Vision and Manifesto

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 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

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

A Creative Philippines: Spirit meets Practical

Art and Creativity Vision and Manifesto

IMG_20170515_083213_181

Art-making is such an intimate distillation of spirit — going through the motions of creating a work demands concentration, dedication and courage in big and small strokes:  Do you have the clarity to know what is true, the courage to choose it and stand by and behind your choices?

Imagine having this discipline so instilled in you that it translates onto all other aspects of your life — business, health, social.  Right in the center is a spiritual knowing, a pulsating, moving energy of truth that infects you wholly, and those around you.

Wow.

That’s the abstract part. The grounding is in art.  This is the school I want to build.  A school of everyday art-making.  I call it a school because it’s a place of learning and healing, but it can very well be a business, a salon for dialogue and exchanging ideas, an innovation/invention center.  Art is so encompassing, that I use it interchangeably with creativity, science, spiritual. Because it is, first and foremost, problem-solving.

Who will show up?

Spiritual seekers.

Such a tricky word but I still use it because it brings with it two essentials: the asking and the spiritual.

We ask because we don’t know, and we acknowledge that we don’t know.  We are moving, we are not attached to one dogma or philosophy, because we know that questions only lead to more questions.  We flow.

And this asking is driven by the spirit.  It is the spirit that moves and calls us.  What is this spirit?

I tried answering this recently:

To be spiritual is [to be] alive, [it is] an activity, an impulse to pursue truth in all things — relationships, business, health. When faced with a fork in the road, the spiritual person takes out the truth radar. He decides not based on emotion or desire, but on truth:  what is my truth? What is the truth of the situation? What does it ask of me, of the other, of the world?  It is not an easy process to come to a truth.  One has to be driven both by results and process… to be patient. To move forward but also to recognize the lull moments. The negative space. And to be there, actively waiting, preparing. Because there is a rhythm to all things. One takes as long as one takes.

To be spiritual is to acknowledge the world and be present to it 100% — in mind, body, heart.  One observes and listens, but also makes sure he is equipped to do this task– so he clears the space inside and makes room for the new. All the time.  He recognizes the big picture and how we exist in its context.  It’s always about context.  There is a greater scheme of things, a thread that ties everyone and everything together.  I remember a scientific law that puts forward the same idea:  Energy is neither created nor destroyed.  It is transformed.  You can never get rid of what you put out there — be it physical trash or a brilliant idea.  It always goes somewhere, moves into a new space, a new vessel. The spiritual works under the same law:  There is no real death, no delete button.  Everything moves into the other.  Everything is connected.

This is what it means to be spiritual:  to recognize this connecting movement.  Change.  Transformation.  The spiritual person is open; he feels for the pulse of our time over and over again, so he can respond to it over and over again.

Swap the word “spiritual” above with “creative” or “scientific” and everything still holds true.

– from Spirit and Practical

My Perfect Day: How it all Began

Vision and Manifesto

Image by Bianca Mentil from Pixabay

This dream project all began in 2010, when I was asked to describe my perfect day:

I wake up in a home near the mountains and sea, surrounded by family and friends. I start the day with sunshine on my face and the sound of birds chirping and waves crashing on the shore. I look outside my window and see everyone around me abuzz– the neighborhood is waking up too.

Who are my neighbors?

My most favorite people in the world:  entrepreneurs and artists.   Add in the geeks, techies, scientists and the alternatives of every discipline and you get a hotbed of the most interesting, enabling people there could be (at least to me).

Wow, what an everyday environment to cherish and grow in.

I knew then, as I know now, that for this perfect day to become my everyday reality, massive changes needed to take place, and that I wouldn’t be able to do them alone.

At the end of the day, what ultimately makes me happy is being in a community that I can contribute to with all of me (academically, socially, artistically, spiritually), and vice versa–it nourishes all of me as well.

I am an artist in my deepest of hearts, and I am easily seduced by the idea of running off into the wilderness to live a simple, quiet life.   But as someone who grew up in the Philippines, my reality has been one doused in poverty, frustration and lack of resources, and this has made me always look out for the other: what can I do to help?  How can I grow to my highest potential and bring along with me as many people as possible?  I can’t be happy just doing my own thing in a corner.

And so back to community.  Build something true, scalable, and includes a lot of people.