The Seed Camp

The Seed Camp

In the past, the mountains between what is now Podocarpus National Park, and the town of Vilcabamba, in Southern Ecuador, were home to many people who grew their own food from the steep hillsides. Decades ago, however, the residents left their homes for the valley. The last few generations practiced unsustainable agricultural such as burning for cattle grazing.

Constant burning of the plants left the top soil more susceptible to erosion. Any soil that may have been left over lack in nutrients as there was no plants to decompose. Due to the lack of productivity, the steepness, and the two hour hike from Vilcabamba, no Ecuadorians wanted to live and work there. For these same reasons we decided to take the degraded mountainside and call it home, Sacred Sueños, in hopes to show that we could make it into a productive site, both for humans to live sustainably as well as to promote biodiversity and create a healthy, growing ecosystem. To achieve this we focus on permaculture and analog forestry practices while experimenting and demonstrating means of: restoring soil fertility while enhancing resource production; building affordable natural housing, and appropriate technologies.

With the erratic help of numerous short-time volunteers, Sacred Sueños has built bedroom cabins, a dormitory, and a kitchen to humbly house 8-14 people (depending on how many couples). The project has made good headway in increasing soil fertility, but production is still a long way from being able to sustain 8 people throughout the year. With dependable help, it should take a few more years for the gardens to supply enough vegetables and starches, and for most of the trees to begin bearing.

Sacred Sueños has been a great opportunity for us, and for the many volunteers who have come through. We learn a great deal, especially through mistakes. There has been countless trial and errors, and this will continue for much time to come. Regardless of the setbacks and revisions, a great deal has been accomplished with a very low-budget in only a few years.

Finished Projects:

Adobe kitchen and tool room Without much sand available, some time was spent to find a method to produce bricks using the heavy clay subsoil on site. Today, the kitchen doubles as a library.

The Dormitory This is a pole platform attached to a cob storeroom supporting a second floor cantilevered pole dormitory. The poles are from a nearby eucalyptus plantation, and the cob is an experiment using dry sugar cane leaves as fibre. The front (non-supporting) wall of the storeroom was a different experiment using just shredded plastic garbage to replace the fibre. This successful technique is now being repeated with most of our cob work, reducing our waste by over 95%!

Cob bedroom Using our successful technique, we built another cob bedroom.

Composting toilet Our toilet provides all the fertility for the orchard and trees in the garden. The bucket and sawdust system is surprisingly hygienic and odor free, uses no water, and has had astoundingly positive effects on the trees.

Greywater system The greywater system from the kitchen sink filters much of the used water and irritates a few garden plots.

Adobe made nursery We seem to have a great deal of difficulty getting seeds to germinate outdoors so we made a nursery which houses all our garden greens and tree seedlings until transplanting.

Chicken tractor The chicken tractor consists of eight 1m by 8m beds that rotate uses from feeding the chickens who naturally terrace and weed our terrain. Once they have done their job, we plant all our lettuce greens. These beds are our most successful due to the constant fertilizing of the chickens wonderful poo.

Two pole bedrooms

Solar heated shower Shower and Laundry tub with solar hot water heater.

Two greenhouses Hot/humid and warm/dry Two greenhouses providing hot humid and warm dry climates for increased plant diversity. The humid greenhouse is semi earth-sheltered and built with adobes to reduce costs. If the greenhouse were planted solely in tomatoes, 7 months of harvests would have payed for the entire construction (minus labour costs).

The Orchard Currently there are an array of plums, peaches, apples, pears and some shorter lived fruit trees such as naranjilla and tomate d’arbol. All these trees are happily growing with the help of our healthy contribution of poo.

Garden beds We currently have approximately 20 garden beds ranging from 1m squared to 1m by 3m producing annuals for our lunch harvests. Beds were made by adding our compost mix (made by composting our kitchen scraps, donkey manure, dry and wet mulch and some ash in heaps and allowing them to become thermophilic).

Garden shed

Earthbag damn
Constructed with earth bags, this damn supplies the farm for all its water needs.

Water tank
An earthbag (cement lined) water tank with a sand filter intake providing gravity fed water for the shower and irrigation for gardens and orchard.

Stereo and speakers
The installation of a small 12v solar power system, which powers our music vices along with home-made speakers.

Contour ditches
Contour ditches are dug throughout the garden acting as both a soil catchment and a rain catchment. When it rains here, it rains a lot so we try to catch the rain and have it slowly infiltrate into the gardens rather than rushing down the mountain taking all our top soil. During exceptionally wet times, the ditches can also serve to drain the gardens.

Contour bunds
Contour bunds below the ditches act as windbreak and perennial gardens The roots of the perennial plants that feed us and protect the gardens from strong winds, take up water slowly from the ditches. The bunds also contain some native species that provide nutrients through leaf mulch, provide food, and firewood all within the garden, increasing our energy efficiency.

Current Projects

Here are some of the projects that have been initiated, some on the way to completion, some always ongoing:

Tree planting Bi-weekly we plant different seeds in hope to contribute to our reforestation efforts.

Garden building and care We are currently fixing up old beds and continuously trying to get a more diverse garden to contribute to our food needs.

Tree care A couple of times a year we give some human compost, loosen the soil and depending on the season, trim the encroaching brush prune, and irrigate all our orchard and other perennials.

Apiculture We now have three hives started, but it will be a while before they grow and expand enough for sustainable honey and wax production.

Cob wood oven We would like to have a wood burning stove for the main cooking appliance in the future. We have tried many times to get this thing to work, hopefully on the next trial we will succeed.

Yves house and future RADI center. Development of a new project on a site located twenty minutes from Sacred Suenos. For those interested in building we have several projects including the construction of a house using various natural building techniques.

General maintenance on the site This includes fixing leaky roofs and pipes, maintaining stairs, cleaning contour bunds, clearing trails, etc..

Composting We are always collecting donkey manure and trimming greens from the site for the compost piles. We usually make a new one every six weeks.

Rainwater harvesting
We can have months without rain during the dry season, but when it does rain, it can be very intense. We hope to divert as much of the deluge during the rainy season, storing the water in the soil as well as ponds and cisterns.

Planting and fencing a silvopastoral system
Using a diversity of mainly native multipurpose forage trees rather than grass monoculture, we want to demonstrate that its possible to house a number of ruminants (the aforementioned donkeys, horse and perhaps a few more goats for surplus cheese production) using a rotating pasture system.

Yurt bedroom
A wood and rubberized canvas yurt bedroom.

RADI (Regenerative Andean Design Institute)
We are looking to set up intern programs for long-term commitments who share our vision. For more information please click here.

Future Projects:

The farm is always growing and we are open to collaborating with volunteers to create and implement new projects! Our objective is to complete the development of the Seed Camp by 2014. Our mission is to be self-sufficient by this time through the production of resources for our own consumption as well as surplus to be sold or traded. The following projects are what we hope to accomplish. Projects will be added, changed, adapted or disregarded as we learn, and receive exciting new ideas from volunteers and interns.

• Medicinal herbs
• Complete garden building to sustain eight people.
• Recycling center/platform extension made from recycled materials (cob from last 6 years) The first floor will be storage for recyclable materials, while the second floor will be a library and social area.

• Natural structures for more bedrooms.
• Completing rainwater harvesting earthworks and converting some reservoirs into seasonal fish ponds.
• Producing medicinal and gourmet mushrooms
• Propagating mushrooms for soil mediation
• Converting composting toilet into biodigester for added benefit of methane production.