“Not a collective farm, not a sect, not a seasonal get-together” is the principle of one of the oldest eco-villages in Russia, Nevo-Ekovil. What, in this case, unites 11 families who settled on forty hectares near Sortavala, the correspondents of Russian Planet found out.

Story from Ivan

The only pointer to Nevo Ecoville is a handwritten sign "Seedlings for your home" in the Ladoga village of Reuskula. All the curious who have reached this place will definitely be directed to the founding father of the settlement, Ivan Goncharov. And he will say:

- No ecovillages. This, my dears, is all bullshit in vegetable oil.

We expected to see a guru, but Ivan looks more like a merchant. Stately, with a beard. He invites to a table in the yard of his house. Under the arms, pot-bellied, like a master, teapots and a sugar bowl, painted in Khokhloma. Mug after mug Ivan drinks tea, snacking on thick circles of hard-sugared lemon.

- Oh ... Well, then tell us what it is.

- You need to make a preface. It will give an explanation of how the Russian "Ecoville" differs from the European one. And ecoville (eco-village. - “RP”) is it at all ... However, I will return to this topic, but in the later chapters of this novel. What is the novel about. The life of a small society has its own laws and stages of development. Whether you like it or not, you will go through these stages. We have a lot of experience here. Not because we are so cool, but it just so happened that we rushed into it earlier. Four years ago, I collected this experience and systematized it ...

Ivan Goncharov is a very solid person. It tells the story of the settlement from Adam and Eve. Or he builds a story from the foundation, because he is an architect by profession.

- In every culture there is an archetype of paradise - a righteous land, a righteous being. And if in Orthodoxy the construction of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth is impossible by definition, then in the communist tradition it is possible. And we, Lord, were all October pioneers. This is the first, basic such idea. And then ... If you ask the Russian intelligentsia how they would like to live, you will hear: their own house, and that by the lake, by the river, a bathhouse is a must, a garden, that means with a garden - without fanaticism, moreover, an apiary. Perhaps goats or birds are also without fanaticism. And how do we, that is, this intelligentsia, see ourselves? In linen shirts, barefoot, on the grass, at sunrise... Heal, teach... Ninety percent of the sets will be from this figurative palette. Then they go in layers, as in "Napoleon", different traditions. For us, this is the Eastern wave with a small admixture of the Western wave as theosophy and anthroposophy, Western occultism. We read all this, and even in the eighties, when it was just beginning: amateur yogis, all sorts of revelations of the constellation Orion - such crap was going on. And we didn’t just read, we all practiced: astral trips, contacts with extraterrestrial civilizations, everything is in full, - Ivan glances to see if the youth understand the seriousness of their previous experiences and his current irony. - I wanted to stay away from this sinful world, it is illusory, it is disgusting and defiles the soul. We dreamed of building a new world, in a clean place, away from it... And so we, the architects, got together and said: "We are sitting in the kitchen, talking, talking... Damn, why don't we build this world?". Plus, the everyday situation crushed me ... I had two small children, and I lived in the family of my wife.

- That is, with the mother-in-law ...

- Yes! Ivan laughs. - In 1986, our group filmed from St. Petersburg, several families.

- And how did the relatives react to this?

- In different ways: who has micro-infarcts, who has micro-strokes. Everyone chose for himself and his own form of lectures for our departure. And what was it like to leave St. Petersburg in 1986? When the registration was tough, like a watchdog's chain. Virtually no return. Everything was cut off to be fair. They didn’t rent out apartments, they didn’t live on it, as it’s fashionable today. We decided not to jump, sorry for the expression, with a pillow under your ass, when this pillow can prevent you from jumping. We decided to jump light as high as possible. And they jumped from a run ...

Ivan pauses and insinuatingly finishes:

- They didn't arrive.

Having got rid of the Leningrad registration, the architects found a dead place. The nearest village is ten kilometers away. No electricity, no roads. Ivan got a job as a labor teacher. Over time, they planned to create their own art school. But the main thing was to equip the community, or, as they called it, the ashram. They designed a common house: cruciform, in the center an observatory with a dome. In the meantime, I had to live in a house from a state farm - decommissioned, still Finnish. Three pairs of adults with five children from two to seven years old withstood a fierce winter in it with frosts up to 42 degrees.

- Master, good afternoon! - one of the neighbors looks into the yard.

- Oh, Igor. You see, I'm sitting on a perch, telling a heroic epic. Kantele also lacks a suit. It's time to get some decent chlamys. Are you teasing a seagull?

- Nope. Where is your mistress?

- The mistress in the garden, all in labor. I'm afraid to even touch her, she'll get hit on the head with a chopper. I even sat down so that I could not be seen.

