By Søren Bjørn Hansen

It was July, high summer and harvest time. But Anders Wamsler was largely alone out in the large vegetable gardens around the housing community Permatopia outside Karise in South Zealand. It was the first summer after the last of the roughly 200 residents moved in in August 2018, and with about 80 children as part of the community, an unexpected problem revealed itself: Families with children are spending the summer holidays going on vacation.

"Something has to be done in the summer. And then everyone left. I posted on our community chat and was completely bewildered. The few of us who were here had to struggle to save the vegetables," he recalls over a cup of coffee almost five years later.

"Then we got some discussions out of it," he adds with a small smile.

Today, field work is more well organized. Partly some of the families have adapted to it, partly more people without children have moved in, and then there are the WWOOFs – the 2 to 4 volunteer workers who today live in the housing community's common farm in return for free lodging and meals. If you are in doubt, you just have to stop by the 'Permatopia Shop', which on this day abounds with gains from the fields and greenhouses: tomatoes, peppers, honey, salads, herbs, eggs and even a "crisp and simple" permatopia cider, which "probably" holds between 3 and 5 percent alcohol.

The story of working in agriculture holds a general lesson about living in a place like Permatopia, born of idealism and visions of a more sustainable and self-sufficient life: it's hard. 

There are many, long discussions; there are challenges where, for example, the everyday life of modern families with children collides with the annual wheel of self-sufficiency; and there are times when you just have to realize that pure idealism is no match for the possibilities of reality.

The replacement has been positive

The conception of Permatopia alone is a story of adversity being overcome – as was described in the documentary 'Journey to Utopia. A bank crash and the classic construction challenges delayed moving in for several years, and when the first people moved in, it was actually too early, but to accommodate the many children's school changes.  

Anders Wamsler, who was involved in the work to reach the goal from 2014, actually only moved in as one of the last in August 2018, when the last cluster of houses was ready. And, as with most others, it was the idea of ​​self-sufficiency, especially with food, that had attracted him. He had looked at several of the sustainable housing communities that have appeared in Denmark in the past decade, but the other most idealistic ones required a large degree of self-construction, and as an almost-retired person with no tradesman skills, he was not interested in that. 

When the now-retired mathematics teacher, who turns 76 the day after the interview, looks back on the five years he has lived in the realized utopia, it is precisely both the big visions and the accompanying great commitment mixed with the encounter with practical life that fill .

"In the years leading up to our moving in, the commitment to the idea and the place was great and broad. But the moment we moved in, the practicality came, where there were many who could not see it anyway. Because they also had children and work and other things. And then there was a period of somewhat declining commitment, you could say.”

You can also call this period a necessary adjustment. Part of the original residents ended up moving, and in their place came people who understood what an address in Permatopia requires.

Anders Wamsler describes the difference between those who have moved and the new ones who have joined, with an anecdote from just after Permatopia was completed, and the new village's inhabitants had to get to know each other. There was a day of social games, and one of them was that you had to divide yourself according to why you had primarily moved in – for the social or for the self-sufficient working community. Those who stood the furthest against the former were, roughly speaking, also those who ended up moving. 

“There are quite a few sympathetic people who have moved. And even if they were sympathetic, I think it's positive, because living here requires a certain commitment to permaculture and self-sufficiency," he states.

Sociocracy's advantages and disadvantages

In practical terms, the commitment requires that you put in weekly working hours in the community. The starting point was that you had to put in two hours, but in practice there are many who put in much more, and some who put in less. There is no coercion, and there is understanding for illness, old age and other things.

The tasks are many. For example, some take care of the chickens, others of the various vegetable gardens, others look after the geothermal heating system. And then there are also administrative tasks such as communication, shop, accounting and, as something new, responsibility for tours. The visiting journalist is far from the only one who is curious about Permatopia.

Anders Wamsler has today taken a slightly more withdrawn role than before, where he was, for example, the driving factor behind the store and often took on more tasks because, as he says, it took hold.   

“It hasn't been hard for me. When you have had your daily job for more than 40 years, you are used to work. So I said I can work every morning. But some of it became a bit much at one point, and I have said that and tried to tell the opposite. We have also succeeded," he says, and begins to describe the advantages and disadvantages of the sociocracy that Permatopia is experiencing in practice.

Sociocracy can be translated as 'management by friends' and is essentially about delegating responsibility to smaller groups, rather than making a lot of decisions by either majority or consensus decisions at large meetings.

It's a beautiful line of thinking, and the retired high school teacher fully supports it, but it can be difficult in practice. How many are to lead - sit in the 'main circle' as the governing body is called, what can they decide and how much responsibility can the individual bear, are just a few of the questions that are very often at stake.

Despite all the trouble, the sometimes slightly skewed distribution of work and the many practical adjustments, Anders Wamsler is happy with his decision to move into Permatopia number 86. As he experiences it, it is exactly when the work and the social goes up.

“It is satisfying. When it is collected," he says.

Tonight, for example, he is going to dinner again. There is a well-run rotation system, with a resident responsible for the kitchen who is employed in a part-time position. They have to sit in 'Loen', the large, award-winning common room, and a large part of the meal comes from the vegetable fields they themselves have helped tend.

It makes sense.

Søren Bjørn-Hansen is a journalist and part of the journalist community Klimajournalisterne.

This article is part of our project 'Yes in my backyard', where we focus on how people help drive the green transition in their local communities.

Energy, waste and food in circulation at Permatopia

Permatopia is built with the goal of being as disconnected as possible from the surrounding community. It is the whole basic idea of ​​self-sufficiency that one must be off grid. In practice, it cannot be fully done, but a number of measures have brought them close:

Rainwater is collected in a large underground facility and reused as a toilet flush, for washing clothes in the shared laundry and for watering vegetable gardens.

When the separation toilets flush, they separate 'number 1' and 'number 2'. The urine is directed to a storage tank and can be used as fertilizer after six months.

The so-called 'grey' and 'black' waste water is directed to the community's large willow cleaning plant, from which the willows are harvested and used as compost.

On part of Permatopia's 29,2 hectares stands a 46 meter high wind turbine that produces 320 MWh annually. The electricity can be used free of charge on the agricultural land where it is produced, i.e. for shared laundry, cooking, pumps that drive the supply and charging stations for electric cars. The surplus is delivered to the SEAS electricity grid. Private electricity in the homes is with your own choice of electricity supplier.

The homes are heated with a large geothermal heating system, and the heat can be stored in a hot water silo.

The approximately 200 residents are not self-sufficient in food. The local supermarkets complement the Permatopia Shop in a big way, to which the agricultural area with an employed gardener supplies all crops, which you can then pick up and pay for. About a third of what is harvested is delivered to restaurants in Copenhagen.

Permatopia in numbers

There are 90 households: 23 owner-occupied homes, 23 cooperative homes and 44 public housing. The homes are in five sizes from 76 to 126 square meters.

In the vision for the housing community, the following composition of residents was hoped for:

• Young people (18 to 45 years) without children: 20 percent
• Families with children: 40 percent
• Middle-aged (45 to 64): 30 percent
• Elderly (65+): 10 percent.

Permatopia spreads over 29,2 hectares. The 4,7 hectares is an urban zone with housing developments, road construction and parking spaces. The remaining 24,5 hectares is a land zone, of which approximately 12 hectares is a former peace forest.

All residents have a work obligation of an average of 2 hours per week. There are 34 active work teams, which are gathered in 6 areas: Agriculture, Supply, Economy, Common Area, Common Farm and Social Sustainability. Agriculture accounts for slightly more than half of the working hours.