Building LEADIA

Imagining Our Dream Farm: Slow living with Friends

Farming and Gardening Vision and Manifesto
terrace with comfortable couches and armchairs around table

It’s Sunday and we’re on relax mode, watching videos on Albanian Village Life. Inspired by this family in the rural mountainside, we again imagine our own dream farm, allowing ourselves to say things out loud:

I see a nice bungalow home giving that feeling of a wide open space even inside its walls. Think Pinterest farmhouse with the rustic, shabby chic vibe, worn out on the edges and wildly tame–a beloved, inviting home. We’ll have open-plan living and dining spaces, extending to a covered wraparound veranda that has retractable glass roofing, walls and windows. Screened during summer to ward off bugs, and closed off as a sunroom aka winter garden in the colder months.

Outside we have a wide open field perfect for games, picnics and our daughter’s major must-have, a tree house. All around are blooming bushes and fruit trees. We grow our own tomatoes, apples, plums, apricots, oranges, mulberry, lemons, malterri (Japanese plums), pears and pomegranate–a bigger version of our small family garden here in Turkey. This is in the Mediterranean, so it will have Mediterranean greens and herbs: flourishing bushes of rosemary, mint, basil, parsley, spring onions. We’re planting foreign vegetables and fruits too (non-invasive), because this farm is home to us in multiple ways. It’s a capsule of treasured travels and moments lived elsewhere, and what better way to enliven those moments than to nurture and cultivate heirloom seeds from around the world. Maybe we’d be able to grow bananas and calamansi, bringing us the smells and flavors of the Philippines in Europe.

Many Visiting and Gathering Spaces

Around us in courtyard fashion are wooden and stone guesthouses. Standalone villas where friends are welcome to visit to retreat into farm life or stay and become neighbors. Inspired by living architecture, the farm is both streamlined and abundant, expansive and tender, modern and natural. There are nooks and crannies everywhere, freeform spaces to connect with nature or just be alone. In the center are communal places that invite conversations and shared activities–an open kitchen, lounge, library (with the rolling ladder!), breathing space. There’s an oven and open pit for a bonfire and barbeque. A place for bodywork and celebrations.

anonymous little girl drawing on ground with chalks

It’s also a home to nurture our inner child, a safe place to play and experiment. We walk barefoot in our garden, to ground and discharge. I want a 100% organic section for humans too, with wifi jammers, and maybe even the foils and fringe science stuff to protect the space from radiation and waves. An outdoor womb to embrace us and detox us from modern life. Maybe a natural pool.

We make our own butter, cheese, jams, honey, and liquor, and find as much joy in the production process as in the actual farm-to-table wining and dining.

There are art studios, tinkering labs, makerspaces–a coworking space for creatives. And one for businesses.

There’s also a natural school that uses holistic technology to provide a living education that’s personalized to the talent, capacity, and interests of the child. It’s a blend of protecting the sense of wonder and magic in children, and including them in the joys of modern life.


Food Production for Our Home and Beyond

Koray is Mr. Scale, so he searches for organic chicken farming online and finds a video of a poultry farmer with 1,000 chickens in Cannakale, Turkey. I see the wheels turning in his head. The food engineer in him is already doing the math for a scalable system for eggs, meat and dairy production. We’re not just farming for our own consumption. It will make business sense. Nothing will go to waste.

I plow through the Turkish dialogue thanks to automated subtitles, and get schooled on how chickens are raised. Nope, (don’t laugh) we won’t be chasing after chickens to catch their eggs after all, and nope, free-range and organic don’t necessarily go together.

I gravitate more towards the homesteading videos, where farming is more personal and for the household. I like the one by the backyard farmer with 6 hens in a chicken mansion, all being tended to as pets. I learn that there are farms designed for meat and farms just to harvest eggs.

brown and black hen with peep of chick outdoor

Yin and Yang Farming

My interest is more on the farming lifestyle itself of slowing down, making everyday living sustainable. I’ve done my share of farm visits around the Philippines, both for tourism and for learning courses on Permaculture, Vermiculture and Biodynamic Farming. I like the personal investment in farming: touching the earth myself, cultivating the soil with my bare hands, naming my livestock.

When I first started dreaming up my perfect lifestyle, I always saw it on a farm next to the mountains and sea, with that synergy of nature and tech. I saw myself growing old on a small-scale beach farm community equipped with the latest tech innovations. Koray and I jokingly call it glamfarming, maybe similar to what most would call a weekend farm–a place to relax and grow my own food in an enjoyable way, with just enough surplus to gift to friends and family.

