Glad to hear from you. We have been trying for a long time to make this village happen – which would be a mix of being inexpensive, a learning center where travellers can find “a slow lifestyle”, suitable for families with kids and also independent singles who want to learn by creating.
The needs which have to be met have been “quite simple”, such as the following:

1) Finding people who are willing to do voluntary work, given that certain prerequisites are catered for by the community. [This might sound outlandish to some people, be we do not see a problem here.]
2) Finding a community, a municipality, which is interested in handcraft, slow- and other cultural activities etc.. [No problem with that either.]
3) Finding a community, a municipality where the “real” deciders, including the administration, are interested in getting something done “by the people, for the people, with the people”, which has meant that they need to work, read and study – and a quite a lot – before there will be new opportunities concerning work etc.
As you already might have guessed, here lies the real problem. But we have not given up yet…

There has been cases during the course of starting this project, that private persons has offered us some forest where to build – forests to take care of, and this has been great.
But up until now, we have gotten the impression that municipalities which have thousands of hectares of forest that should be taken care of and trimmed, are not interested in volunteers!
Our demands for some infrastructure from the municipality have been quite modest: a road, Internet and a connection to the electric grid.
To sum things up, we are still looking and keeping or eyes open for a suitable community which could be cooperative.

For the next 6 – 12 months, we will be engaged and quite busy with another ‘volunteer-project’ which has to do with a quite different field; We will be working together with foreigners who have moved to Finland.
The project is about creating a cross-lingual studying and learning method. The field is about learning Finnish, and language learning in general.

On the other hand, the idea of a village community can be realized anytime, because it is not that important even if the project gets a new go in the year 2011, or even 2013.

If and when anything substantial happens, we will inform of this.

- Henry

P.S.
As our activities are in a standstill at the moment and for an undisclosed period of time, but we will resume once some of the prerequisites to start activities come along – We will be answering e-mails to any inquiries about the topic to the best of our abilities.
We do not know of any communities who receive volunteers, although there are some commercial entities which also specialise in strawbale buildings.
If you have a look at our bookmarks (located on the left margin of our blog) you might find some useful links concerning clay building and plastering – regrettably some of the links lead to pages which are only in Finnish.

Pari lisäajatusta:
-Olkipaaleista…Olisikohan paaliseinän kattaminen sisäpuolelta pinkopahvilla edullista? Silloin tietysti menetetään rappauksen estetiikka ja paloturvallisuus.

-Entä holvattu olkipaalirakenne? Voisiko paaleista tehdä kantavan kupolin? Kattaa sen viherkatolla tai ruo’olla? Eräänlainen nykyajan ruohomaja…

-Ikkunat…Niitä voisi rakennella paloista lyijylasitekniikalla, kurssina…

Seppo

Ruokojen käytöstä löytyy netistä (englanninkielinen) kirja:
http://www.ymparisto.fi/default.asp?contentid=247909&lan=FI
Kirjan voi ladat itselleen ilmaiseksi tältä sivulta.
Täältä löytyy lisää tietoa:
http://www.ruoko.fi/

Myös Saviyhdistykseltä löytyy lisätietoja:
http://www.saviry.fi/

Meidän leveysasteilla ruokoja on tietääkseni eniten käytetty kattoaineena sekä myös eristeenä. Kirjassa kerrotaan myös ruu’on kaupallisesta käytöstä täällä meillä Suomessa.
Kantavina rakenteina tuskin mikään instanssi hyväksyy sitä, koska Suomessa on otettava huomioon lumikuormat. Rappauspintojen ‘sidosaineena’ olen nähnyt enemmänkin käytettävän punottua pajua ja sellainen mutu-tuntuma on, että paju olisi tässä kohden kestävämpää, varsinkin jos joku seinä epäonnistuu ja joudutaan osin purkamaan pois savirappausta.

Olki on paloturvallisuudeltaan luultua turvallisempaa – ja varsinkin jos se on rapattu.

Henry

Henry & Tero

As it happens, the sauna culture has a long history.

The ProVillage -team