Of course it was too good to be true. I’d put out a request to find a trained “permie” who could help me develop my plan for the land and a guy called Torrie Suzuki’s name had come up. Of course I didn’t know him from Adam, but as ever, this is about leaps of faith….and I have the faith.

So Torrie came up. Smoked a lot of pot. Hung out with growers of pot, washed not quite enough and without answering many of my questions and concerns, left.

There are times when again, you get that feeling that all isn’t quite right, but I was prepared to see what he could produce…I felt a little ageist…he’s too young, not taking this quite seriously enough etc…lets see what he produces.

Yet again The Gut has it, and what he produced was more GCSE support group, than long term environmental land use plan consultation. It’s a shame and a waste of money, but I learnt again to listen to my “Gut” and am now hoping that the final plan will be undertaken with Catherine.

I won’t pretend to really understand the ins and outs of how the perma culture plan is expected to work, but in Torri’s case, even the philosophy or ethos was absent.  I’m still hoping to complete the plan and for that to act as a guiding principle in the development of the land use….watch this space.

New Permies

Having said that I’ve managed to meet up with some other permies at an event in Fez and visited some farms near Meknes. It was good to meet people who are “in to” permaculture and there’s a lot of mutualisation to build on. However I also feel that, similar to working in WaSH, many people have read the same books, are comfortable using the same language and ideas, but fewer have actually gotten their hands dirty.

Getting Hands Dirty.

I feel as if I may be doing much of this practical action, with a host of people who agree with the ideas, but haven’t actually put them in to practice.

Alex to the rescue

And of course in the ongoing absence of any building permission (see below), it’s it’s all about what we can do on the land…which includes planning and putting in the infrastructure for the water system. In this I have to say thank you to Alex, an old colleague from British Red Cross Emergency Teams now working in Rabat.

Water Reservoir cum pool

My idea of the water system is of course to be as efficient and wasteless as possible.

Thus sink water should feed any “wet toilets” and shower and other “grey water” will be send through a system of grease traps, gravel and sand filtration systems, finally possibly leading  through a reed bed system (maybe even with fish….I’m unsure about this…in terms of introducing new technology and practices in to an area and expecting it to work…human error…it’s fatal!).

This should then feed the lower water reservoir/pool, where the water will be used for swimming, watering the lower fields, or being pumped up for use from another holding tank at the top of the land, to then water plants below.

This will mean water will be used 3 times, shower/washing, swimming, watering plants. I’m trying to follow Art Ludwig who’s something of a grey water Guru, but equally having Alex about to hold hands, is a real bonus.

Building a Rainwater Harvesting Tank

One of the first stages of this is the diversification of water catchment. I plan to use water from the spring for drinking and should have enough access to provide for that.

Equally I have water from both wells, though the lower one only provides a refilling at a rate of 7 litres and hour and the top well is dry…thus awaiting digging down again. But what I can do is to collect rainwater and as such I’m putting in a 50m/3 tank to harvest rainwater from the house.

The grey and black water systems will be developed later and under the watchful eyes of Alex…I hope.

Building Walls and Terraces. 

Outside of the foundations being put in place for the

water/sanitation and land use systems, work has been ongong on the walls and tbh, it looks great.

Now permies would argue to leave the land alone. By digging up the land, any top soil, which is to say that fertile part we are looking to develop, gets torn up and “killed”, but equally by terracing I am enabling far easier use of the land and reducing opportunity for rainwater to flow away.

There are now aseries of beautiful partitioning walls and terraces which make access to and use of the land far easier and  I hope that wil eventually and literally bear fruit in the not too distant future.

The area around the “pool” has also been developed and looks spectacular…even if the pool itself is on hold till I work out how to fit it into the aforementioned grey water system.

8. 

The Digger and Finn.

I’ve used the “opportunity” of having to work on the land, to bring in the “trex” or digger, but it’s not without it’s problems. Of course it “gets the job done” but it’s bruital and unforgiving. That said, it takes a fraction of the time to do the same work as men and, with the amount of clay in the soil, clearing the land, to such an extent, with human labour, could have taken months…and lots of men.

The struggle for a Roxa.

As I’ve alluded to above, we’re still awaiting the building permission. The process requires an initial “commission” to agree that the land, illegally owned by a foreigner, can have it’s use changed from agriculture to tourism. Once that is agreed, another commission meets to agree to your building plans. Unfortunately whilst I got a thumbs up from the majority of the initial commission, the Director of Agriculture felt that farm Finn was the thin edge of the wedge and that it would lead to large scale tourism development.

Of course currently Loubar mostly produces dope…..so one might have thought that this would have been welcomed, especially as the model for FF is low impact agro tourism…but so far …no good. I’ve a meeting with the governor planned asap, so we’ll see what happens next.

Possible Design for the House

9. Possible-design-for-the-house

Tbh, if I get no authorization, I’ll simply start by building “my house” and see where we get to after that. I really need to get on with the build of the house, just to be able to stop building. To this end I’ve been look at styles of house to model on and so far I think I’ve found one that feels right…what do you think? I’ve also been putting up all possible materials, including the potrine, rocks, sand, gravel, bricks etc. I’ve bought most of the doors and windows, though these may need stripping.

But, in short, we are close to being ready to go…exciting…if the weather keeps dry.