Anyone who wants power shouldn't have it

All the uproar in the media and the government at the moment just reminds me of a pack of ghastly spoiled children, all screaming, bullying and cheating each other behind their backs, and all the time our environmental systems, social systems, food production, world finances are creaking at the seams ready to burst. What chance is there that these people, in the pocket of big business, will ever do anything constructive about the dire state of our world? Exactly, fuck all.
Is it a case of wicked them and good little us though? I don't think so, there's only us, and we're all to blame for having these arseholes in control and for the mess we're in. So what to do? Here's some ideas:
GO LOCAL get involved with local people and projects, they're the people you're going to be working with in the future. Help to build up local skills, resources and resilience. Help to grow food locally - check out what we're doing at Cwm Harry. And come on a Sector39 Permaculture course! Our courses are all about local solutions for world problems.
GO FRUGAL cut down on your energy usage and other inputs - the less you need the more resilient you are. Learn how to use hand tools, buy as little as possible, get good quality stuff that lasts and can be repaired. I get so annoyed with the crap furniture for sale these days, chests of drawers that are barely able to hang together long enough to be taken to the skip - what a waste of energy, time and materials.
GO GLOBAL we're all connected, the choices we make and the stuff we're complicit with to keep us in oil and winter strawberries has an effect on people all over the world - read, think, talk about it.
...and above all, don't bother waiting for the bunch or arseholes we have in power to sort things out for you, they haven't a clue how to and they don't really have any control.

Urban Permaculture in Reading

How many edible roofs do you know of?
The inspiring RISC roof garden is now mature and giving lots of produce. This one day event with Sector39 will show you the permaculture principles behind it and help you to see similar opportunities that you can take in your own locality - opportunities for growing food and in many other areas of daily life.
More about Sector39 and Forest Gardening
More about RISC - Reading International Solidarity Centre

The Storm Clouds Gather...

A couple of clips from The Oil Drum - a good source of in-depth, reasoned comment, well worth checking out if you don't already know about it:
A new paper by NASA’s James Hansen suggests that immediate and drastic declines (ca. 6% annual) in industrial CO2 emissions are required to avoid catastrophic climatic destabilization. As no realistic political solution exists for such immediate CO2 reduction, prospects for a livable future have now become dependent on a single back-breaking option: rapid global economic collapse. And in ‘Deus ex machina’ style, we may get it just in time.

...and this from Richard Heinberg, also in The Oil Drum:
At the core, though, all of these uprisings are about the simultaneous failure of modern economics and modern politics—even though systems differ somewhat from country to country. People in all of the nations mentioned have one thing in common: crushed expectations. Economists and politicians have promised jobs and growth, but instead citizens are seeing spreading unemployment, rising food and energy prices, and increasing economic inequality. Nowhere are there realistic prospects for a political remedy to worsening economic conditions. Thus, while unrest seems destined to spread and intensify in the months and years ahead, it has no clear long-term strategy or goal. 

ME and MINE Art Camp for Powys Young Carers

Lots of interesting geodesic goings-on

I was helping my friends Sue and Richie with the catering for this event, lots of people there, maybe 80 or 90 altogether. With many of them being kids I did have a few concerns about how it would go... but as it turned out this was a wonderful, fun, high-energy few days. Inspiring and sometimes moving, it was great just to see everyone getting on - and they did some fantastic artwork too.

Love all these colours and shapes...

The event was at Sychpwll, pronounced "suchpoochl", meaning "dry pool", refering to an ancient safe river crossing point. The site has been developed over many years by Pete Hendry and has lots of interesting low-impact buildings and features, including a vast photvoltaic array. It was an excellent venue for the camp and we hope to use it for Sector39 courses soon. More about Sychpwll here.

...but the final word goes to the kids.

Roots-Up at CAT

Steve talking on Permaculture during the first Welsh Living Landscape Festival at CAT

A couple of pics of the new WISE building at CAT, the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth - Steve's talks there last month went really well and sparked off some interesting questions afterwards including: 
"Examples of roots up projects are all very well but will they ever become big enough to make a difference?"
But what's happening with the Facebook revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa if that's not a roots-up phenomenon? And of course CAT itself started in a disused slate qwuarry back in 1974...

