Within the last four months, this agroforestry system
has been growing faster than anything around it. I mean, just look at these crazy big banana palms. I can literally not get them into frame. So, why? Well, it has something to do with this box, but
before we look inside of it, where even are we? This is Camping Guáimaro, named after the big Guáimaro
tree standing right over there next to the cliff. It is a beautiful campsite right next to Barichara,
Run by the lovely couple of Julia and Joep. Now this far out, there's of
course no access to public sewage. Nonetheless, they decided to build flush toilets
entirely flushed with rain and recycled wastewater. And to process the black and grey waters, instead
of a septic tank, they built an incredible biofilter with layers of plants, sand, and gravel. It cleans so well, in fact, that
when Joep's father came to visit we took a test out of the test pit with this water
after filtration and we, um, put another glass of water next to it so my father could have a look. But he started drinking it straight
away, which was not the idea. But he said it was pretty good, and he
said he felt pretty good as well, so It is really, really clean. But about one and a half years ago, Joep and Julia
decided the capacity wasn't going to be enough if they wanted to have more guests at the campsite. So, they built this box, which is a vermicomposting system. it's basically a system to clean black water,
wastewater from the toilets, and with worms. So the worms basically, decompose
everything which is in that wastewater. we have the pipe running from the two bathrooms, all
the way down to the, to the vermicomposting system. the pipe is still partly visible. it goes in the top of the house, just underneath the roof. And from there, it connects to the IBC tanks. But one tank at a time, so we have chosen to have
like a flexible four inch tube at the end inside the house, so we can move actually between the two tanks. so we have always access in case of
cleaning or whatever for one of the two. Before we have a closer look at the
leach field and the crazy results the fertilizer this system produces can achieve, Are you ready to have a look inside? so you have the worms inside there, but they're of
course not just worms stacked on worms on worms, right? What else is in there in those tanks? Basically, mostly organic material, which is high in carbon. We went to the carpenters outside of
Barichara to get a lot of wood shavings. And we also were chopping up just loads of
dry stuff we could find here on the property twigs may be maximum one centimeter thick
And leaves and grass as long as it's as dry. that's the most important thing. Alright, no more poop from now on. Let's switch to a graphic. So we have the water poop mixture being added on top,
which forms a layer in which the worms live and eat. The particles are in theory big enough that
they can't immediately pass through the big layer of organic material right below. But obviously, the water can pass through,
washing the finer worm castings with it, so that the worms are never drowning in liquids either. And that fertilizer water can then pass out at
the bottom to be channeled into a leach field. How much maintenance work is maintaining a vermi
composting system with living organisms inside of it? Well, in the first few weeks, Julia was always
checking daily, um, to see how things were going. And topping up sometimes with some materials
and checking and stirring into the top layer to see if the worms were happy and stuff like that. And then the heat was too much. one of the most important thing is to have a space
for the worms, where they are In darkness and where they, live between, 20 and 25 degrees Celsius. the challenge was mostly to get the temperature down. because it can be pretty hot out here, during the day. So that's why we started to create some more insulation. apart from that first few weeks... Now we do only once a week we just move the the
hose inside the house from one tank to another So it can be sort of more spread out over both tanks. That's what we do and I think about Every nine
months or something like that we will have to top up on this carbon rich, every nine months? organic layer yeah, it's, it's pretty easy. Incredibly easy maintenance and basically
no smell unless you're directly downwind. And all of that isn't even the best part yet. Are you ready for some worm poop water magic? These worm droppings or worm castings are being
flushed with the water all the way down and go through this pipe further down into a leach field. This leach field is basically like a big trench filled
with the same type of carbon rich organic material. And there, it will basically feed the
plants which are planted in that area. The feeding of those plants is
like, the main purpose, basically. And it is, growing like crazy. the difference is like day and night, I would say. The, upper layers where we have just
the conventional, syntropic agroforestry systems, these lines, it's doing really well. It looks really nice, we've been mulching and everything, so it
looks nice, but if you look at the infiltration area, it's three times as big and lush. And what kind of things have you planted if you're in the productive species,
should be predominantly trees, fruit trees. so we've planted, for example, cacao, breadfruit, papaya,
bananas, plantains, some chickpeas, tree spinach, But apart from that, there are also some other species in there,
which may be considered as support species, maybe to give shade, but I don't think they seem to be too essential
there in that system because everything is just exploding. So we could make like a closed loop. We could just eat the food or we can maybe give
it to the guests and they will go to the toilet. So we have like a closed circle. the lady who prototyped this, uh, Wendy Howard, she
says like, we're not probably going to convince many people to use the typical dry composting toilets, which
may be even better because they don't use any water. but, you can just have the the comfort of
conventional toilets, and people will be more likely maybe to adopt these type of systems. So here we have a system built almost entirely
of recycled materials that doesn't smell and can treat the poop of up to 14 people. And all that just built with persistence,
good planning, and volunteer labor. Closing our nutrient cycles is one of the
most important things that we have to do in order to make local food production possible. And this is one of the coolest solutions I've seen. Well done Joep and Julia and all the volunteers
that worked their ass off in the hot Colombian sun. Let's regenerate the earth.
