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The Dream of Mother Earth
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(Margot) The Dream of
Mother Earth, to me, is a place
where people, animals, and
nature can exist in productive
harmony and where we can show
many examples of sustainable living
and living close to nature, without
harming the balance of everything.
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What I find important in life is
to live in harmony with the Earth
and show people that this is
possible to do so.
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(Antoine) I live here now for
seven years. After doing my forestry
school, I decided I wanted to start a
project where I could show people how
they can live with nature.
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Le Rêve de Gaïa means the Dream of
Mother Earth and Gaïa is from Greek
mythology. It's the name for our planet.
The Dream of Gaia means that we
try to live in productive harmony with
nature, without putting too much
pressure on it. That's what we try to
do here.
(Margot) The five things
are forestry, agriculture, living with
animals, sustainable construction,
and the magic of life.
Forestry
(Antoine) The terrain exists of
around 60 hectares, so that's like
120 soccer fields big. I was looking
for a terrain on which I could combine
all the things we do in the project. Since
forestry is my profession, I was looking
for land with a lot of woods on it.
This used to be mainly spruce plantation,
not really forest, so I tried to shift
the plantation into a forest. A forest,
for me, is lots of trees, but different
kinds of trees, so you can create a
balance, instead of a monoculture.
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There's part of the forest that I try
not to touch, so that would be like
real, natural forest, where life can go
at its own pace. Then, there's the
production side of the forest, of the
wood that I really like to use in
construction, so we have the saw
and we can transform a tree to planks
or beams and make something out
of it. There's also the food production
of trees. There is a plot we plan on
creating a food forest on.
A food forest is really
a piece of land where all the trees
and growing organisms bear fruit or
nuts. You could walk through it and
collect your meal.
Agriculture
(Margot) In the vegetable
garden, we try to apply permaculture
principles, so we do a lot of companion
planting and mulching and composting
and crop rotation.
(Antoine) But we definitely don't
use any chemical pesticides. There's
a lot of treatments that you can do
on a plant-based matter, so if we have
a certain bug threatening a harvest, we
can use this.
(Margot) We'd rather have the
insects eating some food than use
pesticides on the food that we eat.
(Antoine) We definitely don't
want to have any pesticides in our own
bodies, so that's why we don't treat
our plants and vegetables with it.
(Margot) If a couple of plants
get eaten, this is already calculated
when we sow or plant.
Water we use in the garden and
to shower with and to drink comes
from the spring, but we also want
to collect more rainwater.
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Living with Animals
(Antoine) Part of the project is
that we have animals, chickens, for
instance. We will have the eggs, which
we can use. We have some goose. We
have the dogs and cats as companion
animals. We have some sheep that
will cut the grass for us also, but we
can also use the wool as insulation,
for instance, and we have a couple
of pigs that will plow the ground for
us, so we try to work together with
the animals.
Sustainable Agriculture
(Antoine) Now, we have two tiny
houses with two different kinds of woods,
one that is completely treated with oil
and one that we tried to keep as
natural as possible. At the end of the
summer, we plan on building another
tiny house, where we will put
insulation so we can also use it,
maybe in winter, even, with a little
stove.
The Magic of Life
(Margot) The magic of life is
actually not magic, but it's kind of the
theme that connects all the other
themes. It's about being a platform
where people feel free to share their
beliefs and their backgrounds and
their experiences from all kinds of
disciplines. We would like to be a
platform where everyone feels free
to share their ideas.
Since two years, we have been
receiving volunteers here. It's an
exchange of what we do and they can
experience working with us and help us
develop this project. Many times, we
also learn a lot of things from the
volunteers because they have other
experiences and they bring their
knowledge to us, so it's usually
a very nice exchange.
When a volunteer comes here,
they work about 4-5 hours a day, five
days a week. In the afternoons and
in their free time, they are free to
explore the place, do things for
themselves, or pick up their own
projects. They get free meals and
accommodation in exchange for
their contribution.
(Antoine) People should live how
they feel comfortable, but they should
take responsibility toward our planet
and choose wisely what kind of
vegetables they eat, if it's local
vegetables, if it's from the season,
so there's all these choices we can
make. Actually, with logical reasoning,
it's very simple to make these choices,
so we try to feel what is best and,
based on that, you can easily make
decisions.
(Margot) We want to be an
example for how you can live
sustainably, but when we're gone,
I hope that we don't have to be an
example. It should be everywhere
like this. Everywhere should be living
in harmony with Mother Earth, so we are
not an example anymore because we
merge into everything as one.
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Subtitles by the Amara.org community