About

Here we are! 

We connect Permaculture Design  & applied Regenerative Agriculture Techniques with an holistic perspective inspired by Deep Ecology, Grassroots Activism and the changes we want to see in this world to reverse degradation of the soul and the soil.

Soil Sun Soul came about from a journey that brought about a deep personal transformation while working with the Earth, in various countries, on various Permaculture, Regenerative Agriculture, Community and other inspiring projects.

We felt inspired to share this learning by creating and facilitating courses or create projects through bringing together teachers and places that have inspired us to grow plus offer proffesional project work and consultation.

We aim in our courses and projects to create a combination of:

SOIL (Permaculture/ Restorative Agriculture, low-impact living)

SUN (The Prana and energy (including good food) that allows for all this to happen) and

SOUL (Deep Ecology, Nature Connection, yoga, mindfullness & healing work,music and art)

Always growing, changing and adapting, this project is a work in progress... as are we all !

                                 

                                    Our Need For a Sense Of Unity

Alan Watts and Terence McKenna talk about our need for a sense of unity as our global problems are getting worse and we have become enemies of our planet and each other.

                                                        History Of Human Thinking

some Infos about my personal journey in the last few years:

A Nomadic Permaculture Journey Continues…

Five years ago, I never would have thought it possible to experience a journey and transformation in my life like this. My whole world-view and belief system changed. With it came a change in eating and sleeping habits, a reduction in consumption of all kinds of unnecessary products, a more positive state of mind manifested, through satisfying work outside the city or office environment in beautiful outdoor settings, and getting to meet and share time with interesting people from all around the world.

How did that come to be?


In 2009, leaving Austria and my comfort zone, I took my first small steps in organic farming and community living in the Caribbean and after went to South America. We traveled by local buses through Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador, meeting local activists, farmers and change-makers to find out about local challenges, alternative initiatives and to build networks of support, sharing and understanding. This journey made me understand the global economic and environmental dark sides of our lifestyles, behavioral patterns and the exploitation of people and mother nature. I wanted to act, change something, and be part of the solution and not the problems. After some time of research I luckily discovered Permaculture.

Fruit tree root pruning, Natueco farm, India

I participated in my first PDC in 2010 with Alex Kruger from Berg en Dal Ecovillage at Nature’s Gift Permaculture Centre, Malawi — which was, just a few months before, the hosting site of the 9th International Permaculture Convergence. I stayed at the centre to volunteer for two months after my PDC course, and also participated in an Earth building workshop in which we build an outdoor kitchen with cob pizza oven.

Liquid fertilizer making, Farmer training, Surkhet district, Nepal

This experience changed my life, opened my eyes and inspired me to transform myself and the environments around me into more holistic, abundant and regenerative systems. A big awakening process started and with it came the motivation and opportunities to start spreading some seeds of change, which brought me to many different countries, cultures, climates and led me to participate in, co-organize and co-facilitate eight PDC courses and several introduction workshops and farmer trainings, mostly in India but also East Africa, Nepal and Portugal.

Mulch pit, Tipwere orphanage, Malawi

During my 1-year stay in East Africa, I was working with amazing and inspirational people and projects, being part of a permablitz in an orphanage near Blantyre with Walter Mugove and Chris Walker (ReScope Program), plus helping out at two 5-day Permaculture workshops in rural orphanages around Malawi. We established nurseries, kitchen gardens, compost systems and grey-water systems together, plus Chris Walker and his local team were sharing Permaculture theory and practical knowledge. I also got the chance to visit and volunteer in projects along the way through my travels in Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia. It gave me lots of great experiences and memories for a lifetime!

My Pattern session, PDC 2014, India

I wanted to continue on this path of gaining practical experiences in the different fields of Permaculture, living and learning in culturally and environmentally different places, so I saved some money after working in England and went off to magical India.
Arriving in India and ending up in Auroville, learning and working with experienced people like Krishna from Solitude Farm and Bernard and Deepika from Pebble Garden, pushed me to the next level. I got the chance to help with the design and implementation for Sapney Farm, a degraded half acre in a tropical arid climate on the edge of Auroville, owned by Snehal, the founder of Heal the Soil Project. With the help of Ellumalai, a local gardener with many years’ experience in growing medicinal plants and tree-planting, Martin from France, and hundreds of multinational volunteers, we managed to transform and get good response from the land in the short period of just 3 years. We started to receive more and more visitors, people started asking for advice and we started to organize more workshops. Heal the Soil hosted the first PDC at Sapney Farm, with Bernard Alonso from Canada in January 2012. We also successfully organized a PDC in Portugal in November that year, when Luis, one of our first PDC students, invited us to come to his land there. The network had started to grow! It brought me to Portugal, where I helped establish permaculture systems and gardens for 10 months, visited the Tamera project and meet Sepp Holzer — showing his inspirational Water Retention Landscapes during a day visit to a large group of people — to a brief consultation in Southern Italy, after which I returned to India.

