So here we are, quite isolated in the mountains on 18 hectares of land. Forest, meadows, heath, streams, springs, rocks, air and the Mediterranean sun. It’s sprawling and alive. There are many old stone terraces at all altitudes, on which a lot of cultivation seems to have taken place in the past. Nothing has happened here for decades. Blackberry desert and gorse/bracken scrub, two stable high herbaceous vegetation that prevent further development towards natural reforestation, or at least extremely delay it. In addition, there are free-roaming cows that trample the old terraces and pollute springs and streams with their excreta. Again, there is no concern for and about natural resources.

But, we do not want to revive a farm here. Rather, we want to work into the conditions and nature without a direct goal in mind. To act freely, to achieve a certain degree of self-sufficiency, yes, that is possible. However, the aspect of active autonomy is most important to us. If this results in an autonomous, self-sufficient life, then that’s fine.

To resonate with nature, to sense the genius loci again and again and to carefully re-naturalise and re-cultivate from it, that should be our focus. “As within – so without”, we also want to grow personally in our work. Man works into nature, but nature also works back on him at the same time. Interpenetratively, so to speak. This is exactly what we do not want to rationalise away. There is no separation. The more natural, the more natural! Just as we cultivate the land that has been given to us, we also want to cultivate ourselves as personalities. Just as we want to use principles such as permaculture to achieve an autonomous natural structure that functions independently of humans, we also want to increase our inner degree of freedom and independence. A lot of free-will work is an important prerequisite for this. For it is free will that makes up the real human being.

For us, nature and culture are two concepts that originally belong together. It is creation that provides us with everything we need: Light, warmth, air, water, fertile earth. Forms of gratitude for this were and are the first cultural (counter-) achievements of man.

Especially in the last three years, the loss of the cultural and the social has accelerated rapidly, especially in modern, western societies. So we have decided for ourselves to start again from the beginning, from the origin. Gratitude for the gifts of creation and the family as the seed of society may be the starting point. Being there. Let’s see what may develop…