SEAL Project awarded 6 hectares for Permacultural development

Tilyeubyek 'Bek' Yeltai, Food Security Director for ADRA-Mongolia, confirmed today that the local governments of Ulgii City and Bugat soum in Bayan Ulgii province have awarded two 3-hectare land parcels to the SEAL Project for development into permacultural demonstration and education sites.

"We are working on designs for the parcels now," said Bek. "The land parcels are barren and rocky, but the soil underneath looks rich and moist; they are close to the river, and sheltered by the nearby hills."

The list of 146 useful plant species suitable for growing in Bayan Ulgii's climatic conditions compiled Dr Beket's research team over the last few years will be a valuable resource to support the design for this new development in the SEAL Project.

Establishing large-scale demonstration sites give Project staff another location to conduct trainings, and a place to test experimental designs and techniques (such as plant guilds, worm farm designs, and mycellium innoculation of soils) for their effectiveness before implementing new ideas into the field (where an ineffective design could cause a family to go hungry).

The SEAL Project team will document development of the sites with photography and video (coming soon), to show how quickly a bare patch of land can be brought into production through permaculture and regenerative design.

We'll keep you posted!

Photo: View of Ulgii City, from the base of the surrounding hills.

Mongolian Permaculture: What's next? (Day 22)

Theme song of the day: 'Just Breathe' by Eddie Vedder.  His lyrics just couldn't say this any better.

Photo: graduating class of Dec 2009 PDC at SCPI

It's been about 15 months since I stumbled across permaculture at Rick and Naomi Coleman's Permaculture Design Course at the Southern Cross Permaculture Institute in Leongatha (Victoria, Australia).

I had run out of money, moved back home with my parents in Melbourne, and, in search of what was next for me in the adventure that is my life, I had applied for a position studying Landscape Architecture at RMIT University in Melbourne.  There was no way of knowing on day one of my PDC that in just over a year, I would have been to Mongolia twice, covering an area from the Gobi Desert in the south to Zavkhan province in the northwest, to the Kazakh stronghold of Bayan Ulgii in the far west; and working on projects making a positive contribution to Mongolian communities all along the way... life is strange, and unpredictable, and beautiful.
 

Photo: Bek 'The Mongolian Maniac' wrestles with Dave 'The Ghost' Gibb at Wilson's Prom during our PDC rest day.

The new humble Monoglian friend I made on that course turned out to be the Food Security Director of an international NGO, and the small pact we made over the campfire one evening (to visit each other's homelands) is growing into an international collaboration of knowledge & resources that could help vastly different cultures connect, and learn from each other.

It's Bek's turn to visit my homeland since I am 2-0 in the visit tally right now, but first he has his work cut out for him with establishing a strong foundational year for the SEAL Project, and the other permaculture-based projects he is implementing throughout Mongolia (permaculture has been integrated into all of ADRA-Mongolia's Food Security initiatives).

600 integrated root cellars, and 600 passive solar greenhouses equipped with 600 drip-irrigation systems will be built for carefully selected beneficiaries throughout Bayan Ulgii province in the next year, as part of a 4-year plan to strengthen local food security and stimulate the local economy (with microenterprises and Self-Help microfinance groups) by seeding the community with these permaculture demonstration sites and future permaculture teachers.

Photo: 'Bolhadt', Project beneficiary living in Sagsay soum.  He is married, has 2 young children, has an existing root cellar installed under his house, is already farming his own worms, and has some experience growing potatoes and turnips.

Beneficiaries are screened not for their level of needs (this would be applicable to an 'aid' or 'relief' effort), but rather for their character, motivation, and potential to become future community leaders once equipped with the tools, knowledge, and opportunity to create positive, regenerative change in their own lives.  Checks and balances (such as monitoring gender-ratios and potential conflicts-of-interest) are designed into the selection process to maximize the project's potential for success.

Like all projects and organizations, the quality of results created is entirely dependent upon the quality and character of the people driving it, and based on my experience of the eleven ADRA staff devoted to this project, and the leadership & vision of Bek, Doc, and Michelle Abel (Programs Director) from ADRA-Mongolia's head offices in UB, integrity levels are high and the project is off to a very good start. 

One heartfelt conversation I had with project staff in the closing days of the course revolved around my personal experience of how many friends came forward to support me emotionally, practically, and even financially while I watched the small fortune I made during my twenties be taken away; when the money was gone, all that was left was the people I had touched - and I was humbled to find out how many that is, and how rich I truly am.

The SEAL Project staff have a similar opportunity, in that the work they are being paid to do over the next four years will touch many lives and forge many relationships that would be challenging to create outside of this context; if project staff focus on taking care of their people the best way they know how, than each one of them will be richer than they can imagine by the time the project ends - and we are talking about true wealth: the wealth of rich and supportive relationships, not the transient & deceptive wealth of money.

Photo: Bastama School Gardens project.

