Ecology

With the setup of this ecovillage we try to find answers and show them to a wide audience looking for models.
On this search ecological principles that are also part of permaculture are considered:

  • To close cycles of material flow

  • to avoid producing waste

  • to use renewable ressources

  • to use regional ressources

  • to create diversity

    • and others.

    Our aim of setting up a holistic model by working with the above principles leads us to a huge variety of fields that we work in to find possible solutions.


    Biodiversity
    When designing the settlement consideration was given to wild animals and their habitats. For example, we created huge strips of wind shelter hedges with multiple functions and biotopes for frogs, insects, birds and other animals. Also, we enhance the biodiversity of the land by turning the surrounding pine monoculture into a diverse mixed woodland and by gardening organically on land that was formerly farmed conventionally.

    Water
    The precipitation is 500 mm per year around here with very dry spells during the summer. Rainwater is partly used to fill our firewater lake, partly it just filters into the ground.
    Two wells on the land provide us with fresh water in drinking quality. We installed a closed water cycle: we are not connected to the sewerage system of the local municipality but built a reedbed system that filters our water. After this it is being used in the gardens for watering. The additionally needed water here is freshwater - through using a drip-irrigation we want to reduce the amount of freshwater needed.
    In addition to this we only have composting toilets on the settlement, using the compost for tree planting. So far urine is not collected seperately.
    Due to these features we only use 2/3 of the amount of water that the average german uses and produce much less waterpollution.

    Energy
    We try to use the most direct source of energy (i.e. aiming for the highest input-output-ratio) and avoid fossil fuels where possible.

    Electricity
    For a few years now we have had enough photovoltaic panels installed for us to produce as much electricity per year as we consume (on average over the year). We are forced to feed this electricity into the grid as we do not have any means of storage so far.
    There is no wind- or combined heat- and power-system yet, although we aim to expand our self-sufficiency in electric energy to a system that provides us with our own energy all year round so that we are not dependent on the grid.

    Heating
    We heat our houses by burning wood in a system that is supported by waterheating through solar panels. About half of the wood comes from our own forest, the other half is bought from outside, preferably grown and harvested ecologically. The next houses that we plan will have a seasonal storage which is supposed to provide heat all year round through a huge tank that stores water that is warmed up by the sun during the summermonths until next spring.

    Cooking
    We cook on natural / propane gas - there is no biogas plant in Sieben Linden as yet, though we would only build a small one for our own needs.
    Some groups in Sieben Linden cook on a wooden stove during the winter when it heats the room at the same time - and a solar parabolic cooker is used to heat dishwashing water during the summer where no solar panels are available for hot water.
    Solardriers are used by some people in the village.

    Animals
    There are several decisions that were made in the course of the project concerning keeping animals in this ecovillage. Some of these are directly linked to the next topic (food production).
    So far there are the following farm animals and pets living in Sieben Linden:
    6 horses, several cats, some guinea pigs and some fish.
    Some of the horses were given to us because they were ill and would otherwise have been killed, others came here with new inhabitants. The smaller animals came here, were found or collected in an animal sanctuary.
    Reasons why we do not have more (farm) animals are diverse, here are some of them:
    One is that, as we are aware that the production of animal products takes a lot more space and energy than that of direct plant nutrition, we decided that we want to produce plant-based nutrition in the first place and only keep animals when we have land left to grow their food (the horses live on land that is not usable for other things than meadow, as the soil is too poor - and they graze on land that will in the future be used to build houses on, so they are part of a succession here).
    Another reason is that we had a very long process around keeping and killing animals, at the end of which we agreed on only keeping animals that will not be killed here or elsewhere, i.e. to have a kind of animal sanctuary here. This enables a certain self-sufficiency with animal products (eggs, a little milk) and gives kids the opportunity to live with animals, while at the same time respecting the ethical needs of people that want to live in a space where animals are not killed for our pleasure.
    Then there are also those people that rather want to live close to wild animals than kept animals.
    And an important fact is also that so far there is no one that is very much into keeping for example cows (although to be honest, so far we simply did not have the land to do so).

