Sustainability THE ‘GREEN VILLAGE’ PROJECT IS ALL ABOUT SHOWING HOW COUNTRYSIDE PEOPLE FROM ANY ONE OF NINE PARTICIPATING EUROPEAN COUNTRIES, CAN SHOW US ALL EXAMPLES OF REAL SUSTAINABILITY Words Martin CLARK Photography Martin CLARK INGENUITY, TEAM SPIRIT AND FRUGAL USE OF LIMITED RESOURCES FOR A FENCE WITH A LOW CARBON FOOTPRINT – IT’S WHAT THE ‘GREEN VILLAGE’ IS ALL ABOUT ROMANIAN FENCING WITHOUT WIRE Sustainability 6 I GREEN VILLAGE
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Sustainability
The ‘Green VillaGe’ projecT is all abouT showinG how counTryside people from any one of nine parTicipaTinG european counTries, can show us all examples of real susTainabiliTy
Words Martin Clark
Photography Martin Clark
IngenuIty, team spIrIt and frugal use of lImIted resources for a fence wIth a low carbon footprInt – It’s what the ‘green VIllage’ Is all about
romanian fencinG wiThouT wire
Sustainability
6 I green VIllage
The project has seven strands and it was under ‘Sustainable Ancestors’ that villagers from Girboviţa in Transylvania’s Alba County showed visitors from Iceland, Slovakia and the United Kingdom how to construct a wild pig-proof fence to keep the marauding forest animals off their precious potato crop, using nothing but wood from the local forest.
Sustainability
Monica Oprean from the Romanian host organization ‘Satul Verde Association’ was delighted with the result: ’in Romania, countryside people are not very economically wealthy but they know how to make good use of what they’ve got. They are inventive and resourceful but also remember how their ancestors managed the land so successfully for generations – before the Communist era, through it and since its collapse’.
The first job was ‘pollarding’ some willow, black locust and poplar trees to get the posts, then cutting great bundles of young growth for weaving between the posts – like constructing an enormous basket. Led by Florian, the village cow-herder
and Emil the farmer, with mama Silvia,
the matriarch of the family, giving sound
advice, the team built a fence almost
200 metres long over a five-day period.
Since Romania joined the European Union in 2007, several million people have left the country as economic migrants; this means that many villages are seriously short of labour as well as money. Only by carrying out frugal measures, such as building fences without wire, can they cling on to a farming tradition pre-dating the Roman Empire.
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the fence wIthout wIre used materIal gathered from adjacent trees and forest.
Pippa Murray from the United Kingdom was a participant, she has the final say on the fence:‘The finished product was beautiful, cheap and so strong, using all my weight it didn’t rock at all. This year’s potato harvest is going to be a good one!’
VIllagers from gIrboVIŢa and partIcIpants from the uK, sloVaKIa and Iceland wIth theIr ‘green VIllage’ certIfIcates – the VIllagers just showed us all how to buIld a fence wIthout wIre.
On the outskirts of Alba Iulia, 20 kilometres from the village, another group of students are on a
‘Learning by Doing - Leonardo da Vinci’ placement.
With Mihai Gligor and Calin Suteu, archaeologists
from the University, they are excavating a Neolithic
site (5,000 year old). As well as finding flints, shell
jewelery and grindstones, they made a remarkable
discovery; buildings were made of wattle and daub
(a woven frame plastered with mud) and some had
been burnt.The process fired the clay and the imprint
of the branches is frozen in time. The branches used
are of a uniform size, suggesting that these ancient
farmers in what is Romania today, were managing
trees for a standard product. The discovery also links
the Neolithic to the 21st century - the technology
of weaving small roundwood pieces (‘withies’) into
fences and walls is an appropriate technology that
has stood the test of time; it would be a tragedy if
it died with this current generation and such a low
carbon solution to local construction was lost.
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catlIn, a uK archaeology graduate wIth a fragment of semI-fIred clay whIch bears a 5,000 year-old ImprInt of woVen branches (‘wattle’).