The Bosque Village, located in Michoacan, Mexico, is dedicated to serving the international permaculture community with a model for modern sustainable culture. It is our goal to live closely with nature using minimum resources for maximum benefit.
We began in 2004 on over 50 acres of pine, oak, and madrone forest. We are off the grid, using no outside water or power. By adjusting our lifestyle we have enough power from solar panels and enough water from rain catchment. The solar panels also offer enough power to have internet using laptop computers. We have made over six kilometers of trails and improved most to allow horse travel. We built lorena stoves for cooking and built five cabanas, an art studio, and five composting toilets.
We occasionally rent cabanas to individuals and groups for retreats. We also have camping spots for about forty tents available during the dry season (October through May). As our infrastructure improves we will expand our offerings to include yoga workshops and cob building training programs.
We are currently seeking like-minded groups and individuals who share our dream of living in a community which serves both nature and ourselves.
Living off the grid...
Here in the Bosque we have adjusted our livestyles in order to be
able to live free of state power and water use. By simply
conserving our light use and not relying on electric heating, we have
been able to survive comfortably with our relatively simple solar
system. For future members, the help is already in place to add
more solar power to the community in order to accomodate more people.
Currently we are supplied with more power than we use.
We rely on rain water for the majority of our water use, and have
over 100,000 liters of cistern space installed. By conserving
water we are able to sustain ourselves without relying on outside water
sources. One of the largest wastes of water is indoor toilets. We have built five composting toilets, and have a team in place to build more as our membership increases. We are also in the process of building a cobwood sauna to eliminate the need for long showers.
We are slowly eliminating our need for propane gas by relying on
lorena stoves for our cooking and using solar hot water heaters. Soon to come: a cob oven!
To further enhance our independence from outside sources, we grow a lot our own produce during the appropriate seasons. The trees are developing slowly, but we have
harvested some mandarins, avocados, capolines, peaches, pomegranites, manzanillas, and plums! We have just started grafting pears and quince onto existing manzanilla trees. Our gardens have been very successful, and we hope
to soon have a greens garden year-round.
Living in nature... 
Our livestyle allows us to live in tune with the natural world around us,
focusing our activities on being outside and enjoying our wonderful surroundings. The days
here in Michoacan are sunny and beautiful, so to take advantage of the
climate we focus on activites that allow us to be outside!
Depending on interests, visitors, members, and volunteers
participate in a range of fun and fruitful tasks. While living in
such rustic conditions is not without a share of work involved to
sustain comfort, we also find time to enjoy ourselves.
Activities include horseback riding, hiking, photography, art and writing,
building, outdoor games (volleyball, badminton, tetherball, hula hooping, spinning poi, juggling, etc), yoga, reading from the extensive library, plant propagation, weeding and gardening,
and engaging in conversation with other members and visitors on site.