Permablitz, Auroville area, India

After that period we also collaborated with the Himalayan Farm Project located in the magical foothills of the Himalayas in Uttarakhand. We organized the first PDC there together with Ben and Sam from the Panya Project, which brought 25 people from many different countries to this amazing place and we learned, shared and experienced for three weeks the beauty of living together in harmony with nature.
Also, I went to stay with Deepak Suchede for 1 month in central India, an experienced natural farmer and practitioner of Natueco Farming Science, mixing spirituality and science with traditional Indian farming practices. In Nepal I stayed with Govinda Sharma at the beautiful Hasera Farm and in Kathmandu at Sunrise Farm, from where I set out onto a journey into the wild west of Nepal, the Surket District, to visit the Himalayan Permaculture Centre, a project supported and founded by Chris Evans and local Permaculturists. I was lucky to be part of a 5-day Permaculture Farmers’ Training there, organized at the centre for local future permaculture farmers. I experienced an almost entirely self-sufficient and self reliant community (tea, sugar, salt and occasionally oil are the only products bought from outside) living in beneficial relationships with nature — a truly inspirational ecovillage model and traditional, low impact lifestyle!
After returning to India, more courses in Sapney Farm followed. Once again we collaborated with Bernard Alonso, plus held another PDC with Govinda Sharma from Nepal, who came to teach in the Auroville area for the first time. These courses attracted people from over 19 different countries and created a very rich, diverse and fertile learning environment for all the people involved. It also led me to participate in a practical Earthship building workshop at Karuna Farm, near Kodiakanal in South India, the first site in India to have an Earthship constructed.

Plant distribution at Intro-course, Chambe Rock, Malawi

In November 2013, I participated in and facilitated three sessions at a Permaculture Design Course in Darjeeling with inspirational and experienced teacher Rico Zook. This experience gave me deeper insights into professional group facilitation and confidence to continue sharing the knowledge I acquired in the period of my nomadic travels all over the world. Immediately good connections where established with Rico and we decided to do some more work together in the future. There will be a PDC with him in December 2014 in Sapney Farm, India, and we are organizing a PDC course with him in a beautifully located nature reserve near Barcelona in Spain this June 2014.
The latest stop on my journey was Thailand. I visited Khao Sok Nature Reserve, a very diverse and ancient rainforest in Southern Thailand — Zone 5 inspirations everywhere! Afterwards I visited my friends, Ben and Sam, at the wonderful Panya Project. I gained further inspiration in a brief visit to Pun Pun, plus a few days at Tacompai near Pai, and a short stay at the newly founded Gaia Ashram in Nothern Thailand. These four visits led me to meet amazing people and establish further connections plus get inspired by some functional models of Permaculture and natural building in Thailand, which in some parts has a very similar climate to the area where I was working in India.

Web of Life, Chambe Rock, Malawi

Over the past five years I was hosted, supported and inspired by amazing, kind and open-hearted people who gave me the chance to practice and get a deeper understanding of the theoretical knowledge I learned from books, videos and workshops. In return for my work I received food and accommodation plus a small income from workshops which helped me to sustain myself and to start to make permaculture almost my full-time profession.
I am extremely grateful for this journey and feel happy to share with you here my story and some impressions from past workshops. I feel my example could be a good inspiration and motivation for future students of PDC courses and Permaculture workshops all over the world, to make people understand and realize that a transformation and shift in our lives and ways of seeing the world is very much possible and supported by the Permaculture toolbox.
A good start is to just get out there! Follow your inner calling, join some Permaculture projects, communities and workshops, start to build networks and relationships. Start with small, manageable steps and more and more doors will open along your way!

With Deepak Suchede at Natueco farm, India

Although a journey like this may not be possible for everyone, and being aware of the significant resources it took in flights and transport, it’s possibly also not advisable, but there were huge returns for these investments — we regenerated degraded lands, designed and implemented regenerative systems, planted trees and grew our own food, harvested rainwater, re-used grey water, utilized alternative technologies and shared and inspired many people through workshops and volunteering. I believe the general environmental impact of the projects and life I lived these last years is comparably lower than in my old life in Austria, as often I was living in projects during the pioneer phase with no electricity, tap water or internet, etc.
Stay tuned, as in the future I plan to share more in-depth reports and articles about my experiences around the world.
We are hosting a Permaculture Design Course with Rico Zook and myself, together with a local project, Active Earth, in La Garrotxa, a beautiful nature reserve near Barcelona this June, and still have places available. For course info feel free to get in touch at: permaculturainfo (at) gmail.com
The time is now! and as Mahatma Ghandi very wisely said:

Be the change you wish to see in this world!

