Little bits of self-sufficiency

This year we have eaten all our own rhubarb, but due to dry weather it has gone to seed (first time in 7 years). Don't buy shallots or onions, grow my own from sets, the shallots keep for up to 2 years, just gathered them in before the welcome rain of the last two days. Must get onions up and in soon. Ground still very hard, big cracks in clayey soil on allotment. Wonderful red and black currants this year. The bushes are not expensive to buy as small plants, don't need a lot of work, weeding, feeding, mulching, pruning maybe twice a year, netting to save the fruit from pigeons. Just put away many pots of redcurrant jelly and blackcurrant jam, make good  presents. French friends sometimes a bit bemused by my concotions such as rhubarb and ginger jam, green tomato chutney, chinese plum sauce... Trying to grow angelica again.

 Potatoes this year a disaster, very dry weather and some late frost. Beans looking good and enough for some nearly every day, will get boring soon. Years ago used to slice with a little machine and then salt them in big earthenware jars. Remember having a complete cupboard filled with Kilner jars with mainly fruit in. No freezers in the 1950s only a small fridge. luxury (you were lucky... young people nowadays...). Bendix washing machine my dad bought to cope with the nappies after I arrived in 1945 cost over £100, a small fortune, you could survive on £200 a year, lasted 30 years. I digress. We used to have fruit picking parties with all ages involved, a huge picnic lunch. I remember lots of people sitting round the kitchen table preparing fruit for bottling or making into jam. A joint endeavor, laughter, singing, drinking, playing "sardines" in the garden, a lot of cigarette smoking (both parents smoked 50 a day).


What is the point of all this you might well ask? It feels good to produce some of your own food, to be able to give it away, to cook and eat it, to share it. I get great joy from watching my grandchildren pick fruit as I did when small, to look for beans to pick, where they gathered the bean seeds, dried, sorted and planted them. I'm trying to reconnect them to the soil, the earth on which we all depend for our survival. To feel a part of nature not apart from it. To develop a sense of place, belonging, heimat, at-homeness. To come to know the seasons, the weather, the need for rain and frost, as well as sun and warmth. ho hum

Chief Seattle's Testimony

I  came across Neil Spencer's "looped cursive" handwriting book from my class of 9 year olds in 1976. His handwriting had improved wonderfully during the year in my class and he was proud for me to keep it as an example of what can be achieved. What has this to do with sustainability you might well ask. Well, after using Spike Milligan poems and children's regional skipping games (Iona & Peter Opie + children's own knowledge) for the texts for our daily 4 lines or so of handwriting, I came across Chief Seattle's Testimony. So we used that and spent time discussing what had happened in 1854, what his message to the white man was and what it might mean for us in Colne, Lancashire today. The children were genuinely inspired by his words (even if he didn't say exactly that, even if they were changed at a later date, even if they were invention. See "A native american eco-gospel or Southern Baptist creation?") It made them think about their environment and how it was being spoiled. It helped them to realise the importance of noticing nature across the seasons, during our monthly walk around the same patch of cemetry, riverbank, woodland and abandoned land behind the old Lancashire cotton mills, long silent. That summer term we organised cleaning the river/stream with the help of the local district council who provided, gloves and plastic sacks and a skip. It was a success but deemed too risky to repeat. "Why were they not in school? Wasn't it too dangerous? What were they learning from the experience? "Shouldn't the council clean up the river/stream?... How proud they were of what they had achieved. I told them earlier in the year that if they started and finished each lesson on time saving at least 5 mins. for each lesson, more than 20 mins. a day, and nearly 2 hours a week, they would earn 3 whole days during the summer term to do some worthwhile project that they could choose. Another year and another class, we conducted a local tree survey over a period of  a few weeks.
The good news, some of the trees especially the ones with TPOs (tree preservation order) are still there, the little saplings in danger of being vandalised, now majestically line the road. The children knew they had made a small difference. The bad news, 3 years after the river clean up a local company up stream suffered a fractured pipe on a suphuric acid storage tank. The children now at the local secondary school came to me one day after school in tears to tell me about the dead fish. It mattered to them, it was their river now. The company was fined, and eventually life returned to the little river. I have happy memories watching them play by the side of a sand bank, swimming and splashing after the clean up knowing all the broken glass, old bikes and steel drums ... had been removed. I wonder what their children's experiences have been?. Neil will be 43.
How can we develop a sense of place in today's children?

Might Twitter give rise to Tweets as the new Haiku?

Direct experience before words and language?

Cool morning air touches my nostrils. Am I breathing in
or is Gaia breathing out? Ah!

2 crickets signal the end of St Glace, the warmth returns.
In go the tomato plants.

Watching hairs on my old paintbrush.
How many strokes, cutting in, playing a role to make the edge?

This mouthful, honey's silky sweetness, nectar gathered from many flowers,
incessant work for my one  lick.

