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One Day On Earth – 10/10/10

October 6, 2010 in Den, Environmentally Friendly, Fun Stuff, Reduce Reuse Recycle by fullmonte | No comments

Organisers of One Day On Earth found this blog and contacted me to participate in their project. They are asking individuals and organisations to film the human experience in every country in the world over a 24 hour period on 10/10/10 to present a global view of the community of this earth.

They contacted me ages ago and I thought, yeah, great and promptly put it on the back burner until I had time to deal with it – namely TODAY!

I’m ashamed because I should have been promoting this more, so this is my last minute attempt to begin to spread the word about this amazing project and maybe even get some of you hooked on becoming part of it… I know it’s a bit last minute, but hey, that’s all part of what life’s like here in Monte so…

Here’s some video’s explaining more about this exciting global collaboration:

Tonight we began to form a plan of what to film. It will likely revolve around water, the use & abuse of it in this supposed “eco state” of Montenegro and the wonderful ways we reduce, reuse and recycle this precious resource at our Eco Camp.

Mainly due to a defunct sprinkler system (probably partly due to ridiculously high water pressure) water was haemorrhaging from our pipes at our house above Herceg Novi for 5 days non-stop. Our water bill for last month was nearly 100 euros!!! (Our total bills – power, water, ADSL & phone – for the month are normally around 85 euros combined in total!). The hideous truth is that last month in this house we used more than twice as much water than we have used on the campsite in the past 4 months – we have a 45,000 litre water tank on the site which was filled in June and is still not empty… you do the math.

Currently I am the only individual representing this beautiful country – get involved if you can…

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Weathering the storms

July 13, 2009 in Organic Gardening, The Build by fullmonte | 1 comment

We’ve taken quite a battering lately – funds running low, tasks mounting high, the global economic crisis as an unwelcome back drop – but most dramatic has been what nature’s had to throw at us.  We’ve had a week of mental weather – even when the day has stayed dry, the evenings have brought us incredible thunder & lightning…

Lightning strikes

We have no blinds or curtains in the top 2 floors of our house and there have been nights that the whole place has been lit up from all over the sky with the most amazing flashes.  And then of course, there’s the rain.  It has rained buckets and buckets and one day last week, Steve & I were working in the shower block as a storm raged overhead and we watched in dismay as the land turned to mud around us in minutes.  The water poured off the road and through the palm fence in a stream that gushed into the raised beds.  And the basement room filled up with water.

Although disheartened at the time, seeing where and why the water flowed onto the land and into the building was a valuable lesson and definitely better to learn it now than at a time when the camp is full of tents!  The water was flowing off the road because a) the main drainage gully was blocked with leaves and debris and b) there is a low point by the side of the road that needs building up or a pipe putting in to divert the water.  OK, we can deal with that…

The basement was filling up because water was flowing in through holes left for ventilation at the back of the building. We have dug a trench to divert the water away from these holes and have bought pieces of pipe which we will fit and have risers coming off so the air can can in but water can’t.  We have siphoned out all the water from the basement and now need to tackle the final messy job of shovelling out all the mud that has collected there, allowing the (now hot) ambient temperature to dry it completely and then sealing it good and proper from any potential dampness from below and around. We will be mindful of the land drainage issues as we develop the camping terraces, restoring the trenches dug along terrace walls to ensure there are decent soakaways, with plenty of gravel.

The upside of all the rain is that the garden is flourishing again.  It has been a joy watching nature repair itself.  Here are some of the raised beds looking not so cow trodden!

Raised beds - early July

Thankfully, most of the tomatoes are flowering again…

The tomatoes will not be squashed!

And look at the cabbages and broccili – unbelievable progress, from munched stumps to this!

Bravo brassicas

And after all the drama, the cucumbers are fruiting well!

Cool as a cucumber!

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Montenegrin Water Torture

May 23, 2009 in Environmentally Friendly, Reduce Reuse Recycle by fullmonte | 1 comment

Allegedly, they are cleaning the pipes and doing some improvements to the water supply, so for most of this week we have only had water in our apartment from 6-7pm every day.  We heard about it in advance and the news was that the schedule was a couple of hours in the morning and evening from 7-9am and 7-9pm, so when we arrived back from a day’s sweating on the land at 7pm and there was no water, we were gutted.  It turns out, we are further up the hill and on a different supply and they couldn’t really tell us when we would get water but it would be for some indeterminate time at some indeterminate hour! The next day we waited in all day, listening for the sounds of gurgling pipes and watching the dirty dishes and clothes pile up.  When it finally came on we rushed around like mad things putting on washing machine, filling up buckets, watering plants…

dripping-tap

This water rationing is set to last for another 7 days or maybe more and although it is inconvenient is a timely reminder of how critical water is to everything and how easily it is squandered.  We think we’re pretty aware and conserve water well but its amazing how much more you can do when you have to.  The water we shower in is captured and used to flush toilets for the next day; one small mugful of water between two people is all you REALLY need to clean your teeth and you can wash lots of dirty dishes in a very small bowl of water if you wipe stuff clean with a bit of loo paper first!

The craziest thing of all is that the water pressure here is a phenomenal 6-8 bar.  Such pressure is completely, unnecessarily excessive and leads to water being shamefully wasted – hosepipes burst with the pressure and spray water pointlessly into nothing for hours on end, showers use far more water than is needed because its comes out at such a rate – and then the water dries up and is rationed in the middle of summer!!!  Why don’ t they turn the pressure down for everyone and ensure there is enough to go around all year?  Yet another thing we will use our project to educate people about – we are proud of our perfectly adequate 1 bar of pressure and no pump!

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4 Men & a lot of Water!

April 29, 2009 in Environmentally Friendly, The Build by fullmonte | No comments

It started off as just 2 men, as Nik and Steve tried to connect the pipe (heaved into place by the gang the previous day) to the water tank.  The first bit of fun was getting the compression joint fitted and leak-proof.  Look what a beautiful job they did!

Water tank joint (arty farty pic c/o Nik!)

But the course of true water does not always run smooth and due to a funny angle, a large rock and very unforgiving pipe Miso and one of his dudes had to wade in to help to actually connect the joint to the valve.  Eventually after a rather large drill had chipped away enough of the rock to get the pipe round it, the pipe was connected.  I was palming fences on the bottom plot and could hear the rush of water in the pipe around me as the valve was opened from the tank and the 165 metres of pipe filled up.  Excitedly, Steve rushed to turn on the tap…

Water! Works!

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