We are both originally from Germany. We immigrated to ‘the land of the long white cloud’ in 1987. Wolfgang has trained and worked as a veterinarian in Germany. Sabine has trained and worked as a secondary school teacher. We have both enjoyed the varied working opportunities we have since found in NZ.
In 1993 and 1997 respectively we completed our Permaculture Design Certificate. This course provided a clear focus for both of us, the philosophy and ethics of Permaculture: ‘Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share’ became very important to us.
In 1997 we joined the Otamatea Eco Village, fulfilling a dream we both had pursued for decades – sharing work and play with other people willing to create a community based on Permaculture principles. A place of learning and sharing the learning.
Otamatea Eco Village – Welcome
We have gained many skills over the years, which we see are all part of our path towards self sufficiency. There are the practical skills from building with mud, designing food supplying systems, home making (cheese, bread and sausage making), scything, distilling and many more. We love sharing our expertise with others and believe in educating those willing to learn.
In 2013 Wolfgang and I have started our Human Design experiment. The impact has been huge and beneficial and we both continued to learn and study more. Christine Spicer has been our inspiring teacher in those years. It is thanks to Christine that I have decided to become a Professional Human Design Analyst.
We are passionate about papatuanuku and it’s inhabitants and continue to work towards creating a beneficial future for planet earth and the creatures walking this amazing place we humans call home.
For our house and barn we have used the light earth building method. Light earth uses a double timber frame structure which holds the roof and has an infill of clay and either wood chips or scoria. The walls are 300mm deep, which gives a really cosy feeling. Light earth is holding the heat well in winter and keeps the temperature pleasant in summer.
In winter we are mainly cooking on a wood fired kitchen range, this also keeps the house nice and dry and thanks to the wetback also heats the water. In summer we use our gas cook top and the outside gas BBQ and the sun (solar hot water) does all the water heating. We have dry composting toilets.
Both buildings are on alternative power, again supplied by the sun. The drinking water is rain water, stored in tanks, pumped to a header tank and then gravity fed back for us. A gray water system takes care of the used water from the kitchen and the shower.
The irrigation for the gardens is supplied by a communal dam.
The food we grow and eat is simple and fresh, we do avoid processed food wherever possible – at home you are (can be in) control. The words by Michael Pollan in his book “In Defence of Food” still ring true to us: ‘If your grandmother would not recognise it as food, then don’t eat it’.
Our gardens supply us with the best vegetables and fruit all year round, we have our own eggs and meat. Our high degree of self sufficiency and bulk buying of organic dry goods allows us to create a variety of meals any time.
If you feel like a visiting us, please get in touch so we can arrange details: pukahusw@gmail.com
Appropriate Technology
Our idea was to generate as much energy as possible on site and at the same time keep our energy consumption low.
Our house is one of two at the village not connected to the national grid – we always liked the idea of being “independent” and of using renewable sources of energy where we can. When we looked at how much electricity we need, we arrived at about 2 kilowatts per day – this is about 10% of what a typical NZ household consumes. Our consumption is so low, because we don’t use electricity for heating water or rooms or for cooking. This means of course that we need other sources of energy for these: firewood and gas. It was and still is exciting to have our “own” power … and no power bills. This does not mean that our electricity is free – to set up our system has cost a similar amount to what it would have been to connect to the national grid at the time and over the years we implemented a number of improvements to the system.
As far as Alternative Power Systems go, our set up is very common: We are using photovoltaic panels to generate electricity which is then stored in a battery bank. We draw the electricity from there through an inverter for the freezer, lights, music systems, TV, computer and other appliances that we use.
We have upgraded our system in 2016 and now actually have two separate systems:
House: 6 Photovoltaic panels (1.5 kW peak) / 24 V – 800 Ahrs battery bank – Sine wave inverter.
Barn/Studio: 4 Photovoltaic panels (1.0 kW peak) / 24 V – 700 Ahrs battery bank – sine wave inverter.
We do have a 6 KVA Petrol Generator as a back up.
Refrigeration
We run a high efficiency chest freezer with our solar power system. In the chest freezer we freeze containers of water that we place in insulated drawers in our kitchen – these drawers are our fridge.
Hand Washing Machine
Based on a hand operated washing machine in the Lehman’s catalogue, we had a washing machine built by a local engineer.
Scything
Wolfgang has become an expert in using a scythe to cut grass for mulch that we use around fruit trees and in the vegetable gardens. For him scything is poetry in motion – quiet, efficient and deeply satisfying.
