 Welcome to a new project camp video. So this video is part of a research series where we're going to explore alternative ways of living. So people around the world that decided to find another way to live together and hear their experiences, see what they learned about it, get some inspiration to really see the other options that are available out there. And this time I'm in Portugal to visit a community called Tamera based in the South. It's 133 hectares big, having around 200 members. It's 100% sufficient in water, 25% self-sufficient in food, and about 50% self-sufficient in electricity. And they actually have quite a lot of infrastructure here. They have their own logo, their own school for the children. They have compost toilets, which is basically just a hole in the floor. They have a seed garden where they grow plants that produce the seeds for the vegetables. They have a big gathering space for the community where they all come together every Sunday, and then it's busy. And they have a beautiful view. They have their own stone circle. They have their own fire department, which is basically just this one very beautiful old German fire truck. They have workplaces for instance to work with food. And they have a lot of fruit trees around here. You can pick the fruits straight from the tree, nice and sweet. And growing your own food is actually quite a big thing here. Well, let me show you in the garden. Welcome to the South Valley. This is the area in Tamera which produces the major part of the vegetables that we grow for ourselves. It's between 10 to 14 tons of vegetables every year, which is only 20 to 25 percent of the consumption of the community and the guests in one year. So we are proud to grow our own vegetables. We also love it. I love my work. I also love to eat my work. And we can grow much more. So we know that this soil is relatively young. Only seven years ago we started to work here. And these terraces started with the building of the water retention landscape over there. So the lake, the big lake which is behind this dam, the soil that was digged in order to create the lake was distributed into more than 20 terraces which we are working on. So every year we also grow vegetables but we also grow soil. So it's very important to make the soil better, to build soil. And yeah, we grow carrots and potatoes and tomatoes and zucchini and cucumbers and pumpkins and many other vegetables. We grow for us, we don't want to sell for others. We also don't want to reach into 100 percent of self-sufficiency in the issue of food because actually we like the contact with the farmers around. So my vision is to gain 80 percent of self-sufficiency in vegetables growing but still the grains and 20 percent of the vegetables, also the legumes. I love it that it comes from other farmers and it keeps us in contact with our surrounding. So we are not a bubble, we are not an isolated island. I love it not only because of the taste but also the contact that I have with the vegetables. So when you know where it was growing, how it was growing, from where the compost came, from where the mulch came who put the hands in it, the taste is much better. So once they gathered all the fruits and vegetables from the garden it's time to bring them to the kitchen to cook them into a meal. However one interesting thing they also like to do here is figuring out how to cook. So for instance trying to do it on biogas or solar energy. So before we go to the kitchen we first need to go to the workspace. Hi Dave, welcome to our workshop. This is our Tamera workshop. Here is the wood workshop part. Some fences being built right now. And let's go and I give you a short tour. Wood workshop over here. Now we enter, this is more the car workshop currently used with our CNC router that we built. This is our welding and more the metal area. Now we enter the technology workshop. This is our technology team workspace stuffed with machines. You see already very messy right now because we have a workshop going on. You will see. Also noisy because there's many people working but I hope it's alright. This is more the dirty part of the workshop. We have welding, cutting metals going on here. A bit of material bending coming inside. So this is our machine shop, main machine shop. This is where we have some metal machines. But it's also where we have our big table to do prototyping, developing work. Nice window over here into our beautiful community in the middle of the nature. Very beautiful. Yeah, this is the workshop. Then we go over what we call our lab. So this is, as I say, very messy. Greg doing great work right there. More the electronics part, computers, CAD CAM design, 3D printing. And then once we build something we go out and test it in the sun. We work on solar technologies mainly. Okay, right now no sun out but some cookers that we prototype. All kinds of stuff lying around. More cookers that we refurbish. This is our solar concentrator that we have developed over the last years. All prototyping things from this workshop right now. And finally our hangout space for now, that's our workshop. And after we build the things we bring, for example, the cookers to the kitchen as you will see it later. Awesome man, thanks. So that was Daniel from the workspace, super nice guy. And now we're on our way to the kitchen where we're actually going to combine the technology and all the fruits and vegetables we got from the garden to make lunch. Welcome to the solar kitchen in the test field of Tamara. We are preparing lunch here every day only with solar energy and with biogas. And we are cooking for 60 people today. We will have potatoes and carrots fresh from our own garden and also cooked from our own garden. And we will also do a carrot cake with our new solar oven. So every morning I first check the sky and look how the weather is, like how much sun do we have. And then