Creating Our Own Paradise in Swedish Lapland

For a long time we have been looking for our own place and finally found it in 2020. It will be a place where we live our dream of a sustainable life and fully develop our potential.
In the workshops you will be able to take part in our journey and learn about all the things that could make your place as sustainable and independent as possible.

Food and Accommodation

Simple meals (vegetarian), drinking water and tea are included. We will also fire the old wood oven in our bagarstuga to make pizza on saturday evening. If you bring your sleeping bag you can sleep at our hay hotel in the old Ladugård else you can bring your own tent or campervan.

WorkShop: Building a Geodom, nordic Style

In this workshop you will learn how to plan and build a geodesic dome greenhouse and how you can improve it further to make it even more sustainable.
You will get to know about the benefits of earthsheltered greenhouses in the nordic climate, how to work with raised beds and how you can improve them further by combining them with different composting techniques to heat them up and increase fertility.
We will talk about companion planting and crop rotations, not only with plants, but also mushrooms to create healthy guilds that support eachother and produce a diverse yield.
We look into how chickens can be integrated into a greenhouse, how they are working as additional heat source and how they can help us to prepare beds in our garden. We will also have a look at what they need to live a happy and healthy life. And we talk about a special type of chicken fodder forest we can create for them, so they can forage a part of their fodder by themselves.

WorkShop: Building a Solar Dehydrator

During this workshop you get to know the basic function of a solar dehydrator, how it works and how you can easily build one yourself. We will look at how solar energy can be used the best way to dehydrate fruits, vegetables, herbs and mushrooms and keep their precious and healthy ingredients.During the workshop we will build a big solar dehydrator in our garden, that stays in place. It will be covered with a green living roof so it blends into nature and the drying chamber will be enhanced with cob. The cob walls will act as a thermal mass and as humidity regulation, storeing the solar energy and absorbing a part of the moist air during the day. In this way it will even prolong the drying process so it can go on even after the sun went to sleep.You will get to know about working with cob and how you can even make it waterproof.

WorkShop: Building a RocketMassHeater

This workshop will teach you how a Rocket Mass Heater works and how you can easily build one yourself. In a few words, a RMH is special, as it uses only ⅓ of fire wood compared to normal woodstoves to produce the same heating. The wood burns twice and it creates the necessary draft already in the burning chamber, this produces a really clean burn.
Combining this with a thermal mass (out of stones and clay) that stores the energy in a bench or wall, will make it even more efficient. It cools down the exhaust gases, while they move through the termal mass. So the smoke (more or less just CO2 and H2O) will have a temperature around 40°C when it exits the thermal mass.
At the same time you will also learn how you can improve the basic design to produce hot water and/or electricity (with TEGs) at the same time.
And of course you learn about how to work with cob (mixture of clay, sand and straw) and how you can give your RMH a beatuiful finish.