Week 29- Ura Gora interview
Interview: Sophie Reeve
Introduction: Introduce yourself the way you want
I am Sophie Reeve, one of the co-founders of Ura Gora Foundation in South Bulgaria and one of the founding members of the community where the foundation is based.
When did you first hear about Permaculture and why were you interested?
I passed through 3 different stages to really understand Permaculture.
The 1st time was when I was a teenager when I heard about woofing. A woman told me how it was about saving energy, being efficient, exchanging competences, she was super enthusiastic but at this stage I didn’t really understand what she was talking about. It was like an alien concept at this moment.
The 2nd stage was when I was traveling with my bike when I left London. I was going to different places and communities. Most of them were talking about Permaculture and everyone had different interpretations of it, which made me create my own idea of what it was.
The last stage was when I came here. We exchanged our knowledge with Kossio and Krassy, and I spent one winter by the stove reading Bill Molisson’s book. Then, I started to have much more understanding of it!
Where did you take your PDC course and when?
After reading the book, I was really interested in it. That’s how with Krassy we made our PDC course. It was the online version of Geoff Lawton’s course. The two of us did that watching the videos, taking notes, making a design for outside, … It was really useful from a technical point of view.
The second one was organized by Misha a few years ago in Bulgaria. We were there able to see the social permaculture aspect by having group sessions, cooking and cleaning together, having sharing circles in the mornings about how we were feeling and learning … That was really interesting.
What was your biggest takeaway from the course - what made the biggest impact at the time?
The main motivation for me and Krassy to do the one in Bulgaria was to have that knowledge about Permaculture and to get some clear tools to structure our community. For example, we learnt about sociocracy, non violent communication and decision making, which was very useful in Ura Gora.
In reality, it is reasonably easy to grow a forest. But to grow a community is a bigger challenge! There is a nice quote from Brigid Meier: “Permaculture is a revolution disguised as organic gardening”. It is a radical way to rethink how we live and how we relay to each other.
What did you gain or learn on the course that you didn’t expect?
I learnt a lot about facilitation with the games we did in the 2nd PDC I followed. For example we had this game with the string in between the participants, sometimes we were walking in the garden being explained things, and this game where we all were parts of a tree and were someone was pumping, … It was such an amazing experience! By doing, the learning went really deep inside us. And also this idea that everyone can be responsible for creating this experience. I had this idea that if you organize a PDC, you also have to organize the food, the setting, and then the other people come and just attend the sessions like students. What I saw is that if you give people responsibilities and if you take decisions all together, then people really have this feeling of being part of the community. They will be much more invested in everything that happens rather than feeling like a consumer, they really feel like being part of a community.
What are the learnings that helped you the most while living in a community?
What helped me the most is the combination of being in a circle, taking decisions and creating together a new way to behave with each other. It is important for me to know that we all are important and are able to share our knowledge. The ethics of the PDC are really useful for the everyday life of the community as well. In Ura Gora, we implemented the gratitude circles, which is something we learnt from the PDC and that is related with the “collect feedbacks” principle.
What is your personal definition of Permaculture?
To me, permaculture is an ethical system that uses the intelligence and patterns of nature to design a way that we can live in harmony with each other and with nature and create a view for futur. In permaculture, there is a separation between earth care and people care. I think this is a response to a current mentality but as much as possible we have to think that we are creatures of nature. We are humans of nature, and I think the more we try to separate ourselves from that the more we are creating problems.
What was your first design or what did you do after the PDC?
During the 1st PDC, we made a design for outside. During the 2nd, we made one for Kossio and Alex’s place. After that, we designed lots of spots for our own place.
My 1st serious design after that was for a friend who asked me to design a garden for one of her friends living in Budapest. I had to use patterns of forest gardening, having clear places for the kids to play, having edible & medicinal plants, … This was my first professional design making, and we had an all process in which I had an observation step with interviews of the family, a survey, then some discussions because the house was still in construction. In fact, we validated the design section by section after a lot of discussions. Then we implemented it. I haven’t seen the implementation yet because of the Covid situation, but I am looking forward to going there soon!
What mistakes did you learn from?
At the beginning, I used to plant a nursery with really invasive plants. People told me about the propagation issue I may have encountered, but I thought it would not be a problem at that moment!
In general, I’m quite happy because we didn’t have a lot of money at the beginning which prevented us from making expensive mistakes. We didn’t lose so much time more energy. Because we started small, we had a fast feedback loop and were able to implement solutions pretty fastly.
How do you manage to irrigate your landscape?
We live in the driest part of Bulgaria. The whole site was deforested when we arrived. We have very dry and exposed weather in the summer with a heavy clayish and buggy soil when it rains. In general, we try to have a main water storage in the soil. We also have earthworks with an earth pond which we use to water the plants. We also use contour swales. Then, our main irrigation is the rumpump. This gives us enough to water my land and 3 families gardens. The water comes to the lands from the rumpump, we store it into a tank, then it overflows into swales to a pond. Then, we have plastic pipes to irrigate the different areas of the garden etc.
In fact, we chose to live in this area because it was easier to buy a large area there. When I came, I felt an emotional connection to the land, the people who were here, … All those things attracted me.
What are the long term goals and or visions of your project?
Yes. We want to extend the community and to implement a new design for a new land. We already made a design of how we would like it to look like with access points, water design, plants, how to fit the different places, the communal areas, forest, community building, …
Then also, in terms of sharing our ideas we made a website for the community that can be translated into different languages. We have educational projects, willing to spread our community and vision, we want to inspire people from our vision.
Do you have any other information you would like to add ?
Read a lot, visit different places, experiment, make the PDC, observe, and dream big. Permaculture is not only for designing garden! Design your life, your community and your future world. Permaculture is a toolbox. I encourage people to be brave, to experiment, and definitely to dream big!
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