Eco in Denmark: The cheapest and most practical house

At the support concert for Pakistan, tiny ecovillage Friland collected 10,000DKK whereas an earth quake resistant straw bale house to be built in Pakistan will cost about 700DKK to implement, by strong hands and local material in Pakistan. This only event will shed 14 families, usually consisting of more than 4 people. So this proves.. little help matters.

Eco in Denmark: Support concert for Pakistan

Yesterday, the ecovillage Friland arranged a support concert for the flood victims of Pakistan, and the previously mentioned housebuilding-project where my previous host flying to Pakistan this week are already starting to teach new building instructors in the area on how to build with the delivered material. The support concert collected a lot of money, by having volunteers working and musicians playing. I participated making ecological drinks in the bar which we sold, and played a few of my compositions on the piano. The other musicians were a singing duo with folk songs, a violin player, an irish flute player and a drum player. There was singing, dancing and lots of pakistani food made by my prev host and his father. Alittle taste of another world, and we came closer to their reality by seeing how wonderful their food and music culture really is. Seeing the dresses hanging on the wall, made me sence there should be persons wearing them..

selling fabrics and tickets

Eco in Denmark: Brushing some lime plaster on walls

In the first few days here at Friland, I started as mentioned with whitewashing (or not clearly), more specifically mixing and painting with lime plaster on the external walls at my host. It was both a lesson in building stairs to reach the upper levels of the wall as well as climbing them, and of course this very simple technique. The cal is calcium carbonate, which is a chemical form of calcium hydroxide and sand, where water is added 4 times 1 to make the plaster slake. The result after brushing is below:

House's wall before lime plaster



Voila! A completely white, bright house!:)

Eco in Denmark: Sailboat ride and black dolphins!

On September 2nd, a crew from Friland went on boat ride from Ebeltoft harbor, to move the sailboat from one location to another. It was beautiful weather and with my hidden enthusiasm for boats there was not a chance I would stay on land. On the boat was the two older men who owns it, three inhabitants of Friland (Morten,Cathrine and little Birk), and three wwoofers (from Switzerland,Australia and Spain). The humor was high, the food alittle unprepared and improvised, and we kept talking about everything from philosophy to real practical ecology, world unity, the value of wwoofing and energy from constructions. Well worth the trip, also for the less shallow conversations. To our happy surprise, we spotted two black dolphins swimming and jumping pretty far from the boat! We couldn't capture them on camera, as they seemed to leave, but through spyglasses we could see them clearly. Dolphins are able to swim along the boats as the social creatures they are, but hopefully we can see them again one time.

Birk and his cool viking-costume

To float is to move sustainably

Eco in Denmark: Arriving at ecovillage Friland, Djursland



Boat ride on Sept 2nd in a 4 hour sail with other wwoofers and hosts.

About time for some updates. Arriving at "Friland" (Freeland) in Djursland on August 30th and now it is the 5th of September, and many exciting things are going on here already. Right now, I am at the fantasy house of Einer's, who cannot stand squares -so all his equipment and house is formed un-square (soon to be uploaded!), and my previous host until September 4th, was Caroline and Tahir from Pakistan as posted below in the supportlink. 

Arriving at ecovillage Friland, I first started whitewashing the outside wall of my host with calc and water mixed, to cover the brownish straw bales. The house also hosted a kitchen garden, as Friland stribes to become a hundred percent self-sustained as households. Their goals are pretty ambitious, both self-sustained, but also free from all loans. And most of them, has houses and area built for less than 300.000 DKK, which includes material. There is about 100.000 for material, and 200.000 for VVS,watersupply and common area costs. The host I first arrived to is on phase 2 of Friland, which means they are houses in building after phase 1 is almost finished. Phase 3 is in planning, and right now I am just gazing at the open yellow field there. Even though there are plenty more "fantasy buildings" here than at Fri & Fro in Odsherred where I was at first, I'd say I am still waiting for that badass hippie, and most of those who came here are simply average danish families, mostly with first-born children, often from the city and tired of the noices there, and the big wavy skirts and rasta-hairdos are still nowhere to be seen... hmm. Surprising, even here.

My current host's greenhouse, where I am working