Almenara – Building a Regenerative Future… by Hand
And we’re off! After years of dreaming, we’ve finally broken ground on our natural building course, guided by master builders Fermín Olalla and Ángel Arbo. Last Monday, we began constructing a Flexagon—a beautifully designed, earth-friendly structure that will soon become our new community living room.
Using our hands, local materials, and time-honoured techniques, we’re not just building shelter—we’re reclaiming the knowledge and power to create spaces that are accessible, healthy, and economically viable. Straw, clay, and wood have sheltered humans for millennia, yet in an era of mass production and hyper-specialization, the act of coming together to build in this way feels radical.
Over the next seven weeks, we’ll be completing the structure and installing a green roof, ensuring the building stays cool in the summer and warm in the winter—nature’s own insulation at work. If you’d like to get your hands in the mud and be part of this journey, join us for a volunteer day! Our first day, Friday February 28th is almost full. You can find all the details in our Telegram group here: https://t.me/almenarafestival2024.
Syntropic Experiments – Citrus Mandalas
It’s now over 3 years since we built our first mandala garden, with the chicken tractor rotating over its circular beds, and helping to build soil. We’ve found that these gardens, as beautiful as they are, are quite exposed, and too far from our kitchen to maintain as veggie gardens, so we decided to transition the two mandalas into citrus food forests using syntropic approaches. Last spring the chickens moved into their new coop, allowing us to move forward and start preparing the circular beds. Each of the twelve circles will have a citrus tree as its centrepiece, and a guild of supporting species including trees, bushes and aromatics. We’ve completed the first pergola, featuring grapevines which will provide shade in the garden in the hot months, while allowing light to penetrate in the winter.
Earth Care Volunteering Day
In the January newsletter we told you about the work we were doing bringing the soil back to life in two swales in Barrio Norte. This month we held the first in our new series of volunteering days, and about 20 willing workers came to plant over 600 perennial plants provided by the Junta de Andalucía. Between preparing the ground well in advance of the rain, adding fertility, adding seeds, seedlings, cuttings and now rooted plants, we’re creating a dense, syntropic, dryland community. Not to mention the fun involved in meeting with a community of humans who care. We finished our work and had plenty to hang out and enjoy our shared lunch.
Almenara Festival 2025 – Call for Workshops and Talks…
We’ve set the date (April 26th in case you missed the announcement) and now we’re building the programme – a natural earth plastering workshop, tours of the land, yoga and kirtan, music and dance… what would you like to offer? We’d love to hear from artists who’d like to share their practice, anyone who wants to organise activities for children, and anyone who’d like to offer practical workshops. We’re also keen to hear from local regenerative projects who’d like to share their dream and their practical ideas to help us together imagine regenerative futures.
New online courses in syntropic approaches to permaculture coming soon!
Collaborating with Candela and Aitor from Objetivo de Luz over the past few months has not only helped us advance our work here on the land, but has also expanded the impact of what we do. As they’ve supported us in designing and implementing new syntropic agroforestry experiments, they’ve also co-created two online courses—set to launch soon. One course focuses on syntropic lines, and the other on syntropic mandalas, both designed to produce high yields of perennial food while adapting to our dry Mediterranean climate.
If you’d like to follow our collaboration and learn more, check out Objetivo de Luz and sign up for their newsletter here: objetivodeluz.substack.com. And while you’re waiting for the courses to launch, you can explore their YouTube channel for lots of great permaculture content. It’s mostly in Spanish, but don’t forget that YouTube autogenerates subtitles in the language of your choice!
From the Archive: Creating Regenerative Communities
Yearn for community but don’t know where to find it? Read our article from Permaculture Magazine’s Spring 2024 edition (#119) to find out more about our experiments in creating regenerative communities, and find out how we have created small gatherings to
actively build local communities. Why not collaborate with us in the creation of Almenara Festival this year?! (We have now translated this article into Spanish too).
