Response to Simona’s questions following the overnight stay at the farm 10/09/2020
I read at the entrance to the farm a sign with European funds for rural development written on it. Who can I turn to for information about it? Do you know if private individuals can also benefit from these funds?
It’s Action 6.4.01 – “Creation and development of agriturismi and educational farms” of the European rural development plan 2014-2020. These are funds reserved for agricultural businesses. For more information you can contact professional organisations and trade associations of the agricultural, equine and fishing sectors. Private individuals cannot benefit from these funds.
I didn’t understand if you are totally self-sufficient regarding electricity? If so what type of panels or other instruments do you use?
At the moment we are self-sufficient for hot water production in summer with solar panels and in winter with a wood boiler but not yet for electricity. We have a photovoltaic system but there are no storage systems. The final project envisages the integration of energy produced by the sun with energy produced by falling water. The excess photovoltaic production in summer will be used to pump water towards an upstream basin which will serve as energy storage in a season when the water of the stream that crosses the Farm might not be sufficient.
Is the water you use taken from the well you had made? How do you manage to purify it to be able to drink it?
The water we use all comes from springs. It is analysed every 6 months and being naturally pure wouldn’t need purification. For safety in public use chlorination and a steriliser with UV lamp are required anyway.
What type of heating do you use? I saw a stove in the dining room how is it fuelled?
In the main structure, the farm stay, we have 2 types of heating. The wall microcapillary is a very efficient system that keeps the walls warm and water heated to only 28 degrees is sufficient to keep the structure warm. The stove in the dining room instead is thermal mass. It was built on site by Filo di Paglia with 3,000 kg of refractory bricks. With a single daily combustion the bricks heat up and then release heat throughout the day. Both systems are fuelled with wood from our forests.
I would like to create my own private home with the same principles. I live in Piedmont, do you think one can be energy self-sufficient even in the middle of winter?
A private home has an enormously lower energy expenditure compared to an accommodation structure and this is a great advantage. It’s much easier to reduce waste than to create energy. With only energy from the sun it’s very difficult to be self-sufficient in winter but if you combine it with other renewable sources it’s certainly possible. I’m thinking in particular of wind, water and biomass.
Response to the questions posed by Alessandro (_a_le) following the post of 25/04/2020 on the farm’s Instagram page (fattoria_autosufficienza)
Alessandro. I’ve read all the comments especially to get to know you and understand how you reason, to understand where enjoying a great wellbeing and freedom which we obviously enjoy in our times rather than 50 years ago can lead. I would like not to judge but we’re on a social network so it’s legitimate to put oneself at the mercy of public opinion; for this reason instead of crucifying you regardless I would like to ask a couple of questions that I’d like to be answered honestly and try to have a dialogue that enriches us all… You talk about civil disobedience, creation of a new world and you stage David and Gandhi; we know that these two people, especially Henry completely left society and its dependence by not using it at all and demonstrating that one can do without its goods, how do you do this apart from posting such a photo?
From Wikipedia: “Civil disobedience is a form of political struggle, implemented by a single individual or more often by a group of people, which involves the conscious violation of a specific rule of law, considered particularly unjust, a violation which however takes place publicly, so as to make the sanctions provided for by the law itself evident to all and immediately operative.” We don’t claim to be like Thoreau and even less like Gandhi. We have simply engaged in civil disobedience.
Alessandro. We know you have a farm, so-called self-sufficient, yet you use society’s means to develop and build it. E.g.: people like me come to your workshops, who pay you with money that derives from the society you reject.
No one has ever said that we reject society. We would like to create a new one and we are trying in small steps in a transition process.
Alessandro. Despite the photo posted today, we know that from Monday to Friday you have a shop @macrolibrarsi which despite the beautiful things you sell and the most disparate names in the new age world, basically works like any other business in the territory.
Macrolibrarsi is always there not only from Monday to Friday. The difference compared to many other businesses in the territory is that we are an ethical company, namely a business that at the same time pursues company growth and profit objectives and social and spiritual objectives. Today the world is dominated by companies that in turn are guided in their actions by the pursuit of profit, often at any cost. A company is ethical, namely is guided by values instead of profit, when it puts at the centre of its actions people, the wellbeing of the community in which it operates, respect and conservation of the natural environment.
Alessandro. I’ve paid you with euros in my orders and you don’t accept, it seems to me, time currencies or the emerging new ways of exchange outside the system. You do warehousing, processing, preparation and shipping to me, using means that poison us etc relying totally on the system, not by bicycle. The last oil I got comes from India, and I didn’t seem to see the wording “brought on foot by Marco Polo”. The € money I pay you and then their use, passes through my, Italy’s largest bank without naming names which we know well what it gets up to, and yours, which despite being an “ethical” bank uses international circuits of economic exploitation.
