Back from the Permafest

We are back from the Permaculture festival in Burgundy.

Well we have been back for about a week already actually but seen as I have just re-designed this website and added a blog I thought I would write about it.

The trip there was long but fairly easy. We drove by night to avoid the heat, leaving Toulouse towards 9 P.M..  It took us about 10 hours driving to get there because we didn't take the motorway so as to save on fuel consumption. I'm not sure but I think we migth have spent the little money we saved on the coffee and Red Bull we bought to stay awake with...

We arrived at the site on Friday 21st around 10 in the morning ( we had stopped for a couple of hours of sleep around 8 ). We made it to the opening speech in which Oswaldo, one the of the main organizers, had a go at explaining exactly what Permaculture is (I wont get into that here but trust me it's cool. You can read about Permaculture on Wikipedia if you want).

The festival was in huge harvested Colza field with no shade whatsoever. So after that I set myself up a shelter and went to sleep for the afternoon while Jeremy and Jean-Marc sat around talking about music and getting drunk and sun burnt :) .

There was organic food cooked for the whole festival (500 people) on a pay-what-you-want basis. It was really amazing !
There where also basic shower units (places where you could wash with a basin of water) and compost toilets.

Saturday the workshops started at 9 AM so most people where up early. There where tons of interesting workshops on everything from Alexander Technique to book binding, bread baking and bee keeping.

In the evening the gig started with the Binghy Family, then Steve Reid, La Grande Ourse and finally Something Else (that's us). We played from about eleven to about half twelve. Although a lot people had gone to bed at that point we played well and enjoyed ourselves.

On the whole the event was more of a gathering of Permaculure enthusiasts than a festival (most people weren't there to listen to music and party) but it was fun nevertheless.

We drove home on Sunday the 23rd (in the day this time).