Week 4 - Green, Grow, Glow

Hello dears ! Today, Fanny is the writer. I will tell you about the 4th week of the 2021 batch’s ESC Volonteering for Balkep. This is also my 1st week in Shipka, as I joined the project in the middle of June !

After 5 days to Wake Up Festival, we went back to Shipka on 20th of June with our great team : Tara, Ruhsar, Fanny, Marco & Markus. Ruxandra flewed to volonteer for a 10 days Erasmus + youth exhange in Sweden. Can’t wait to see you back home Rux !

Summer time : while garding, we have collected millions of red berries ! Some to eat and some to dry (but ssht, it’s for another project in preparation …)

This new week was full of green projects : 

• Sow our annual vegetables seeds !

To be self-sufficient, we prepared our plantations. We had first to clear our annual beds to sow carrots, beet roots and cabbage seeds.

Tara, Sophie, Fanny & Markus planting beetroots, carrots and cabbage to harvest it in october

• Clear the gardens and the food forest !

Sophie & Paul have some gardens near Shipka (mainly in the eastern part). Those gardens have been created mainly to reach those great goals :

1) Develop the polyculture system in Shipka

2) Maintain biodiversity

3) Becoming a shared garden with paths, plants, food trees

Some of those gardens can be a place in which people may enjoy the site while having a walk, spending some time or eating some fruits. The place will also be a culture place to inform about nature which surrounds us all.

To reach those goals, we first need to maintain the plant by weeding the beds. This also permits the young trees to strengthen !

Tara weeding a tree outlines

Great Team working : Before …                          … And after !

Another project that we have is to take benefits from Shipka biodiversity to create medicinal infusions, oils and ointments. To pursue this goal, we basically :

1) Look the plants and flowers that surround us

2) Make researches on the possible combination and the remedies that we could create

3) Collect those plants and flowers and dry it

4) Create the remedies !

Accompanied by our plant encyclopedia, we have collected the flowers on summer solstice day

Delicate poppy flowers

Tara detailing flowers

During this week, some of us were unfortunatly sick. After a total of 8 antigen Covid test and a lot of sleep, Markus and I let the others resting and went hiking near the river on Saturday :

Markus near the river

The day after on sunday, Marco and me made another hiking session to Shipka memorial ! 2 hours to reach the site, 45 min to get dow … and 3h to lay out under the sunrise in between.

Stay stuned ! 

Brought to you by Fanny from France,

Cheers <3