our experience with the cellar

Dear friends,

In 2017-2018 we built our cellar from earth bags. It was mostly the two of us (Iulia and Ronen)… helped along the way a bit by volunteers and friends.

We learned a lot, people started to ask questions. This is how Iulia started the Romania: EarthBags Building / Constructii din saci umpluti cu pamant group on Facebook. The group grew, now more than 1000 people.

Many of you continued to ask questions, talked to Iulia in private about details.

From all your inquiries we want to make one more step now to share our experience with those who are really interested in earth bags building. Now, as traveling is a bit more complicated, we invite you to sit at your place and join us in an open conversation – a webinar on earth bag building – questions and answers from our experience.

So, grab a cup of tea or water join us! 🙂

When? Tuesday, 19th of May, 19:00 Romanian time (check your local time here). We estimate to spend around 1,5 hours together, depending on your interest and group dynamics.

What? We will build our conversation based on how participant’s interests are related to our experience. Ronen already wrote a summary of our journey with the cellar (again, please read all the posts he wrote along the two years we built the cellar) an we are interested to converse with those who have specific questions. We learnt and lot and still learning. 🙂 We do not pretend to hold the absolute truth, yet we realize – from your questions, from all the conversations and debates Iulia is following on the natural building and off grid groups on Facebook – that you want to know more and we have things to share.

We will not lecture you on earth bags building, you can read a lot on the internet.

Where to we meet? Online, we will give the connection details for those who want to join. We will use Zoom.
The webinar will be held in English – Ronen, the facilitator of the webinar, does not speak good Romanian. Translation can be offered by one of the participants (volunteering). Iulia will be moderating the conversation.

How to join? Please fill the form below to let us know that you want to be in the conversation.

Exchange. We suggest a starting donation of 50 lei for Romanians (Revolut, BT Pay or BT payment) / 15 Euros for people outside Romania (paypal) / participant, for this meeting, paid upfront. In the spirit of gift economy, we also encourage you to adjust (increase or decrease) your contribution, based on the experienced value, at the end of the webinar. The details for offering donations will be provided for those who want to join.

Looking forward to meet and talk to you all! 🙂

Iulia & Ronen

PS: the pictures below are a selection of pictures along the way of building our earthbag cellar 🙂

PS2: the post picture is with Iulia sitting on our first completed earth bag arch.

Categories
Uncategorized

[Webinar] Building with Earthbags: our experience with the cellar

Dear friends,

In the last 2 years we built our cellar from earth bags. It was mostly the two of us… helped along the way a bit by volunteers and friends.

We learned a lot, people started to ask questions. This is how Iulia started the Romania: EarthBags Building / Constructii din saci umpluti cu pamant group on Facebook. The group grew, now around 450 people.

Many of you continued to ask questions, talked to Iulia in private about details.

From all your inquiries we want to make one more step now to share our experience with those who are really interested in earth bags building. Now, as winter is upon us and we are more inside, we invite you to sit next to the fireplace and join us in an open conversation – a webinar on earth bag bulding – questions and answers from our experience.

So, put the fire on (we will be next to one of our own rocket stoves that we also built), grab a cup of hot tea and join us!

When? Tuesday, 15th of January, 19:00. We estimate to spend around 1,5 hours together, depending on your interest and group dynamics.

What? We will build our conversation based on how participant’s interests are related to our experience. Ronen already wrote a summary of our journey with the cellar (again, please read all the posts he wrote along the two years here) an we are interested to converse with those who have specific questions. We learnt and lot and still learning. 🙂 We do not pretend to hold the absolute truth, yet we realize – from your questions, from all the conversations and debates Iulia is following on the natural building and off grid groups on Facebook – that you want to know more and we have things to share.

We will not lecture you on earth bags building, you can read a lot on the internet.

Where? Online, we will give the connection details for those who want to join. We will use Zoom.
The webinar will be held in English – Ronen, the facilitator of the webinar, does not speak good Romanian. Translation can be offered by one of the participants (volunteering). Iulia will be moderating the conversation.

How to join? Please fill the form below to let us know that you want to be in the conversation.

Exchange. We suggest a starting donation of 50 lei (15 Euros for people outside Romania, by paypal) / participant, for this meeting, paid upfront. In the spirit of gift economy, we also encourage our to adjust (to increase or decrease) your contribution, based on the experienced value, at the end of the webinar. The details for offering donations will be provided for those who want to join.

Looking forward to meet and talk to you all! :

Iulia & Ronen

PS: after the form below you see a selection of pictures along the way of bulding our earthbag cellar 🙂

Categories
Blog Heating Rocket Stoves

2018 Rocket Stove workshop

Our rocket-stoves journey

We have a journey of rocket stove building at Bhudeva… first it was the first rocket stove (bedroom, 2011), then fixing it (2012) then the second one (living room, 2012) and rebuilding the first one (2014).

We cook food and bake on both rockets most of the winter time.

It’s time to try a next step – we are going to rebuild the one in  the living room, this time we are going to make it even more efficient and add a heated bench for two on it :).

We are open to make it as a mini-workshop where you can come over and learn by doing.

The workshop

We will be building a rocket stove with a small mass attached to it and a place for sitting / reading / resting. It will be an opportunity to learn what were the limitations of the previous design (and why they were introduced in the first place) and the considerations that went into the new design. We will be building a typical rocket core with an attached brick chamber with some cob to add more mass and bring it altogether. It is a tight design that will fill a tight space.

You will have an opportunity to:

  • Learn about rocket stove design,
  • Participate in all stages of construction,
  • Meet the materials and the tools involved,
  • Spend some time at and learn about Bhudeva.

All within the settings and limitations of a traditional Romanian village house.

