Windarra Farm

Windarra Farm / The TerraSoul Community

In Australian aboriginal, 'Windarra' means: 'A place to live where I can express my soul'. Windarra Farm has been a cultivated land for around 12 years, and we, The TerraSoul Community, started out here in January 2011. We are a learning community. Our holistic approach embraces farming as the ground pillar - added arts, education, renewable energy, music, movement and healing. We enjoy common living, common working, common facilities and common activities. TerraSoul works on 9,5 acres of beautiful land, divided between forest (2,85), fruit orchard (2,85), vegetable garden and grain fields (2,8) and housing (1).

Farming:

Our goal is to provide organic food for The International Township of Auroville, which we are a part of. (www.auroville.org / www.auroville.com) We cultivate a large variety of vegetables, among cucumbers, tomatoes, capsicum, different types of beans, pumpkin, radish, gurds, peanuts etc., and a larg variety of indegenous grains such as red rice, varagu,Ragi and other local millets. In our organic orchard grows among others: guava, mango, banana, papaya, coconut, rosella, citrus and chicco. Our approach is to combine traditional farming in its most natural form with methods from permaculture, Masanobu Fukuoka´s natural farming and biodynamics. We work with nature, the whole farm is one ecosystem of fertile soil, healthy plants and useful insects.

Food Processing:

We create delicious fruit jams, using the fruits from our own organic orchard. We make peanut butter, pesto and pickles from eggplants, cucumbers, tomatoes.

Renewable Energy:

Our enthusiastic goal is to become independent from non-renewable energies. To achieve this, we will improve the efficiency of our energy consumption Our main project on renewable energy is 'Minvayu' – for the moment producing windturbines for Auroville. 'Min' is 'electricity' in Tamil, 'vayu' is 'wind' in Sanskrit - creating energy with the wind. More information is available at www.minvayu.org.

Volunteers:

Volunteers are fully integrated in all aspects of community life and activities. As an essential part of our community, volunteers provide help in the farm, fresh ideas and inspiration, and a cultural exchange. The sharing of knowledge and mutual inspiration enriches our life. You are welcome at any time to come and be a part of our project, to live and work together with us in awareness and respect for the environment.

We offer a wide range of working possibilities:

- farming, preparing compost, fruit orchard

- construction (working with bamboo, welding, roof making etc)

- making of windturbines

- making of jams / pickles

- cooking

- we welcome artistic souls to put their mark by painting walls or similar, to help in the making of our webpage, to decorate etc.)

Farming experience or any experience is very welcome but not necessary. There is also a possibility for offering workshops. We try to consider your individual needs and your personal aim.

We ask for a min. of 1 month commitment of approx. 6 hors daily.

The volunteer housing situation: Various environmental friendly buildings such as bamboo and keet constructions for approx. 15 volunteers are mainly done. The dormitories are simple. We have outside showers and dry compost toilets. There is a community kitchen where we eat common lunch, where we often cook together and where you can cook your own meal.

Activities:

In the community, everybody is involved in farm related work, and at the same time all have the chance to develop individual talents through workshops and projects. We have the following activities in the farm: Didgeridoo, Percussion, African Dance, Capoeira, AcroYoga, Thai-Yoga massage, Tango, Healing. We have different arrangements to bring people and new life to visit the farm. At the moment we have an afternoon/evening a week where we arrange a music jam, then dinner, then a chanting circle around the fire under the stars. Singing songs from around the world.