Lots of interesting angle and shapes in CAT's WISE building. A lovely feel to the place thanks to the natural materials used, on the right the impressive rammed earth walls of the theatre.

SECTOR 39 - LATEST COURSE DATES inc the EDIBLE ROOF

24th September 2011 at the RISC roof garden, Reading. Learn about urban permaculture and designing your edible landscape in this stunning, well-established, food forest ON A CITY ROOF. More HERE and see poster below.

More about this amazing garden on the Sector39 blog


All 2011 dates:

JULY 2011
10th Forest Gardening at Treflach

SEPTEMBER 2011
10th, 11th Introduction to Permaculture, Hay Farm
16th, 17th, 18th Introduction to Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening at Sych Pwll: £60
24th Forest Gardening day at RISC: £45

OCTOBER 2011
1st, 2nd W/E 1 Hereford PDC
8th to 22nd two week Permaculture Design Course at Treflach
29th 30th W/E 2 Hereford PDC

NOVEMBER 2011
26th 27th W/E 3 Hereford PDC
 MORE INFO AND BOOKINGS AT SECTOR39.co.uk

Calling Woody Women Everywhere...

Our friend Ruth Stafford sent us this:

Woody Women:

A Two Day Woodland Skills Experience for Women

• A chance for women to try a variety of woodland activities and crafts including axe work and fire-lighting.
• Enjoy a tree folklore walk in the beautiful setting of the Silk Wood Barn, Westonbirt Arboretum, near Bristol.
• Join us for fun in the woods and take home your own hand-made spatula!

Dates for 2011:

22^nd – 23^rd June    and    25^th – 26^th June

28^th – 29^th September

1^st – 2^nd October

    

Led by professional coppice workers Ruth Goodfellow and Jenna Higgins.

For June courses contact Ruth: 07794 054623 rgoodf@hotmail.com

For Sept courses contact Jenna: 07921 256466 jennahiggins@ymail.com

Cost: £135, which includes camping, materials and entry to the arboretum.

Ruth talked about coppicing on Radio 4's 'Women's Hour' April 20th:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b010dq6r

Permaculture Design at Treflach Farm May 2011

What a great bunch! I've met very few dread-locked hippy dope-heads in the Permaculture world, instead I've worked with some of the most intelligent, well-informed, caring, thoughtful people I've ever met with a broad range of practical and business experience. This course was no exception, great participants and also great people working on the various projects we visited during the course.

It's wonderful for me to be involved at the edge of exploring sustainability and I feel a sense of vindication, that it's my path. When I was living back down near Brighton I used to feel a continuous background unease, that living there was just shoring up the problems rather than looking actively for solutions.

I really enjoy working with Steve, apart from his breadth of knowledge and passion for permaculture he's always thinking about how to make the courses better and where best to put our energy generally. We included more ideas from my experience of the therapy world this time, there's a big overlap with permaculture ethics and principles. The healing journey is often a journey of inner understanding which mirrors and enhances the outward journey we are on towards regeneration of our environment and our partnership with the Earth.

There were two design briefs this time, one group worked on the project for a bunkhouse that Treflach's farmer, Ian Steele, will be building and on how to get more people involved with the farm. The other group looked at ways of developing the pigs' field into more diversity. They came up with excellent useful plans but more importantly they came to a deeper understanding of working with nature and working with each other. Well done you lot! good luck with all your projects and stay in touch.

I did these composite photos just for fun, individual photos are at:

Facebook PDC Treflach May 2011 Photo Album

Primrose Earth Awareness Trust - Quantity and Quality

Steve and I visited PEAT with friends from the Llandrindod course and it turned out to be a really inspiring morning. You can read books and look at websites all you want but there's no substitute for the impact of seeing ideas put into practice out there in a field. PEAT represents 25 years of work by Dr Paul and Jan Benham and apart from anything else is the most productive one and a half acre plot in the UK. The garden produces between £25,000 and £30,000 worth of fruit and vegetables a year. As well as quantity they have top quality too, PEAT has received no less than six True Taste of Wales awards for its produce and supplies the top end local hotel and restaurant trade, especially with salad crops. The centre is on the edge of the village of Felindre, just five miles from Hay on Wye.

