Hello beautiful people reading this blog,
This entry is to present one of the members of the Green School Village association who is also my host at The Gates (Portite) in Dolen. She is Veronika Borisova and has been here since the beginning of Spring 2023 working in the house and implementing new initiatives in order to live in a more sustainable way towards a Zero Waste lifestyle. I had the chance to have an interview so she could tell us more about the place and her experience here, the response of the local community and the projects and perspectives for the next season. You can find the interview in the following link:
Some of her initatives, as she mentioned in the interview, include using broken toilet seats to plant tomatoes and other vegetables and aromatic plants, setting up a compost pile to use organic waste, repairing things that were in the house, involving the local community in the activities and much more. She also mentioned that it was nice to see how her neighbors were impressed her tomatos were so good without spraying them with any chemicals or industrial products, but only enriching the soil with the compost and with natural sources of nutrients.
When we were turning the compost, we could see different sections of it and I could better understand and see clearly how does it look a good compost but also how it is a dry one, or one that is too wet and has anaerobic conditions and what need to be done to fix it. We even found some huge red worms that seemed very happy with all the food and were doing well their job.
During my stay here I have witnessed how this place is full of life and how she is leaving her trace by implementing these practices that are sometimes unknown and are new for people, but they also start to be interested in participating and collaborating in the process. Some other good practices can be seen in this place, such as some walls built with cob and old glass bottles as a way to upcycle materials, The house itself is like a small ethnographic museum as it gathers many old crafts with their tools, a lot of art and books. Portite is definitely a place worth visiting. It is also very inspiring that people from the city are choosing this place geographically isolated as their base for new projects and as an investment in rural development.
As some additional activities, we have been chopping wood to cook and keep us warm and collecting some rose hips to make a delicious marmelade. She has taught me how to make Banitsa (a typical Bulgarian pastry), a great recipe for roasted peppers and also how to ferment vegetables for the winter. This was a new method for me, since where I come from we don’t have the need to preserve vegetables for so long time since our weather conditions are very different. I will probably try it out!
That is all for now. I hope you enjoyed this post and talk to you soon!
Hasta pronto,
Juliana G.
