Either you find a way, or you make a way….

 

Cape Breton Eco Village

 

St. Peters on Cape Breton Island, Friday December 15th 2023

Dear visitor

Welcome and nice that you found our page of the Cape Breton Eco Village 😉

You probably love our beautiful island Cape Breton and Atlantic Canada and / or you want to give your life a new direction. Maybe you are interested in the topics independence, self-sufficiency, healthy living, self-sufficiency and personal responsibility, networks with like-minded people who have a similar, still healthy, “tact”. Then you should read on now and dive into our vision of the Cape Breton Eco Village – our “small” self-sufficient settlement project.

When I came to this beautiful island from Germany more than 20 years ago, I was fascinated by the beautiful landscape and the possibilities that would arise if I settled here both privately and commercially. I could leave my previous life in the hamster wheel behind me and tackle some ideas and visions that I had already had in mind for quite some time, but which were difficult to realize in my home country Germany. Here I imagined the possibilities to put this into practice sometime. You can get to know a part of it here.

All my life I loved to live independently and as far as possible on my own responsibility. The world that surrounds us is increasingly taking away from us the ability to live and act independently. All-round care in fully comprehensive insurance mentality from “Papa Staat” or other non-governmental organizations. More and more regulations and controls, pressure and foreign control. Does that also frighten you? As we can easily see from the current developments, this rarely happens for the benefit of the people. On the contrary. It entangles them more and more in dependencies of any kind. Therefore I looked for a place here on the island with lots of space and untouched nature around it. There I feel most comfortable and for some years I have been living there with my small family. My wife Vanessa and our two blonde “rascals” Felix & Falk and her little sister Freyja 😉 Two Germanic bear dogs have everything in view and two cats joined us in autumn to complete the “crew” of our little farm for the time being.

Why am I reporting this?

We have quite a few visitors here every year. Friends and customers alike. We often hear the words ” oh, did you have this beautiful place and that the children can grow up like this, without W Lan, vaccinations, 5 G, free learning and without the need for school, in the middle of nature, that is almost nowhere else ” … etc. The wish of many people for a comparable life and living concept, for a network, freedom, design possibilities, self-sufficiency as far as possible similar to our way of life is clearly visible.

As an enthusiastic dad and my wife Vanessa, I was especially pleased about the fact that we are addressing many families. As an entrepreneur (I have been running a small land development company since 2007) I was pleased to see that many entrepreneurs from the German cultural area are also in the process of reorganizing their lives in order to look for a completely different real asset investment, as well as a different private life concept. The conversations and contacts that have resulted from this in the past years were and are more than exciting and gratifying.

The question of “where could we build something like this for our family”?

A lot of nature as with you but not so far away to go shopping.
The egg-laying wool-milk sow. Here it is suddenly back again.
Many “normal” Canada prospective buyers who think about buying land or real estate here think primarily about Atlantic, lake or Bras Dor properties. Wonderful and nothing to object to. But there are now more and more visitors who think about completely different possibilities and variants. Self-sufficiency, autarky, best possible independence, active landscaping, network, community on a purely voluntary basis. This is not only listed on world wide web pages far away from practice for the purpose of sales optimization. To be honest, who is actually able to show a halfway functioning practical example of this direction? Who has the background knowledge and practical experience? Where can I look at and touch something like this – in real EXPERIENCE?

For years I have been looking for a suitable piece of land that has the right size, location, transport connections, terrain structure and forestation. My yearly training as a permaculture practitioner years ago with Sepp and Josef Holzer in Austria has somehow never really left me. Afterwards I became more and more involved with all these things like terrain and landscape planning, natural cycles, self-sufficiency. Further practical trainings like the annual training on edible wild plants with Dr. Markus Strauss were added. This resulted in further ideas and visions ( much too much 😉 about all the things you can design and build with your own strength and creativity.

Here now it suddenly lay in front of me. The long searched and one hundred percent suitable land area. Here I could start and since the beginning of the year 2019, after years of planning, I am finally getting down to business. Out of the long theoretical phase, into practice and its implementation. Something tangible, real, something to look at, walk on, smell, taste, listen to and marvel at. I can’t tell you how many days I have spent in this area, how many kilometres I have walked through the deep forests, in every season. One thing became clear to me very quickly: All those who “believe” that only plots of land with a shore connection in Canada are fantastically beautiful may be pleasantly surprised from this summer on.
Within this small “self-catering settlement”, a show house with an outbuilding has been built at one of the sites on an area of approx. 46000 square meters of land. Without connection to the public electricity grid including a permaculture garden & pond landscape. Everything from a former “Ur Wald” creatively designed.

Before I go into more detail about the presentation of the overall concept, I would like to answer the question of the “why” honestly.

Why do I build such a project, do a lot of work besides the general things I do for my small family and my small business every day ?

Why invest a considerable amount of money in this project which will be unique in the whole Atlantic Canada ?

Yes, why actually?

The answer is quite simple and is divided into two parts.

1. I am creating an extraordinary object of interest which will help my customers and interested parties who want to buy land here to orientate themselves. The desired side effect of this should be that I can optimize my marketing of non-shore areas that are best suited for self-sufficiency. So a commercial and practical background. Also I must earn for my small family as a sole breadwinner the “bread roll”.I fulfill myself with this a life dream.
2. A “playground for big boys” who like to dream, plan, play, build, design, dig in the dirt, are connected with wood, earth, water, air.
   Being in the middle of nature and being able to inspire and stimulate other people with their ideas. Especially the children. All without a flat screen monitor in their hands and without having to let their thumbs spin. Spade, rake, axe and bucket are the order of the day. A project for school classes, students and children’s groups of all kinds who want to “dive in” and or come to rest here. Again a big step back into reality. No Disney or Hollywood superheroes. The superheroes here are the gardeners, craftsmen, excavator drivers and lumberjacks. Here you can touch them, they have dusty faces and dirt on their hands, but not on their sticks.
   Literally – back to our roots and a step out of the “system” and hamster wheel.
   I think this is necessary and indispensable in the direction of a sustainable recovery process and the regaining of real quality and joy of life in our society, which is collectively insane to a large extent.

Do you understand what I mean?

Can you empathize a little bit and do you feel similar?

Then read on.