This week we sent a blog post to our friends at Weston A Price Foundation.
Kia Ora to all Weston Price members.
We are a group of people in beautiful New Zealand who are developing an eco-village, Kotare Village www.kotarevillage.co.nz, where we are committed to regenerating our health and the health of the ecosystem we live in. This means we are creating our own food culture out of the Weston Price principles and it also means the land use design for the entire village is based around our food requirements put together with what works on this land in this climate.
It all looks something like this… A small dairy farm producing raw milk from which meets all of our dairy requirements, the dairy also provides curds to feed poultry and whey for pigs, poultry follow cows around the posture or they are in forest gardens, pigs are free range, or in perennial polyculture systems, we catch fish in our river, we eat our own lamb, beef, pork poultry and wild goat, all grazed following Holistic Management practices, and perennial polycultures. We grow nutrient dense vegetables and fruit and nuts and are experts in this field. We are all currently gardeners although we recognise that everybody isn’t a gardener, we garden our own gardens as well as a main crop community garden, and we make and eat lots of ferments, and we teach all of this stuff to others through Koanga Institute.
The Koanga Institute (www.koanga.org.nz) is at the heart of the Kotare Village, where we are currently running an urban garden research project to see how much of a families nutrition can be provided from a 200 sq m garden. We have a How To Grow Nutrient Dense Food research project in early stages as well, plus growing and saving the New Zealand national heritage vegetable seed collection and an important heritage fruit tree collection. There is a load of potential for eco-village settlers in these fields as part of the whole shape, and we envisage a co-operative as soon as we have enough families invested. The way we have structured our business plan means we will have money to invest in businesses that come out of our passion and the land for the good of the whole.
Kotare Village is actively looking for like minded people who want to support a shared dream of embracing a regenerative future through independent village living, local economies and co-evolution. There are opportunities for settlers, investors and supporters.
It is a very exciting time in the village! Through this venture we are planning to have around 30 families live in Kotare Village to ensure we have enough of a population to create a strong economic base.
We’d love to hear from you NOW if you are interested in investing in your future or becoming a setter. Email us at koangainstitute@gmail.com