Dr. Beket's Bastama School Gardens project has the potential to impact an additional 500 students and families, while Guliya's large-scale fruit & vegetable production plot could also impact countless more.  In this way, we plant the seeds of permaculture design with 13 students, and watch it grow to help over 1,100 families move towards a sustainable & regenerative future.

As for me?  Well, I couldn't have done any of this work if not for the foundation laid by the many permaculturists who have gone before me, especially the work done by Rick Coleman and Kat Lavers during the 2010 Mongolian Permaculture project; had it not been for that experience and learning curve, I would not have a strong enough baseline of knowledge & experience to be effective here, and in fact it would have been irresponsible to send me in lieu of a more experienced instructor.

Photo: Rick and Kat, Mongolian Permaculture 2010

I was able to be effective in Mongolian conditions, and adapt the lessons I learned last year to Mongol-Kazakh culture, only because of the time, money and effort dedicated towards skilling up, and learning from others who were so willing to share with & teach me.  Now I have a stronger baseline to operate from when working in Sustainable Aid and Overseas Development, but there are knowledge & experience gaps (especially in creating and cultivating my own productive & functional crop systems) that I need to fill.

Bill Mollison said it best in the Global Gardener series:

'Once you've set up your home, so that you can leave it for 2 or 3 months and it just gets better, so that you are free to travel, then you can go and teach other people.' 

- Bill Mollison -

So that's what is next for me:  return to Hawaii, marry the woman I love, put some roots down, and start growing some veggies. 

Come visit if you are in the area.

Photo: Wind & Light ride in Hawaii.

Photo: HOME.

 

Chickens in Bayan Ulgii (Day 14)

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[Excerpt from SEAL 2011 Permaculture Design Training Report, by Matthew Lynch]

Mongolian chickens are very cold hardy breed that lay one egg every 1-2 days from March until October.  There are successful breeders currently raising chickens in Ulgii City; ADRA staff brought us to one family hasha during our pre-course resource inventory to meet with a breeder and view her system.

Photo: Heavily insulated chicken house design with warm-weather chicken run attached to entryway.

A small, well-designed and  fully insulated (including the floor) earthen shelter is sufficient to keep the chickens warm throughout the winter without active heating.  The site we visited had a small earthen chicken house (approximately 2 x 1 x 1 meters) nestled in a corner between the outer hasha wall and an earthen block storage shed, with a south-facing aspect.  A small caged chicken house of similar dimensions was built over the entryway for use in warmer months. 

The compact size and strong insulation (layers of felt insulation were also installed over the floor) of the winter shelter helps to conserve the chickens' precious body heat, which was sufficient to heat the chicken house throughout the winter.  Household food scraps and grain bought from the local market provide their feed, and they are let out during the day to forage and scratch in the hasha courtyard.  The children bring the chickens water from the house, and the shelter is cleaned out once every couple of weeks.

 Photo: The Rooster watches over his hens.

Photo: The flock huddles together against the cold.

Photo: The owner demonstrates how she calls the chickens to feed.

This flock of 10-12 chickens has been thriving for the last 10 years in this design, laying 5-10 eggs per day from March - October, providing eggs, meat, and baby chickens when need, as well as an additional family income of 300MNT per egg (360,000 - 720,000MNT annually)(i).  A strong demand for fresh eggs exists, and this family is easily able to sell all their surplus eggs to the neighbours. 

Successfully introducing chickens into a permaculture system for Ulgii City will have multiple benefits: increasing food security, boosting nutrition, building soil fertility, and creating additional income sources from microenterprises based upon chicken products (eggs, meat, baby chickens, perhaps even baking).

The existing design, while effective, could be modified to become more productive, functional, and resilient by integrating the chickens into a permacultural food production system. 

For example, a passive solar greenhouse would make an excellent winter run for the chickens, keeping the birds out of the wind and in the warmth of the sun during the day, while providing fertility and preparing the soils for a jump-start on the short Mongolian growing season.  Locating the heavily insulated winter shelter next to the greenhouse (so that it can be entered from the courtyard or from the greenhouse) could make it easier to clean; a larger door could be installed on the greenhouse side of the shelter (since it opens into a warm still-air chamber), and the dropping simply swept out into the greenhouse to be used as fertilizer.

Fruit trees such as seabuckthorn and blackcurrant could be grown along the hasha walls, to take advantage of the chicken manure during warmer months when the birds can be let out of the greenhouse.  Grasses and 'weeds' such as fat hen and plantain, could be cultivated and encouraged within the hasha walls and fed to the chickens to boost the quality of the eggs (layers who are fed greens will produce eggs with healthy, bright yellow yolks).

Photo: These chickens' hasha courtyard is bare.

Photo: Outer entrance.

Photo: Inner entrance.

Photo: Family watchdog doubles as chickens' bodyguard.

Photo: Chicken's bodyguard warns us off.

____________________

(i) 1,500 MNT per month would be considered a strong salary in Bayan Ulgii.

Passive solar greenhouse design: Bayan Ulgii v1.0

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Slideshow designed to use as basis for session on passive solar greenhouse design.

