Welcome to our family home! An old wooden house on the forest edge of Putten, west-Veluwe which we are retrofitting and slowly turning the ornamental garden into an edible woodland landscape. We're retrofitting the house with natural materials like wood fiber, sheepswool, cork, clay and lime plaster. For the garden we are excited and inspired by forest farms around the world, local regenerative plant nurseries and the wild plants we see in the forest bordering our house.
We hope to grow and evolve into a family friendly demonstration site with workshops and an option for overnight stays (in 2-3 years).
Our main interests are
* children in permaculture
* natural building / building biology / building art
* forest gardening (in a forest or woodland light regime)
* creativity, clay and DIY in general
We love our area. A little copy-paste action for those interested:
The Veluwe (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈveːlyu.ə] ⓘ) is a forest-rich ridge of hills (1100 km2; 420 sq. mi.) in the province of Gelderland in the Netherlands. The Veluwe features many different landscapes, including woodland, heath, some small lakes and Europe's largest sand drifts.
The Veluwe is the largest push moraine complex in the Netherlands, stretching 60 km (40 miles) from north to south, and reaching heights of up to 110 metres (360'). The Veluwe was formed by the Saalian glacial during the Pleistocene epoch, some 200,000 years ago. Glaciers some 200 metres (600') thick pushed the sand deposits in the Rhine and Maas Delta sideways, creating the hills which now form most of the Veluwe. Because the hills are made of sand, rain water disappears rapidly, and then it flows at a depth of tens of metres (yards) to the edges where it reaches the surface again.[1]
Veluwe derives from Proto-Germanic *falwaz (pale, fallow) and *awjō (island).[2] The name corresponds to "fallow lands" in English and probably was used in opposition to the fertile "good lands" of the Betuwe (from *bataz, good, and *awjō, island) to the south.
There are both coniferous and deciduous forests on the Veluwe, and some 500 different plant species can be found. The region is also home to many different species of animals, such as wild boar, several species of deer (like the roe deer, red deer and fallow deer), several species of snakes (including the common viper), pine martens, foxes, and badgers. Furthermore, the bird raven was successfully reintroduced, and the introduced Reeves's muntjac and mouflon can sometimes be seen. Furthermore, there live semi-wild and wild cattle and horses like both semi-wild and wild Highland cattle in multiple areas of the Veluwe, semi-wild Sayaguesa cattle and two semi-wild horse breeds: New-forest pony and Icelandic pony. Since 2019 the wolf is officially back with a female and male pair in the northern Veluwe (spring 2019) who had their offspring in the summer of 2019 and one female wolf in middle Veluwe. The prognosis are that many more wolves will reclaim the area. The European bison is also reintroduced as pilot in a fenced area in the Radio Kootwijk Reserve and the golden jackal is reaching the area, from which they are not native, but since the jackals reach the area all by their own they are seen as a welcome and new native species.