Like our farms and gardens, fws's permaculture pages are always growing.
So make sure you come back for regular updates - including our new
fws fast fact sheets, more coming soon!
we’re proud of our permaculture systems...
And why not? Our superb systems:
- Will grow to eventually provide much of our food, water, shelter and energy needs, for up to 100 residents.
- Use locally-appropriate technology.
- Provide education opportunities for the youngest children right through to the oldest community members.
- Are quickly becoming a feature of the community that all our Tanzanian neighbours can be proud of.
- Have all been developed to meet fws's sustainability aims.
Above: Glorious growth at Kesho Leo.
fws's permaculture paradise
Each system, and in fact the whole Kesho Leo project, is designed under the
concepts of permaculture.
It’s nothing fancy – just holistic sustainable design, where we aim for every system or structure to interact positively with another one (or two, or three!)
All of our permaculture systems are based around five locations, which interact and work together to meet our needs:
1. Kesho Leo building
- Designed to meet the needs of the local environment.
- Incorporates passive solar design.
- Collects and stores all of our domestic water obtained from rainwater harvesting.
- Uses biogas produced from our farm and sustainably produced firewood for all our cooking.
- Creates the grey water and toilet ‘waste’ that we use as a resource to produce food.
Above: Eco-tecture excellence meets the needs of the environment.
2. Our waste utilisation farm garden
- Designed to effectively utilise toilet and laundry ‘waste’ and manage water through the dry season.
- Using interlinked systems of fodder producing swales, food forests and banana circles, we safely use all of our grey water and ‘humanure’ (composted toilet waste) to grow usable resources.
Above: Thriving gardens at Kesho, thanks to 'humanure'!
3. Our 'show' farm
- Produces many of the living needs of our residents in a sustainably intensive system.
- Designed, constructed and operates in a manner that our neighbours can come and learn from.
Above: Our productive 'show' farm.
4. Our commercial organic farm
- Will produce organically grown products in a fashion that provides commercial organic solutions for medium-sized Tanzanian farms.
- Using more permaculture concepts, this farm aims at being commercially viable by using locally-appropriate, organic farming techniques and small business opportunities.
5. Our volunteer village
- We practice what we preach, so our volunteer village has been developed with the same locally-appropriate permaculture solutions.
Above: The volunteer village uses the same eco-friendly systems as the farms.
education that doesn't cost the earth
Above: fws environmental advisor Rob Cork teaches students from the School of St Jude about the benefits of permaculture at Kesho Leo.
eco-friendly fact sharing
Learn all about Kesho Leo’s individual permaculture components, by checking out
fws's fabulous fast facts on your topic of choice.
care to contribute to our permaculture paradise?
Check out our
shopping list of eco-friendly items required at Kesho Leo.
Below: Lessons in composting, from one generation to another.