Now that I’m approaching two years in a four-season country, I have a deeper respect for and connection to the rhythm of nature, and the call to live according to this rhythm is ever stronger. The icing on the cake is the community: to have like-minded neighbors and pool resources for support (economic, social, wellness, spiritual) and smart living, such as greentech, agritech, housing tech, edutech. Wow, right?

With Koray bringing in his food production expertise and our 5-year-old needing a school community, step one is to build a prototype that works as a hub for business, education, creativity and joy. Then we can replicate this in different parts of the world, with each location tapping into the local environment, culture, talent, and energy. At their core, these farms are energy centers, bringing in elevated environments, livelihoods, and everyday living. These in turn elevate the mind, heart, and sense of self.

We have done location search in the Philippines, Turkey, Mediterranean Europe, and Central and South America, and we are zeroing in on Albania for the farm because of its designation as a 100% organic country. Montenegro and Macedonia are also tied into the mix as possible locations for an urban annex.

No doubt about it, we will build the farm of our dreams: a yin and yang farm and a happy place for us that is personal plus.

If you’re interested in joining us on this journey, send me a message, would be happy to have a chat.

💙 What keeps you walking? 💙

Gathering People Rhythm
Montalut Daily Rhythm

Picking up my rhythm posts after a month-long whirlwind in Istanbul for @leadiafestivals. Here’s a photo from the last days of calm before the storm, when @korayerimez and I took our 5yo exploring the Galata Bridge.

Thankful for everything that Istanbul gave us 🙏, still so much to unpack from the first #LeadiaFest, and already we’re prepping for #Leadiafestlisbon2024 in February. To say I’m tired is an understatement, but it’s a filling kind of tired, much like the #teamnosleep vibe when a new baby comes.

After over a decade of dreaming up a space of possibility, we’ve finally given birth to it (with A LOT of help from unexpected places!) and it now has a life of its own. 🌈

Sending lots of cheers to anyone who is on ✨️ the path of creating, building and honoring your dream–it’s all going to be so worth it!

💙 On Blue Day, take that much needed rest, so you can keep on walking tomorrow. 🚶‍♂️🚶‍♀️✨

#LeadiaFestivals
#dreambig #istanbul #possibility #rest #recovery #blue #Bluejays #rhythm #leadiafest2023 #leadiafestlisbon2024

Leadia is graduating! HUG Studios Demo Day

Building LEADIA

If you’re free tomorrow, we’re graduating from the HUG program and doing our final pitches tomorrow night!✨️ Would be AMAZING to have you there for moral support, and we’re sure you’ll enjoy learning about the other Web3 projects launching soon. Panel will be attended by the Hug team, including Hug founders Randi Zuckerberg and Debbie Soon, and the greater HUG community + friends.

Link to register below!

P.s. Its 11pm PH time, Thurs March 30.

What is Island Life Plus?

Vision and Manifesto Slow Travel Sustainable Living

My friends know I’m exactly the type to run off to the islands and live a life on the beach. 🏝

Now at 42, with a family of my own and mom to a toddler, I’m revisiting this deep desire with different lenses.👓

What is island life and is it for everyone? Is it for my family?

🏝 Slow
🏝 Simple
🏝 Back to basics
🏝 Nature
🏝 Bugs
🏝 Flipflops

What is Island Life Plus?
🏝➕️ with interesting like minds: conversations!
🏝➕️ sense of new: innovation, ideas
🏝➕️ art, theater, music
🏝➕️ sports
🏝➕️ people sharing themselves: hopes, dreams, expertise, experiences, stories, advocacies
🏝➕️ people working together, both personal and professional collabs: schooling, gardening, dream projects, businesses, tech startups, labs, tinkering spaces, farming, hubs.

Writing all these down this Sunday morning excited me again to no end, and it’s how I know it’s still my life mission: it’s alive! Alive in me, and I will keep it alive in others who wish to share the journey.

My dream project has transformed from Alaya to Montalut to now Leadia. It’s not for everyone, but it definitely is for my family. Wherever we end up building @leadiagrowth, it’s the place I want to be in everyday, and the place I want my daughter to flourish and make lifelong friends. It’s where I see @korayerimez and I growing old with wine in hand, dancing into the night, laughing with friends who believe in dreams, wealth, abundance and deeply connecting with people, nurturing our stories and talents as gifts to ourselves, to each other and to the world.

