Ecovillage Silimalombu

Since 2008 Ratnauli Gultom, the youngest daughter of the King of Silimalombu started to built an Ecovillage at the shore of the island Samosir in Lake Toba. Her Vision is:

“Let us create the paradise on earth and let it spread around the globe!”

Out of this vision she creates with her german husband Thomas a permaculture organic food forest on the land of the Gultom Clan. Today maybe already around 80 % is food from land. We want to give an example what is possible to create a future of a sustainable world:

  • Not digging the soil anymore
  • harvesting instead of weeding
  • Using all the sunlight for a diversity of useful plants and trees
  • Creating own electricity
  • Zero Waste
  • Upcycling of all residues
  • Creating products from our land
  • Creating higher income for the villages
  • Improve village live to get the people back from the useless towns

How you can join us?

  • For a short visit,
    You just come over for some hours. For Buffet lunch, for one of our guided tours
  • For a one day activity
    We have for each day of the week a different program.
  • for some nights
    We have a guesthouse. This is bookable via Airbnb or via our own Booking page. The minimum stay for this are two nights. A one night stand don’t make sense for us. We are not a hotel just for sleeping.
    You find all our accommodation prices and availability there. If there is no availability shown, still you can ask us per phone (+62 852 6289 3299) or Whatsup: or send us an email. 
  • for month or forever.
    Maybe you are looking for a place, where you want to stay for a longer time and want to get involved in our vision. The things are possible. We had several people here they stood here for a year and more. Even it can be possible to built your house here, if you fit with our vision and family.

We invite our guests to our garden and to all the things we have and produce. You can come as a guest and you can get part of our family for the time of your stay. You can enjoy all our activities.

How to reach us, you can find the description on Wikitravel. Or you look on googlemaps.

Our Products

We developed now already more then 100 different products out of our land. The main products are our herbal teas, Mango Wine, cold pressed oils. You can visit our shop here or also online.

Our Farm

We have a unique traditional Batak farm stay. Silimalombu village (meaning the 5 cows) was formed by my grandparents. Our family’s farm stay is now managed by myself, my husband, my family and my employees. We farm the natural 300-500 year old mango forest and we grow and make many products on a small scale, mostly for locals. We aim for a sustainable lifestyle, and we’re largely self-sufficient. We manage organic permacultural farming, we use solar panels, waste water management and composting.

We envision modelling a return to appreciating and utilizing our land and it’s abundant food supply; more sustainable, healthier and cheaper than the processed food commonly favoured.

Eating

Since we have an organic plantation that provides a large variety of food, we eat tasty and healthy meals (Western and Indonesian/Batak). We cook together, learning about traditional local methods and ingredients. We create for breakfast, lunch and dinner a Buffet. Our food is organic, we have rawfood, vegan and vegetarian dishes. Also we serve fish from the lake, lake lobster, our own chicken and pork.

We make a tasty food, therefore we never use MSG and preservatives or artificial colours. We don’t use Margarine. Therefore our bread, cakes and cookies are free of trans-fats. Also we don’t use TBM. Also we don’t make any product out of imported milk or milkpowder.

The farm

As well as mango, we grow cacao, coffee, coconut, avocado, durian, soursoup, jackfruit, guava, passionfruit, strawberries, tapioca, onions, eggplant, zucchini, salad, sweet potatoes, mushrooms, lemongrass, citronella, cinnamon, ginger, thallas, cloves and other herbs. We also have water buffalo, pigs, ducks, chickens, dogs, cats, a monkey and we fish lobster, tilapia and catfish.

Things to Note
  • we use water instead of toilet paper (as part of our sustainability practice; if you need it, please bring it with you)
  • Don’t use tissues at our place: You don’t have spread the dirt on your skin to other places on your face or hand. Just use water to make you really clean. Remember: All the forest around Lake Toba just is getting cutted down to produce toilet paper and tissue. Indonesia is number 4 in the world of pulp exports.
  • Don’t bring any convenient food or snacks to our place. We don’t want to have your waste. We don’t accept it to consume it here to get the huge international companies more fat, polluting the whole planet and poison the whole population with their waste products.
  • we encourage you to bathe in the lake, as it is the same water we use for washing in the home. If you prefer, you can use bucket washing inside the shared washrooms
  • there are USB chargers and lights in the rooms; electrical outlets are in the communal areas
  • WIFI: we have a Starlink Internet connection with a download speed of 200 Mbit. Good for working online.