Earthship Belgium vzw

August 21, 2010 - This holiday I suddenly planned (one month in advance). I had found this project on the website of Earthship Belgium. I knew nobody and had come alone by train. I had no experience in the construction of an Earthship and only knew it from the Internet.

The Earthship that is being build in Sweden is built for Jonas Erlandsson and his girlfriend and child. Later it appeared that there are even more plans for a complete Ecovillage with their friends from the same village.

My first day in Skattungbyn was Tuesday, August 3. I arrived at 1 pm , and it became immediately clear where I had to be.From the road the site was easily recognizable. I turned out the only woman (the others had arrived two days earlier) and therefore hoped that I could get around. But soon I noticed that we had a really great team! Of course we worked hard to build the Earthship, but we had a better group we could have wished for.

The E-Team. Clockwise from far left starting: Ids, Henk, Willy, Daan, Willem Maris.

I Soon discovered that none of us knew the other earlier nor had experience with building an Earthship. In the first days everyone had to find his way of organising the work, but during the conversations in the evening at the campfire in the outdoor kitchen, it was clear that we were all at a same sort of level. We had political and social psychological, philosophical and even spiritual conversations. The next day we went back to work as a bunch of construction workers filling tyres with sand!

Kitchen area with our chef Ids and his lovely assistant Willem.