How are you dreaming these days, friends? 🌟


#dreams #islandlife #creativecommunities #growthliving #conversations #inspiringenvironments #everydayart #everydayartist

Building LEADIA: What is Community?

Gathering People My Nuvali Home

In 2011, I was living in Nuvali, an ecocity in the Philippines. I’d just built my first home and documented my journey to sustainable living in a blog, MyNuvaliHome.

I’m now incorporating that blog into Montalut, and came across abrasive comments on my About section, where I shared the Why of my blog. Reading between the lines, one can tell that the person was angry at something, yes, and it was at the promise of Nuvali.

When you’re building something out of the future, all you have is your vision of it. You are emerging something new, something that doesn’t yet exist. To see it too, some people need a proof of concept that it’s been done before or that you’ve built a prototype of sorts. Some need more than that–they want to feel it directly benefiting them before they jump in. If the benefits fall short of the promise, they bite.

And yet a few already see the future with you, and choose to journey with you.

Reading that comment today made me recall what community is, at least to me.

Here’s the reply I wrote back in 2012, and it still rings true today:

Nuvali is a beautiful place that I’ve personally invested in, and it’s just one of the many new developments in the South that seeks to address the congestion problem in Metro Manila.  Anything can happen years from now, but as someone who’s already betting on this community, I also hope to be an active part of what will make it truly a home — along with my future neighbors and those looking to contribute to and benefit from alternative communities like this.

Community is what we make of it, and as with anything in life, you get what you give. You give nothing, and you get nothing back. You give love and joy, and you get love and joy back.

Alaya on Year 3: Dark Night

Building LEADIA

It’s been three years since I picked up the Alaya mantle, and sometimes shame overcomes me for neglecting it for so long. I thought I’d lost the fire that built Alaya to begin with, but I guess life projects of this magnitude assert themselves no matter what.

Here I am, living in a condo–the best condo setup in the Philippines in my opinion–and still I find myself pining for the wide open spaces of a landed community. Life has been on repeat for the past five months, and I’ve found myself in the movie, “Waking Life”, living like an ant. This is not life. I refuse to succumb to numbness, to cattle talk, to survival mode. We can do better. I can do better. For Sulana.

Last week I had a vision of real excitement, of joy I could smell and taste, and it was sea breeze that lingered on me. To live seaside is still the longing of my heart, and I went back to why I started Alaya to begin with. I wanted to wake up everyday surrounded by nature, and more importantly, by people who shared my life vision and values. People I wouldn’t tire of having barbeques with, who I’d entrust raising my daughter to, who I’d call whether to help save the world or watch Spirited Away with. That’s what lights up my eyes everyday.

I look at the past three years, and do an audit of my time and energy, and 0% of it was devoted to this. How could I have strayed so far?

One can say life railroaded me. Marriage, motherhood, startup life. To gain control over the past and own my story, I would reframe that in the words of my mentor Benjamin Hardy, and say that all these happened for me. I am who I am now, August 10th, 2020, five months into a pandemic, with the global economy and healthcare system on the brink of collapse, because of everything difficult, heartbreaking, and traumatic that has happened in the past three years. They call the years of 37, 38, and 39 the dark night of the soul, when all the forces that have nurtured and supported your spiritual journey pull back and leave you on your own. These are the years of forging the iron sword solo, and one comes out of this moment either stronger and ready for battle, or brittle and nearly broken, needing to rebuild.

I’m still midway through this dark night, and I choose to keep plowing through. The digging deep also persists, to find that golden anchor that will keep the fire burning, and will keep lighting other fires, no matter what.

Building the Entrepreneur and Tech Hubs of Alaya

Building LEADIA
Koray and Johanna

Seven months ago, I met someone who would turn out to be Alaya’s first investor.  He would also turn out to be the love of my life and my life partner.

Since September 2017, Koray and I have been traveling all over (Manila, Iloilo, Turkey, Palawan) and discussing nonstop about how to create the economic backbone to make Alaya happen.  As dreams would have it, something bigger than us started carrying us towards the right path, right ideas, right people.   And now here we are, April 2018, getting ready to birth our babies: we’re expecting our first baby girl in July (yay!), and our tech company a little sooner than that.

Why a tech company?

The priority hub in building Alaya was always the Enterprise hub.