Links for further information about the projects mentioned in the article:

• PDC Spain, June, 2014
• Rico Zook, Itinerant permaculture
• Govinda Sharma at Hasera, Nepal
• Bernard Alonso
• Heal the Soil, Sapney Farm, India
• Solitude Farm, Auroville, India
• Panya, Thailand
• PunPun, Thailand
• Tacompai, Thailand
• Gaia Ashram, Thailand
• Rescope, Malawi
• Himalayan Permaculture Centre, Nepal
• Himalayam Farm Project, India
• Natueco Farming Science, India

Awareness course group, Tipwere orphanage, Malawi

PDC Spain June 2014

Permaculture Design Course Spain - Alta Garrotxa 

Join us for this experience in Spain

Classic 72 Hours Permaculture Design Certificate Curriculum with lots of theory and some hands-on experiences plus Design Exercises in groups plus optional Yoga,Meditation,Deep Ecology and Mindfulness practices.Spanish translation available.

      Topics include:

Historyand Definition of Permaculture
Ethics and Principles of Permaculture
Design Methodologies
Patterns in Nature, Culture and Society
Reading the Land –Observation
Land Restoration Techniques
Water Harvesting Techniques
Grey Water Recycling
Natural Building Strategies
Cultivated & Productive ecological Gardens
Food Forests and Plant Guilds
Energy Conservation Technologies & Appropriate Technologies
Integrated Pest Management
Compost
Soil
Water
Forests and Reforestation
Animal Management in Permaculture
and much more

The course is adapted to a wide variety of learning styles and is presented via lecture, images, video, group discussion, individual and group exercises, and design projects. Class usually lasts from about 8AM to 5PM.

hosted in a beautiful natural reserve near Barcelona,Alta Garroxta by ActiveEarth.Come and join us for the amazing 2 weeks experience in June 2014!

ThePermaculture way of looking at things,everything is a gift,everythinghas a value,nothing should be wasted.

Main Facilitator will be Rico Zook and Roman Eisenkoelbl,for more information please contact us or look here:


http://www.i-permaculture.org

http://www.permacultureglobal.com/users/2280-roman-eisenkoelbl

http://www.active-earth.net/

Dates:9th June until 22nd June

Price:Slidingscale starting from 500 Euro food and camping accomodation included.

VenueInformation:

The Active Earth Centre for transformative learning is a place of great natural beauty and power. It is in the Alta Garrotxa Nature Reserve,2 hours by car northeast of Barcelona and 50 minutes north of Girona.Our vision for the project is the creation of a world-class adult education venue hosting individuals, students and organisations on programmes and courses that encourage and support human flourishing.


for more infos please contact:

permaculturainfo@gmail.com

Permaculture Intro Course India Pictures

enjoy the pics!thanks to everybody who joined..........

Charcoal at Pebble Garden

Bernard Declercq explains the role of charcoal in restoring soil fertility and demonstrates a simple method of making charcoal.

Bernard Declercq demonstrates the process of creating charcoal with an Iwasaki charcoal kiln.

Demonstration of processing charcoal for use as a soil amendment in the garden.

More information about kiln construction can be found at:
http://iwasaki-sumiyaki.com/esub2.htm

nature inspired Soil building at Pebble Garden Auroville

have a look at Bernard from Pebble Garden in Auroville explaining our Permaculture Design Course Group about how to mimic nature and build soil with local materials on a degraded land in an dry tropical climate!really amazing.....

Regenerative Farming talk by Eric Toensmeier

The co-author of Edible Forest Gardens (among other titles) speaks about earth-friendly methods for promoting robust food production while improving soil fertility, sequestering carbon and contributing to equitable economies. Hosted by Heifer International, a non-profit which works with communities around the world to end hunger and poverty through the use of sustainable farm and garden practices.

