For some people, the present world crisis can be seen as a devastating blow to their economy, to their personal dreams, and even to the future of the human race in general.
However, for all the negative effects of this situation with regard to our world economic
system and all the seemingly ridiculous controls on our lives, as ecologists, we can see this as ‘the wake up call’ we needed, in order to change the way we do business and how we treat our communal home.
Of course, in Casita Verde, we’ve been doing our best to be friends of the Earth from the moment we founded our little green paradise back in 1993, but there are always further improvements we can make both as individuals and as an environmental movement. So although we’re well on the way with our journey, we are still nowhere near perfect guardians of our planet. (We actually had a small party in the eco-wagon on the 1st of March this year, to celebrate 30 years in this house!)
Since writing my last blog in January this year, our small team of very active residents have been extremely busy finishing all the major repair jobs and programmed improvements to the centre. We’ve also had very few visitors during this period, so have been able to dedicate all our time to the work in hand and should be able to slow down our pace as the weather warms up towards the summer season.
I must say that the Casita Verde has never been so tidy, well organised and beautiful. All the garden areas are in full bloom, after receiving some timely rain during the last couple of weeks and our two nature-ponds are full of water. After successfully finishing our first nature pond at the beginning of 2020, we made another smaller pond next to the eco-wagon, so we could gather the water from the car park, which flows in a channel made from old roof tiles.
We also installed some food gardens under the carob tree there, as well as planted pumpkins under all the solar panels, in order to make good use of the space and extra shade during the summer heat. Actually, what we’ve created is another lovely garden area to hang out at the end of the day, listening to the water fountain and enjoying the sunset!
Having completely remade our Ibiza Fènix website during January and February, we’re ready to move on the Ibiza Ecolandia project as soon as we’ve managed to secure the land to build it on (Hopefully, next to Cafe Del Mar in San Antonio, if the owners are in agreement!). Even though the whole process seems to be very slow, we are still confident that we will eventually realise our dream and make a wonderful eco-centre which will serve to revitalise San Antonio and hopefully help to educate both the island residents, as well as tourist visitors to improve their impact on our fragile environment.
We’re also working together with the ‘Orca Sound Project’ from London, to up-cycle all the non-recyclable plastic waste from the island into usable materials, which can then be recycled indefinitely, with a special processing plant that we hope to install on the island.
Obviously, with so many people now wishing to escape from the rat-race and live a more natural and auto sufficient lifestyle, we’ve had a lot of inquiries about making ‘Casita Verde’ type projects. For this reason, we decided to write a full guide to making your own eco-centre, supported by more than 180 photographs of the various constructions and installations in Casita Verde Ibiza. You can find this information on our main website www.casitaverde.com in the ‘about’ section, plus a copy of the official ‘statutes’ of the NGO which runs the centre.
We also included an interesting questionnaire called ‘50 shades of Green’ in the ‘Education’ section, hoping to inspire both individuals and businesses to be more sustainable.
The Casita Verde Ibiza remains closed to the public, but we do occasionally invite special groups or individuals for a tour and a chat, especially those who are in the process of making their own centre.
In Granada, Rey Aldana and his girlfriend Audrey Turquand have recently purchased a 10 hectare farm, just 20 minutes drive from the original Casita Verde site and are busy moving all the materials over to the new location. The new Casita Verde centre has around 250 olive trees and more than a hundred almond trees, plus wonderful views of the snow covered peaks of the Sierra Nevada and an available water supply. They expect to be open for receiving volunteer visitors at the beginning of May this year, so if you’d like to help them with their new project, please fill in the on-line form and get in touch.
Casita Verde Poland is still in its infant stages, but Evie and her husband are busy preparing the place to begin doing workshops later this year, so also hope to start receiving volunteers in the very near future.
We’ll have more news for you in our summertime blog, which should be published at the end of June. Also, if we decide to offer any workshops or guided visits, we’ll advertise them on our Facebook page, as well as in the ‘Education’ section of the casitaverde.com website.
Of course, if you have any questions about alternative lifestyle techniques, or want to know how you can be a more eco-conscious citizen, please get in touch by email, sending your request to info@casitaverde.com, or calling our main office on 608838190 (English and Spanish)
With warm greetings from Casita Verde,
Chris Dews – coordinator
Recommendations for our followers:
https://www.greengorillas.eco