Wealth Creation is growing our own value so we can share it with the world.

The Enterprise and Wealth Creation hub of Alaya.PH will focus on the economic aspect of communities:  how do we create wealth for ourselves and scale this?

– from Why Enterprise?

IMG_20170428_090313_711
Being able to scale the wealth creation was always important for us, and what better product or service to scale than something whose very nature is to scale itself–technology.

We’ve just put up Leadeana, a tech holding company whose mission is to give Filipinos fair access to opportunities for a good life.  We will train, hire, and mentor world-class tech professionals in underserved areas of the Philippines to create the biggest Data and AI Team in the world.   The business model is designed to bring with us as many people as possible, to create a new economic class of creative, empowered and self-improving Filipino geeks (geeks used ever so lovingly!).  Our community of tech experts will then be a self-sustaining breeding ground for entrepreneurs ready to take up the challenge of producing Philippine unicorns.

We are now offering an opportunity for 12 people to come in as strategic partners who will bring this vision to fruition with us. If you share our vision for the Philippines and are able to contribute your expertise to the group: industry knowledge, network, passions and time, please send us a big hello.

What are collaborative home environments?

Green Design and Architecture Vision and Manifesto

It’s my big #dream to #build a #community of #creatives, #entrepreneurs and #techies on a farm next to the mountains and sea. I’ve called the concept coliving to myself for a while now and only recently learned it’s an actual thing happening all over the world! So glad this idea resonates with a growing number of people.

The idea of communal living is not alien to Filipinos (or most Asians).    Most of us grew up sharing a home with our extended families, which schooled us on shared personal space early on.  We have helpers who co-raise us with our parents, and we readily call people in the neighborhood, blood-relatives or not, uncle-aunt-brother-sister.

When I talk about cohousing or coliving to friends in the Philippines, I get poker faces because for the most part, it’s nothing new.  If anything, it’s the default that most Pinoys want to move away from.  We want fenced in houses, gated communities,  thick walls between us and our neighbors.  Anything that gives us more privacy, more security, boundaries.

So what drew me to coliving and cohousing to begin with?

Intention.  Living together with people because of a shared vision.  Like attracts like.   Before I decided to build a house in Nuvali, I explored intentional communities and sought them out in the Philippines.   I’m not a hippie but my brothers like to tease that my lifestyle choices make me the uncool tita or aunt.  I went raw vegan for a while, love solo travel, have no television.  For someone who grew up in a group-oriented culture, I’ve always been more comfortable doing things by myself.  I guess I always looked for other people like me, so we could be individual together.

The definitions of coliving and cohousing stretch far and wide, but the general idea I’m taking from them is this:  I wish to gather people , who more or less share my values, in a place where we can all hang out everyday (i.e. live and work).   The physicality of it is important, and it is what I insist on:  environment is so big in shaping daily habits, thoughts, and intentions.   This is space-clearing on a group level, translated onto property or real estate development.

Collaborative Home Environments

Montalut I Build Collaborative Home Environments

It’s about building the shrine without to build the shrine within.  Our environment shapes us and it makes perfect sense to align our everyday living environment–our homes–with our core values.

A friend who does feng shui consulting once told me that all the effort in the world to improve one’s fortune or luck wouldn’t make a difference if he or she didn’t first change or address the negative energies in his or her living space.

What would a collaborative home environment espouse?

Collaborative Home Environments
face-to-face
conversations
diverse
open economy
healing
beautiful
inspiring
warm
root-building
identity base
nurturing
safe space
orderly
open/flexible design
visionary
accessible
affordable/democratic
authentic
respectful
natural + high tech
complete
practical
set up to succeed
set up to nurture
set up to propel

What makes a home?

  • Not disconnected from nature and the cycles of life:  birth, decay and death, cleaning, waste management, food production
  • rest
  • gathering
  • restorative

What can’t people live without?

  • Water supply: potable and gray water
  • Sources of food: wet market, dry goods
  • Toiletries
  • Laundry
  • Recreation
  • Fitness
  • Private space

Building the Team

Gathering People
women sitting on chairs inside a room

Who’s In:

  • people with heart
  • co-carriers, collaborators
  • implementors
  • people who know what they want
  • authentic
  • excellence mindset
  • abundance mindset: great attitude towards money
  • self-starters
  • sacred me-time
  • seeking; questions
  • passionate, happy people
  • gatherings
  • beautiful spaces and everyday environments