Les Fermes Communautaires Libres - Clos du Doubs II

clos du doubs PART 1


So, we just left the ecovillage Clos du Doubs to go to denk:mal , a selforganised school in Bern. I am sitting here in the living room now with my laptop on the couch, trying to remember what happened in the last days in Clos du Doubs before all this new impressions of this beautiful project ran over me.

Our last days in Clos du Doubs were full of amazing experiences and full of trouble also...

Well, first: we met Chaques... one of the guys who founded the first community there and also the foundation "Les Fermes Communautaires Libres" which is the owner of one farm place (where one community was living before) and the "maison orange" in St Ursanne (where one community is living now).



Next to "maison orange" is a free school founded by the community, with 12 children, based on the ideas of Montessori and Marshall B. Rosenberg (nonviolent communication). Quite interesting project also...

I wrote about Chaques before in the first article about Clos du Doubs. He was the guy who went with the false beard of a shepherd and all his sheep -and some media people -to the prison where he should go to because not coming to the armee... they just sent him away "come back another time" - whereas the sheep ate all the nice roses etc around the prison :-)

He showed us the farm place where one community lived before and where they are now building a great eco-house out of clay and straw - with a huge window showing the beautiful mountains down in the valley. Nobody lives there right now in this amazing place and Chaques explained to us that they are building up the infrastructure for young people who want to come and create something in this place.


By the time we were there they just had 2 volunteers there, who know about constructing ecohouses. Both come from France, but one now living in Spain. The guy from Spain also invited us to come to his place from December on...

Moreover we heard about Chaques' newest project: he is now building up -more experimentally than for really needing to - a company that makes your car go with 30% water mixed into normal diesel , which saves you a lot of money and CO2 emissions - and, as Chaques says, questions the view on the world that a lot of people have:
if you mix diesel with water it is getting more explosive, not less...

Our view on the world also got a little bit questioned, when Anja who was so happy as she could be going to Sri Lanka with Krishan, our oven building teacher, just fell into deep confusions and depressions and decided to go back home...

For her all the new impressions, the group process being together with so many people all the time on small space and without ever having a lot of privacy or time to rest
- together with some personal problems and and the same time stopping smoking cigarettes
were getting too much and so she couldn't go on with us nor go with Krishan.
She will spend some more days in Froidevaux, one farm of the ecovillage, where they produce mostly sheep meet and other sheep products where also one of the communities that do not exist any more was before, high up the mountains. Then she will go back to Germany.

The two other girls, Kati (the new french girl who had arrived), as well as Astrid (from Austria)
then decided to go on with Krishan to build another stove (to learn more about stove building) and join us again later on.
So Sam and me spent one more day in Nicolas farm all alone with Nicolas...
and in the morning we left we talked with him to give each other some feedback about how all the experience was for all of us. It was tiring for him as for us, but we all won't regret I guess.



A lot of things happened in this place:
...arriving there sick ...
Kati from France joining us
...Lena going back to Germany,
... Artur leaving the tour as he felt it wouldn't fit,
... Anna, Sani and Peter leaving to Lausanne because of the starting problems we had with Nicolas,
... Astrid coming back from her trip to zalp association,
...talking the first French of our trip with Kati, Chaques and the volunteers there
...the problems with Anja in the very end before we left

We learned about making ovens there
and a bit about the history of Clos du Doubs community,
about the foundation and the free school.
We learned that our group needs more structure
and a "group rythm"
and that getting up early can be more productive than to sleep long ;-)

Nicolas learned that he should put more clear signs about what he wishes and expects from his guests, but also that it can be just allright to just let things flow...
for instance he didn't really tell us one day what we could help him except oven building...
so we just cleaned up one room ourselves without him having told - which made him very happy.

Maybe we can help him a little bit now with making some publicity for his project...


and telling people that he and the other people of Clos du Doubs are searching people to help for longtime or just for a while to live in the ecovillage and help on the farms.
It's a great place. Go there :-)