Week 10 - Living a regenerative life

Ready to become regenerative? Any healthy ecosystem generates space for improvement and experimentation to explore patterns, the force of habits, and the new species that will help it to evolve. We are so not different compare to the ecosystem. This is what we are experiencing at Balkan Ecology Project, it's nice to notice how we actually feel. 

On the first day of the week, we led the young Phronesis and almost mature Aponia  Polyculture Food Forest to give water. Markus, Fanny, and Hekim cleaned the east side of the channel to bring water. I also would like to write about what is food forest garden is. In Phronesis Polyculture Food Forest the pond is getting full from the mountain stream and by the contours and watering by itself. When Phronesis Polyculture Food Forest was designed firstly was contoured and shaped with earthworks (channels, pond). Phronesis was on the slope and measured from three different areas in the land with measurement tools to create the contours. Cold climate and drought-resistant varieties are growing there. Black locust Robinia pseudoacacia, Italian alder   Alnus cordota, Paulownia Paulownia tomentosa will get the canopy. Under canopies are Turkish hazel Corylus colurna, Cornel Dogwood Cornus officinalis. As a shrub layer, Blackcurrant Ribes nigrum was planted before with alder. After the rain, we usually cut tall grasses with machetes and mulched the trees with biomass and straw from time to time in a year. We are giving half a bucket of water/5 liters of each tree every two times a week. Creating a food forest is a satisfying thing to feed to biodiversity and human. We also talked about Wouter Van Dijk made a financial comparison between maize and food forest per hectare. 

“Interviews (with Wouter van Eijk for example), then you can have more of a feeling for what it will be like, whereas there you can show the farmer that it can work, to get 3000 euros per hectare. Getting more insights from other food forests that are already there is a good way to promote it to new prospects. Maize or grassland, which brings next to nothing, 300 to 400 euros a year.” (1)

Plums - Prunus americana and prunes - Prunus americana are rich in antioxidants, which help reduce inflammation, avoid cancer, and protecting our cells from damage by free radicals. Prunes have positive effects on bone health and can help reduce the risk of heart disease and diabetes. Even plums can help with blood sugar control. Plums are sugary does not mean that affecting insulin because of a low-glycemic index.

It caught our attention Chaste tree - Vitex agnus-castusis when we visited Balkep`s garden this week. The plant has been used for thousands of years for its beneficial effect on the female hormonal system. The berries of this plant have a range of medicinal actions but possibly the most important is its ability to rectify hormonal imbalances caused by an excess of estrogen and insufficiency of progesterone. The seeds and fruits are anaphrodisiacs, aphrodisiac, galactagogue, ophthalmic, sedative, stomachic, women's complaints. Plus it is an amazing bees and butterflies plant. (2)

(1)Bridault, Frenquelicci, Nabisubi, Lukács (2020, June 28) HAS UniversityofApplied Sciences.  Financing Food Forest, Professional Applied Report 2020 https://www.has.nl/media/25gjudp2/financing-food-forests.pdf

(1)https://www.permaculturenews.org/2019/10/31/phronesis-our-new-forest-garden-preparing-raised-beds-and-edible-perennials/

(2) https://pfaf.org/user/plant.aspx?latinname=Vitex+agnus-castus

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