Allotments going crazy

Since January this year I've noticed a lot more eco activity round and about - I'm certainly not the only one feeling the urge to do something.

There is a bit of allotment land behind our house, I rented one of the spaces myself back in January 2006. At that time there were only two or three other plots with much happening on them. You can see that the area behind Joe is pretty much deserted. Two years later there is hardly a vacant plot - it looks as if there's a market gardening competition going on out there - amazing!


It This was the first time I'd ever grown any food myself and I learned a lot. Tatties, sweetcorn, sugar-snap peas, garlic and herbs were the big successes. I tried digging part of it and not digging part of it and found that not digging works really well. I've now given up the allotment and am just seeing how much stuff I can grow in the garden. The problems are the slugs and snails as usual, footballs and the cats - the one thing they haven't dug up is the bloomin catmint.

We went to see cousins of Debi's up in London a couple of weeks ago - I was delighted to see a poly tunnel on the city farm there - brilliant! Cuba comes to Vauxhall, right in the heart of the city.


Here is a wee garden just outside one of the houseboats in Shoreham with a lot going on in a small space. I thing the health benefits of having even just a few fresh home-grown things are enormous. We don't need much of some the rarer elements and minerals but we're unlikely to get them via the food-agribusiness.







I'm really excited about this - plums! I gave this tree in our garden a good prune with my Brighton Permaculture Trust skills and now it's producing its first fruit ever....

Transition - talk on waste

I went along to the 19th June Transition Brighton and Hove talk on waste. It brought home how unbelievably wasteful we are in the UK:

• we consume about a ton of stuff per head per year - half of that is food and 30% of that just gets thrown out uneaten.
• for every single bag of stuff we throw out from our homes 70 more bags of waste have already been produced on our behalf getting the stuff there in the first place.
• the national electric grid is only 30% efficient in terms of the energy it delivers from the energy put into it (by the way, the fabric of the grid is rapidly decaying and cracks are appearing in some of the older nuclear plants)

We are now doing lots of good things such as capturing methane from landfill sites and producing electricity from it as well as making compost on a giant scale - but it all still produces yet more CO2 and there is a big net energy usage. We are also better at recycling stuff but the message for me again was that there is really no alternative to reducing consumption - by lots and the sooner the better, ie within ten to twenty years.

I know a couple of very intelligent, well-informed people who still say that climate change is more due to volcanic activity or changes in the sun than any human activity - I think you're in a minority now you lot! How can we chuck up this mountain of CO2 without having some effect? Anyway, with peak oil upon is there doesn't seem to be an alternative to big reductions in fossil fuel use. I don't think the penny has dropped for many people as regards the scale of change that is needed/going to be forced on us. What I hope to show in these posts that the low energy life can actually be a lot of fun, less stressful, more soulful, more creative, more cooperative...

There were only about thirty or so people at the meeting and I find sitting and listening to technical stuff for hours a bit heavy going so I'll continue to focus on doing practical stuff in my own personal transition towards a lower energy way of living.

Sunflower Seeds - just a short rant...

Yesterday, I called into that great Temple To Ill Health - Portslade Tesco's. Oh dear...oh dear...oh dear...We must be one of the sickest societies ever on the planet and no wonder if this is the sort of rubbish we eat.

Aisle after aisle of sugary-wheaty-sludgey-fatty-dairy stuff. Even the fruit and veg are just pale imitations of the real thing. Grown on impoverished soils, with tons of chemicals, not fresh, not ripe, packaged and repackaged and food-miled to Outer Mongolia and back.

I'm not particularly having a go at Tesco's - it's only there because we've all bought into it and we're all responsible for the rubbish we're generally being offered as food. I don't agree with "us" and "them" categorisation - to me there's only "us". I suppose I'm having a go at us.

However you can find a few good things at Portslade Tesco's, eg sunflower seeds. They are one of the most nutritious foods you can eat - particularly if you soak them to start the germination process. Edward Cairney in his excellent book "The Sprouters Handbook" says they are "almost a complete food." (If you don't already sprout seeds it's one of the tastiest, healthiest and cheapest things you could look into.)

There are packs of sunflower seeds at Portslade Tesco's at 125gm for 99p, not organic. However, almost next door, Paul and Lorraine at Healthlink are selling 500gm packs of organic sunflower seeds for £1.55 - that makes Tesco's more than two and a half times more expensive by weight for poorer quality on that one.....well, well.