Nothing to lose but my insanity.
Memories of playing a kazoo on the train. Just be. Now.

The candle is burning down. My gap year is coming to an end.
I need to use my time wisely.

Transient birdsong, blackbird, cuckoo, dog barking, traffic, my breath,
bell chimes 9.

When spitting, spit, with a balance of tension and relaxation,
with intention, deliberately, mindfully.

Small actions; little things

What litte things can we do to live a bit more simply?
"Live simply, that others may simply live." A 1970s sound-bite..
I picked some fresh mint to make tea and thought about the zero food miles, packaging.....
For years I've been planting cuttings from herbs, growing them on a bit and then giving them away or selling them at school fairs etc. I've planted out a few sprigs of rosemary and lavender descended from parent plants from 1986 in Cornwall, now growing in France and heaven knows where else.
I filled a raised bed, made from salvaged timber, with compost which must be at least 5yrs old. I'll plant beans in one and tomatoes in the other. All the old garden rubbish had completely broken down. The ash tree benefitted from all that rubbish we piled next to it in 1994, such as layers of ancient chicken muck we initailly mistook for lime rendering it was so hard. I use a shredder now to reduce all the hedge and orchard prunings to small pieces. I store them for a year or two before using them as mulch.
The weather has been getting colder 20, 19, 18 ....15 degrees C. So put on another sweater. Once I get working I soon warm up. It is interesting how quickly the body gets used to a dwelling at around 15 degrees C. No central heating here to turn down in these C18th cottages, but thick mud and river stone walls hold the heat. I knew it was colder inside because the butter was hard.
Snowed today so had to cut up some old wood and light the woodburner. Old hand riven oak roofing lattes, salvaged when the barn was re-roofed 10 years ago, must be well over 100 years old nearer 200.

 

Spring is on its way

The cold weather has broken down the soil into a fine tilth; just hoed with a push-pull hoe, cuts the weeds well. Burning rubbish, hope to make some charcoal to incorporate into the soil, great benefits and easy to do.  Get the fire going, put on the wood or organic matter, waste, cuttings... cover up with weeds or soil to excluded air. Next day open up the reduced pile. There should  be charcoal (bio-char) amongst the ashes. Rake shovel out and work into the soil. Planted shallots, easy to grow, keep well and a high value crop. Half my onion sets in now rest in later. Very early potatoes in now.
Met my friends John & Sarah Snyder, from the Sahara Project 1986 - 1992, after 18 years. John has just digitised the 35000 images he took in Mali and converted them into a film. A copy of the 43G file now sits on a tiny 250G external hard drive that easily fits in my pocket. Oh how the technology has changed since laser vision disc of the late 1980s. John is still working with Dr Mark Porter of "Muscat" fame (an early  probablisitic search engine). Their current project is "Grapeshot".

My Head in a Tag Cloud

Strange the way things come together. Have made contact with old friends over the past few weeks and new contacts have offered new links and ideas. Brenda  is working in France on local green issues and suggested I opened up the comments. So I have. Caleb Gattegno's Educational Solutions has changed hands and now most of his extensive writing is available to read on-line. Re-inventing Education is increasingly important. Gattegno suggested that we "sub-ordinate teaching to learning".
After many years interest in the use of charcoal to improve soils both in my own garden/allotment and when in Zambia in early 70s, BioChar is now big news. Can you imagine the internal surface area of a lump of charcoal no bigger than a sugar lump being 100m2!! Imagine you are a micro-organism. What a great place to live. terra preta
Rolf Jucker gave an interesting seminar at IRIS in Cheltenham on 4th Dec. "Systemic Change in the Age of Stupid" Swiss goings on in ESD. He is Director of Swiss Foundation for Environmental Education.
I'm still struggling with what to use as tags. Too many tags makes the tag cloud I'm using weaker, too few restricts the concepts/ideas in the cloud. Restricted vocabulary or free? What happens in ESD Electronic Service Delivery that is when the words you think are really important for survival, such as resilience, soil improvement, rich soil, power down, energy descent, energy decline, limits to growth, are not included?
Wonderful, wonderful COP15. Will it be??
Have a look at 10x10, Ecoloqo & of course my Diigo tag cloud.

Autumn 2009

Well I'm back from France. The main structural work on the eco-barn is completed. I hope to finish it next summer. The allotment looks a bit neglected but good crops of potatoes, shallots, onions, black & red currants and beans before we left end of July. Green manure has worked well and covering fallow soil with garden rubbish &/or cardboard just fine.
Major recent influences include: Great new book on Sustainability Literacy; continued interest globally in the potentail for bio-char to sequester Carbon and improve soils water and nutrient holding capacity and hence productivity.
Eckhart Tolle and excellent articles in Resurgence magazine 256 on Consciousness.
I'm still stuggling with Tag list (controlled vocabulary), but warming to a solution.
Tag cloud for ESDGC