Barrel House Permaculture

Barrel House Permaculture is a smallholding with an abundant fruit and veg garden and pottery in the iconic Findhorn ecovillage community in Moray, where it also serves as a classroom for many of the community's sustainability and permaculture courses.

 

Barrel House Permaculture is a private home and garden, which is used as a permaculture teaching and demonstration site by the various educational institutions in the Findhorn community, hosting approximately 600 people/year. Currently two people live here full-time, experimenting with a holistic sustainable lifestyle and being as close to self-sufficient in fruit and veg as possible. It also houses a pottery studio and woodfired kiln.

 

The house is one of the iconic Whisky Barrel Houses - a round tiny house built from a whisky vat previously used in the distilling industry. Over the years the house has been extended and added to, mostly using local and/or recycled materials, to adapt to growing number of occupants and their changing needs. It has solar panels, a woodstove with backboiler and rain water on tap in the kitchen.

 

The garden has changed greatly over the years. It was started in landscape dominated by sand dunes and littered with waste left over from the war, much of it toxic, and all covered by gorse, broom and elders, the pioneers species of the local ecosystem. Today the older part of the garden has mature fruit trees and shrubs interplanted with annual crops, as well as a greenhouse, pond, compost toilet and outdoor bathtub. The younger part of the garden is reclaimed construction site with abundant annual and perennial crops. Extremely free-ranging chickens contribute to the garden throughout.

 

Being based in an ecovillage and spiritual community - we also bring our external environment into the project, exploring the links between spirituality and permaculture, hosting community meetings and events, and managing spaces for connecting with nature and the elements.

 

Barrel House Permaculture is used as a learning venue for permaculture and sustainability courses.  Here is an introduction to Barrel House Permaculture and a video of Barrel House with Craig Gibsone https://youtu.be/n-vukWofcqw