Fourth Day at Friland Meeting

_MG_4512editAs with every morning, we began with an opening circle, where we did a round of appreciation and sang a song that went like this:

Home,  I’m coming home
I need the land to heal my soul
Coming home
Coming home
Over the green, green fields
and far away.

Then, since it was the last day at Friland and we were preparing for the trip to Sweden or back home, we filled the poster of our Networking Garden (to be added online soon), where we collected the contacts from other networks, not only from our immediate environment but also international networks, in order to foster synergistic relationships.

Then we talked briefly about how the evolution of the previous meetings went and later shared the results in small groups, using different assessment techniques.

The group representing Bulgaria told us about the organization of the next EPT meeting, which will take place from July the 20th to July the 24th in Bulgaria. Right after that the European Permaculture Convergence (EUPC12) will follow, from July 25th to July 30th. It will be a very special gathering for the EPT community, because we will present the final results of our two years of work.

After that we went to work in our primary activities until lunch time, and after lunch we continued that work for some more time. Then we identified the achievements of the meeting so far and we met in groups of primary activities to determine which tasks we had to finalise, and we had more time in the schedule in order to have them finished. From that activity we moved to evaluation.

First, an evaluation was carried out in a circle, called “bull’s eye”, in which the participants move closer to the centre of the circle if the assessment is positive (the closer, the more positive) and move away from the centre if it is not considered positive. We ended with another evaluation activity in groups of three, answering a short questionnaire.

After the evaluation session the details of the follow day’s journey were explained and we closed the day with group photos, hugs, kisses and “some tears of sadness” for separation. But the day did not end there. After dinner several activit_MG_4505edities followed: another visit to Tove’s house, one of the ecovillage residents and participant of this meeting, an adobe and timber frame house, and finally a very special activity: we planted a tree on behalf of the EPT and we used the posters we created during the meeting, now captured in pictures, for mulching. After, the party had already starting. I could hear the drums! We had a jam session and other surprises were to come.

For those participating, the 5th day saw visits to various permaculture projects, a forest garden and intentional community in Copenhagen and several forest gardens in neighbouring Sweden.