February 24: New week — new info. Skyping Nassib.

Today early morning I have Skyped Nassib with the key questions we have outlined the last time. We have spent about half an hour time in which seeds for common understanding were planted. Previously the office was busy planning a bike ride in support of the project awareness. However the ride was postponed till March because of the recent car explosion in Beirut that gave uneasy mood to people around. Nevertheless the work on Rock Village is happening and 1200 trees were recently planted in the area. (Nassib promised to provide us with the map showing the tree formations).

We begun the conversation talking of how far has shaping of the network of farmers gone now. It appears that due to the lack of funding not much is happening in this area at the moment. To establish the contacts Rock Village plans to hire agriculture engineer, social worker and an administrator. Aside from the salaries the expenses for telephone costs and car transportations should be covered for those workers to be able to work in the area. As soon as Rock Village can allocate finance for this task the work will proceed faster. As it was mentioned earlier on the first phase one family moves into the area of the future Rock Village to establish and exemplary household that may provide some basic needs sustainably and prove the need and vision of it to the local community on personal case. As the project grows and machines for processing are ready to run - purchases from local households will begin.

The aimed objective for the farmer's network is clear. Rock Village hopes to involve up to 300 households with an estimate of 200 tons of grains annual circulation in the process in the end. Focus is on the small farms (under 500m2 of land or 1-5 cattle heads) that will be united in establishing Rock Village production chain. The hope is to learn together to carefully and accurately treat the land and environment while farming. As well, there is no system at the moment that would be regularly collecting the product from little farm households, that does not allow them to properly benefit from their product. For example, milk from the cow will not be collected on time and it poses the question of what to do with the excess product. Rock Village plans to develop milk collection and processing in parallel with the grain collection program. For this, in its turn refrigerating and processing power will be needed. Final marketable products could be cheeses and yoghurts.

However main focus of the project is that far revolving around grains cultivating and processing. We have only briefly touched the agricultural aspect in a talk. What is clear by now is that farming will happen largely in winter (with planting in November) so that most of the irrigation needs will be met with natural rains. However even this is not reliable enough and this year's winter for example was rather dry.

Water resources remain key topic in the conversation. System able to collect grey water for irrigation is brought by Nassib as one of the most desired elements on the Phase 1 of building. Currently the well in nearby village is providing up to 80m3 of water per hour. How much of this will be able to Rock Village for obtain is an open question now. Outcome will finalize according to the public relation and authorities perception of the project needs. Alternative plan for supporting water needs in Rock Village is buying a truck with water reservoir and pulling water pumped from the river (7 km away). The need for water in Rock Village can be quite massive in the end since all the grain processing will take place in their facilities.  Processing cycle includes following stages (at least these if not more): cleaning of the grains, disinfecting the grains (that happens in a tightly closed place with chemicals), sorting by size (possible, yet not essential),  lifting to the boiler, boiling (500 kg per time), drying on the rooftop, crush, drying again, packaging. Few important aspects for sustainable planning can be the fact that boiler water is drained, for example. As well separate industrial machines needed (on many of the stages) that will require space and power. Production area is not same with living area of the Rock Village inhabitants.

Another area of consideration is waste collection. Initial plan for the Phase 1 of Rock Village project was to call 10-20 housewives in the nearby village for kitchen waste collection and establish a compost plant in a Rock Village household. Aalto team was not entirely optimistic about complex composting system payback on the early stage of development. However providing exact numbers and clear examples could still help Rock Village planning the system that grows by time. People in the area seem to be well concerned about waste collection in general. Details are little on this account, but the waste collection factory is going to be build and the money for it are allocated already from 30 villages.

Lebanese University partners have had presented their 5 projects of Rock Village possible architecture last week. No preference was given to a single solid project, however the work done was impressive and final decisions will be pulled from all of the projects. We should get in contact with University on our own and obtain their studies as they have made some field explorations and talked to locals in the villages. We have gotten the soil report from Nassib (however we will still need a person reading Arabic to help us with the translation).

For further numbers and technical details Nassib recommend two institutions working in the area. The first is LARI, Lebanese Agriculture Research Institute that provided soil study seen above. Their email can be found from the bottom of the page and more information online. Another institution to get in touch with is ICARDA, Sustainable Agriculture for the Dry Areas, who has the reports on local possibilities in harmless farming. We should get in touch with these organizations to support our study with technical details.  

As out trip to Lebanon currently seems to be cancelled, we have to establish another system of communicating Rock Village now. Nassib agreed to Skype again next Monday morning, which gives us enough time to end up with more questions.