    Food production
    Part of this project is that a huge diversity of people lives here together and thus has to find ways how to do so peacefully. For this reason right in the beginning of the project the community members decided that communal and public spaces would be vegetarian as the lowest common denominator. As cooking in the main kitchen is basically vegan, this enables people of all kinds of food regimes to have meals in the main house, while everyone is free to consume what they want in private kitchens.

    Of course pretty much 100% of the food we produce, buy and consume is organic.
    What we do not produce ourselves, we buy in from local / nearby producers on one hand but also from a wholesalers on the other. So far we hardly sell any produce to people from outside the ecovillage, most is needed by ourselves.

    We aim for a big part of self-sufficiency in food. For the first ten years we did not have enough land to start an arable system, but we set up 3 hectares of organic vegetable and herb gardens that provide us with on average of the year between 50 and 70% of our vegetable needs.
    This number is also so little because so far we do not have a lot of good storage space and we also do not have greenhouses to extend the season. Right now we just decided on setting up a greenhouse next autumn.

    Part of the vegetable garden integrates a fruit tree nursery which produces quite a bit of our fruit needs. The main source of fruit are fruit tree alleys in the area surrounding the ecovillage that have been planted in the former german democratic republic and that are hardly harvested by anyone these days. Here we collect pears, apples, plums, cherries and other treasures.
    In total we grow vegetables, herbs and fruit intensively on almost 3 hectares. A third of this is worked on with a small tractor, on another third we work on with horses. Both parts also use a lot of manual labor.
    Besides these two bigger vegetable schemes there is a garden of about 2.000 m² that works with vegan-organic methods and only manual labor, i.e. integrating a lot of permacultural principles into gardening, like mulching, no dig and closed cycles.
    There are also a few self-sufficiency patches by community members.

    A setback permaculture-wise is that we had to decide where to place the garden land in relation to the building area. So now the garden is on the best land - but this also means that it is quite far away from the communal kitchen. This is okay in so far as we do not only need a small garden for a few people but quite a bit of area for the amount of vegetables that we use in the kitchen.
    We expect that the groups that live together will grow some of their own food next to their kitchendoor, once the houses are built and time and energy are set free.

    The soil is improved by green manure on one hand and by quite a lot of compost on the other. Part of the compost is made of the clover / grass that grows on the building land but: due to us not having a lot of land to grow compost material on plus there being only six horses whose manure is mainly needed to fertilize their meadows, we import manure from nearby sheep or horse farmers to build soil fertility.
    Our compost that we produce in the composting toilets is used for planting hedges and fruit trees.

    Since last year we own about 22 hectares of (conventional) arable land. We only just decided to rent this out to a local organic farmer who converts it to organic for us and uses it till we are set up to farm ourselves. So far we neither have the infrastructure nor the people to do it but we are actively searching for people that want to live with us and are up to setting up an organic agriculture scheme.

    Cooking is being done communally for all that want this service - buffet for breakfast and dinner, a team of cooks that provides lunch for the community and seminar guests.

    Forest managment
    To increase stability, to provide habitat for a wider variety of animals and plants, for fire protection reasons and to enhance the local environment we gradually turn the 44 hectares of pine monoculture that we own into a mixed broadleaf woodland which is closer to what would be growing here were not humans interfering.
    This work is being done with the help of a lot of volunteers and with environmental programmes that provide us with plants. As there are not enough seeding broadleaf trees left, we support the development of a more natural woodland by planting. Existing pine trees are used both for firewood and as building material, and it is extracted with horses where possible.
    When the newly planted or incoming trees are old enough we will turn more to a coppicing culture, which means cutting off trees that regrow several branches from the trunk and can then be cut every few years.

    align=leftSite development - basic plan
    Before any activity started on the newly found land in 1997, a group got funding to do an in-depth analysis of the site conditions (wind, temperatures, flora and fauna, ...) in order to be able to make a good design for the planned village. After this site analysis, a design was made using zone and sector analysis, zoning the building area into different areas of publicity and loudness.
    The final design is one that we still stick to, putting the more public areas along the main path up to the center of the village (which is made up of a central square on which the former farm building is situated and where the new seminar center is planned). Around this, a little bit set back, is the semi-public area which is used by people that come as guests but stay longer than just one day. Further into the village, set back from public and semi-public spaces is the more private living area of the community members. Communal areas are close to the village center and in some parts closely intertwined with public and semi-public space.
    As the settlement is supposed to be car-free, parking space is situated near the entrance. In order to reduce loud work to certain areas, woodworkshops and other louder trades are also situated on the near end of the village, close to the entrance for easy access of material transport.