That's the friendly figure of Paul front-right wearing the white shirt and green scarf

It might look a bit ramshackle here and there...

...but Paul is a master of re-using stuff and getting a lot out of a small budget. The garden plot at PEAT is the most productive 1.5 acres in the UK.

Densely packed beds in between abundant poly-tunnels

Ingenuity: cast-off fridge feezers used as plant propagators with incandescent 40w bulbs as heat sources.

One of several polytunnels - well stocked for April

 The beds are a densely packed system developed over the last 25 years and the polytunnels were in full production even in April. The plot has mostly been worked just by Paul and his wife Jan with the help of two WOOFERS in the growing and hearvesting seasons and without the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. It was really good to see so much space given over to forest gardening methods, some of it established over 25 years. There's different densities of forest gardening at PEAT and its very interesting to see how the forest areas fit in with the beds and polytunnels. I'm convinced that Forest Gardening has the potential to help many people in cities as well as out in the countryside so have started a separate page for that: Forest Gardening Page.

Roundhouse at PEAT with beautiful thatched roof.

There's lots of interesting buildings at PEAT including the roundhouse above and the earth-sheletered building below which is the regular home for two wwoofers. I didn't get a photo of another building, the "Sound Peace Chamber", which is built on an ancient sacred site and where Paul holds meetings timed with other similar buildings in different parts of the world. I hope to find out more about this work as it ties in with what I have been thinking and practising myself in the area of global communication and consciousness - learning to live with the Earth rather than on the Earth, learning to be part of a regenisis of bio-diversity rather than trampling out all life on the planet by continuing on our mad chemico-agrico path towards mass extinction.

Earth-sheltered woofer home

A pear tree with its fruit just set.

I loved this area for the variety it has on the go - well possible on the home gardening or allotment scale.

There's many areas of  forest garden at PEAT, this is the longest established one.

 As well as exploring Sound Healing for people, another area I'd like to explore more, Paul has been experimenting with treating plants with precise frequencies from tuning forks and has found that this can help to keep them healthy. Much more on the PEAT website, including details of courses and guided tours as well as many ideas about making the transition to sustainable food supply - do visit PEAT if you're in the area, I bet you'll find it inspiring too.
TWO EVENTS COMING UP AT PEAT:
Sunday 8th May 2011 - Seasonal Sounds: connecting with the energy of Spring time with sound.
15th - 17th July - Sound Healing with Nature: experiencing sound healing and the healing sense of belonging in nature.

"The Biochar Solution" by Albert Bates

What an amazing book!

This is a really good read as well as being packed full of hopeful practical ideas and solutions for world problems. There's fascinating insights about soil, chemical agriculture, climate change, the sustainable abundant forest and carbon sequestration, all backed up with references to appropriate research papers.
Albert Bates details solutions that are already transforming lives on a small scale and may even have the potential to avert climate catastrophe. When carbon in the form of charcoal is locked up in the soil it can easily stay locked up there for a thousand years and in the soil its multi-micro-pocketed structure makes it a coral reef style habitat for the millions of micro-life forms that are found in healthy soil. Biochar is charcoal that has been impregnated with nitrogen, (you just have to soak it in pee) or bacterial or mycellial cultures and helps to bring back degraded soil.
The Amazon Carbon Store
Part of the book that made my jaw drop a bit deals with the Spanish conquest and eradication of the Amazon people of the 16th century. There may have been as many as 30 million people living in the area at the time and more than 99% of them may have been wiped out, mainly by mutations of the diseases of domesticated animals to which the Europeans were acclimatised - but to which the Native Americans had no immunity...
Jaw-dropping in itself, but the sudden growth of sapling trees afterwards, which incorporate carbon at the highest rate in the trees life, may well have led to the period of global cooling from 1500 to 1750 known as the Little Ice Age.
The Lucia Stove
This is just such a nice story! Nathaniel Mulcahy, an industrial designer of home appliances, injured his spine badly in a fall down a flight of stairs. His life was saved by his dog, Lucia, who supported his head and spine for over five hours until neighbours discovered them and summoned help. Once he had recovered, Mulcahy gave up his job and turned his skills to humanitarian engineering launching the company WorldStove. Their Lucia stove, named after his dog, is a brilliant design which runs on a wide range of biomass waste eg nut shells. The stove burns its fuel very efficiently and without the smoke which is a major health hazard for families who cook on open fires. The charcoal produced by the stove can be charged with compost and used as a soil-improver while also sequestrating carbon. Each time a Lucia stove is used to cook a meal for a family it can produce enough charcoal to filter 10 liters of water. WorldStove helps local communities to set up their own stove companies and the project is changing lives from Burkina Faso to Mongolia.