Restoration Agriculture

Restoration Agriculture by Mark Shepard

Around the globe most people get their calories from “annual” agriculture — plants that grow fast for one season, produce lots of seeds, then die. Every single human society that has relied on annual crops for staple foods has collapsed. Restoration Agriculture explains how we can have all of the benefits of natural, perennial ecosystems and create agricultural systems that imitate nature in form and function while still providing for our food, building, fuel and many other needs — in your own backyard, farm or ranch. This book, based on real-world practices, presents an alternative to the agriculture system of eradication and offers exciting hope for our future.


see a You tube video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb_t-sVVzF0

Redesigning Agriculture in Nature's Image

Annual monocropping produces nearly all of the grain, meat, vegetables, and processed foods consumed today. These practices require giant machinery, tilling, and the application of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, resulting in the eradication of biodiversity, the erosion of topsoil, and contributes 30% of global carbon emissions - more than from any other source.

Despite the massive human efforts applied to farming, we are woefully short of the inherent resilience, stability, and outright beauty of natural ecosystems. We need look no further than native ecosystems for a template of how to move forward from the many woes of annual monocropping.  This is our goal and mission: Redesigning Agriculture in Nature's Image.

By intentionally designing and planting perennial ecosystems, we remove carbon dioxide from the air, provide habitat for wildlife, produce food, prevent soil erosion, and begin the creation of ecologically sustainable human habitats.  Whether you call it Permaculture, Agroforestry, Eco-Agriculture, Agroecology, or Restoration Agriculture; Forest Agriculture Enterprises is here to provide the plants, technical assistance, and equipment to help create a healthier, more ecologically sustainable world.

Does this actually work in reality? Will it really produce enough, food, fuel, timber and human necessities to economically viable?  We firmly believe the answer is yes, and are working on providing demonstration sites, and economic farming models to answer that question with more certainty.  New Forest Farm is perhaps the most complete of such demonstrations sites.  It is a farm in SW wisconsin that was founded in 1994 by Mark and Jen Shepard. New Forest Farm has in many ways proven the concept successful. It is a living, breathing, productive 110 acre restored savanna farm that produces abundant food, fiber, and fuels.

Regenerative Water Harvesting

working in depth with dryland situations in South India made me realize the importance of Regenerative Water Harvesting Strategies 

I worked for the last 3 years in depth with dryland situations,mostly in South India in and around Auroville which has all the typical characterisitcs of a Tropical Dry Monsoon Climate.The last 2 years in this area the monsoon rains where almost non existend and we could observe big shifts in rain patterns and climate patterns.The situation is getting more and more serious,ground water tables are starting to shrink,reforestation efforts depending on monsoon rains are failing and dryland rain dependend farmers are loosign there crops to drought!
We started to look into Broadscale Waterharvesting Strategies,as we all know the famous Swale is in all the books but there are a few more things to consider.I am sharing here to sets of principles and links to websites which influence my way of thinging and knowledge development.

1.Watershed Artisans - Craig Sponholtz - http://www.watershedartisans.com/

10 Principles:

1. *Manage landscapes to increase ecosystem services and productivity.
2. *Protect and expand natural moisture storing areas.
3. *Stabilize active erosion to prevent further incision.
4. *Restore dispersed flow and increase infiltration at every opportunity.
5. *Cultivate regenerative plant communities to retain and build soil.
6. *Harvest runoff in place before attempting to move it.
7. *Transform “waste” runoff and sediment into resources.
8. *Create site-specific solutions using natural forms and processes.
9. *Anticipate likely failure modes and avoid creating new problems.
10. *Strive for beauty and inspiration.

2.Brad Lancaster - http://www.harvestingrainwater.com/

1. begin with long and toughtful observation
2. start high in landscape and work down – water gravity useful!!!
3. start small and simple
4. spread and infiltrate water flow – swales!
5. Always plan overflow and manage as resource
6. maximize living and organic groundcover
7. maximize beneficial relationships and efficiency by stacking functions – swale used as path and mount as planting area
8. continually reasses your system
     
   The Water retention Landscapes in Tamera,Portugal also seem to offer an interesting apporch to regenerative and healing Waterharvesting and usage. 
   
   
   
   

On a gardener level i found this tips from Toby Hemenway very useful:

Five water conservation techniques:(the fivefold path to water wisdom)

1. High organic matter content -holds moisture and add fertility
2. Deep mulching – slows evaporation,cools soil,add fertility
3. water conserving plants – need less water,survive drought
4. dense planting – shade soil and smoother weeds
5. soil conditioning – catches water,builds humus,directs water where needed
   
   
   the Water retention Landscapes in Tamera,Portugal also seem to offer an interesting apporch to regenerative and healing Waterharvesting and usage.

and please always remember and keep in mind:

MOST EFFICIENT WATER HARVESTING STRATEGY IS CONSERVATION!