More ranting and raving about food and health soon...

FOREST GARDENING - part three

The second day of the course was held up at Stanmer Park, just on the edge of Brighton. We used the amazing off-grid earthship as a base - it uses passive solar heating via a huge thermal mass of rammed earth partly contained in old car tyres on its North side. Those are empty bottles in the wall outside.



There's LOTS going on at the park - everytime I go there it looks more and more interesting and obviously more and more people are getting involved in different projects - a wealth of practical experience.



This is inside the willow dome at Stanmer - a beautiful natural structure which glows inside with a gentle green light.

These are two pictures from the orchard - note the nettle layer beneath the apple trees. It has been left there on purpose as its a very nutritious food. I know its not difficult to grow...

That's me below posing with a tree which I helped to prune earlier in the year on the Fruit Tree Renovation and Pruning Course. I'm proud to say that the tree has not only survived but is looking very healthy. The course was extremely useful and skills I picked up helped a lot when Clive and I were pruning olive trees in Portugal - see posts below.




Bryn explaining about different ways of propagating apple trees. Strong, resilient, productive trees can be grown on their own roots rather than grafted on to more vigorous root stocks - this is just the stuff I believe we should be researching more and putting into practise. Instead a lot of research in this area has just been dumped...hmmmm... I wonder why. Surely, the more resilient we can be in the near future the better.

This apple tree has had a lot of its roots used as cuttings to generate more trees. Now it has been pruned well back to help it into balanced regrowth. I would have thought that it was almost a bit cruel a few years ago but having done some pruning recently my feeling is now quite different. I would say the trees love the attention, as if they have been given a thorough grooming and they are delighted to work in partnership with us given half a chance.

HOW TO MAKE A BED WITHOUT DIGGING:

Fork into the surface a bit to loosen up the grass roots and stuff...
...stick plenty of good thick cardboard on top...
...have a rest and learn a bit more from Bryn (and keep the cardboard from blowing away)...
...stick lots of compost on top of the cardboard...
...then stick woodchips on top of that. Done! There's a wee bit more to it than that but it's easy and it works.

I've put these and a few more photos from the course into a set on flickr - if any of my course chums or anyone else is interested click here and you will go straight to them by internet magic.

FOREST GARDENING - part two

Pippa Johns very kindly showed us round her beautiful garden in Southease, near Lewes. It has quite a different feel to it - much more cottagey - but you can see lots of the same principles being applied.
There's layering, perrenial plants, self-seeding plants, wild areas, soft fruit, herbs, salad plants and Pippa didn't dig the garden at all when she first moved there five years ago. She reckons they get about 60% of their food from their garden in the Summer and about 30% in the Winter.

Below there's wild rocket acting as a ground cover - and its delicious...
I loved this empty bottle edging too:

FOREST GARDENING - part one

A weekend course with Brighton Permaculture Trust - June 2008. Another excellent BPT course taught by the tireless and ever-inspiring Bryn Thomas.


So what's Forest Gardening?
It's amazing! It's been around for thousands of years and the time is right for it to be much better known. The principles of Forest Gardening could be helping us to grow lots of food and other useful stuff in cities and the countryside, our own gardens, allotments, inner cities, suburbs, at schools and hospitals as well as out in the green deserts of insane agribusiness-monoculture and they can be applied in a space just a few metres square or in a whole field:

- with minimum of fossil fuel input from fuel and chemicals
- with a minimum of personal effort - eg much less digging and general maintenance
- giving people direct access to some fresh, nutritious food - all year round

- building up healthy soil alive with earthworms, bacteria and fungal activity (if you dig up or plough soil regularly you don't give these systems a chance to develop)
- giving highly productive gardens that are drought-tolerant and resistant to pests and diseases
...and who knows just how important all that will become in this present chapter of human life...
How does Forest Gardening Work?
Robert Hart, who first coined the term, refers to the seven distinct layers found in a natural woodland which Forest Gardening mimics:

1: the canopy formed by the tops of the higher trees

2: low-growing trees such as dwarf fruits

3: the shrub layer - bush fruits

4: the herbaceous layer of herbs and vegetables

5: the ground layer of plants which spread horizontally rather than vertically

6: the vertical layer occupied by climbing berries and vines

7: the 'rhizosphere', shade-tolerant root-plants.