Hand-drawn images are based on student designs from Mongolian Permaculture Project 2010.

Other images selected from Ladakh to show passive solar greenhouse design successfully operating year-round to minus-25C. Students will apply design principles to explore & discuss what can be improved in these designs in order to adapt to harsher Mongolian conditions.

Glass and plastic bottles are available as waste products that are thrown away in the soum; examples of greenhouse, coldframes and cloches made from repurposed waste plastic bottles are shown.

Finally, images of existing greenhouses in Bayan Ulgii are shown, to be used as a class design exercise exploring 'What is working / What isn't working / How can the design be improved?'

Final version will be translated into Russian language, as most residents of Bayan Ulgii are literate in Kazakh, Russian, and Mongolian languages.

Click here to view presentation on Slideshare.

SEAL Project, Preparations: Ulaanbaatar

photo: Bok Choy gone to seed in ADRA's office plot

Springtime in Mongolia: minus 10C days, minus 20C nights.

Most crops we know in the West will not yield a quality harvest below minus 9.4C(i).  This is only one of the many challenges facing food security efforts in Monglia.

photo:  hands coated with sooty coal grime after harvesting the seedstalks.

A filmy haze of smog glazes the otherwise clear sky above Ulaanbaatar as the sun stubbornly persists in blazing through; temperatures are noticeably lower in the buildings' shade. 

As I navigate the crowded streets, the massive coal-fired power plants we passed on the way into the city center from the airport relentlessly belch clouds of grey smoke, the smell of which mixes with diesel fumes from car exhausts, and burning plastic waste from the ger stoves of Ulaanbaatar's ever-expanding outer settlements.  The rocky sidewalks, which we so carefully picked out way across during the summer, give me grip in the snow-turned-ice which has been trampled into the streets. 

The lush green hedges and trees now stand bone-white, or grey, buds tightly coiled on their branches awaiting warmer temperatures to burst forth again.  It is easy to talk about minus 40C temperature extremes when you are in the midst of summer, and marvel at people's ability to survive such extremes, but to begin to experience what that actually feels like is quite something else - and locals tell me that it is actually quite warm out today. 

I am out of breath just walking from my hotel to the expat cafe where I type this entry, rugged up in 4 layers + a hardy, Swedish-army-issue jacket that feels like I am wearing a dead animal hide turned inside-out; it's 1,500m above sea level in the capital.  Meanwhile, the locals are enjoying the springtime sunshine, strolling briskly without hats or gloves, squinting and smiling into the sun while kids wrestle and laugh on the steps of their schools, waiting for parents to pick them up.

This is a land full of contrasts: blazing sun / cold temperatures; brand-new Hummers pausing for nomads clad in traditional deels (trenchcoats) crossing the streets; street-hustlers hawking wares to suited businessmen; multi-million-dollar mining deals being negotiated in bars while street kids crawl out of manholes outside to survive another day...

In two days time, we will be headed out to the westernmost settlement of Mongolia, nestled in the valleys of Bayan Ulgii province, home of the ancient Kazakh Eaglehunters.  These are some of the most resilient people on the planet, who have learned to live with the harshest forces of nature around them, and while my employer is confident that I have some information to share which will help them, I am sure that there is more for me to learn here than I could ever hope to teach.

photo: Bek and great Eaglehunter Mr. Saylaukhan, utilizing Bayan Ulgii's Biological Resources...

Bek(ii) and I had long conversations last night about what we hope to accomplish in the next 27 days - 'Sustainable Economic & Agricultural Learning' is quite a mouthful, and quite an ambitious goal to achieve in so short a timeframe - so we wrote our introductory speeches to the class:

" 'To educate' means 'to draw from', which means that we are here to help draw out the knowledge & intelligence that each of you has, so that we can share & support each other in learning & growing together.   

As your Instructors, we will function more like Guides, helping you to understand things from new perspectives, giving new information where necessary and drawing from your own knowledge, to help you build a strong foundation to continue your learning journey.

None of us is smarter than all of us."

If we can leave our students nothing else but the mindset and inspiration to ask themselves, and each other, the right questions: 'What worked?  What didn't work?  How can we improve?', than we will have made a positive impact.  And along the way, if we can equip them with a new baseline of skills, knowledge, and perspective, than we might just spark a regenerative cycle of innovation and self-directed, collaborative learning - which can spread organically, virally... and hopefully infect inspire a movement towards securing personal sovereignty and security, in the face of increasing global adversity.

Changing the world begins at home; wherever your home may be.

Wish us luck.

endnote references:___________________________________
(i) 'The Winter Harvest Handbook', by Elliot Coleman
(iI) Tilyeubek Ye, Food Security Director for ADRA-Mongolia

Pattern literacy: Bayan Ulgii SEAL Project 2011 v1.0

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Photos and imagery of local examples provide discussion points to explore how pattern literacy can be utilized to inform the design process.

View the complete presentation here.