2nd Annual Clean Energy and Agro-ecological Fair on the Household-scale in Valdivia

This year we celebrated the Solstice educating the passing public in Paseo Libertad in Valdivia about sustainable and clean energy practices on the household-scale. We even cooked lunch for all the groups participating in the fair on our rocket stove, making tomato sauce from scratch and boiling pasta for over 20 people with the amount of wood usually used as kindling in traditional woodstoves. There were workshops on various techniques of composting, ram pumps, geodesic domes, seed banks, and bicycle machines as well as presentations on solar energy and documentaries on the sustainable living movement. A film from Spain called "La Voz del Viento: Semillas en Transicion" was very well done and show-cases several sustainable projects between France and the coast of Granada. At our stand under the EcoChile banner we displayed the many api-cosmetic products we produce with wax from our beehives and medicinal herbs from our forest and did demonstrations of the Bio-Lite cookstove which uses a mini thermo-electric generator with a usb-port that can charge small electronic devices like cell phones while you are camping and preparing your meals. It is a technology that we would like to adapt for our home woodstove to produce low-volt energy to our house system. We also showcased photos and comics of the human-scale technologies we practice and experiment with in Los Brujos, explaining the concept of a dry-compost toilet to many curious and enthusiastic visitors. 
We spoke with so many people we lost count, and we were exhausted after three days and happy to return home to tranquil life in our forest where many summer chores awaited us; the 2nd ram pump needing to be run to water the gardens, the mobile chicken coop in need of rotation, mud walls to finish coating and others to begin. This was our second fair and we were more involved in the organization of the event, the official poster sporting my perma-comics illustrations. Hopefully we will hold another fair next year with even more participation and presence from the growing number of groups experimenting and promoting sustainable living practices.