Hopefully these photos show some of these features, they're from a garden that Bryn has developed for a client in Seaford over the last fifteen years. It's very jungley and appeals to my need for more wild nature in my life - and you can eat a lot of it, which appeals to me too, including the delicious petals of these flowers:
The ground is really soft, open textured and moist - just like in the forests and woods I played around in as a kid.
These principles, under the name of Agriforestry, are making a big difference at the moment to lives in countries such as Ethiopia and Nepal. There was an inspiring feature on Radio 4's Food Programme recently:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/foodprogramme_20080525.shtml

Tirade No 1 - MONEY and Stuff

Chatting to people and watching what's happening around here on the UK South Coast it seems that the implications of Peak Oil etc etc etc and Impending Big Change are beginning to sink in, we're all noticing fuel and food prices rising ...

I hope my posts here show a simpler and more self-sufficient future may also be a lot of fun and more soul-satisfying too.

A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT MONEY AND STUFF: Still the whole consumer-materialist-government machine is pounding relentlessly away at us apparently still wanting us to consume more and yet more - have you seen an advert telling you to STOP buying more stuff yet? Pretty much everything we buy/use/consume has an energy component - maybe it's making, buying, using, throwing away all the STUFF that has got us into the mess into the first place, maybe we shouldn't be thinking about Growth but about Shrink ??

Get a job! - that's a message that's thrust upon us by everyone - even Sponge Bob Squarepants - and not just get a job but get a mortgage, buy insurance, buy a car, get a pension ... and lets not forget about having a nice comfy velvet lined funeral plan ... and you need a job to get the money to get all that stuff.
I think Claire Moore's 1937 picture above "Factory/Industry" sums up the whole thing - look at the mother offering her baby up to the captains of industry - how much have we all sacrificed to the whole ghastly business? How much of it do we actually need? When did we buy into all this stuff? And who exactly is benefiting from it?
Maybe it's time to start working towards a world that doesn't centre around Money but to something else eg Cooperation? Simplicity? Pursuit of Happiness? Quality? Relocalisation? Self-sufficiency? Also let's think about what "success" might be in the future - maybe it won't be so much about high incomes and owning lots of stuff.

I've recently met people living very simply and cheaply in the UK with rents as low as £40 per week, living in the middle of gardens or rolling hills, not going to those ghastly supermarkets, not stressed up to the eyeballs, doing a few days work here and there, with plenty of time for gardening etc etc, eating plenty of their own fresh food - and all the happier and healthier for it. That seems like New Success to me.

ACCESS to LAND - I have a gut feeling that part of the key to a survivable future lies in allowing change in the way we use land - here is an extract from an inspirational article by a landowner, Sue Burke, who hopes to sell land to the Lammas organisation for their eco village:

....(I) saw in the local paper that a group called Lammas was looking for 200 acres which was exactly the acreage I needed to shift. And they had this truly eco friendly plan and lots of people to help make it happen. I’d felt a bit like a lone voice in the wilderness in the local farming scene preaching organics to people who saw the whole things as some insane hippie pipe dream. Especially when the local system is mostly based on one and a half men and large amounts of expensive machinery and fertiliser and chemical treatments for the resultant overcrowding of animals required to make such an expensive system financially viable.

The pain of watching the suffering of the dairy animals overfed so their feet hurt [something like gout] from a high protein diet to maximise milk production and the way the calves had to make do with a bucket of either milk powder or even at one point pre BSE, pig’s blood for a milk substitute, and then go on to a life like their mother producing milk at an udder- busting rate on a precarious health basis. How could the milk from that process be good food for anyone?

...anyone who has been farming “traditionally” goes into shock at the idea that a whole family could live on as few as ten acres when their methods don’t produce a living for their families off under three hundred acres. It’s unbelievable for them, but what they don’t understand is how radically the eco-life style differs from their own...

NICE ONE! ROCK ON SUE!

more ranting from me soon...

Rant about - MONEY and STUFF

Chatting to people and watching what's happening around here on the UK South Coast it seems that the implications of Peak Oil etc etc etc and Impending Big Change are beginning to sink in ...

I hope my posts below show a simpler and more self-sufficient future may also be a lot of fun and more soul-satisfying too.

A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT MONEY AND STUFF: Still the whole consumer-materialist-government machine is pounding relentlessly away at us apparently still wanting us to consume more and yet more - have you ever seen an advert telling you NOT to buy something? Pretty much everything we buy/use/consume has an energy component - maybe we shouldn't be thinking about Growth but about Shrink ??