It’s all absolutely true and we are aware of it. Precisely for this reason we compile every 2 years the economy for the common good balance sheet where instead of costs the various points you highlighted are reported and in revenues what we do that’s positive instead. We try to improve this balance sheet every year. You can download it directly on our about us page https://www.macrolibrarsi.it/info/13/chisiamo.php
Alessandro. You quote the data and erroneous numbers in your view on which this violation of freedom is based in the name of the constitution. @angelofrancescorosso in particular you, for whom I have great respect for what in one way or another you have created, have sinned in presumption saying that you have moved and contacted several kilometres and people around the planet and demonstrating civil disobedience;
I travelled the kilometres around the planet and in Italy in full compliance with the rules, they were not an act of disobedience. What I wanted to communicate and can be inferred from the context, is that contagion is not necessarily directly proportional to the number of people one meets. There are many more variables. For me the most important is the state of health of the people who come into contact with the virus.
Alessandro. Starting from the fact that there is always in the universe a cause and an effect, and that this effect must be prevented as much as possible to avoid it becoming a personal tragedy, you doing this and then animating this scene today, together with @naturopatia_new_moon, I imagine you thought about the effect.
The desired effect is that those who don’t agree with the health fascist regime that has been established demonstrate it and don’t remain hidden in the shadows.
Alessandro. And taking for granted that the state putting these restrictive measures didn’t think much about the health effect, but about a possible collapse of the health system, the only problem today for which a state today can think of making its own malignant economic system collapse, so let’s say an own goal, coming to the question:
The health system has not been in crisis for weeks, not even in the most affected areas. In this regard I invite you to watch the interviews with Dr. Stefano Manera, surgeon, anaesthetist and resuscitator who in the last 2 months has gone as a volunteer to work at the intensive care unit of the Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital in Bergamo.
Alessandro. How did you think in your example about a possible effect of your hypothetical disobedience, therefore about contagion through this, of your tenants or employees, in your new society created disobeying the norms?
The problem is not contagion, certainly more people amongst us have contracted the virus but without consequences. Viruses have always existed and always will exist. We don’t share the specialist and symptomatic approach of modern allopathic medicine. The influenza virus creates complications in a very selective manner as nature has always done.
Alessandro. I can imagine that you have an internal hospital and therefore you won’t rely on the classic hospital society which at this moment survives and is nurtured to stay well only and exclusively by the norms that you put in the stocks?
The question is not very comprehensible I imagine because it was written quickly on a mobile phone. I would like to clarify that in our area, at this moment, there is no health emergency. The restrictive measures have been applied indiscriminately throughout Italy or rather in much of the world regardless of the health emergency. To date we have always worried about how to always be healthy rather than how to treat ourselves. Ideally we would very much like to create a conscious hospital (or rather a health centre). In the first meeting held with the Vivi Consapevole in Romagna Association this emerged as one of the main needs for “conscious” Romagnoli. Unfortunately the necessary investments are not within our reach at the moment but in the future who knows… For now the hospitals that already exist are welcome, if and when it’s not possible to do without them.
Alessandro. Because, it’s obvious I would say, that like Henry and Gandhi, you must give an alternative to young people who might follow you. Civil disobedience, for me, is a great act of responsibility in which a person (or group), knows, and is totally responsible for what they may face. I’m not against
We take full responsibility in engaging in civil disobedience towards unconstitutional rules and against human rights.
Alessandro. 3. Are you ready?
It depends
Thanks for your time and attention. If I find in the new issue something in-depth on the discussed topic it will be very interesting and I will be grateful to you. Because in the end what we need today is a valid alternative. You voluntarily or not have positioned yourselves as such, so in my small opinion, you should give trust, sense of community and respect. This is why people if they see such selfishness let’s say, react by discrediting you.
Disobeying rules for personal gain is selfish. Civil disobedience is exactly the opposite: it’s an altruistic act, namely I take on the uncomfortable consequences (fines, punishments, repercussions…) for general gain.
It’s true that you are 70 people, but the question that arises is, what do you want to be? A private reality or a community reality, where all of us enslaved by this society can see change and hope for the future? Good life guys. 🙏
Here you can find the history of the farm https://autosufficienza.dartmoon.dev/wp/chi-siamo/storia-della-fattoria-dellautosufficienza/
Reading what is written up to 2020 you understand who we are. Reading what is written after 2020 you understand who we want to become.
Good life to you too!
Answers by Francesco and Giulia