WorldStove's Lucia model.

Steve and I have both been really impressed with all the ideas and possibilities for biochar and will be doing some experiments with tin cans very soon - you can download plans for a simple stove/charcoal maker, the "EverythingNice Stove" from the WorldStove site.

"The Biochar Solution" is available from New Society Publishers at $17.95.

Florida calling....

I was delighted to get a request to write a guest article for my blog from a college graduate of the University of Central Florida, Krista Peterson. Krista is an aspiring writer and Health and Safety Advocate, she is passionate about the wellness of others in her community and for the health of the environment. She says she uses her writings to spread awareness of such issues to help encourage others everywhere to live the healthiest and most eco-friendly lifestyles possible. Brilliant! I think it's great that more and more people are waking up to the fact we are going to be forced to lead very different lives in the near future. Here's Krista's article:

Students at UCF are helping to develop an array of tools to make the solar panels that make up solar farms easier to install and monitor. UCF News Report,  "Greening the World's Energy" here.

A Primer on Permaculture
With the spring finally springing and the flowers blooming it’s getting to be a lovely time to be outdoors.  This spring, as you make your way outdoors be sure and take a moment to appreciate the beauty of your natural surroundings and consider that unless we make changes to be sure that we have sustainable development it may not be there much longer.  Of course making the change to permaculture and sustainable development is a serious and major commitment, but here are three easy ways to get started!

Eat Local and Organic
While it may be the way of the future, it’s not always possible right now for everyone to make the switch over to co-op farms, where rather than having factories produce food you purchase in supermarkets (yech!) a community bonds together to help raise livestock and plants in a natural, sustainable way.  But most people are able to support these growing sustainable farms by purchasing local organic food through a farmers market or local co-op. 
Garden and Compost
Of course, another great way to get your food locally is by starting your own garden! Starting a sustainable garden can save you a little green too, even up to $800 dollars a year in food costs. Growing a garden might seem daunting at first but sustainable gardening can be pretty easy, and is a great skill to learn.  And just in case you end up not needing as much food as you grow start you can start a compost!  Every eight months the UK produces enough waste to fill Lake Windermere.  If everyone simply dropped their food scraps, grass clippings, newspaper, cardboard, and coffee grounds into a compost we could dramatically lower the waste you leave behind. 
Natural Building
Natural building is a big part of permaculture because currently our building processes simply are not sustainable.  It can be a large undertaking, but building a house using primarily natural materials like logs seriously lessens your global impact and is likely to be a key facet in human housing in the future.  There are plenty of resources available if you’re up to the challenge of natural building, but if not you can always look into more natural modifications of your current home.  For instance, soy-based insulation foam is far more sustainable and healthier than other types of insulation, and can also protect you from mesothelioma cancer!
While a major culture change towards permaculture definitely ought to be in your plans for the future, these three easy steps can get you started down the path we all need to start walking. It’s time for us to turn away from unnatural, unhealthy manufacturing ways and start examining local natural solutions within our ecosystems.
 
Thanks Krista! Great stuff, I'm looking forward to reading your own blog once it's up and running. 

Sistine Chapel Shock !!

