A gallery showing photographs of the House of Prayer and also previous work and experiments in preparation for the House of Prayer.
Open Day 2013
Good Friday 2013
2009
Preparing the no-dig vegetable beds for planting in a pasture field
Planting salads and experimenting with different types of mulch
Komatsuna salad plants in one of the no-dig vegetable beds
Organic salads growing successfully in mulched pasture (until the owner’s sheep got in)
First harvest of early potatoes grown in mole hill soil with no digging
Home-made top-bar bee hive
Natural honeycomb built by bees without foundation in a Top Bar Hive, showing eggs, capped worker and drone brood
Newly hatched Maran chick with another egg hatching beside
House of Prayer layout plan envisaged for initial 7-acre green-field site in 2009, showing accommodation (with numbers in each dwelling) around a central garden, oratory at the east end opposite the refectory and library at the west end. Other features, such as forest garden, woodland edge with swale habitats, aqualculture ponds, wells, reed-bed sewage treatment, and coppicing for wood fuel and use were also included. Unfortunately the site became unavailable the following year.
Parishioners on Hadrian’s Wall during the 2012 Good Friday Walk from Gilsland to Lanercost
The young people’s yurt in Weardale where we prayed, listened in silence to the sounds of the world outside and to stories, worked with raw wool, and ate home-baked cakes and drank organic cocoa. All by the light of beeswax candles.
A very interesting project. But from a money point of view ( as ever shortage of such in landwork and religious circles to which I belong too ) why go for permaculture and not for something specialist that brings in decent funds ? Like the monks in the past and even now, an craft drink or food or something medicinal ? Try to scale something like that up if it works to form the basis of a religious ecovillage type community ? It needs a business aspect somewhere which I haven’t met yet in permaculture circles other than giving courses. To get a project financially right you have to break out of the self sufficiency format.
Best of luck,
Paul