The Place
Much of Boskanter has been gradually developed by volunteers using low-tech, eco-friendly building techniques such as rocket stoves, locally sourced clay, wood from our forest, and homemade paint made from cottage cheese or flour.
The 4-hectare estate consists of woodland, a copse, meadows and a vegetable garden. There are sheep, dogs, cats, chickens and an old horse.
The People
Boskanter is run by the owners, Ine and Dirk, and their children. Sometimes long-term volunteers help out for a year or more. Short-term volunteers come and go. In winter, there is only room for a maximum of two volunteers for a longer stay.
A Brief History of Boskanter
Boskanter already existed in our minds when we bought this estate. Loosely inspired by the Transition Towns movement, we wanted to be the change we wished to see in the world. We wanted to share this with volunteers. While we gave them a taste of what life after the transition might be like, they could help us to live this kind of life in a world and system not yet designed for it.
From the very first year, we had volunteers staying with us. They lived with us and our children Hazel and Sienna in the small spaces with an improvised kitchen whilst we moved from the house to various spots in the barn so we could renovate elsewhere.
The name Boskanter
Long time ago in Belgium the Boskanters were a peculiar little folk who lived on the edge of the forest. They gathered typical forest produce such as mushrooms and firewood, which they sold in the villages. To the villagers, they were oddballs. That’s exactly what we don’t want to be. From our home ‘on the edge of the forest’, we want to show ‘the villagers’ the forest and lower the threshold. Not quite literally, as Brakel Forest can hardly be called wild. But figuratively, we want to give people a ‘taste of a different life’. A life that is certainly a little wilder, but above all full of the abundance of what nature can naturally provide, and a little lighter on so-called ‘lucky charms’ for which we pay a high price. Precisely because that journey is exciting and unknown, we want to reach out to visitors, to reach out to one another, because we too are searching, and to step into the forest. Within permaculture, a forest edge – like any boundary between two biotopes – is incredibly rich and full of diversity, precisely because two worlds converge here. Step into this fascinating in-between world.
VZW
Boskanter is a non-profit organisation, founded in 2012.