Recent cleaning of the famous ceiling has revealed that the old familiar scene had actually been painted over this extraordinarily prescient warning:

A Dodo invites Man into the halls of Extinction: note the old master's wonderful brushwork and the delicacy of his treatment of the dodo's luxuriant plummage.

Final Weekend of Llandod Permaculture Design Course

What a journey this course has been! Instead of the usual two-week residential PDC Steve ran this course on a weekend-a-month format. This suited our course hosts, the Llandrindod Wells Transition Town Group much better - Steve will always adapt the course material to accommodate different groups' needs as far as possible.

Looking down to Nannerth Ganol through the beautiful old oaks on the hillside - I wonder how much human nonsense those old oaks have seen passing...?

Over the seven months we often said how much the Llandod course reminded us of The Council of the Elders from Lord of the Rings, partly because much of it was held at Nannerth Ganol, Roz and Brian's restored long house at the head of a beautiful valley. It was easy to feel a connection with the many generations of people who have lived there during the settlement's history - many, many thanks to Roz and Brian for all their hospitality, all the wonderful meals and for the use of their cottage. The course also had a Council of the Elders feel about it because although we had people of all ages, many of the participants have many years' experience from a wide range of working lives. It gives me a lot of hope that these respected, experienced, intelligent, connected people took the time to sit down together and study how we can work with nature to design truly sustainable lives and systems for the future - another big thank you to all the participants, it's been a wonderful experience getting to know you all. I'm looking forward to seeing how all the projects everyone is involved with flourish - not least the house whose re-design was central to the course, Lis and Nick's house, Trosnant.

 

Steve discussing garden plans with Lis and Nick, Trosnant in the background

Fully-fledged garden design above - the participants came up with excellent, detailed, integrated designs for the house, garden, energy and work systems, for Lis and Nick's contact with the community and with space deliberately kept free for "Wilderness Ideas" or inspiration from the bigger picture.

Unusual but very effective presentation idea from Alan - a box pasted up with permaculture ideas containing a wealth of local resources.

1: Scything Workshop, part of the final weekend. 2: Different blades for scrub and grass.  3: Removing bumps and twists from blade using mini-anvil or "peen". 4: Scything's a bit like Tai Chi...

Now we're getting ready for our next course, a return to Treflach Farm, 8th to 21st May, where it will be fascinating to see how Ian Steele is already incorporating some of the design ideas from our first course there back in October 2010. This is a unique opportunity to get right into the nuts and bolts of food production, energy systems, building bio-diversity, community access to land and much more - places still available - BOOK NOW !!

Traveling and Exploring - Great Resources

Matt Richards posted these links from his friend Tim Richard's Blog - great to see so much stuff going on:

Global Ecovillage Network – find one near you: http://gen.ecovillage.org/
    * Fellowship for Intentional Communities – find one near you: http://directory.ic.org/
    * Eurotopia – find an intentional community or ecovillage in Europe: http://www.eurotopia.de/
    * Worldwide Permaculture Network – the Facebook of Permaculture; find people and projects: http://www.permacultureglobal.com/

PERMACULTURE - TREFLACH TWO

!! UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY - BOOK NOW !!

We are back at Treflach, Farm in Transition, for a second two-week Permaculture Design Course running from May 8th to 21st, 2011. Our first course there was inspirational, empowering and lots of fun for all, see earlier post: October 2010, Treflach.
Farmer Ian Steele is already grappling with the issues that will force change on us all. As he said himself, "Peak Oil has already happened for us, every time I hear a tractor start up my heart sinks because I know we can't afford the diesel". Ian has already started to implement some of the ideas the course participants came up with on the October course. This is a unique opportunity to study many urgent issues: Transition/Energy Descent, Peak Oil, Food Security, Community Land Access amongst many others.
Permaculture gives us a framework for observing and working with natural patterns and processes. From there we can design and build truly sustainable systems for all aspects of our lives.
The course will mainly be taught by Steve Jones who takes endless trouble to work with all participants' interests and backgrounds. Guest sessions will be given by others including Chris Dixon who has had many fascinating insights through his own work at Tir Penrhos Isaf.
I hope to be doing a presentation on design, Tai Chi and Chi Kung in the mornings and just helping the show along generally.
MORE DETAILS AND BOOKING AT SECTOR39 HERE.

