Permaculture (Permanent Agriculture)

At the retreat center we grow our own completely organic vegetables. We believe in the permaculture philosophy of working with nature and all the plants, animals, ensuring we do not see them as being a product for us to dispose of when its life cycle has completed. Everything is re-used to provide food for us, the insects, plants just about anything that is hungry, they are more than welcome to have a feast in our garden.

With the old approach to agriculture, farmers are told what to grow and indeed when to grow it across all europe and some parts of the world. We see families in Africa and India to name a couple who cannot afford to provide a meal for there families due to this mass agricultural control which destroys land and leaves it baron having had all the nutrients sucked out of the soil and nothing but chemicals returned in its place. This has happened for years and years and like anything in life and nature if you keep taking and give no thought, love or understanding then it becomes unsustainable and this will lead to suffering of the human being and of the earth.

I (Peter) come from a agricultural background having worked in market gardening since the age of eleven and then moving onto a farm shortly after that. I spent years going to college to learn how to apply chemicals to a crop that covered sixty hectares, it felt wrong, and i could feel it inside deep down in my soul. To have the opportunity to do things in a way that shows you care for nature and this universe gives you a feeling of incredible contentment and sometimes when you have been lumping and humping things around and you don't feel you could walk any further, you don't, you sit down and have a look around and see the beauty of what nature provides for you, with no conditions. This leaves you tingling all over and you intuitively know that there is something else to life and if we can all learn to love and respect what nature provides then we can find peace of mind through the food we put into our bodies.

Permaculture in not just for the privileged person who owns a huge chunk of land. It is for everybody and can be applied in your own back garden, that's if you have not paved or cemented it, if you have, you are just wasting a valuable recourse right in your own back garden. I feel the need for us to grow our own vegetables is simply because we should not be eating food that has come from australia or has been shipped from another part of the world and consumed energy from the earth just so the super markets can profit from destroying the earth and consuming more and more energy, think about how much fuel is used. Also if you think of the pranic value of this food, it is indeed dead and may well cause you digestive problems. Their is nothing better that going into your own garden (it can be small) and picking your own life giving healthy vegetables or fruit.

While you are here with us we will share all the knowledge we have about green building, permaculture, cooking, yoga and will also give you the opportunity of creating your own vegetable beds, building a mud hut which ever you want to do. Their will be around 3 workshops a week in the afternoon and you never know you may go home and sell up and do what we have done, give everything up and move toward sustaining our own existence.