Siamo un gruppo di persone che amano l'arte, la natura e il benessere. Nella nostra fattoria, ci connettiamo con noi stessi, con gli altri e con la natura, avendo allo stesso tempo lo spazio per esplorare la creatività e la comunicazione.

Abbiamo Anita, la nostra artista ceramista e fondatrice di questo progetto. Scopri il lavoro di Anita qui.

Abbiamo le nostre instancabili fate del giardino, sempre impegnate nei loro compiti.

E abbiamo la nostra meravigliosa Ingrid, che ha introdotto i metodi di Fukuoka, insieme all'agricoltura sintropica e rigenerativa, nel nostro progetto.

We are a group of people who love art, nature, and well-being. At our farm, we connect with ourselves, with others, and with nature, while having the space to explore creativity and communication.

We have Anita, our ceramic artist and the founder of this project. Check out Anita’s work here.

We have our hardworking garden fairies, always busy with their tasks.

And we have our wonderful Ingrid, who introduced Fukuoka’s methods, as well as syntropic and regenerative agriculture to our project.

Appelo

Cerchiamo persone che amano stare nella natura e all'aria aperta, sono in grado di dedicare tempo e che siano disposte a unirsi a noi nel nostro progetto come un percorso di apprendimento collettivo basato su coltivazione, creatività e ripristino dell'ecosistema.

Il progetto

Il progetto è incentrato sulla creazione di un giardino che mira non solo all'autosufficienza, ma anche a essere rigenerativo nel suo design, allo scopo di migliorare la fertilità del suolo a lungo termine consentendo di avere sempre più produzione e sempre meno input.

I principi guida

I principi guida saranno ispirati dalla permacultura, da Fukuoka, dall'agricoltura sintropica e rigenerativa, da varie altre pratiche antiche e moderne nonché  dalle osservazioni e input degli partecipanti.

I ritorni

saranno le uscite dall'orto e la possibilità di partecipare e creare corsi incentrati sul progetto

Call for Applications

We are looking for people who love being in nature and outdoors, who can dedicate time and are willing to join us in our project as part of a collective learning journey based on cultivation, creativity, and ecosystem restoration.

The Project

The project focuses on creating a garden aimed not only at self-sufficiency but also at being regenerative in its design, with the goal of improving soil fertility in the long term, allowing for more production with fewer inputs.

Guiding Principles

The guiding principles will be inspired by permaculture, Fukuoka's methods, syntropic and regenerative agriculture, various other ancient and modern practices, as well as observations and inputs from the participants.

The Benefits

The benefits will include harvests from the garden and the opportunity to participate in and create courses centered around the project.

BIOGRAPHY

Hi

I’m Ingrid and I embraced this ÈLÍSHÍMUN project with a full hearted embrace in a

chance meeting with Anita at our local organic vegetable store when we discovered

our common interest in permaculture.

I still marvel at how I came to be captured by this interest, far from what I’d ever

aspired to up until a few years ago. I feel long country walks in the Essex countryside

with my mother play an important role.

My studies were in contemporary dance at LSCD, followed by Integrated Arts at

Crewe and Alsager college of higher education. A yearn to travel brought me to Italy

where I taught English and continued to dedicate myself to dance, teaching and

sporadically performing and choreographing.

I moved from Rome to the countryside near the small town of Bracciano and settled

down to become a family.

During Covid I happened to attend an online world climate summit of the COP 21 in

Edinburg hosted by Kosha Joubert of the Pocket Project, introducing me to the work

of countless ecologists reinforcing my bond to the earth as I began to understand the

extent of the severe damage humans have done and are continuing to do to the

Environment. My North star became the words and work of John D Lui whose

documentary Green Gold restored hope within me by opening me up to the

possibility of landscape transformation at a scale previously unheard of. This started

me on a trajectory, thanks to increasing online accessibility, of going into greater

depth as regards ecosystem restoration, being introduced to its intricate workings and

mechanisms and how to go about implementing it.

3 MOOCs ( massive open source online courses) on ecosystem restoration and

together with Matt Power’s (author of Regenerative Soil) Advanced permaculture

Student Course opened up a whole range of possibilities as to how to begin creating

abundance through working in relation to nature and the earth, further made possible

by my integration into the Elishimun project.

Dance continues to be central to my life in study and practice leading to alignment of

scientific knowledge of the body as an organism with inner knowing, sensing and

perception. My studies in ecology have revealed to me that in the same way that all

the functions in the body are fully interrelated and interconnected within a greater

whole, they are also intimately connected to the earth and universe. The evolutionary

process of life on earth seems to have taken place from microcosm to macrocosm, the

whole reflected in the parts and the parts within the whole.

