The project of Fontarnau is, essencially, to create a space for experimenting with, learning and promoting self sufficient and sustainable ways of life.
Fontarnau adds up to about 14 acres of cultivated land (currently being rented out to a farmer who produces animal feed) and about triple that amount of forest. There is a big farm house and a couple other buildings on site.
This project is just kicking off, we only seriously started Summer 2018, with the creation of Food Forests as our main focus.
Who are we?
Fontarnau is home to 7 people: Maria Àngels and Jordi, Simon and Marian, Ferran, Boris and Julia.
The others (Julia’s family and Ferran) are supporting and helping the project by other ways.Julia grew up in Fontarnau, the land has been in her family for five generations.
There is for the moment 7 people living in Fontarnau. 2 are actively creating this project:
Julia and Boris met in Ireland during a one year Permaculture/Sustainable Horticulture course. Then they travelled together, making and participating in many permaculture projects around, especially in South America. They came back to Fontarnau, the land of Julia’s family, to start their own project. They share a passion for Food Forest, wild plants and self-sufficiency in general.
The main point which we focuse on for the moment is food security, throught the creation of perennial vegetable gardens and a food forest, and by learning about useful wild plants (edible and medicinal especially).
A bit about permaculture and self sufficienty
Permaculture is a concept created in the 70s by the Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. It’s a contraction of the words “Permanent Agriculture”, or “Permanent Culture” if we integrate to this conception the social aspects. There is many ways to understand this concept. We see it as a set of techniques used for creating more autonomous/resilient/self sufficient way of living, including mainly the topics of food security, shelter and renewable energy systems, community living and self management, etc.
This concept is linked with sustainability as the aim is to make systems of living that will keep on sustain themselves in the future, through caring on our natural ecosystems.
But we actively also working on other themes here like construction with natural materials, designing more sustainable energy systems, crafts, etc.