I grew up on the countryside with a beautifull ecological garden that blended in with the neighboring pastures and protected landscape area. My father very often took me with him on nature walks so I learned the names of wild plants and birds together with the rest of my basic vocabulary. In primary school I became a member of the local nature preservation organisation. In my teens I became very interrested in healthy food and herbal medicine. At that time I read a lot of books about these themes and worked freelance in the vegetarian kitchen of a course-center, where there was also a special focus on special therapeutic diets. There I also got my Yoga-teachers diploma. It must have been at the age of 17 I visited my first permaculture-project, Yggdrasil-farm in Tienen, Belgium. I loved it but at the time I considerd it merely one of the organic growing methods. At the age of 21 I started a two year Herbalist diploma course. After that I also specialised in the preparing of herbal remedies.

It was in that period I became slightly obsessed with food production and worldwide foodproblems. One day I saw a little Youtube movie called 'Greening the desert', about regreening a piece of desert in Israel using permaculture tecniques. From that moment I read and watched everything I could find about permaculture and got very frustrated that I couldn't try it for my own because I didn't have a garden.

Since 2007 my husband and I have a cottage in a piece of wood where we have been able to observe nature and how everything is interconnected. We heven't been able to grow food there yet but we did a lot of mushroompicking and gathering of wild herbs, berries and nuts. I hope to change the sic pine-trees in our lot for trees and srubs with edible fruits and nuts in the next years.
In the mean time since 2010 we have the enormous luck we can live in the house of my husbands parents/grandparents just outside Antwerp. We have a relatively big garden where I have at last been able to have my first vegetable growing season this summer! I learned a lot and I will do better next year. I want to make this garden a permaculture example and this will be my first project but others may follow.

New business

Why did it take me so long to do a new update

What do you really need?

What babystuff do you really need?

About consumption and use of resources

When a baby comes a whole new lot of items try to find their way into your house.

To have kids or not to have kids?

Maybe this is not directly permaculture but in a way it also is 'growing' something and probably the same rules count here than in the permaculturegarden. So, something about having children because I'm so busy with my own newborn that I have to neglect m