Where are we now

SomerVille Ecovillage™ – Perth, Western Australia

Updated photos are now available

Photos from August, September and early October have now been made available on the website. They include photos of the manure crop being ploughed into the land, September SomerVille Sunday, the Busy Bee in September, the Yurt Busy Bee and October's SomerVille Sunday.

Building the Yurt

Wow what a busy weekend the 6th and 7th of October was, with an early start on Saturday to construct our Yurt. A number of us turned up for this historic event, only to spend a lot a time standing around scratching our heads trying to work out how best to erect the Yurt. As this is a traditional Mongolian Yurt, the instructions were in Mongolian, however they did provide a instructional video, which gave us a few ideas about how to go about putting it together. On the video they constructed the Yurt in about an Hour, us on the other hand spent a day just to get up the main supports (but what fun we had). You can see a range of photos of this first day here. The following day was a SomerVille Sunday but as we had not yet finished the Yurt we decided to cancel the original activities and get back to constructing the Yurt. Photos of the Sunday can be found here. We made a lot more progress on the Sunday and finished all the initial frame work, but we still have yet to put the insulation and canvas cover in place, so its another Busy Bee the next weekend.

Latest Photos added to Web Site

The latest photos from March and April have now been copied up to the web site. Included are photos from the March and April SomerVille Sundays, the Blessing Ceremony that we did in preparation for starting Agriculture, the start of the Agriculture at SomerVille, the Essence of Listening Workshop by Kay Kay and the Findhorn Presentation that Kay did for us. If you have any SomerVille photos that you would like to share on the web site, then please let us know.

Essence of Listening Workshop and Findhorn Presentation

We were fortunate to have Kay Kay from Findhorn at SomerVille at the end of April. About fifteen of us attended a one day Essence of Listening Workshop with Kay facilitating. After dinner the numbers swelled and Kay did a presentation that included the history of Findhorn and what it is like now. Thanks Kay for coming up to Chidlow to help us with our listening and to tell us about your magical home in Scotland!

Agriculture Underway at SomerVille

Michael Velders and Allan Werner took an opportunity during the April SomerVille Sunday to talk to us about available options for protecting our agricultural areas from kangaroos, rabbits and other animals. A new ultrasonic technology was discussed but rejected by residents because of health concerns and the close proximity to the proposed residential areas. It was decided that fences would be installed with an area north of the Yellow Shed set aside to trial Biodynamic peppering as a means of animal control. The ground has now been prepared for a green manure crop.

Tomato Sauce Making

It's tomato season again and the pasta sauce shareholders gathered at the Yellow Shed to process over 400 kg of Roma tomatoes on Sunday the 18th of February.

The organic tomatoes are from the same grower in Denmark, WA that supplied us previously.

This year, a Calabrese variant of the sauce has been produced.

The next batch will be processed on Saturday the 3rd of March.

Check out the photos of the day.

SomerVille Ecovillage™ from Google Earth

For those of you who have discovered the amazing Google Earth program, here is a link to take you to a satellite view of SomerVille Ecovillage™. You need to have Google Earth installed for this to work. Google Earth is free to download and install and is available for Windows XP/2000, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Site Map

The SomerVille Vision:
"A vibrant village where community flourishes, in which every person is supported and contributes
in balance with a sustainable ecological ethic."