January has been a busy month at the Quinta – with lots happening online, as well as working on the land.
Since January, there are a few new community events. The first new event is the Queer Permies Pod, a place for community members interested in permaculture to share their insights, ideas and questions. Over the year, the pod will explore all 12 permaculture principles, one each month. January started with “observe and interact”. The next Queer Permies Café will be on the 13 Feb at 6:00 pm. For more information, head over here: https://quintaproject.org/event/queer-permies-pod/2023-02-13/
We also had a Quinta Community Call, with Benedict Morrison talking about “EcoQueer Adventures: the theoretical foundations of queer ecology“. Benedict explored what “ecoqueer” actually means, and reflected on his experience on the Quinta Land of what ecoqueer praxis could look like. The complete talk is available for replay on Vimeo. And don’t forget the next Community call is on the 16 Feb, at 7:30 pm. All the details can be found here.
The other new event was a Cookalong: Everyone who joined with the ingredients (listed in the newsletter last month) cooked together. This time the meal was Swiss Chard (and/or Kale) with Dumplings. Next time it will be a different mean based on seasonal ingredients from the Quinta garden. All the details are here.
On Quinta Land, there have been three volunteers in January. Together we cleared a lot of the land, removing cut wood and plants. We chipped many plants to make mulch for our vegetable beds and burned those that are unsuitable for chipping. Another activity has been preparing the beds of the two vegetable gardens (and a new one!). All of the veggie gardens have enormous weed pressure, as they haven’t been maintained before. To stop weed growth, we used cardboard last year. This year we also experiment with black tarps to cover the beds. The idea is that the warm and humid conditions created under the tarps will encourage weeds to sprout. At the same time, as there is no light, the weeds can then not grow and die, thus reducing the number of weeds in the vegetable beds. Stay tuned for updates on our success with that!
… and in January we planted: celery, celeriac, coriander, red, spring and white onions – all started in seed trays.
The heating system for the main house is now also (mostly) complete: we now have a wood burner that complements the pallets and solar system to power the radiators – and to provide hot water if necessary.
Finally, it was an exciting time in our local community: there is a new initiative to create a “circular economy” movement and alternative market. The first one happened in January and lots of people turned up. It’s also conveniently close to a bar that since December offers vegan food, cakes and regular concerts and other events!
And that’s it for the January update! Until next month… have a great springtime!