If all we want is clean water Jame, why are we talking about ‘energy’?

Great Question Guys ~ keep ’em coming.

All we ‘want‘ is clean water. So go ahead and design a water filter right? … well yes. Exactly. What water are we filtering though? Where does it come from? What was it doing?

• Are we watering plants to grow our food?
• Are we watering our animals?
• Are we capturing rainwater for reuse?
• Do we have a self-replenishing lake or river we can use?
• IS our water state scarce?
• Are we using it to generate electricity, or machine our foodstuffs in any way (Eg: flour)?
• Are we using it for sanitary purposes ~ ourselves AND our animals?
• Are we using the dung to create compost to grow our food?
• How does the dung interact with the water?
• How does ‘any‘ waste interact with ‘any‘ water?
• What ‘are‘ our waste products and what are we doing with them?
• Have we thought about it comprehensively?
• Can we use it more efficiently?
• Can we create something that takes a large amount of work out for all of us by sharing the load?
• Can we create a holistic ‘system‘ that achieves all of the above AND filter our water for us? YES.

If we’re ALL trying to achieve the basics individually by ourselves, we’re doing it inefficiently ~ that’s how it relates to energy ~ and that’s what community based thinking is all about.

Energy Efficiency.

Working individually to achieve the same goals, in the same location is a ‘waste‘ of energy, therefore an inefficient energy system. If we ‘align’ ourselves with our individual goals a little bit better (no matter how simple those goals might be), we can ‘group’ those that we ALL need, share the load and raise the ‘entropy‘ of the system, to include ‘more‘ microstates within our ‘macro-state’ ~ opposed to considering our water needs and requirements as a macro-state of its own. For any circular system to function correctly, we MUST consider the details AND INCLUDE OURSELVES WITHIN THE DETAIL SETS.

Once considered properly, we will ALL benefit from our actions, opposed to a few ~ giving us ALL opportunities to better the same system, all the time, because we’ve all GOT more time!

Let’s Begin with Fire.

1. Sun/ Wildfire/ Contained fire: Essentially all do the same job. They create a state of a high energy source to do other things with. At the human scale (if we want to remain in the same location for any amount of time), that can be a firepit or an engine (same thing ~ but the engine can take our fire ‘with’ us if we want to move). So let’s use it to design a garden that we can all benefit from.
2. Reusing or recycling ~ we need compost to help our garden grow stuff for us. If we follow nature we can filter out the inorganic, minimize our ‘footprint’ and recreate soil.
3. Healthy food ~ Food doesn’t ‘have’ to include animals, but the production of plants certainly benefits from animal integration since their dung is high in energy, which we mix into the soil to provide for the plants. If you don’t want to eat them, ‘exchange‘ them with someone else who ‘does’.
4. Economy ~ We’re all working the same garden now. We’re not necessarily ‘earning’ from it, but we’re a community. We don’t oppress our opinions on others, we find the things that amuse us about our differences and help each other to be secure about those differences. ~ In doing so; we have an energy source (Fire); We have a ‘habitat’ arranged almost automatically because we came together (Garden); We have foodstuffs that we can specialize with individually ~ Recycling; Soil-provision; Manure and soil-amelioration; Meat; Vegetables and OH! … where’s the ‘water’?
5. Water ~ EVERYTHING requires water to even exist. It’s not that our aquatic interests are ‘lower’ on our list, it’s that we already ‘know’ that without the stuff, none of the above will EVER happen anyway. So if we apply ourselves to our ‘needs’ first, we can look at bettering the provision for those needs and requirements more easily, a little further down the track. Consider how we’ve circled the person in the garden. The water is behind them IE: it is a prerequisite. The REAL question is: How is it being used?
6. Filtration ~ NOW we can look at filtration PROPERLY! We began with a garden. We included ourselves within that garden, thus it is a habitat. We’re following the patterns of nature to work ‘with’ the garden, thus we’re equals, thus it is an ‘Environment‘. We recognise that heat is a waste of energy (because we understand entropy now) and that ourselves and our fire are both macro-state operations in their own right, BUT ~ also ‘micro-states’ of the processes of nature of the ‘environment’ that now includes our thinking patterns. those thinking patterns are now therefore “filtered” and oriented towards natural processes, rather than our own. They are therefore ‘holistic‘ because we recognise ourselves as part and parcel of the system that contains us.
7. Holistic System ~ We can very easily see that pretty much everything is a filtration system of one sort or another. Fire filters light to create carbon; Carbon absorbs moisture and nutrient content in the form of reusable energy; Animals and humans filter that energy by eating the garden; the maintenance of the garden is filtered into sub-groups that use it differently towards the same goals; The goals are filtered into their constituent matter all of which is based around water, but we don’t even have to think about that ~ it’s now obvious ~ so filtering the water can mean multiple things and create diverse realities with which we can experience equally by individual means, and as we can as a whole ~ and THAT kids, is Consciousness.

