During April we had the chance to visit Stagones, an eco-project on the outskirts of the mountain Pixarias with a ravishing view to the Aegean sea.

 

Andreas & Stella have settled down here since 2009 and with the help of Yannis & Nikos, who met each other during a natural building workshop, built up the first strawbale house with a wooden structure, a kiosk, an outdoor kitchen, a cob oven and a geodesic dome.

 

After working & having fun together, Yannis which is a former construction engineer & Nikos who had studied economics but gave up easily for the sake of natural farming decided to buy their own land a few meters higher in altitude than Andrea's & Stella's house. Natalia joined them after finishing her master in architecture in England, where she met Dominique, a carpenter & craftsman, who joined the crew some months ago! Dinos (a jack of all trades and master of some!) & Dimitris (a dexter welder and an excellent cook) joined them 2 years ago and all together set up a water supply system connecting 2km long hoses to a spring in the mountain.

 

Water reserves are stored in two large tanks & two solar pannels provide them with the electricity needed to power their devices, such as fridge, washing machine and laptops.  Dominique helped them build the wooden structure of the first two strawbale houses and the compost toilet with the breathtaking view ;) He also gave the idea of a flying fox (a zipline) as a means of transfering the materials & equipment needed to the remote area of the houses from the road, which could be only achieved with a wheelbarrow in the past (thus, avoiding a 200m trail carrying with the hands).

 

  Enchanted by the scenery, we stayed for a couple of days in order to exchange ideas on the construction of the composting toilet which feeds the fruit trees with its deposit and on a d-i-y metal stove cooker where they attached a used radiator, to make a full use of the emitted heat and of the circulated hot water !

 

Moreover, we visited their water supply system up in the mountain, explaining to us the difficulties they faced during installing it, as none of them had done it before.

 

Once in a while, they organise open natural building workshops to transmit their knowledge while boosting their site with practical constructions. In July, we had the opportunity to participate in one of those where we learned all the steps to build a wall using natural materials (sand, clay, straw,etc) doing everything from scratch. It was an amazing experience where everyone contributed with his/her techniques, abilities & energy, while enjoying the good vibes of our facilitators.

 

You can visit their website www.stagones.org or get in touch with them if you would like to go as a volunteer: info@stagones.org