Ecology Learning Centre
This site, of 7,500 square metres, is in an area known locally as the ‘holy of holies’, indicating that it has played an important role in the island’s sacred geography.
The final complex will consist of a Learning Centre, complete with conference rooms inside and out, a library, and residential accommodation or eco-lodges for people attending courses.
The library will include the collected works of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, a great Orthodox teacher, Oxford professor and monk of Pátmos who strongly encouraged the Charis Project up to the time of his death in August 2022.
The Learning Centre will offer courses covering the theory and practice of care for the created world, including programmes in traditional island husbandry, sustainable lifestyle and livelihood development, environmental spirituality, theology and ethics.
Programmes will run year-round, respecting the agricultural cycle, the academic year, the visitor season and the local community’s needs and availability.
An excellent start has been made. Buildings have been constructed in a form of ‘gentle architecture’ incorporating natural ventilation, lighting and waste treatment and use sustainable materials sourced from Greece, including Patmian stone.
This site will also feature a traditional threshing-floor (aloni) and several ‘garden rooms’.
St John’s Farm and Garden
The Learning Centre will work in close synergy with Saint John’s Farm and Garden. The former will place emphasis on theoretical foundations and structures; the latter will focus on the practical application of sustainable land management and livelihood in this Mediterranean setting.
Saint John’s Farm is a small agricultural property running down a hillside in the vicinity of the Cave of the Apocalypse, where Saint John the Theologian is said to have experienced his vision of a new heaven and new earth (Rev 21:1).
Saint John’s Farm is a smallholding of 10,500 square metres which has served, and will serve again, as a compact and highly diversified centre of agricultural and horticultural activity. There are water-courses running down both sides, although the terraces and water collection systems are in need of repair.
The 400 or so trees on the site are a remarkable mixture of species which have been documented and are being husbanded. It is hoped that an olive press will serve the needs of small farms across the island along with other equipment such as an almond- shelling machine.
The Farm will apply traditional and local methods of land cultivation, and aspires to encourage others to revive abandoned land. The Farm will also include a dry garden which among other things will demonstrate species
that are appropriate and beneficial for the Mediterranean environment – whether aromatic, culinary or medicinal.
