Friskoven

Help us build up a newly started eco village in the forest!

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    About us

    We are a group of people who are working on creating an eco-village on our land in the forest on Bornholm. We are right now a group of 14 adults and 17 children involved in the project, but the group keeps evolving and we hope to be around 17-19 families (or individuals) living on the land as the project grows. Where most eco villages spend 2-5 years planning everything before buying land - we did the opposite! We just bought the land in an almost spontaneous way and now we have to figure out everything! The space is a 12 hectare piece of land in the forest on the Danish Island Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. It was built as a work camp in 1939, and has since been a boarding school for kids from Greenland and then a "production" school. It has been empty for around 10 years and left to severe neglect and vandalism. There is one very big building and several small ones. All of the buildings will need to be seriously renovated. We want to rebuild the houses with natural building materials, as local and sustainable as possible. We want to open the space for children and adults to spend time in nature and share workshops, food, music and creativity. We want to include many rooms and spaces for people to have a place to realise their dreams together with the community. We need many hands and hearts to realise this dream, and we hope that you want to take part!


    My place

    The plot is 12 hectares large. 8 hectares are forest - ie must remain forest, but may be used for forestry. We have about 2,500 m2 of buildings, spread over one large building, consisting of 4 long barracks, combined with a connecting corridor, an old 2 family villa, and several outbuildings. All the buildings are in really bad condition and need to be completely renovated! Naturewise, we have a fantastic plot, on the edge of Bornholm's largest forest, Almindingen! Our 8 acres of forest are mixed, some young and self-blown trees and a little bit of douglas with larger trees. Fallow deer and roe deer are often seen between the trees. We have a small lake and little creek, which meanders over the ground from east to west. ​We have a large open meadow at the northern end. ​Friskoven is located 4 km outside Åkirkeby, which is Bornholm's 3rd largest city. We are centrally located on Bornholm which has many beautiful sights to offer - from dramatic rocky shores in the north to soft sandy beaches with Europe's finest sand in the south and all the charming small coastal towns in between, Bornholm is never boring to explore. In addition, there is a fantastic community and local environment on Bornholm, with local food producers, a vibrant cultural life and perhaps Denmark's strongest home school community.


    Projects

    We need a lot of different help. The main project is building the communal space and the space for volunteers. The communal spaces we are working on now is first to make something simple and kindof fast, to start having something to be in while we build the rest of the space. We are still very early in the progress and still live in trailers and yurts, while we build our future homes! Later in the progress we will be building the more longterm communal space and we will probably also need help on our private houses. There will be people building with different techninques, some renovaton, some strawbale, some wood, but all natural building to some extend! As we live in a forest, general forest work like clearing, cutting and stacking wood is always needed, as collecting and processing wild edibles. We have started our permaculture garden, but as getting the space build has had the first priority until now, we are not that far with the gardening process yet. But we will still need help in making it bigger :)


    Accommodation

    As we are on the very early stages of this project, we haven't yet build accommodation for volunteers. This we hope to do in the near future, maybe with your help! For now we have 2 caravans, one tiny little hut that used to be a sauna and lots of space for tents and vans! We have compost toilets and a communal kitchen and shower.


    Food

    We cook communal meals once a day 5-7 days a week (early dinner around 17.30). Breakfast and lunch you cook for yourself, but you can use everything in the communal kitchen. As a community we do not follow any dietary guidelines and have both vegan, vegetarian and omnivorous members, but we keep the communal meals vegan, sometimes with vegetarian options too. We dumpsterdive as our main resource of food and supply with veggies from the garden and some extras from the shop!



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