Interesting place in Spain/ Canary Islands (could use some web help, too) for Eco Innovator/ author

We’re three months into a year-long family journey through Europe, looking for some interesting, innovative places to visit in Spain/ Canary Islands and a beautiful place to set down roots for several months. We may head north again in the spring if there is something super compelling to draw us, but for now we’re focused on Spain.

We’re seasoned travellers with a lot to contribute; everything from tool sharpening and baking to water system design and construction.
We’d possibly be interested in having a workshop to build a state of the art fire/ earthquake resistant cob structure (see pics of scale model testing)

My wife is a bi-lingual (Spanish-English) physician’s assistant, I am a lifelong ecological systems designer/ consultant/ author/ builder. We have an 12 year old son and may be joined for a time by our 22 year old fire-spinning artist-scientist daughter.

We have ongoing income and whatever exchange we’re not covering with work trade (like when we’re putting energy into our own projects, below) we can cover with money.

We speak Spanish and also some Danish, German, and Italian.

We need some months with good internet in a nice environment to work on updating our 500 page web site, new book projects and laying groundwork for cob shake table test in fall in California.

The ideal scenario would be a community with a spare room, 12 year old kids and an underemployed web genius who would like to work with us on the web site, with breaks in the fresh air to overhaul the community water system.

Any leads?

Thanks,

Art Ludwig
oasisdesign.net

Hello
We are Danish family in Malaga currently working on building a Permaculture Centre in the South of Spain.

We are in the very early stages and currently have no roof on our house, but have previously discussed buying a caravan/yurt or something like it to house volunteers - I'd have to check "the economy department" on that though and he is in France on a Permacultures teachers training - without phone connection I assume as I haven't heard from him since he left, but that question can be answered around Monday next week.

I am 37 years old, stay at home mom, engineer and unschooler. I speak Danish, English some Spanish a little German and a little French. My husband is 35, engineer and permaculture designer. He speaks Danish, German and English and a little Spanish. We are quite new to permaculture - bit eager to learn

At the moment we only have a 3G connection at our homestead but am excellent connection in our rented home. My husband works in telecommunications and I know that getting FWA on the land will be a first priority.

Cob-building work shops sounds really really interesting - do send me a purple message if you think our place sounds like an option

Hi Art,

Not in Europe, but if you ever head into Central America, let me know.

Art Ludwig, my husband is a web genius. Would you consider remote help on your site?

web design is what my wife and I do. Unless you want to come to Canada for a stay (and we have room) we would communicate by email. (skype/jabber as well if you like)

Our site if you are interested - http://www.starlingdesign.ca

We pride ourselves on small businesses and organizations. Our rates are very reasonable (under priced by a lot compared to many others, I just don't feel right billing more)

enjoy your travels.

We are not in Spain, we are in Greece! Any chance of you popping over here some time during your year in Europe? We are in the Peloponnese, mainland Greece near Kalamata. We do not have accommodation for you at this stage as we are still building our house and renting, but if we stay in touch, maybe we could work something out later. We would LOVE a rocket mass heater... do you know much about building them? We are having a lot of trouble convincing people how great they are. We have never built one or even SEEN one.

I am in The Canary island of La Palma....
I am not a community but I am building something....
Feel free to contact me.

A few things anyway...
I have Internet but not fast : I commonly have to wait sometimes when looking at a Youtube video.
As I have another bedroom, I can leave a place that is ok for a couple and a child, as there is a half level at the second floor.
I need some help yes, as a simple life from what is at hand means a lot of different things to take into account.
I am into the compost toilet building, and grey water stuff when I will no more have black water...
I also want to go on with the rocket mass heater project!
I do not need money from a rent because this is help that is welcome. I cannot either feel to be "out of my own home", which means I need that mutual concern be running to each other on both ways.
I am not a specialist in web things, but good at re-reading. Concern for what I am doing means concern for what you are doing as well!

Hey Art, NW Spain here.

Up here our issues have to do with too much rain, rather than too little. We do still need some clever water harvesting because we do have dry summers. Up until now we use spring water to water gardens and such, but for next summer I'd like a more "do-nothing" approach where all that winter rain we get the is held passively on the land.

There is fast internet in my village, I haven't hooked in to it yet. The local cafe has really fast internet. I am 20 minutes from Santiago de Compostela, if you've heard of it. I don't know anything about web programming and I don't have any kids around but you're still welcome to visit if you'd like. I have a big house, four spare bedrooms, plenty of space.

I'm laying out a pretty big forest garden this winter, about 2-3 acres and I have grey water and black water spilling out in to the field (my grandfather left it that way) that I'd like to come up with clever solutions for. I have some ideas, some of which are from your work.

We also have three springs that I'd like to work in to a cool network of ponds.

Maybe not a right match for a protracted stay (although you'd be welcome) but if you guys travel in the North of Spain, drop me a line. Would love to hear your assessment of what I have up here, there is plenty of water and gravity to play with on this little valley of mine.

Regards

José

Hey Buddie,

I'm form a colective in North east spain, specifically Garrotxa, Catalonia....inside a Natural Reservation, with a permaculture project going for overt seven years.
It's a comunity!! but rigth now only three adults, and two five years old and a 16 years old...But there's also a collective around it with people swinging by every often. It's like a rural community center with activities going on pretty often, less in the winter....
The internet it's a pretty good speed, and there's now geeks around but we have a long contact list .....
Our web page is www.masfranch.org, if you'll check it you'll see the natural building and the natural swimming pool we have...in the summer is way more enjoyable!!!

Anyway we have a pretty big design we were discussing to create about our black/grey waters ...in this would be an oportunity for us!! We have been following your work and have a couple of your books....

I haven't really talked to the rest of the collective, but if you guys are interested just send me an email at gussi@moviments.net

Hi Art and family

Alfred from Permacultura Barcelona made us aware of your post on permies.com. I'm living in Mallorca and I'm part of permamed.org, an association promoting permaculture in the Mediterranean area.
I would love to chat to you about options we might have for you and your family on the island, in particular "my" place, which is a property I'm committed to turn into a demo site/productive land.
Do you have a phone number I can reach you on?

Looking forward to talking to you soon

Warm regards
Caroline

Hi Art,

We would love to talk to you more about what you are looking for and how/if what we are currently creating might be a good match. We are an expat family living in the Alpujarra of Granada. We also have a 12yo (daughter) living with us in addition to a couple 20 something adult daughters who live elsewhere in the world at this time. My husband and daughter are bi-lingual English/Spanish and I get by with my own poor Spanish. (my talents lie elsewhere!). We have an odd mix of passports among us. We have the alojamiento up and running as a new model sustainable tourism facility and are now turning the focus of our work towards getting the finca portion operational. Our big picture plans include hosting educational workshops and apprentice placements. There is a link to our website in my profile. You can contact me here or through email or the site.

We would love to talk more if you are interested!

Hello Art and family

Great to hear you are travelling in Spain. I have been using your Greywater books with success for a number of years. (We were discussing the Spanish translation at one point, though that fell through.)

We are an ecological study centre on the north coast (Cantabria) with a guest cabin that's free at the moment. We have been building in cob for about 8 years -- check out our website at http://www.abrazohouse.org. We have internet at home (not that fast) but there's broadband at a lot of places nearby. We also have two girls aged 10 and 7.

It might not be the ideal place for what you're looking for, but we would certainly welcome a visit to play around with some ideas about eco-design.

Hasta pronto

Robert

Hi

I am a permaculture freak of the new school permaculture going to live to a mature 30 years ol food forest in tenerife north, if you need some help