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Location: Spore Initiative regenerative garden @ Spore Initiative, Berlin
Date: July 6th, 2026
Duration: 9:30 – 12:30 (9:30 am – 12:30 am)
Ferment collective resilience. A practice of cultivating shared capacity to navigate uncertainty, respond to change, and sustain life through interdependence, transformation, and care. To ferment resistance and rebellion.
Ingredients: fresh garlic, a regenerative garden in early summer abundance, an apricot tree heavy with fruit, a tree that is dying, bare moist earth, bare fingers, raw sugar, a scale, a circle of chairs, a granite mortal and pestle made of a similar material as the tombstones that border the regenerative garden, birdsong, a gathering of slugs, the existential aftermath of a European heatdome, a choral reading of a collective prayer on resilience, rainfall then sunshine then rainfall then sunshine, morning dew, a gathering of awakening human bodies, grief and anger, air, fire and earth, the earth that connects, nurtures, grows and supports, fresh harvested salad and sugar peas from the garden, cool mint water.
Soft Score
BEGIN
9:30
Introduction, to the ground, to the soft score.
Five encounters, five plants, touching with consent.
9:45
Calling in the earth.
Dig bare fingers deep into the soil.
Harvest the garlic that lies underneath.
Separate the stems from the garlic bulbs.
Weigh the harvest.
FERMENT
10:15
Introduction and checking in.
Form a circle of chairs. Include a place in the circle for a dying tree.
Which being, a person, animal or plant, are you bringing in today?
Calling in their love, calling in their wisdom.
Introduction to the recipe for a garlic ferment preparation to build collective resilience in plant bodies, animal bodies, and human bodies.
Each person takes a clove of garlic.
10:30
Calling in air.
How does it feel to be in connection, rather than separation?
Grounding. An invitation to bring your attention to all that connects, to the air, to the green plant bodies that give you breath, to keep expanding and breathing until your attention encompasses the entire world.
Calling in fire.
Read out loud the daily news on the European heatwave that is impossible without climate crisis.
Circle share.
Ask your body, how is your grief showing up today?
What are your biggest worries? What are your biggest fears?
Grinding anger, grinding sorrow, grinding grief.
Using a granite mortar and pestle, made of a similar granite as the tombstones on the edges of the regenerative garden, each person grinds down a handful of garlic and then passes on to the next person.
If the task is too heavy to bear, bring the granite mortar to the ground, using the ground to support the weight of the task at hand and the weight of the collective labor.
Pass onto the next person.
11:30
A moment for anger.
Anger is not an enemy, it is a messenger.
Grounding anger practice. Sending anger into the earth that supports.*
Gratitude for all that has been shared.
A moment of stillness and silence.
COLLECTIVE
12:00
Mix raw sugar with the garlic.
Each tastes the garlic-sugar mixture for building collective resilience.
The garlic-sugar mixture is added to a clean jar.
Seal and close the jar.
[The garlic-sugar mixture undergoes a light fermentation over 5-7 days. The fermentation is then stabilized by adding vodka to the mixture. Fill with vodka up to the jar rim. Mix together the vodka-garlic-sugar with a wooden spoon. Close the jar and wait for 14 days until it becomes a tincture. After 14 days, strain the solid from the liquid. Use the liquid as a soil drench or foliar spray at a ratio of 1:1000 tincture/water. This preparation has anti-pathogenic properties that will inhibit pathogens like disease causing fungi.]
RESILIENCE
12:10
A choral reading of a collective prayer for building resilient communities.
Plant seeds of hope for building collective resilience.
Make a place for grief, as well as solidarity, empowerment, and resistance.
12:20
A moment of stillness and silence.
Check in. How is your internal weather?
12:30
Spiral remaining garlic stalks.
Drink cool mint water.
Eat salad harvested from the garden.
Last reflections. An offer for an offering.
A invitation to reciprocal actions that go beyond this gathering of people and extend into the next days.
END
* Practice shared by collective grief facilitator Tobi Ayé.