I go to our rock cellar where the vegetables are from the garden and I see what their provides. So then I make up a menu for the day. So if there's a lot of sun and then it will be more fancy. And if we don't have so much sun then we will have more basic meal. It's such a different energy because when I cook not with solar power I first of all I go to the supermarket and say I want this, I want this. And then I just take as much energy as I want to cook. But here I really see like what does your gift to me, how much sun does she give to me, what kind of vegetables does she give and provide for me. So it's a totally different kind of cooking. I really like it, I love this kitchen. Also here I see like we have the solar energy like cooking with the mirror and we have the biogas and I like so much more to cook with sun power. It's such a different energy and it gives me so much joy and then at 1 o'clock all the people are coming and you know like wow all this food is cooked by the sun. Imagine how much energy it has if it's sun cooked. This is amazing. And on a side note I really like the food to eat it. So that's yeah. So this community has been existing for 40 years already. So some of the members have been here for a long time. I sat down with Bori, we joined the second generation of the community in 1999. We ate some fresh strawberries and had a chat about the long-term experience in Tamera. Tamera is what we call a healing biotope, an emerging healing biotope. So to make very clear at the very beginning that it is not a finished project that you just can visit and see. But the vision of it is to create a concrete place on this planet where the questions that humanity carries at the moment and that need a solution are at least researched and wherever we can also answer it. Okay. So on the one hand you have the very practical stuff like how do you get your energy, your food, your water. But you also have here the more inner part right about love and sexuality. What does it have to do with creating this new world or what does that come from? I mean there is no vision of a peaceful world when there is no vision and no practice of people living peacefully together. And people living peacefully together means they need to build trust. And I think it is also an important piece for the model that we say. If we want to set up a model for a society, for a new society then this society needs to be based on trust. There is no other choice. So we need to work on inner issues. And do you yourself have a preference? Like did you like it more when the community was for instance smaller and more building up or do you like now when it's a bit more mature? Both is very interesting. And I think we are at the moment, I mean we always are at ASTAMERA in re-correcting. And in the former times we have been much more as a research community. So now we are much more than in the former times on the level of inviting guests, on having things running, on having gardens running, on all of this maintaining this huge ship. And I would of course love if research would have again a bigger place. A lot of people that are watching this video, they are interested in living in communities I would say or alternative ways of living, they are probably still quite young. Do you have any like tips or advices or suggestions or something? It is very important to stay with your true impulse to become a person of integrity. I think this is a very, very important point for the times we are living in. That when we think this is not okay how humanity lives with animals to find your statement to it. But then, as an excerpt, don't try to change it all by your own. Because there you also get burnout, loss, despair. You take something on yourself which doesn't belong on two shoulders only. It belongs to a movement, to a circle. And I think this is important that we start to recognize each other. This person is also working towards the same aim and that we join forces and support each other. Take a stand and then don't stay alone. And I want to encourage to come back to a very simple integrity where you don't adapt to a lifestyle because you think you need to adapt because then only then you will be accepted by others. There are people that love people when they are like they are. So to find this true level and there to take a stand. I think these are the most important qualities for in these times. So what do we learn from Tamera? I would say they're constantly developing, always figuring out new things whether it's their infrastructure or things they need as a social structure inside the community. But everyone there has very much of a research mindset. And I would say it's one of the most inspiring places I've seen in a while, like for real. Because everything sort of works there together in a harmony even though they're still developing because usually that's kind of messy. But the downside I would say there, I'm not really sure if it's a downside but I think it could be better, is how they share their knowledge. So everyone there knows so much about specific topics and they all walk around there. So if you're there you get a lot of input. But it's very difficult for other people around the world to do something with that knowledge because they don't really share it that much on the internet or in books. Like it's very difficult to get that knowledge. And I think it would be very powerful if they would be better at that. And I think they're quite aware themselves as well but they're just not that comfortable with the internet. So maybe it's the new generation that would take over this task. But either way, a very impressive place. I hope I would see more of these ones. It gives me hope to be able to live in an alternative way. So that's very cool. For now that was this video. Thanks for watching. See you again in the next Project Calm video. Cool. That was Dave Hackens' one take.