Organic compost at Jiwa Damai

Our vision at Jiwa Damai is to create a self-sustaining center, integrating biological permaculture with water preservation, waste recycling and application of solar energy.

We are constantly working towards this goal, adding new features to achieve more sustainability.

An important part of the recycling process is the composting of organic materials. We use cow dung, leaves, fruit and vegetables left over, wood, dust etc. and add effective microorganisms (EM technology)  in order to produce a healthy fertilizer.

Compost area at Jiwa Damai

The effective microorganisms are produced in this blue container.

Effective microorganisms

The fertilizer, made from our compost is used for the entire organic garden.

Next to the compost it is our worm factory. The worms like to eat fruit and veggies. They don’t like spicy and acidic foods, such as lemons or chilis.

Organic honey from Bali

Recently we relocated our bee family from the traditional Balinese bee hives hanging up in the trees to a more classical bee stock – square wooden boxes.

Bees in their new bee stock

Bee stock

Here you can see the first results of the organic honey production.

 

Honey

Honey production

We already manufactured the first jars of organic honey. The taste is a unique bouquet of aromas of wild flowers. Highly nutritious and is locally also used to put on stings and wounds for healing.

On our website you can see the results:  Our products

 

 

Fish ponds at Jiwa Damai

Our ponds at Jiwa Damai are the home of many fish. Among them are some ten year old carps.

Carps

They love to eat Jackfruit and Algae. At night they often jump like dolphins out of the water and land back in the water with a great splash. We do not allow fishing. These carps weigh about 3-5 kg each. They have a gold colored fin on the top and a golden mouth.

The guardians at Jiwa Damai

On our wide-spread premise we house several stone statues made by local Balinese stone carvers.

It is a Balinses tradition and necessity to put up stone figures as well as special offering statues/ places on the entire grounds. These statues are meant for protection and to keep away the evil spirits.

The lion is facing to the east,  guarding the entrances.

Lion statue

The elephants, female and male are the guardians of the whole place.

Elephant statue

Elephant in the garden

The water goddess is the guardian of the “Home of the Water Angel”, our secluded meditation spot in the midst of lush nature.

Guardian of the meditation spot

Organic bananas from Bali

At Jiwa Damai we have about 150 banana plants, spread all throughout the permaculture garden.

The bananas are harvested green and then covered in a box to ripen. We do have about 8 different kinds of bananas in our garden. Their taste is so incredibly aromatic and sweet.

Bananas from our trees

They ripen throughout the whole year and can be harvested at different times.

We also dry the banans in our food drying oven – these dried bananas are very delicious as well.

Dried bananas

Rainy season – overflowing rivers

The rainy season has arrived – but these downpouring rains cause us some problems.

Downpouring rain

Due to the incredible powerful rains, our little river swelled to a ripping torrent.
Many trees along the river were uprooted. Those trees which remained standing, lost most of the supportive earth and now their roots are stretched into the air.

River at Jiwa Damai

To prevent other tree losses, the sand bags were placed directly around the roots to prevent possible future torrents from uprooting more trees.

Roots covered with sand bags

Balinese tooth filing ceremony

The Tooth Filing Ceremony (Metatah ceremony) is one of the biggest Hindu rituals on Bali. This ceremony is executed by smoothing down the incisor and eye-tooth. The ceremony is performed on young adults.

In the Hindu culture when a person turns 18 he or she is to be considered well on the way to adulthood. To help make this smooth transition from adolecent into the first phase of growing up, the young will have to take part in a teeth filing ceremony

Sugik, one of our appreciated team memebers at Jiwa Damai, had his tooth filing ceremony recently.

Metatah ceremony is aimed to kill six enemies (Sad Ripu) in people who are often considered the enemy within ourselves.
Sad Ripu include:

• Kama (lust)
• Loba (greed)
• Krodha (anger )
• Mada (intoxication)
• Moha (confusion)
• Matsarya (jealousy / envy)

This ceremony is performed on a certain day based on the Balinese calendar.

Sugik after his tooth filing ceremony