Hi, I am Natalie Bogwalker and I am the founder and director of Wild Abundance.
Wild Abundance is a school that teaches
skills for living with the Earth.
It's my home and home of my family and many others.
It's part of a neighbourhood of magical people.
It is a permaculture demonstration site.
Here, I have built this cabin with my own two hands and ton of help.
You will see this along with a bunch of other cool things!
We are going to see a cob oven, we are going to see an outdoor kitchen,
an amazing garden, large scale terraces
rain water catchment and way more!
So, please come along!
(birds chirping)
Here it goes!
This is the original part of the cabin.
The original built was 12 feet by 16 feet.
I want to point out a few features.
When you are building a tiny house,
it is really important to pay attention to details.
As you walk in the door,
you are straight to the kitchen, and that's really important
because for me that's where I spent a lot of time in the house.
This is a sink that is made out of soapstone,
and I carved in these drainage points.
This window sill is also soapstone and this is south facing
so when it is winter time, the sun comes in, it hits this window sill
and heats the sink, it heats them up and it releases that heat into the room.
This wood stove, when this is really roaring in the winter time,
that also heats up the soapstone and that heat is slowly released
even if the fire goes out from the wood stove.
(birds chirping)
The leaf shape garden is a living laboratory for the online gardening school
Throughout the year, we grow 33 different types of vegetables
using a wide array of techniques that we have developed to be perfect
just for this area.
We grow so much food that is way more than my family can eat so we get to share
the bounty with a lot of different people in our community.
We planted over 300 fruit trees and bushes here at Wild Abundance
making it into a permaculture paradise.
We planted apples and chestnut trees,
raspberries, blueberries,
goumiberries, serviceberries,
marionberries, mulberries,
and a lot more!
It's really beautiful to see how they are all interacting, and to see people
who come here being so inspired and excited about they can grow
in their own backyards.
Here are some large scale terraces that we built using the appropriate technology
of some heavy machinery.
The amount of food we are going to be able to grow here is enormous!
compared to what we could have grown
growing on the hillside that was here before.
And it really took just probably ten
gallons of gas to make all of these terraces.
This is one of our three season shelters
where apprentices, guests, all sorts of folks have stayed in a place that's very
close to nature. You can see there is no screens and the walls come high enough
to keep all the rain out but don't keep out the sounds of the bird song.
This is just an amazing way to live!
and luckily we don't have many biting insects because we have cultivated
all these ponds so that the frogs keep the insects down,
and we can sleep like this and not get bit up!
Our outdoor classrooms are incredibly unique!
They protect you from the wind and the rain but you are still totally
immersed in nature. As you are learning from amazing teachers!
The classes that we host do really well in these spaces.
They range everywhere from wildcrafting, and permaculture to
tiny house and women's carpentry classes.
Our rain water catchment systems catch water from roof of buildings
and store that water as high as possible so it can be used with pressure
in our gardens, sinks and all sorts of places.
We have these systems on several different buildings.
In times of drought, we have as much water as we need.
This cob oven is made of clay, sand and straw.
The inside of it is super dense, it's thermal mass so when we build fires,
the heat gets trapped in there because there is another layer outside of that
called a thermal break and it's made of mostly straw with a bunch of clay
surrounding it so it doesn't catch on fire!
And finally we have this beautiful earthen plaster on top.
So we make the fire, the heat gets trapped in there, fire dies down and then we cook
delicious pizzas in there!
We sometimes have them at the ends of classes, and we also have them at
community gatherings where we make a bunch of pizza crusts and everyone
the kids, the old people, everyone in between put all the toppings we want
on them and then put them back in to make delicious pizzas.
This round pole timber frame, and wattle and daub outdoor kitchen was built
with logs that were harvested by me and friends right here on this land.
and then the wattle and daub was made by taking saplings that were growing
over crowded in the forest, weaving them together into a big basket and then
covering them with cob that is made with clay, sand and straw.
This technique has been used by indigenous people all over the world and it still
works awesomely today!
This kitchen is used by participants during classes and one perk of living
in the mountains is that you can drink right from the tap.
Here at Wild Abundance we share skills, for living with the Earth and for
smashing the patriarchy through empowerment and learning how to
actually do the things that you need for survival with our own hands.
We teach classes on wild crafting, permaculture and gardening, on tiny houses
and natural building and on women's carpentry.
This place is an institute that is integrated into the landscape
and we really care about our students.
We want to nurture them to be able to take what they learn here
and do awesome things in the world.
We do this not just here on our campus
but by taking these classes online so that they can meet you where you are at.
We sincerely hope that this tour can inspire you to take pieces of what you
have seen and apply it to do some good in the world.