I feel that in working with land we are connecting to the whole, that the interplay of

elements in nature are so beautifully balanced and orchestrated and that our role

could be that of players within this great symphony, guiding ourselves and the system

towards greater health and abundance.

I am hoping a community will gradually form centred around regeneratively

cultivating the site, exchange of ideas, experimentation and creativity.

We/I welcome you to follow our project through our blogs

THE GARDEN PROJECT

Within the permaculture project we are working on a regenerative design for the area

shown on the map, initiating from what will be the chicken run and sloping gradually

down to an area planted with conifer trees. It now consists of grasses and wild plant

species such as chicory and wild calendula and has a mainly clay and silt soil which

is a red/orange colour and contains little organic matter. There are odd areas nearer to

the chicken run which have become encrusted with moss and slightly impermeable.

There are several fruit trees but it is not densely planted. The grasses grow very tall in

spring but, being in the Mediterranean the lack of rain in the summer means the area

quickly dries out and there are signs of stress in the fruit trees.

The first objective is to improve the water retention in the landscape in order for the

trees to recover and for there to be abundant growth that will have more resilience

throughout the summer without needing excessive irrigation or outside input. I have

thought of doing this through rainwater harvesting as well as creating different types

of swale on contour. Different niches geared towards increasing biodiversity and soil

fertility will in turn increase water retention capacity and thus support the abundance.

My general vision is of a transformation whereby the soil will eventually become

rich, brown and crumbly and the whole area will gradually be transformed into a sort

of edible garden where you can wonder down a path and discover different areas and

atmospheres to be savoured and meditated within, where vegetables, fruits, berries,

flowers, wild flowers, trees, water bodies will all become a part.

The motivations driving this vision are to provide a living example of various water

retention systems and techniques able to resist the increasing drought the

Mediterranean is predicted to be subject to. By coming to our presentations and

courses people will be motivated to implement these principles on their own gardens

or landscapes, thus hopefully creating trends and becoming actively and consciously

involved in positively influencing the ecosystem functions in our area.

For now this is but a vision but it will be an inspiration for the path towards its

realisation

Thich Nhat Hanh : “there is no way to happiness, happiness is the way”

Daisaku Ikeda: “Growth is synonymous with ceaseless inquiry and continuous

exploration”

My name is Fiona Pollard. I am a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and Yoga Wave Teacher (500h). I work with yoga, meditation, mindfulness and Somatic Experiencing tools to help clients attune to their bodies and needs with compassion and kindness. I teach Yoga Wave on Wednesdays (Sunset) and Sundays (morning) on the lakeside beach near Trevignano Romano and at Elishimun Farm events. Individual therapy sessions are available in person (Trevignano Romano or Elishimun Farm, Manziana) or online. Visit my YouTube channel @CalmBendyStrong for free yoga & breathing exercises.

Somatic Experiencing

Somatic Experiencing is a gentle therapy aimed at creating space for the body and mind to communicate better. This helps to release trauma and stress trapped in our nervous system. In our busy world, we often use logic to rationalise and minimise our bodily experience, ignoring the signs and signals it is sending us.  We can ‘check out’ from daily stress with screens, food, substances, exercise and more, to avoid what feels uncomfortable and sometimes intolerable. Somatic Experiencing favours a greater connection with our own body, in order to be able to act with greater awareness and coherence. This results in greater respect for oneself in various aspects such as “What are my needs? How do I set healthy limits? How do I take care of myself? Or how do I develop a greater containment capacity?”

By unlocking patterns of behaviour and thoughts, this approach helps to discover the functioning of the nervous system and teaches self-regulation. For example, how to calm down if you are nervous, how to understand body language and pay attention to it, or how to discover patterns of behaviour and thought that have been blocked, to get out of them in a conscious way.

Yoga Wave

We are Nature and the practice of yoga (meaning union of body, mind and soul) aims to connect together our internal world with our external world - a union between the microcosm and the macrocosm in which we exist: non-duality.  Yoga Wave principles, based on this union, are built around 3 natural elements: Rock, Bamboo and Water. The Rock expresses the concept of Centering, Grounding and Physical and Mental Stability. Bamboo expresses the ability to be Strong, Soft and Flexible by transiting between Yin and Yang. Water, being in the flow, expresses the adaptable attitude in the awareness of the intuitive wisdom of body and mind (“Wave flow”) and the flow of energies and emotions (Prana flow). Through the practice, we are “stable like rock, flexible like bamboo, adaptable like water”, helping us feel closely united with Nature. This flowy practice is perfect for all levels of experience. 

Please contact me on +393273329898 or email me at fionapollard88@gmail.com for more details.