Dane in Andalucia

Hi!
I should probably introduce myself now that I have started posting in here: I am Dawn Hoff, married to Marcus Hoff (who is also in here), and the mother of two children aged 4 and 7. I live in the Malaga province in Andalusia, Spain. A few months ago we bought a small farm outside Malaga (6,5 ha) which we are renovating and we plan to turn it in to a Permaculture Centre. My husband did a PDC with Rose Marry Morrow this summer and will be doing a teachers training with her in two weeks. I will get a PDC eventually (I broke our car so bad we had to get a "new" one a few months back so there went the money for my PDC...), for now I am learning on the job and doing a whole lot of reading, I actually think it is sufficient to learn what I need to learn, but there might come a time where a certificate is handy.

I am a stay at home mom, my kids are unschooled, I love knitting, cooking, learning and reading. I have a
Masters in Engineering that I have hardly ever used (5 years, less than my time at University), and I am learning far more now being an Unschooling mom and doing permaculture than I ever did in school. I am a voluntarist/agorist.

I think that'll suffice for now

Oh no - we have a web-site: soloenespana.wordpress.com

Hi Dawn, I've enjoyed reading your posts
See you round the forums!
I'd be really interested to read about the challenges of living in Andalusia; it's a pretty harsh climate isn't it?
Maybe a 'projects' thread?

I think My husband has a projekts thread, I'll just try to find it.

This is our projekts thread - it hasn't been up-dages: https://permies.com/t/27406/projects/Permaculture-center-Spain

It is a harsh environment. I come from Denmark and here dark black soil is the norm. Denmark lies in the gulf-stream and enjoys relatively mild winters and wet summers. But it rains as much on average in Andalusia. But the rain falls in the 3 winter months and the average is over 10 years - every 5-7 years a huge rainfall comes and washes away everything (including trees). This happened last winter so we have around 5 years to secure our mountainside (especially around the house), and create earthworks to catch the water. Spain used to be green and covered by forest - now it is mostly dry (in central Spain it is almost dessert in some places). The oak forests are all but gone, some are replaced by pine, some just bare mountain tops or agricultural land with olive/orange or almond trees on top of bare red soil (they remove all herbs/grass and some of the top soil underneath the trees at least once a year). But is is also wonderfully fertile - if you just manage to stop from washing away everything and soak it in to the ground (I have a photo-series on this coming up on my blog). The resilience of weeds in spite of maltreatment is amazing - wild fennel and asparagus, dandalion, olives and figs germinate as soon as humans turn their backs to the land and let
It do it's own thing.

Dawn - have you seen this thread? Art is the author of several books on grey water and is considered to be somewhat of a guru.

No i hadn't seen it - thank you!