Blueprint
We are Charlotte and Lisa, the seed-planters of Somos. We are two possibilitators who have decided to be the guardians of 25,000 square metres of land in Tenerife which we want to turn into a playground for living full-out and discovering who we really are and what it is we really came here to do.
We want our land to be a hub for the research and investigation of regenerative cultures, a place to bring people together who are also on fire to create an alternative to the way of living that is currently on offer.
Our land is partly native brezo forest and partly agricultural terraces. The terraces are an ode to nature and her resilient spirit. After being abandoned and left unfarmed they have regrown into a mess of ferns, brambles, laurel trees and canes as well as many other types of shrub and tree. The ecosystems of the land are regenerating and it is full of birds, including owls and many bees. It is positively buzzing with life.
Our goal is to protect this habitat for the local fauna and flora
and to allow them to flourish.
We have a 3,000 m2 orchard with an abundance of fruit trees. We are in the planning stages of turning this traditional orchard into a food forest using the techniques of agroforestry.
We are two women, who have decided to leave modern culture and move to the countryside and see how to live regeneratively in our mind, body, soul and for the earth we inhabit.
We are not experts, we don’t pretend to know anything. Anybody can do this, and in fact we invite you to join us and inhabit a piece of land and decide to become its guardian and we can learn together and share what we discover.
Join our Youtube channel to watch our updates and adventures as we navigate living off-grid and learn basically from scratch how to live in a regenerative way.
Regenerative Design and Practices
Food Forest
We are designing and cultivating a nature-imitating mostly perennial food forest to show how we can heal and regenerate farmland through a transformative restoration process and at the same time cultivate abundant crops to feed ourselves.
Food forests imitate nature using stacking systems with different layers which maximise land productivity and create diverse ecosystems that provide habitat for insects, birds, and soil organisms.
Reducing soil disturbance by practising no-till and implementing a keyline water irrigation system.
Companion Planting: We plant compatible crops together to enhance nutrient cycling, and deter pests and diseases.
Soil Building: One of our main focuses will be on building healthy soils by re-creating a healthy ecosystem for the plants to thrive and fend off diseases and pests.
Energy Technology
Somos will be fuelled 100% by renewable energies.
Solar panels will provide the energy for the main bulk of our needs.
We will have two bicycle generators as an auxiliary energy source. They also work as a great reminder to appreciate the value of having electricity. People can bike for 15-30 minutes to charge their phone for an hour or keep a low-usage light bulb running for a week.
For heating the house and water we have also designed a passive solar system.
Water Conservation and Recycling
Water is an incredibly precious resource and we won’t waste a drop of it. We will conserve water using efficient crops adapted to the climate, cover cropping, mulching, keyline irrigation and efficient irrigation scheduling.
We will recycle rainwater from the roofs of the buildings and the land. We have a greywater system set up which recycles all the water from the house apart from the black water and passes it through a filter to be reused for watering the trees.
Another extremely important aspect of water management is avoiding soil being damaged by nutrient runoff caused by heavy rain.
This we will tackle by planting riparian buffers to soak up the water at the edge of each terrace.
We are diluting and recycling our urine which is full of beneficial nutrients for plants.
Everything we learn and develop is shared online and is copy-left. A term we use that means everyone is free to use it.