The build/workshop is estimated to take place in 15-17 of June 2018. The workshop time is Friday (half day), Saturday (full day) and Sunday (until 16:00). If you’ll join us, please arrive sometime Friday until 13:00 (so we can have the second part of the day for working).

There are 5 places available for participants. Sleeping will be in tents (there is plenty of space).  The price for the workshop is 540 lei / participant. We are asking for 200 lei in advance (bank deposit or transfer), when registering, for booking your place. The rest will be paid cash at Bhudeva.

Please acknowledge that English is the communication language at Bhudeva.

 

Living conditions

We are assuming you will want to stay at Bhudeva, however there may be other options one of which is a new pensiune just outside the village (a few minutes drive) which has recently opened its doors to visitors.

If you do choose to stay with us, here are a few things you may wish to know:

  1. You will be camping in a tent (that you need to bring with you). We do not yet have built structures to house other people. We have one small house which is a private space and we prefer to keep is that way, for now.
  2. We have one composting toilet in the house. If you stay here for a few days or more, you will learn not just to use it (make contributions) but also learn to care for it (emptying it in our humanure hacienda).
  3. We have a small outdoor kitchen. We are inviting you too cook together or, if this doesn’t suit you, please bring your own food. If we will cook together, you are invited to bring with you some of the next produce: “bob lung” rice, spaghetti pasta, avocados, honey from verified source (we’ll coordinate this by email).
  4. We eat mostly vegetables and fruits, with some dairy productions and eggs. Most of it locally (in the village) produced.
  5. We intend to be doing everything together: working, cooking, cleaning. We’ll see how this flows.

Visiting Bhudeva, you are going to encounter also our solar dryers, earthbag cellar (we are now at the green roof preparation), hugel beds, solar panel or other things we play with and experiment here.

🙂

If you’re interested to partake please write Iulia at iulia [dot] sara [at] gmail [dot] com… in English and include your phone number and the questions you want to be answered before coming to the workshop (and maybe during the workshop, if you already have something in mind).

Iulia and Ronen

Categories
Food Preservation

apricot compote

Today I made a bit of apricot compote.

Bought some 5 kg of fruits from the market,  not so ripen.

Ronen opened the fruits, took the seeds out. I sterilized the jars (only shortly boiling them under water), stuffed them with halves of fruit, almost to the top, poured hot water over, to cover.

I made 7 big jars with NO sugar, nothing added for sweetening and 6 big jars with two pills of stevia for each.

I closed the jars then I boiled them into a pot, not covering them entirely with water. Water was only coming to the half of the jars, I covered them all with a wet towel, boiling them for about 40 minutes (two batches: 7 and 6).

Them I took them out fast and put them under thick blankets to cool down slowly.

 

Curious how the no-sugar fruits will stay… how the ones with stevia will taste :).

 

I also cut some of the ripen apricots and put them into the dryers, repeating last year experiment (tasty!).

Categories
Trees

seven new trees

We planted four new trees, some three weeks ago, next to the barn.

The ones in the front are peach (Cardinal variety) and apricot (Marculesti 19 variety). The ones in the back side of the barn are a cherry (Red of Bistrita variety) and an apple tree (Golden Delicious variety). I bought them from Praktiker (Tg. Mures) – they are sold in Romania by Yurta Prod SRL (Sacele, Brasov – yurta.ro). Three of them were produced in Hungary and one in Romania.

When we planted them I put some bark under one or two of them. Aside of that I just dig a whole (after some space clearing), put them in, cover, make a small ditch to hold the water and mulch with straw.

 

Now the apple, cherry and apricot trees are already having small leaves. In the apricot tree there are only buds (maybe the ones which already were in place when I brought them)… not sure if already established the roots… yet seems alive.

In the warm days from last weeks I water them around every 3-4 days. These days rain is offering her gift…

Also, I was gifted three fig trees (by Ovidiu, Cristina’s husband). I planted one on the right side of the pathways which goes from the house to the road, next to the green fence we tried to establish last year. The other two are still in pots – they are going to replace some of the trees that didn’t make it – we planted 6 trees last year (outside of the yard area, on the side of the pathway that goes to the future new house place).

I am so excited… every time I visit the garden (sometimes twice a day) to say hey, I have the sense of witnessing unfolding wholeness. Every time I see new buds forming, developing, small leaves bursting into life I feel joy of life and connected.

Categories
Trees

new berries planted

In the last two weeks I planted new berries:

  • three new black currants, planted on the right side of path that goes to the summer kitchen: I took one from Praktiker and two from Mociu market; the one from Praktiker was planted earlier than the last two ones, is giving leaves (just a few for now) and I already see flowers coming! The ones from Mociu market are giving buds and leaves  already – they were already coming the second day I transplanted them – amazing! 🙂
  • two new raspberries, planted on the left side of the same pathway, next to the last raspberry that survived from the last year; I got them from Mociu market; no leaves yet – they are just two stick for now;
  • three new strawberries: gifted to us by Ovidiu, Cristina’s husband; established all right;
  • three new blackberries, also from Ovidiu – planted them on the berries row, replacing the berries that didn’t survive from the last year. These already established roots, green leaves are coming out in this moment.

I mulched all of them.

I am visiting them at least once a day – enjoying their growing.

All the other berries from last years are with buds, some with leaves and some already birthing future flowers! Some (don’t know which kind yet) are already giving new plants, spread next to them… from falling fruits from last year (or roots spreading around?… yet they seem far away from the main stems).

Strawberries that Ildi and Levente gifted us last year – some (few) of them are gone and the ones who established are spreading – giving new plants next to them – they are spreading good and coming so vigorously! Some are already in flower!

in-joying all the way! 🙂