Get a job! - that's a message that's thrust upon us by everyone - even including Sponge Bob Squarepants - and not just get a job but get a mortgage, buy insurance, buy a car, get a pension ... and lets not forget about having a nice comfy velvet lined funeral plan ... and you need a job to get the money to get all that stuff.

I think Claire Moore's 1937 picture above "Factory/Industry" sums up the whole thing - look at the mother offering her baby up to the captains of industry - how much have we all sacrificed to the whole ghastly business? When did we buy into all this stuff? And who exactly is benefiting from it?

Maybe it's time to start working towards a world that doesn't centre around money but to something else eg Cooperation? Simplicity? Transition? Pursuit of Happiness? Quality? Relocalisation? Self-sufficiency? Also let's think about what "success" might be in the future - maybe it won't be so much about high incomes and owning lots of stuff.

I've recently met people living very simply and cheaply in the uk with rents as low as £40 per week, not going to supermarkets, eating plenty of their own fresh food - that seems like a kind of success to me.

ACCESS to LAND - I believe that part of the key to a survivable future is in allowing change in the way we use land - here is an extract from an inspirational article by a landowner, Sue Burke, who hopes to sell land to the Lammas organisation for their eco village:
....(I) saw in the local paper that a group called Lammas was looking for 200 acres which was exactly the acreage I needed to shift. And they had this truly eco friendly plan and lots of people to help make it happen. I’d felt a bit like a lone voice in the wilderness in the local farming scene preaching organics to people who saw the whole things as some insane hippie pipe dream. Especially when the local system is mostly based on one and a half men and large amounts of expensive machinery and fertiliser and chemical treatments for the resultant overcrowding of animals required to make such an expensive system financially viable. The pain of watching the su
RANT ONE - money
commercial/consumerist world
What chance is there of reducing consumption or changing the way we live when the whole consumer-materialist-political machine is still pounding relentlessly away at us - have you seen an advert telling you to stop using/get rid of your car yet? Or not to buy a new car recently? There are a lot of heads in sands I think ... As oil/energy becomes more expensive and along with it everything we use and consume maybe what we should be looking at is not Growth but Shrink ??
Get a job! - thats a message that's thrust upon us by everyone - even including Sponge Bob Squarepants - but maybe it's time to change from thinking around MONEY to something else? Cooperation? Simplicity? Transition? Pursuit of Happiness? Quality?
Get a job - pay rent - get a mortgage - buy insurance - get a pension pension ... and lets not forget about having a nice comfy velvet lined funeral plan!
take the best and dump the rest
be the change
ownership - the more you have the bigger the burden of care - "onus"-ship
i have met people living very simply and cheaply in the uk with rents as low as £40, not going to supermarkets, eating plenty of their own fresh food
get people back onto the land - its not that difficult to grow fruit and veg - cuba
ACCESS - I believe that part of the key to a survivable future is in allowing change in the way we use land - here is an extract from an inspirational article by a landowner, Sue Burke, who hopes to sell land to the Lammas organisation for their eco village:
....(I) saw in the local paper that a group called Lammas was looking for 200 acres which was exactly the acreage I needed to shift. And they had this truly eco friendly plan and lots of people to help make it happen. I’d felt a bit like a lone voice in the wilderness in the local farming scene preaching organics to people who saw the whole things as some insane hippie pipe dream. Especially when the local system is mostly based on one and a half men and large amounts of expensive machinery and fertiliser and chemical treatments for the resultant overcrowding of animals required to make such an expensive system financially viable. The pain of watching the suffering of the dairy animals overfed so their feet hurt [something like gout] from a high protein diet to maximise milk production and the way the calves had to make do with a bucket of either milk powder or even at one point pre BSE, pig’s blood for a milk substitute, and then go on to a life like their mother producing milk at an udder- busting rate on a precarious health basis. How could the milk from that process be good food for anyone? ...anyone who has been farming “traditionally” goes into shock at the idea that a whole family could live on as few as ten acres when their methods don’t produce a living for their families off under three hundred acres. It’s unbelievable for them, but what they don’t understand is how radically the eco- life style differs from their own...
check out the Lammas site :.
http://www.lammas.org.uk/
I liked this picture at the british museum:
it looks like we are going to have to make big changes - lets make it as easy and fun as possibleffering of the dairy animals overfed so their feet hurt [something like gout] from a high protein diet to maximise milk production and the way the calves had to make do with a bucket of either milk powder or even at one point pre BSE, pig’s blood for a milk substitute, and then go on to a life like their mother producing milk at an udder- busting rate on a precarious health basis. How could the milk from that process be good food for anyone? ...anyone who has been farming “traditionally” goes into shock at the idea that a whole family could live on as few as ten acres when their methods don’t produce a living for their families off under three hundred acres. It’s unbelievable for them, but what they don’t understand is how radically the eco- life style differs from their own...
check out the Lammas site :.
http://www.lammas.org.uk/
I liked this picture at the british museum:
it looks like we are going to have to make big changes - lets make it as easy and fun as possible