Between Goncharov and the garden, smoke from the fire really spreads.

- I won't tell, - Ivan, smacking his lips, eating a sugared lemon, - about all the heroism shown by the participants of the first project. He is worthy, - the host sips tea, - a separate story. The image and reality are always scattered to some extent, depending on the clarity of the image and the power of the implementers. Both of these were not enough. Yes, even now it is not enough everywhere, to say the least, in all honesty on the most secret places ... We withstood a year. They thought they were cool, and overstrained themselves. Yes, our friends helped us. There was no Internet, so it was a little more difficult to be compassionate. Compassion then was usually face-to-face, and not online. But we've taken on too much. For example, they felled the forest, skidding it. From midnight to four in the morning, the state farm provided us with a sawmill. We sawed, rolled the logs, and the girls cut the boards on the machines. They returned home, got up until eight, and then went to work. Well, how long can you stand it? Plus living in a small house, a shared kitchen, the socialization of resources - all in one pot. Tension within the team began to build. And she was torn apart. We parted as friends, until now the relationship is like between relatives, but we could no longer be together, we could not agree on the simplest things.

- Separated by families, or within families too ...

“Families have also flocked. In all these social experiments, the ultimate burden fell on families. The family received all the returns from the failed experiment inside themselves. This is the first currency you pay with. A woman, as a rule, follows her husband and sees support in him. If she loses this support, a complete breakdown begins. And men periodically weaken, especially during periods of this molting. I myself am arranged in such a way that my family has always rested on the implicitness of male decision-making. And responsibility, of course. That is, the structure of my family is quite patriarchal ...

We got carried away, and do not notice how a woman appears behind our back, who makes some signs. But Ivan noticed. His intonation changes to sugary:

“Natasha, honey, do you want a cup of tea? .. These are guests, neighbors on the planet… Sunny, I am sharing my experience… It would be better if you shared it there, you understand,” he says, as if on the phone, in complete silence. - I certainly do. I'm just recovering - and I'll run to make a kakalnik right away. No, no, Natashenka, I really will run to work, what are you. I still can, I'm useful.

We are curious:

Is this your second wife?

- Certainly. My wife looks so good: could she really give birth to five children and survive like that? Here ... you need to understand that all these experiments can be very expensive. Ready to pay such a price - you are welcome. Not ready - guys, it's better to go to the auditorium.

(We did visit the auditorium - the boy Martin gave us a concert)

Get comfortable, because the story is just beginning.

- So here it is. Just at that moment, friends said that it was possible to work on Valaam: there were not enough hands there, they provided housing. Came to Valaam killed. Well, the world you built collapsed. What do you have left inside? Nothing. The funnel is like this: m-m-m-m! - Ivan smacks juicy, - deep, black. This is one of the mistakes of life magic. In no case should one become attached to the model of a bright future that he created. The more vulnerable you are when it collapses, and it will collapse and change for sure. And she changes, and you change. Ten years ago you are one, twenty years ago you are different. Either we were hard yogis, then we were Taoists, then, you know, Orthodox, then we became pagans, then else, excuse the expression ... hmm ... who. So there were people on Valaam in those days, 1987. It wasn't even a monastery. The guys were not friends with the head all. Our people, astronauts! And since in my life no one took out a soldering iron from one place, as soon as the voltage was given again, I began to fidget. I think: “Shouldn’t we build an island of the sun, shouldn’t we make a community within the island, our own borders, a whole country?” Two years of digging, it did not work out.

The new idea was not to escape from civilization, but to use existing social institutions. Thanks to Gorbachev's law on the election of leadership, Ivan and his comrades wanted to take on Valaam the posts of chairman of the village council, directors of the forestry and restoration workshops. The elections were lost.

- And what new idea did the soldering iron spark?

- The third idea - well, they don’t let us land anywhere as a community, and okay. When we built the house, we actually perceived it as a community. Let's build a house - that's the community. But we already had a community, in this small house, where the floor was at ground level, where the toilet was outside, where in winter those stalactites of manure rose ... We had to preserve this community, this snail, not the shell. The house is a shell, an external form. It seems to us that we are cool guys, we will be able to live with each other in love and harmony, we just need to build a house in the right place and at the right time. So there is a trap from which it is very difficult to get out. Even harder than at the start. A localized paradise should not be the goal. Then the next question arises: why place at all? Let's make it a nomadic community like the hippies used to be. We have already registered a restoration cooperative. We take a skete for restoration, we move into it, we restore it for eight years - and the next skete. We had a forge, a ceramic workshop, landscapers, I had a design team. But then the monastery came and began to turn off all secular projects. We began to resist, but writing against the wind is more expensive for ourselves. They gave us a kick, and we jumped to the mainland. Then we tried to go over the old schemes: a community house, back and forth. These options were quickly worked out as non-working. In 1994 we started to take the first land here, near the village of Reuskula.

Live broth

What happened here, we'll see and ask others. And Ivan had to ask a few questions.

– Many citizens react negatively to the idea of ​​ecovillages. We had an assumption that in addition to the reasons mentioned above, there is also a fear of spending all the time with your family. Is it hard compared to the city lifestyle?

- You are on the right track, but you only found one puzzle in the picture, and then - just like that, on the periphery. First, for an urban person, the natural environment is stressful. He doesn't know how to live in it. Here something is rustling, something is growing, something is croaking, moving underfoot, rubbing like a chopper... and you yourself must become a part of this giant living broth. Secondly, the social aspect. In the city we have a lot of disguises that give us the opportunity to adapt to different environments. Often people behave not in the way they behave in themselves, but in the way it is customary to behave. And where among these masks actually you are unknown. It's like the consciousness of a modern person, which, unfortunately, is comic. The urban lifestyle is the life of a comic book hero. There, if you are not successful in one environment, you can leave it, change the environment. And here you will not leave your neighbors in the subway. Thirdly, not only you personally, but also your family is the hero of the comic. Take it away, stay alone with your family, and the internal structures on which your family is built will begin to crack. With the change in lifestyle, you will be paying as a family. Next, the question of professional implementation. Now the trend is the professional self-realization of a woman. We say: guys, so the family is the realization for a woman! Where even higher than being realized as a mother? This is actually an apprentice of God! There is such, I believe, a satanic scheme for defiling these information codes. As if a virus program changes a righteous program.

- That is, on earth, people naturally return to the patriarchal way of life. But you talk about family all the time. The units you operate on are families. Can a single person move to an ecovillage?

- A lonely person has nothing to do on earth at all. As soon as you return to earth, to the living, the family program is activated, or something. Homo Sapiens is both male and female. Humanity as a species manifests itself only in the family. When this scrap of humanity arrives at the ecovillage, it starts looking for the other half. With women it's even more difficult. If a man is a seeker by nature, then a lonely woman with such ideas is a complete astronautics, it is better to get away from her.

- So often any eco-settlers are treated as "cosmonauts", sectarians, from whom it is better to stay away. In Russia, the most famous eco-settlements are among the Vissarionites, who live with their prophet on Lake Tiberkul, and the Anastasievites, who believe in a taiga hermit and a ringing cedar.

- We, unfortunately, do not have the right image of the village. Just as there is no image of the future of Russia. I used to talk about the cons, that you can’t get attached to the images, but there are also pluses. They provide very powerful motivation. There is no image, but it is in demand, and now such surrogate images appear, like Megre (the founder of the cult of Anastasia. - “RP”). This is an electric light bulb that insects fly to. Sad and sad.

– So, does your settlement have any common ideology?

– We have taken the ideology beyond the perimeter of the settlement project. Each family has its own. Seryozhka, for example, is an Old Believer, but at the same time he has been practicing yoga for twenty years. Nothing, this is the Russian version, it passes. It’s not clear what I am, also an ordinary Russian vinaigrette. Lenka and Andryukha we had hard yoga, practiced qigong. Now Lenka is terribly Orthodox. We have communists - Vovka Berezin, who grows seedlings. He is an atheist, but when a service is going on in our chapel, he is the first to stand, with a candle. We have Dimka the blacksmith - he was generally a hard Orthodox, from the Cossacks. But recently I began to study Slavic traditions, embroidery, costumes, and got stuck there. I feel that his Orthodoxy is creeping, another year or two and it will slip.

(Orthodox chapel in ecovillage)

- Is it possible for people with such different views to coexist without conflicts?

- If I come to Seryozhka, Seryozhka comes to me, Dimka comes, we want to interact with each other - thank the Lord. And who is he - a Buddhist, a nudist, a communist, I don't give a damn. The main thing is that the person is good. We had a family of the same Anastasievites, they couldn’t do that. They immediately start preaching. If you think that you are the most correct, then build your own world, show that it is really brighter and more beautiful than mine. If so, I'll take a look and probably be your follower. We with these Anastasievites, as with children, said: “Did the squirrel come? Didn't you bring a nut? And the bear did not bring honey ... Did you have a cedar seed in your mouth? Didn't rise? Listen, I slobbered badly ... ". We have had many such cosmonauts, we know that today he is radical as a teenager, and tomorrow he is a normal, adapted person. Or even a cynical layman.

- What else, besides imposing one's views, is unacceptable in Ecoville?

- Idleness. If you have a large income, and you live here with your legs dangling. Then you are in the auditorium, you are not our man. Sit, for God's sake, but you'll never be yours. They will never come to you, and you will not come to anyone, because you are not welcome. When you come here as a guest, you will be warmed and fed. But as soon as you come here the same as everyone else, the situation changes. When such people are caught by the seeming comfort of the environment, and when they come here they don’t get it, they lose interest, sell these plots and leave.

Ivan's closest neighbor is Sergey. He breeds birds and rabbits, and a homemade quail egg sign leads to his house. Sergei also brings teapots into the yard. Previously, there was a village dump here, now there is a pond, a shop, lilies.

– How did you get here?

- From Valaam. They wanted to save the world, they were young.

- And what is your goal now, if not to save the world?

- Ivan tells it beautifully ... If you speak loudly, live your life in order to be holy. Yes, and the potatoes are good here, - Sergey smiles. Everyone wants to live in a good society and with good people. So that I have a good neighbor on the left, right, front and back. This is how builders from Ukraine came to me, they say: “Your geese walk freely, the bicycle is standing, the scythe is hanging. And we can't leave anything at all. Just turned away - a bucket was pulled out from under the backside. We don't like that. You come to Finland, everyone lives like that there. Degradation…

- Does the proximity of the village bother you?

- They used to steal. But still, many live here permanently, here is a bearish corner.

- Do you have any entertainment in the bear corner?

- For example, a bathhouse, our political club. General holidays. It really matters that they exist. You just won't get it right. To go to the other end of the village is incredible. You need to tear off an hour, two, and all the time in the park. We need to urgently dry the hay today, there is no rain. He quickly went to mow, dry, ted. You run, you have to weed. Then you need to go to the city. And so constantly. It's cool, of course, to sit with a good guy, but he also has no time.

On the other side of the Goncharovs' house, already without any sign, there is a stylish building with windows from the floor.

This is Ecoville Hall, where local holidays are held: Christmas, Maslenitsa, Easter, Victory Day, Ivan Kupala, Oseniny. There is no one inside now, but the door is open.

You can also enter the neighboring house. There is equipment for harvesting leaf and granulated Ivan-tea.

You yourself are a gardener!

The nearest house to the club is just under construction. We spoke to the owner:

Are you also from an ecovillage?

- Yes, people here still cannot decide whether this is a village or an eco-village. We think that we just live in the countryside. We have 2 hectares of land to be cultivated. To do this, you need to line up and move. So far there is only a garden. The husband is engaged in carpentry, makes log cabins. I am a coach in the city.

– But do you keep in touch with those who consider themselves part of the ecovillage?

– We are all in contact here, we are still a community. But I believe that an ecovillage is when people live on the earth, work and eat from it. And then half of them generally live like summer residents. And Vanya Goncharov does not winter here. What is this, this "Nevo Ecoville" of his? In fact, another name for the same village club.

Nikolai and Olga go out onto the porch of the neighboring house:

Everywhere there must be a leader. What is the difference between a commissar and a political officer? The commissar says “do as I do”, and the political officer says “do as I said”. We have a political officer, but no commissar. We have recently lived here, but this is one of the first impressions.

– Do you consider yourself an ecovillage?

- Probably, the ecovillage is those who immediately came with Goncharov. Yes, we know these people, we are in contact with them, we participate in common events. Although the old-timers vectors went in different directions. An ecovillage should be distinguished by an organization, a written idea, for the sake of which people came to this settlement. And here is a group of like-minded people, but like-minded people only in the fact that they chose this place.

Alexey and Oksana's house hid in the woods near Lake Varanen.

I can't say much about the settlement. Ivan now has some tasks of his own, something at the federal level. I believe that you can change the world only within your family. Therefore, I can only speak about our family. We are familiar with a Finnish woman who lived on this lake. She was six years old when they were asked from here. Una, that's her name, talked about life here. Here, in fact, lived a clan, a large family. The child did not grow up alone with his mother. And we live as pioneers, as discoverers of this way of life. Not exactly harmonious, to be honest. Therefore, we chose this model for ourselves: we live here most of the year, from spring to winter. Not quite like gardeners. Workshops, Leshkin's carpentry and my ceramics, we have both here and in Sortavala. There is also a house, with outbuildings.

Oksana is glad that they live on the outskirts, and doubts the need for ecotourism. She points to a path leading up the mountain, which should lead us to the traces of the last seminar of Karelian nature lovers. We arrived at the "place of power" and started a fire. Extinguished the entire ecovillage.

old-timers

There are always a lot of people visiting the old-timers of the settlement, Andrey and Elena Obruchey. Egor from St. Petersburg is not here for the first time.

- Don't you think about moving closer to nature?

- My wife is not so ... earthy. Likes apartments. To shower every day, all that. So she is not particularly eager to move.

Yegor has two sons. The youngest eats strawberries from the garden for the first time and swims in the lake. We are also offered to swim, and on the way to pick currants. They immediately tell about the quirks of guests from the city, who refused to eat both garden and wild berries unwashed. The children ran ahead, and we go with the owners. Elena used to do yoga, now she has a bracelet with icons on her arm. Entering the water, she is baptized. There is no sandy beach here - the coast is rocky. Jumping from boulders has home-grown names: "Bomb", "Drunkard", "Pike", "Cog", "Fish", "Gingerbread Man".

- Dad makes a "Bomb", and that's it. We have to work, clean the guest house, collect herbs.

But on the way to the house, you still can’t bypass the playground:

The Hoop family ceases to have many children. There were five of our own and three adopted, but the elders are already studying at institutes, the son is leaving for the army - Polyana and Peresvet remain (by the way, the neighbor's children are called Martha, Martin and Ragnar). The younger ones are taken to the city school, although once the parents were staunch supporters of home schooling and other ideas. For ideological reasons, Obruchi about 20 years ago even had to leave another eco-village - "Kitezh":

- We were so frantic then - both about vaccinations, and vegetarians ... Now I think that it was more about us than about them, - says Elena. - There is still an organization, children are adopted. It was necessary to obey more than to swing your rights.

Polyana is late for dinner today - she is with the guys in the city, buying food for a canoe trip along Ladoga. Running into the kitchen, the first thing he climbs into the refrigerator for sausage. Mom doesn't allow it. The girl plays on borscht, thickly pouring mayonnaise on it. Between the stove and the curtained passage to the next room, a monitor with Elenina's VKontakte page is on. We were given beds upstairs. Andrey is lying on the mattress by the stairs with a laptop on his chest, in the room the boys are watching a movie on the computer, someone's tablet is right there. We can't fall asleep for a long time on the makeshift wooden beds. By midnight, the house is quiet, and only from under the blanket of Peresvet the phone flickers for a long time.

prospects

The settlement has existed for 20 years, but grown children have not yet returned here. In this regard, "Ecoville" is no different from the surrounding villages. Some parents say that it is difficult to find a job, others - that a soul mate who agrees to move to the village. And Ivan Goncharov, speaking of children, even forgets about the patriarchal way of life:

– We are building a world for ourselves, this world is different for children. We came from there, from the outside world, and they have to go there from here.

Nevertheless, the ecovillage continues to grow with urban romantics.

- Go to Zhenya and Lisa. They are from St. Petersburg, absolutely urban people, programmer and designer. They thought it was like that, pampering. Now they are here all year round. They live alone on a farm.

How far to go to them?

- Far ... five minutes to go.

The hosts will be surprised by our visit. Rarely does anyone look at them, even Ivan Goncharov has never been. And in vain. A beautiful two-story house is built on a rock, it is surrounded by a terrace, more like a deck: tanned children climb beams and a rope without fear of heights, and a green sea of ​​​​meadows spreads below. Of course, we are noticed from afar. The girl runs away to put on a swimsuit dress. Upon meeting, it turns out that Lisa already has four children. All were born at home, and the youngest is right here, even without a midwife. Home births are practiced in Ecoville, although some of the settlers oppose them.

- Why did you move here?

“We have been coming here for a long time, almost ten years,” Zhenya begins. – We found out through the Hoops that this is an ecovillage. We arrived for the first time, swam in kayaks, lived in a tent. We really liked this place. When the second child was born, we felt cramped in a two-room apartment. When we had a third, we took it seriously, sold the apartment.

- I was then in the eighth month, then for another two and a half years I was torturing in rented apartments.

- And I ordered a log house, a roof, came here and began to finish everything. I still do. For a year I sat on all sorts of online construction forums, studied how it was all done. When we got to finishing, I realized that it was impossible to entrust it to the builders. Now this is my main occupation, there is no time to deal with agriculture. And I earn money by making graphics for toys. Of course, this is not a city, but we consciously exchanged earnings for a good life. I think it's a good exchange.

– Was there any philosophical background for such an exchange?

- This is Ivan, Andrey - they have ideas, articles on this topic. But in a collision with ordinary life, all this is leveled, and it turns out ... ordinary life. We just live, we just feel good.

But Ivan Goncharov is not the kind of person who will calm down on “we just feel good”:

- For ten years we were in quiet stagnation, the village basically sat in its little worlds. And then something hit. We got together with the men. As expected, poured into a glass. I say: “We will keep the council. Everyone is sitting in their own hole now, we do not have a model of our future. Let's be honest. Either we get the banners of our dreams out of the mothball chests, or we honestly hand them over to the scrap.

There was no free land to which new settlers could come. But the local state farm has recently gone bankrupt, and now the surrounding fields will go under construction. Until they built a dacha hell with two-meter fences, Goncharov is trying to negotiate with the authorities. The promised land in his new grandiose plan is called the “Model Territory of Sustainable Innovation Development”, and even the neighboring island is called “ecotechnopark” and “media generator”. It remains to find ideological followers.

Roman and Daria Nureyev,

Our settlement is located in the South of Karelia. 100 km from Petrozavodsk and 6 km from Lake Onega. On the territory of the settlement there are the remains of 3 villages, after the name of one of which the settlement is called "Zalesye" (for some reason, the emphasis is on the first syllable). In the villages, no one winters, and in the summer summer residents come. Therefore, there are roads, electricity and even a telephone line.

Before the settlement from the highway, you need to drive 8 km along a dirt road, of which 2 km are not cleaned by local authorities in winter.

The nearest school and shop (more precisely 4 grocery stores, 2 hardware stores and one canteen) are located 8 km if you go by car. A walk in a straight line for about 4 km.
About neighbors

We have no restrictions on accepting new neighbors. Enough desire of the person himself. We are glad to any person who has a desire to save a piece of the planet, to create a space of love on it, to equip a family homestead.

And there are plenty of "filters" at the entrance to the settlement without us. The Karelian land itself is the main filter. To stay in Karelia, you need to love this land with its powerful nature, thousands of lakes and vast spaces.

You need to be able to see this earth and your life on it in 10-20 years in order to understand how beautiful they will be.

Another filter is that we do not provide a registered piece of land to someone who wants to live nearby. You need to arrange the land that you need yourself.

We make out the land for a peasant farm. This is the most convenient form in our region. You can issue in about a year and you can immediately build.

Before going to Zalesye it is important to understand:

1. You can rent a guest house from the Romanov family.
2. Or come to visit the one who invited you.

If you arrive just like that, it may turn out that right now there is no one to receive you, no one to answer your questions, no one to give you a tour.

The nearest lake is 400 meters from the settlement.
Lake Onega - 4 km on foot or 8 km by car.
There are many streams in the area.

About commercial projects that we are already implementing.

We have a measured, unhurried settlement.

The sites are very different in terms of landscape and vegetation. There are areas completely overgrown with pines and birches. There are areas in the field, there are on the slopes of hills, there are almost in the forest, there are on the banks of streams. There is a small lake 500 meters from the central road of the settlement. Around the forest and beaver dams.

Today (January 2011) settlers live in the settlement permanently in 6 estates. 3 more houses have been built, but the owners come only for the summer.

Answers on questions - rodoposelenia.ru/faq.html

The site of the settlement is rodoposelenia.ru/.

Karelia loves the strong - that's what the locals say, and they're right. Karelia is an amazing region with powerful nature, thousands of lakes and vast spaces that fascinate with their beauty and purity. It is here - in general, just 100 km from Petrozavodsk - that one of the oldest eco-settlements with the beautiful name "Zalesye" is located (for some reason, when pronouncing this name, the locals emphasize the first syllable).

The name of the eco-village is somewhat historical - there used to be a village of the same name, but then the inhabitants abandoned their homes, moved to ... It was here, on the tract, which includes, in addition to the territory of the former Zalesye, also the territories of two other villages, the settlement was located. If earlier villagers aspired to the city, now the situation has changed dramatically - not only Petersburgers, but also Petersburgers, Muscovites, and residents of other large cities and even residents of Europe and the CIS countries are ready to abandon the bustle of the metropolis, quit a well-paid job and move here - closer to nature. However, there are those who keep a balance: they come only for the summer, and spend the cold season in the city.




"Zalessya" from the first minutes fascinates: here is the traditional Karelian pine forest, where in summer and autumn you can visit for mushrooms and berries, and lakes full of fish, and amazing air! And the proximity to the city gives its comfort - there are roads, electricity and a telephone line! In relative proximity (only 8 kilometers by car or 4 kilometers through the forest) there are shops (food and household). They built their own school here!


Local residents are always happy to have new neighbors - they say that the most important thing for moving to Zalesye is the desire of a person to save a piece of the planet, create a space of love on it, and equip a family homestead. But there are plenty of peculiar “filters” for newcomers here: the main one is Karelian itself, because in order to stay in Karelia, you need to truly love this land, you need to be able to see this land and your life on it in 10-20 years, to understand how wonderful life here can be!


The territory near "Zalessya" is not small! Those who dream of living in the forest can choose for themselves a plot completely overgrown with pines and birches, for those who love space and the smell of flowering herbs, there are plots in the field. You can settle down on a hillside or on the edge of a forest! You can choose a site with a stream flowing through it or on the shore of a lake, with a small river blocked by beaver dams.


Before moving here for permanent residence, you can rent a guest house from local old-timers or just come to visit the one who invited you! Local residents say that it is simply impossible to remain indifferent to the beauty of Karelian nature!
Here, each family equips its family estate, and people are driven by the ideas described in the books of Vladimir Megre. Everyone here is creative! Films are made about Zalesye, seminars are held here, telling how to build a house with their own hands, they help new neighbors with construction! There is a wonderful apiary and amazingly delicious honey, and its sale and work with bees is one of the sources of income for the residents of the eco-settlement. Even in "Zalessya" they like to work with stone - they make handicrafts and sell works from shungite - this is a healing stone, the deposit of which is in Karelia. Local residents are developing their own media - a mailing list on the Internet: "On the way to the Family Homestead", which is read by 280,000 like-minded people and a constantly updated group in contact.


- We have a measured, unhurried settlement, we strive for a quiet life in harmony with nature, enjoy harmony with the surrounding world and equip our land. We breed cattle, horses, sheep! say the locals.


All of them are happy and smiling people, satisfied with life, smiling and ready to ride a sleigh with a horse even to the nearest village for groceries. Those who meet them on the way are no longer surprised - almost all the surrounding people have already visited the residents of Zalesye. And they are happy - talented people and those who love nature are always welcome here!

This weekend we finally went to the eco-village "Zalessya" (they say that the stress should be placed on the first syllable). The most important thing and the best experience is the people! Awesome, simple, open, down to earth (in every way) and with a GREAT Sense of HUMOR! :)

The ecovillage is located in Karelia on the territory of a former village (3-4 houses there are still very old), 100 km from Petrozavodsk and only 5 km from Lake Onega. The way there took about 550 km from St. Petersburg. The road to get there is generally normal (Murmansk federal highway). But in Len. the roads are still worse than anywhere else (after 100 km from the city) :)

Well, back to people. Five houses permanently live on the territory of the settlement (not always one house is one family), in summer about 10-12 houses live. People live differently - a teacher, there is also a pediatrician, there is one sailor in the past, one fire trooper, a builder, a stove-maker, a beekeeper, and so on. In general, a very different audience, while several children constantly live. They go to school - 6 km one way. to the nearest school on foot in summer and 5 km in winter on skis. From this it can be concluded that, according to In preparation, children will give anyone a head start (and not only in physical form) :)

By the way, when the first settlers came, there were (and still are) several houses with local (village) summer residents who came from Petrozavodsk for the summer. For the locals, the arrival of strangers who do not smoke, do not drink and generally lead a "wrong" lifestyle was a serious shock. Someone began to use it and stole some things from the settlers (no one locks the house here), but after a while someone stopped drinking alcohol. In general, different people and different fates. Very soon there will be a gathering of all residents and the administration, which, by the way, is on the side of the eco-settlers (they will solve current issues).

Children walk by themselves from early morning until late evening (already swam in the local pond and lake!). In general, complete freedom and discord! For parents, this is the security and freedom that is necessary for the development of their children, and this is probably the main factor for which they moved here to live.

Residents are slowly equipping their plots, building houses (by the way, everyone has more than 1-2 hectares of land and the neighborhood is very pleasant in such conditions, since everyone lives on their own land). They make honey for sale, hold construction seminars, rent out guest houses to tourists, some are actively engaged in permalculture according to Sepp Holzer, but there are no serious results yet, including commercial ones. But this is not particularly important, since many people live on their own farm, some buy food in the city (when they are there on business). One person admitted that 1,500 rubles a month was enough for him and his daughter and wife (!), but now they spend about 3,000 rubles on average. I found only one family who eats meat products, the rest, as a rule, prefer plant foods. This is largely due to the fact that due to the unstable power grid, many refrigerators do not withstand, and voltage stabilizers (both expensive and cheap) do not withstand more than a year.
Some houses and plots are connected to electricity, but many take plots without electricity on purpose.

Judge for yourself:

5-6 liters of bezin are needed for a chainsaw to prepare firewood for 1 year (!)
1 gas cylinder is used for 1 year for cooking (refueling costs about 400 rubles)
mobile charging (MTS and Megafon catches here) is carried out through neighbors (who have electricity), or through solar panels
solar batteries are also used to illuminate houses (in winter they are of little use)
turn on the generator - in winter and as needed (mainly for power tools) (consumption 0.6 liters per hour)

In general, not so many resources are actually needed, as it seems at first glance to the average layman. And in general, a person needs little to be happy - here on the Karelian land you understand this well, but only personally, only if you yourself came here.

By the way, there are no charters and rules in the settlement itself (the main and natural filter is "Karelian land"). There are big plans for the arrangement of the eco-village (well, how could it be without them?), but more settlers are needed to implement them (more hands - less difficulties). Although the foundation of a common house (aka school) has already been laid. But no one is in a hurry (and there is no need!) because people choose life in any ecovillage so that their life flows calmly and measuredly (like a river).

You can watch a video of the settlement here:
http://rodoposelenia.ru/video3.html

If you decide to come, then you can (and should!) Stop here:
http://www.rodoposelenia.ru/tovary_romanova.html - guest houses are very comfortable!

The settlement has its own website, mailing list and even twitter (!) :)))
http://rodoposelenia.ru/zalesie.html
P.S.
There are mosquitoes there, but less than in the Leningrad region, and for some reason they bite, for the most part, only visitors. I think the point is clogged pores on the skin of a city person, which mosquitoes clean us in good service in this way) So the tick decided to cure me)) I went to an infectious disease specialist to find out the results of the study. Good day everyone!

August 26 - arrival in the morning. We ask you to take tickets for the earliest possible trains in order to start early. On the first day, we will have the closest thing - to miss this, which means to sit out as a bean for the remaining three days.

Hours at 15:00 - lunch: pilaf cooked on a fire. We will eat right there in the circle of the fire all together, looking at each other :-)

• Rope course

After lunch - "Rope course". Type these two words in Yandex to understand how interesting it is for any person! We invited the master with all the necessary equipment.

Feedback on the course has only been positive. We'll have fun until dinner time! I am sure that as a result we will vote to postpone dinner until later :-)

• Such dinner!

• Healing Pulse

On August 27th, I recommend starting with Goltis' Healing Impulse. I have been using this system for several years now. I quit many times, but just as many times I started again. I have never been able to create the same load for the body with other practices.

And it's not about the load! And the fact that the purpose of this load is to cleanse the body!

Before breakfast, I will teach everyone a set of exercises for the first day.

• Breakfast
• Christmas trees

It is clear to everyone that working together brings people closer together. But since you come to the gathering of halves not for labor, but for rapprochement, and not artificial, but natural, we have chosen the simplest thing that can be done by everyone together.

Let's plant trees!

Why and why Christmas trees?

In winter, we ski and snowmobile, so sweeping is critical for us. Therefore, sweeping is critical for us when it sweeps the road with snow in those places where it passes through an open field.

If we each plant a hundred other Christmas trees, then in 10 years, once a well-worn road, it will stay like that for a long time in any winds.

Therefore, after breakfast, we will go together to plant pre-prepared Christmas trees and at the same time communicate freely.

• Dive into the topic

Before lunch, we suggest breaking into groups and each group has a topic for discussion / immersion. The task is to come to unanimity and give an unbanal solution to a given problem.

If you have never participated in a veche, you have no idea how difficult it is to reach unanimity. But if you already had an unsuccessful family, then guess :-)

In a joint search for truth, a person is seen as well as in joint work.

• Tasty dinner

In order not to waste time, we suggest discussing and thinking right during a delicious lunch and some time after, until the body is ready for active games :-)

• Reports

If each group makes a report and issues an unbanal solution on a given topic, then everyone will be enriched.

• Veps dating games

Veps are the indigenous population of the region of Karelia where we are creating a settlement. In the library I came across a book with Vepsian games for acquaintance. More precisely, games, like games, are fun. But it is clear that the idea is to unobtrusively bring the players together :-)

• Baths + bonfire + dance evening

Baths will be 2-3 - regular and mobile. At the same time there will be a fire for those who are waiting for their turn or already from the bath.

And when everyone is gone, Andrey will hold an evening of dancing in the spirit of those years, when it was allowed once a year and was expected by everyone with trepidation :-)

Alexei Romanov and Elena will also show the mastery of classical dance and teach us something.

Resurrection

• Healing Pulse
• Breakfast
• hike

The fact that hiking also brings together, you also know. Timothy promises to lead everyone along the path, which was once a direct road between our settlement and the nearest large village.

We will offer men to take axes so that they go a little ahead and clear the way for women and children.

At the end of the journey, the bravest swim in Lake Onega. And then we will go to the Veps Museum, where we will be treated to the Karelian national dish - wickets. I was in this museum - once it is worth seeing for the completeness of the picture of the world.

We will go back by car.

• And again dinner, fire, baths.

Monday

• AI + breakfast
• Alley of Love

Now that we have the correct state, we can plant the Alley of Love. Purely symbolic. We will dig up small maple trees in the forest and everyone will plant a sapling from their heart. He will be waiting for you until your next visit.

• Orange

This is such a calm and kind game, which is possible only on the day of departure, when everyone became friends :-)

• Departure