THE SITUATION – In Washington , DC , at a Metro Station, on a cold January morning in 2007, a man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, approximately 2,000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

After about 3 minutes, a middle-aged man noticed that there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds, and then he hurried on to meet his schedule. About 4 minutes later: The violinist received his first dollar. A woman threw money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

At 6 minutes: A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

At 10 minutes: A 3-year old boy stopped, but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head the whole time. This action was repeated by several other children, but every parent – without exception – forced their children to move on quickly.

At 45 minutes: The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

After 1 hour: He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed and no one applauded. There was no recognition at all. No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before, Joshua Bell sold-out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100 each to sit and listen to him play the same music.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell, playing incognito in the D.C. Metro Station, was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities.

This experiment raised several questions:
*In a common-place environment, at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?
*If so, do we stop to appreciate it? *Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context? One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made . . . How many other things are we missing as we rush through life?

Shaving yurt poles on a home made brace

Well actually as I write this its the first part of the 20 week organic gardening course. But we are booking for the next 3 day yurt making course at the moment, coming up on the 19 20 21st of March.

There is plenty of oppotunity for people to catch up with the 20 week course even if they miss the first one or 2 classes. Buts its 12.30-3.30pm at the Workhouse starting Thursday this week and then onwards until July. We will miss out the school holiday weeks, which is 3 times .

But yes otherwise it is Yurts next which is three days of green wood work, steam bending and making to keep your own yurt wheel, whilst working on the the other sections as well, picking experience and training in all the skills required to make your own versatile low impact dwelling. It is a very satisfactory and rewarding experience with no special experience required. This is one of our most popular short courses.

We are also offering a special 2 day introduction to green wood working on 17th and 18th with some coppice work and hopefully making some green wood working jigs and tools. There are a couple of places potentially available on this, which is a new course and is being designed and run for a specific customer, but we could offer a couple more places if required.

I am very excited already about the May PDC.. and we are taking bookings for that as well, there are still places but we have had a fair amount of interest.. We are planning practicals and visits for that at the moment and have got some very interesting people coming along so far.

Hot off the press! We are teaming up with Emma Maxwell and Coleg Harlech to offer a 20 week (60 hour) certificated course in organic gardening at the Workhouse. The course will be for 3 hours a week, on a Thursday afternoons from 12.30 – 3.30, and it is planned so that people needing to collect children from the local school can still attend.

Each week there will be a mixture of theory and practial and the course will be there to support you right through the growing season. (We wont be running sessions on the 2 weeks of the easter holiday and the half term week and there will be one practical saturday session in April (tbc).

Its £190 per person for the whole 20 week course, and the good news is that it will be straightforward to get funding via WEA or the ILA Wales. Prices are flexible (fixed by WEA) If you are retired on a penions or full benefits then it is £140. Those on means tested benefits (eg tax credits) then its £40 for the whole course. Those without any level 1 qualifications (eg GCSE) can apply for an ILA and get 100% funding for the course

Call them on their freephone number to apply for your grant. You can book your place via the Coleg Harlech.  We are just confirming all the details, so watch this space but I am keen to advertise the course as it starts soon.

20 week (60 hour) organic gardening course at the Workhouse

New video for the protest song from Show of Hands.. says it all really…. ‘Your on your yacht while we are on our knees, You stop by every tough you pass to feed, with your arrogance, igoranace and greed’

Read this for the full article, which was in the Telegraph recently. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/agriculture/farming/6828878/Britain-facing-food-crisis-as-worlds-soil-vanishes-in-60-years.html

Yes we have known about this a long time now in permaculture circles, but agriculture as we currently know is destroying our soils and although productive in the short term is the road to ruin. Intensive agriculture, ploughing, chemicals and all the rest is destroying soil structure and making them much more prone to erosion. An estimated 75 billion tonnes of soil is lost annually around the world with more than 80 per cent of the world’s farming land “moderately or severely eroded”, the Carbon Farming (http://carbonfarming.blogspot.com/) conference heard.  Also soil is a great store of carbon, and everytime we plough it up and expose it to sunlight much of that is oxidised and released back into the air. I am reminded of Arthur Hollins’ book; The Farmer the Plough and the Devil. Arthur of Ford Hall farm Shropshire was a pioneer of zero tillage agriculture, and his life long experience as a farmer convinced him that ploughing the soil is the very worst thing we can do to it.

To quote Bill Mollison, co-founder of the Permaculture concept, “If we dont stop agriculture then we are all dead!”… dramatic words perhaps, but in the light of the terrible damage we are doing to our ecological capital I think this is something we need to pay close attention to. Once again i am reminded that while we have been so fixated on the remaining stocks of our non-renewable resources like oil and various metal, it is the potentially renewable ones like topsoil, water, fish and trees that are actually the most under threat. I don not know of another system other than permaculture which spells out exactly how we might respond to challenges such as these.

Come on the May 2 week permaculture design course at the Workhouse to find out more and to meet like minded people.

There are some excellent permaculture books out there, and I have put together an Amazon on line store of some of the leading permaculture publications available from them. http://astore.amazon.co.uk/chickenshousi-21 I have been building up a library of these and other titles over the years to use on courses and for personal reference and here are some of my favourites.

The futility economy new post on the Life After the Oil Crash blog. Cheerful subject I know, but with cold weather bighting it does turn your mind to our energy dependency issues and the reality of a growing world staring the realities of looming peak energy in the face.

We have been talking about this stuff for a long time now, and with ever pressing emergency it cant be far away now. The world is scrambling for resources, with an ever growing focus on the middle east… meanwhile, I am frustrated to still be between projects and looking for land or the right location to really focus on for our own permaculture plot. Only permaculture, or rather a framework of understanding that includes a real understanding of the principles of ecology can actually address the issues we are facing.

Ha ha, I mean you can really laugh at the idea of Obama bailing out the US auto industry, if it wasnt such a tragedy, yet another wasted opportunity. They are still trying to prop up the old resource consumption based economic model, it simply cannot work.. when will we learn.. although we know it already

I revisted a Robert Anton Wilson (RIP R.A.W.) clip the other day, been years since I looked at any of his stuff…. he passed away a couple of years ago according to Wikipedia, which I had missed.. anyway.. Kunstler in the pice i linkd to talks about the changes in terms of a coming age of intelligence, I like that idea, again that is what permaculutre seems to be to me. Ha the real intelligent design. I digress. RAW talked about Intelligence squared, i to the power of 2. Using our intelligence to study our own intellignce, It was also somethin Leary had talked about too. So we have to realise that most of what we think and how we see the world is defined by our understanding of it, how we were bought up. So we have to transcend all that, before we can really start to see things clearly, for what they really are. We see everything through a cultural intellectual construct of our own making. To be truly enlightened we have to throw all of that off and see things all over again.

The shift from the Futility Economy, to the Eco economy is a shift to Intelligence, i2, genuine connectivity and productivity.. we have to apply what we have learned to build a new paradigm, not blindly follow this well trodden path that is leading us over the cliff…