Quinta Serrinha - Portugal, Feb 2008 - Part One

I spent a wonderful couple of weeks earlier this year with Janet and Clive lending a hand in bringing their hill farm back to life. The place had been pretty much abandoned for several years and there were vines to de-bramble and lots of olive trees to prune. The farmhouse had no electricity and no running water but that lent an extra magic and simplicity to place. We chatted on about plants, healing work (Janet practises EFT) and everything else by the light of candles and the open fire.
It's a beautiful place - a little hill farm in one of the least developed parts of Europe. Farming is going on there pretty much as it has done for a couple of thousand years or longer. Its pretty much organic, largely self-sufficient - Permaculture without realising it? I hope it can trundle along on for many more thousands of years.
All the water we used came from the hand-cranked well in the village, for drinking, cooking, washing and also for the loo. I hear from Clive that the farm is on mains power and water now though.

Portugal - part two

Janet speaks Portuguese like a native and Clive isn't far behind. I'm sure it's helped them to make local contacts enormously - the Portuguese are surprised and very appreciative. The lovely lady above with Janet and Clive lives near the well and is tremendously friendly - she cooked us a delicious stew one Sunday lunchtime and poured us many a glass of excellent local wine. I won't give away her age but she walks miles everyday, looks after a small holding, prunes trees and looks about fifteen or twenty years younger than she really is - a sort of Portuguese Super-Gran.


Clive and I were a wee bit tentative with our pruning to begin with, agonizing over every twiglet. Then we saw a local pruning in the neighbouring quinta and Janet asked him if he would be kind enough to pop over and give us a little advice. He gave us a demonstration of a sort of Lightning Prune that had two thirds of the tree on the ground in minutes and we got a bit bolder after that.

Olive trees are a real pleasure to work with and you can feel that they love all the attention. Clive and I soon tuned in to their shape and what could go and what could stay. Every now and then there was a loud thump as a larger branch hit the ground.

Portugal - part three

On the left: Rush Hour! Twice a day the peace was disturbed a bit when this shepherd travelled across the quinta with his flock of sheep, goats, clanking bells and a lot of dogs - usually stopping for a bit of a chat or at least giving a huge long-distance wave.
On the right: Boulders - well how did those get there? Fans of Velikovsky will find much to muse on strolling amongst the giant boulders strewn mostly about the higher areas of the quinta.











On the left: the late afternoon view from an olive tree looking up to the farmhouse and giving an idea of the size of the quinta.
On the right: a beautiful sunrise over the misty valley seen from the top of the quinta on my last day there. You'll have to imagine the scent of the air though - ccol, fresh, moist, filled with wild lavender - gorgeous!
Big big thanks for a wonderful experience to Janet and Clive, all the best, lots of love and hope to see you soon.

A peaceful few days at Monimail Tower Project

Many thanks to Louise, Elly, Adam and James for all their friendly hospitality recently. What a great bunch they are! It was really good fun working with them and fascinating to see their version of eco-cooperative living in action. This is the Segal-designed house at Monimail set in the enormous walled garden. It's a very pleasant space to live in - light and roomy. Click here to see more about Monimail on the Diggers and Dreamers site.


They have tons of food growing there - much of it in poly tunnels or under netting. There's always something fresh from the garden and what they don't grow they buy in from an organic wholesaler, so they don't go to supermarkets at all - fantastic! It's obviously much cheaper but also super-healthy to - no wonder their two babies look so healthy and bouncy. (I will be having a good RANT soon about the general poor quality of food in this country and the effect on our health - don't miss that ... )

The walled garden is set in acres of woodland and they are self-sufficient for heating. There is plenty of raw material for all sorts of projects; while I was their I helped make a gate for an opening in the walled garden ... I hope it keeps those rabbits out ...



Thanks once again you lot, good luck with all your projects and hoping to see you again soon.