You are NOT going to solve the entirety of the world’s problems all by yourself and in your lifetime. It is better to move ‘towards’ shared goals, than attempt to convince everyone else of your personal opinions.

HOWEVER, by ‘understanding’ animal husbandry you will allow yourself to produce your own group-energy-provision; have an awful lot of fun with the animals (they’re nuts, trust me. It can be very destructive when you get it wrong ~ but animals are absolutely hilarious to live with); learn to grow better food; learn to better filter water by understanding how the animals do it themselves; learn how animals always think ‘upstream’ in groups (although there’s always one that gets it horribly wrong); therefore learn to include and ‘teach’ upstream thinking among your community, and help ‘them’ to understand ‘our’ environment ~ simply by understanding water ~ as a means of energy.

By structuring our immediate environment together, we can examine it as a means of a municipal support system that works hand-in-hand with our extended environment. Thus our extended environment will begin working with us too.

By creating our packaging and disposables from recyclable materials, our WASTE can be contained and used to create heat (or energy) IE: Waste-to-Waste in the form of Fire; EXACTLY LIKE NATURE.

The residues from that contained fire can be used to ameliorate the soils that we’re making, because of our better approach to animal husbandry ~ in itself now an organic process ~ far better than “Rewilding”.

The fire itself provides us with the means to create different forms of energy from ALL of the waste in our garden, the plants of which we use to feed ourselves and our animals whilst maintaining to provide energy for our bio-digestors to mix with the dung to compose; which creates ‘more’ energy as a bi-product (essentially becoming free energy because of the way that we live) ~ AND filter the water required to achieve the goals in the first place. Thus creating a cyclical economy at any order of complexity.

That is what ‘we’ call “Vila Qatuan“. It isn’t really ‘A’ place, it’s a concept. We’ve decided to segregate everything now, in order to demonstrate that in the form of a life-sized, working model ~ that people can replicate in groups, towards achieving community development goals at Municipal levels. We’re working on the Resort (to demonstrate a very high quality, shared habitat for visitors (a hotel)) and the Community Event Hosting Platform (our pub) as a regional Capacity Building Project, to help others achieve or discuss the goals themselves, and better them.

Energy Provision.

Now we’re moving to energy provision. We’re designing a small pig farm (3-4000m²) that we will integrate into our Agroforestry farm ~ somewhere else in the town ~ feeding ourselves, our friends, our animals and the Municipal energy grid.

We need approximately 30kWh provision for the resort. To manage that correctly the easiest method is pig dung. We can either generate the energy at the farm and transfer it by a grid ~ or transport it to the Resort as a fuel ~ or both. To manage that correctly we need to assess it by means of a weekly Production/ Maintenance schedule so that we can size it. Having done that our results are as follows:

Fazenda Limaria 1Ha. Urban Farm, including 4000m² pig farm + 500m² Energy Platform.

1. With 1150 production pigs, 100 mothers, and 20 boars, the farm aims to produce 30 pigs per year on a weekly basis. The piglets leave the crèche between 42-63 days and have around 110 days of playtime before Christmas. Each lot is approximately 200m², with 10 lots if the cycle is 9 weeks or 7 lots if it’s 6 weeks, allowing for 35 pigs per lot. The pigs leave the crèche at 25kg and reach a kill weight of 110kg, with a weight gain of 0.87kg per day, resulting in approximately 85kg of meat. The cycle lasts for 98 days, including 14 lots and time for sanitation.

2. The farm requires about 15 lots of approximately 200m² each, including feeding areas, access points, corridors, and dividers, totalling around 3-4000m² or about 1 acre. The cost per kilogram in the area is approximately R$6, with a selling price of about R$8 per kilogram. The farm earns around US$1000 per week. The pigs produce a significant amount of waste, approximately 5kg per day per pig, totalling 150kg per lot per day or around 1 tonne per week, generating 110m³ of gas per week. By running over 14 lots simultaneously, the farm can produce 220m³ of gas per day, approaching a 60kW electricity generation station.

The ‘requirement‘ is a 30kW generator for VQ, but the goal has become a community energy generator which will earn around R$116,640 per year by supplying the excess energy to the Municipality at a reduced rate ~ so that the municipality equally benefits from the production of its energy ~ whilst also providing for training and education; Jobs, Food and Water Security.

Event Hosting Platform.

That’s why we have a pub. We have an idea and we want to express it to our local community. We now need to build the bar a stage, upon which we will present our energy idea to them ~ essentially, training our community to use the space we’re developing for them to develop events of their own.

This time ‘we’ will be presenting and demonstrating a community development programme, that we will ‘have’ to teach them to achieve, thus provide jobs and thus provide marketing opportunities ~ such that some of our clever neighbours might want to take our meat and turn it into sausages or bacon for example, to which ends we can create events to assist with community marketing schemes.

All we wanted is clean water, but ‘now’ we’re talking about ‘energy’ ~ together.

Vila Qatuan Community Development Programme:

Small Pig-Poo Management into Bio-fuels: