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.

7 I green VIllage

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.

8 I green VIllage

Sustainability

catlIn, a uK archaeology graduate wIth a fragment of semI-fIred clay whIch bears a 5,000 year-old ImprInt of woVen branches (‘wattle’).