Olio Caldo Update: Self-Sufficiency at 360°

Posted in Create Sustainability, Featured Articles | 2 comments

Feb 04, 13

Con voi, I am writing you with some updates from Prima Stalla, Damanhur’s main agricultural nucleo community, where our self-sufficiency project proceeds.

Our Nucleo has recently presented our project proposal to become a model within Damanhur for Olio Caldo – Self Sufficiency at 360°. The challenge is huge and our first objective remains to ensure food production for 500 people by September, volunteering our time and energy while continuing with our usual jobs.

However, the potential of Prima Stalla is enormous, and we have defined a few other projects to accompany the agricultural endeavor. Maybe the most important second project is our Agroturism, which we have recently renamed “Il Tarassaco” (The Dandelion, named after the flower of Damanhur). In Italy, farms can offer meals as long as they include a majority of home produced food – a perfect fit for us to share self-sufficiency in culinary terms with locals and give a good reason for our fellow community members to have dinner at our place.

Another linked project will be canning food, which is a real art here in Italy. The idea is to turn excess vegetables into home made gourmet conserves following the various regional recipes represented in our family.

Another huge dimension of self sufficiency is potential savings. We have analyzed our consumption in electricity and lowered the temperature in the house. We heat with a very modern wood burner and spend a great deal of our community hours in cutting timbre, as we say, “fare legna”.
If you start to think about saving resources, you touch personal habits and comfort zones for real – aligning rhythms to share rides, turn on the washing machine only at night to use better rates, and so on.

Maybe it is worthwhile to remember that nucleo business as usual goes on as well: we are 25 adults and 7 children/adolescents and share cooking and cleaning turns, organize our shared economy, transform the large country house, host guests, etc. We are still a newly formed group, very international, with a large proportion of “young” Damanhurians in terms of the community experience. We have taken great steps in our group alchemy, and living in Prima Stalla definitely means reinventing yourself – alongside with a renaissance of Olio Caldo.

We had our first party at Prima Stalla dedicated to Olio Caldo because the real fun part are the cultural aspects – a fashion show of Damanhurian collections, art workshops, a quiz on useful knowledge around self sufficiency and other aspects of our community, home made pizza with self produced ingredients… and dancing and massage, because when we enjoy what we are doing, we become even more excited about the direction of Olio Caldo!!!

Capra Carruba

For more information about Damanhur’s sustainable projects and initiatives, click here.