Informed Comment on Japan Nuclear Crisis

Act of Desperation

For the best commentary I've found on the situation at Fukushima go to: The Oil Drum. Excellent informed detail on what is most likely to be happening with the fuel rods, the problems which may be caused by pumping seawater into stainless steel components and likely outcomes for the whole situation. Throwing water from helicopters looks pretty desperate, the pilots have less than a minute over the site before picking up an overdose of radiation.

Roundhouse Reciprocating Roof Up

We are absolutely delighted to have the roof poles up on the roundhouse at Cwm Harry, it's a triumph of co-operation and it's been a really interesting experience for me and lots of fun too.

1. The gentleman in the middle of the photo is Clive Newman who has many years of experience of working on unusual buildings at CAT. Clive's help was really valuable in setting out the angles for the poles and also in general advice on fixings, turf roofs etc etc - thank you Clive!
2. Once we had the first pole up we judged the layout for the rest by eye and bolted them together at the top.
3. Pole number ten being eased into place.
4. With all eleven poles in place forming a circle with each one resting on its neighbour and all well bolted down the great moment comes when Steve removes the inital support and....
5. ...voila! Triumph! Not only does it stay up but it also feels very solid; Richie has a victory walk up onto the finished frame.

A FEW DETAILS: 1. Screw plates helped to strengthen the ring of horizontal members - there's not much lateral force from the roof poles but there is some. 2. We made a surface with the adze to help secure the poles. 3. Roof poles secured on the perimeter with dowels - we nailed them down as well later. 4. The horizontal ring is so massive that we were able to space the roof poles at whatever interval we wanted.

TOOLS & TECHNIQUES: 1. Simple tools including a froe for shaping (the one with the red blade. 2. We only had 8" plus diameter logs so split them up for the roof, some with a chainsaw and... 3 & 4. Some with wedges and mallets. 5. We cut checks out of the horizontals with chainsaw. 6. Dave and I set a horizontal in place. 7. Some manic hand-sawing from Steve. 8. Great teamwork, twelve of us working on the house at one point. 9. One of the Daves trimming wood for the infil panels. 10,11 & 12. Filling in the side spaces.

Two-Day Forest Gardening Course at Berington Hall

This is Berington Hall set in about twenty acres of land near Shrewsbury and home of the Crabapple Community - more about them on the Diggers and Dreamers website. The community is going well with eight adult and five child members but with room for more if you're interested. Nettie from the community got in touch with us asking if we would like to teach a Forest Garden course there, which we were delighted to do. The hall is a Georgian building and times were very different when it was built, it's an interesting challenge in itself to live there in the present day let alone the complexities of managing the land. The community have made a big investment in a giant wood fired heating system which has made living there much more comfortable but does use a lot of wood...

Some of the many tons of wood the new heating sytem uses. A clay book in a workshop in the stable block to the rear of the house.

The Forest Classroom, easy to observe the features of a forest at Berington.

With such a variety of land use around Berington Hall, there's everything from open meadow to mature woodland, it's an ideal place to observe and think about the processes of the forest, eg succession, stacking and the importance of the edges. We had a large group but with three key areas of interest: urban regeneration, education and the hall itself. On the second day we split the group into three workshops to duscuss these different areas. It was time well spent and brought up some good insights and experiences. For myself, I love the broad potential application of Forest Gardening and how the same principles can be applied on many different scales and in the city just as much as the countryside. I'm working on a separate page on this blog as a resource and networking link just for Forest Gardening. 

 

Steve talks about some of the plants that are at home in the forest and how they fit into the different layers of the system.

We had a long practical session on the second day with many trees, bushes, herbs as well as rooty and ground covery things to plant but with so many people working together we got loads done.
Many thanks to Nettie, Stewart, Nickie, Stewart, Jo, Paul, Martin and Clive for all their hospitality and a fascinating insight into communal living in a grand old house. Thanks to the kids too for the daffodils!