What is Olio Caldo?

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Oct 27, 12

In these days in Damanhur, we’re thinking and talking a lot about Olio Caldo (4).

We’ve written about it here on the blog, but maybe you should better explain what it is.

In 1985, the Olio Caldo experiment was born: for a whole year, five people lived in a hut eating what they could produce on their own, with the ability to trade with the Damanhur market their surplus for missing items. Even the clothes were all Damanhurian produced! Electricity was produced by a bicycle connected to a generator and they traveled on foot, by bike or with rides, when they could find them.

In groups of five people at a time, about forty people participated in the experiment over twelve months.

At the end of the year, we learned a lot about the value of things, saving, optimization of resources, etc.

The term “Olio Caldo” (Hot Oil) comes from an scene narrated in the “Myth of the Sapphire Masks”, a tale by Falco in which at some point the players are able to fight off the cold by spreading the magic of “Hot Oil” over their skin. From the experiment of 1985/86, “Olio Caldo” for us has become synonymous with self-produced products, ecology, sustainability, saving, research: this goes for food and for all areas of daily life.

These values are always a part of Damanhur, but in some periods, “Olio Caldo” was of particular importance and involved citizens in collective targets and deadlines. This – for the fourth time in our history – is one of those times, and every citizen in every nucleo community is questioning, planning, organizing… to bring attention to these aspects of Damanhurian production. For several weeks, the agricultural center of Prima Stalla has been at the center of moves from one nucleo to another, to allow interested people to live there and give it a strong base for Damanhurian agriculture. Farmers are planning crops together so that there will be the greatest variety, and every nucleo community is choosing to engage in small farms, orchards, product processing, and also to cut firewood and reactivate small artisan workshops.

Self-reliance is a historic objective of Damanhur: environmental sustainability, the quality of the final product, to discover talent and create opportunities for people to express themselves, to save money and find new resources. In two words, “Olio Caldo”.