    Site development - placing houses
    As this settlement is slowly growing over a wide timespan during which some people leave and a lot of new people come, there is no fix site-development plan. This is because we experience that some things just change over time or that formerly good ideas do not make so much sense anymore after a while (whereas others just stay.). There is a growing understanding for walking the "chaordic path" as a community, being present to the needs of each moment, rather than sticking to a plan.
    When it comes to setting up the settlement, we develop general ideas about how and where we build can provide for our needs of privacy and relaxation - and at the same times makes sense to people coming. We work a lot with ideas and patterns of Christopher Alexander, an american architect that did very inspiring work on settlements.
    In order to further this knowledge and to integrate the needs of people that want to build with the needs of the settlement, there is a group that accompanies new building initiatives in the process of finding a build site.

    To save area and to seal as little land as possible, we set ourselves a limit of squaremeters per person for living area. We feel that we have a responsibility to be aware of the amount of land that we use for all kinds of activities, including housing.
    The other action that we take is that we stick to strip or point foundations so as to reduce the area that is actually sealed by building a house. This is also due to our wish to use as little energy intensively produced concrete (and other building materials) as possible.

    Houses and Housing
    The central farm building was converted to the central building with the seminar center, communal kitchen, library, infrastructure and our big seminar room. The side complex is used with our organic food shop and a jewellery store, several offices and guest rooms and a bar.
    So far we have built seven houses which give a home to 54 people and communal space for about 80 people. We also own a house in the nearby village whose 15 inhabitants are also members of the community. All the other that are not living in a house stay in circus caravans at the moment until we have built enough houses.

    The first really simple and quick ecological buildings that we set up in 2001 are two modern low-energy houses. These integrate different co-operative structures for communal living (flat sharing, family, couples).


    ecological building


















    After these two, we decided to stick to strawbale building from now on. For this climate strawbales, wood and earth are great materials to build well insulated housing from local ressources. The German Strawbalebuilding Association was founded in Sieben Linden and we closely cooperate, supporting the spreading of straw-bale-building in Europe with our work. Between 2001-2003 one of the first strawbale houses with planning permission in Germany was built. This was built completely by hand using only regional materials (timber, straw and clay) and recycled materials.
    We built another couple of houses - "strohpolis" the biggest straw-bale-building in Europe is finished and another straw-bale-building as well.
    As we want to be a model settlement, we experiment with all kinds of different ways of strawbale building, like infill, timberframe, loadbearing, prefabrication of wall elements and more. This will most likely go on in the next years.

    The different groups that build look with varying intensity for regional, recycled or second hand building material - some houses were built to integrate rejected windows that were falsely produced for another building, others use recycled material for floors, windows and doors, roof tiles, and more. These all have different pros and cons - often the recycled material is not as energy efficient in use as new ones.

    Housing in Sieben Linden is not built by individuals but by organisations, be it an association that a group of people founds to build together, or our Housing-Co-operative Sieben Linden eG, which built most of the houses so far. Here a group of people becomes a member and puts in their money into the co-operative, with the co-operative employing builders and buying the material. Our aim is to promote communal living - and to avoid that single people own a house which they might want to sell some day.

    There are still quite a few people living in a circus caravan as we grow faster than we can build housing. Those people living in caravans do this officially, approved by the building authorities. We assured them (and ourselves) that in the long term we will reduce the number of caravans, also because we know that this form of living is not as sustainable as living in a house. We see to it that caravans are built as ecologically as possible (well insulated with natural materials, wind tight, no plastic caravans).
     
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