Permaculture adventures in Sector39

Trying to make sense of living in a crazy time

Category : sustainability

Permaculture Design Course, plans for 2013

February 1st 2013 Posted at permaculture design course, sustainability
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permaculture design course 2013

PDC advert 2013

Permaculture is the fastest growing, most vital and energetic grass roots movement around. Permaculture addresses the challenging issues of the day.. resource depletion, climate change, soil loss, financial chaos and the social and economic turmoil that goes with that.

Globalisation is a massive failure, finance and banking has become a global fraud, Western economies are suffocating in unmanageable levels of debt, collapsing biodiversity,  soil erosion, lowering water tables and deforestation are typical of the massive degradation we are inflicting on the physical environment. Bizarrely our economic paradigm actually values resource destruction and environmental damage as a measurement of achievement and consequently decision makers, politicians and corporates are wilfully blind to the devastation they are causing.

Permaculture is a grass roots, bottom up design process which attempts to address all of these issues.. it focusses on self empowering and bypasses many of the blockages to launching projects and initiatives from within the mainstream.  Permaculture is about modelling on nature to build resilience, to re-localise and regenerate the social and biological complexity that globalised systems have eroded.

We will be based on a 100 acre family farm in the Welsh Marches and interacting with a community in transition whilst visiting some of the leading permaculture projects and organic farms in the area. We will mix classroom based theory, presentations and video with practical sessions on gardening, woodwork, crafts with field trips and site visits.

This is a course for anyone with an active interest in our continued survival on this planet. This is an energising, inspirational and uplifting experience with the power to transform and create new possibilities.

Pricing. We work very hard to make our courses and affordable and accessible as possible. Price includes camping in your own tent, 3 delicious and nutritious meals a day, tuition, field trips, certification and practicals. No unavoidable extras.

Full price is £600, with some places available at £450 for folks on low income or students.

There are 2 places at £150 for volunteers/ interns/ or trainees.. applications will be assessed by us according to need.

Everyone is expected to join in to help with serving and clearing meals, site maintenance etc..

Dates and times:

Those travelling to the farm are encouraged to arrive on  on Saturday 11th May. We will provide evening meal at 6.30 pm and there is an (optional) evening video screening that evening. Nearest station is Gobowen (for Oswestry).

Tuition starts at 9.00 am Sunday May 12th.

On the Middle weekend (18/ 19 May) there will be a trip to the Welsh Smallholders show at Llandrindod Wells show-ground (packed lunch)
On the Sunday we will be visiting the beautiful Welsh mountain village and waterfall at Llanrhaeadr ym Mochnant, with a roast lunch in the local pub (£8.50 extra)

The course finishes 5pm, on Saturday 25th May. Participants and encouraged to stay for an evening closing party, with pizza, local ales and wines and homespun entertainment and folk music (Food £7 extra).

Site clear up and departure by  Midday Sunday 26th May.

Booking and additional Info

Please complete a booking form and a deposit of £150 is required in advance to secure a place. Balance to be paid minimum of 2 weeks prior to the course starting.

There is much more general information about our permaculture courses on the Sector39 PDC page

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Essential Soil Lecture

January 24th 2013 Posted at good teaching resources, Soil, sustainability
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Anyone with an interest in permaculture already know how important soil is to our survival. In this well presented lecture geologist Dave Montgomery argues taht we have the potential to sequester much of the carbon we are currently emitting into the atmosphere back into soil with different management techniques. He provides some excellent statistics to back up the main thrust of what we present on permaculture design courses regarding soil management and carbon storage. A stand out statistic is that 1/3 of CO2 added to the atmosphere by human activity has come from ploughing up soils and therefore gives is the chance to put something of that magnitude back into the soil through changed farming practices.

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Clear, sane and erudite. Watch this challenging and very well constructed argument

September 9th 2012 Posted at current affairs, peak oil, renewable energy, social change, sustainability
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This is very well presented speech which must have been recorded in the build up to the Copenhagan summit.. and we all know what happend there.. the global car crash of the multilateral response to climate change.. but these are very wise and measured words and offer clear and precise ways forward… this is the kind of thinking the World needs and what we should be paying attention to.

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Biochar.. and the secretes of Eldorado

September 2nd 2012 Posted at biochar, permaculture, sustainability
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With melting polar ice caps, retreating glaciers and increasingly unpredictable weather patterns the need to directly address climate change has never been so important. Does an ancient civilization that once lived in the Amazon jungle hold a possible key to not just addressing carbon capture and storage but also of addressing that of global food security. Please do take the time to watch this extraordinary video if you have not already.

This is a truly remarkable story which surely has the upmost significance in the context of our looming and great challenges of confroning energy security and climate change.

This documentary presents all the evidence you need to demonstrate that there was a huge and advanced civilization in the Amazon 2000 – 500 years ago. Contemprary to the Egyptians the amazon was home to great cites, complex settlement and agrigucltural practices. Not only does this completely change the way we see the jungleasa a wild and untamed landscape but it also changes the idea of our relationship with the soil itself. Essential watching and a topic that demands further and immediate investigation. Not to be too dramatic, but i cant but help think this is highly significant stuff.

There is an abbitional bit on the end of this looking at the wider implications and possibilities of biochar from a recent conference. Both are essentail watching, and once your appetite is whetted you need to read Biochar solution by Albert Bates.

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Climate change and all that stuff…

August 7th 2012 Posted at community gardens, sustainability
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Blah blah.. global warming.. blah blah…it kind of flows over you after a while.. yet still it amazes me how we stumble on, ignoring the increasingly obvious reality.. but at some point something big is going to break, then we will wonder why we didnt DO SOMETHING sooner.


“This is not some scientific theory. We are now experiencing scientific fact,” NASA’s James Hansen told The Associated Press in an interview.

“Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.

The deadly European heat wave of 2003, the fiery Russian heat wave of 2010 and catastrophic droughts in Texas and Oklahoma last year can each be attributed to climate change. And once the data are gathered in a few weeks’ time, it’s likely that the same will be true for the extremely hot summer the United States is suffering through right now.

These weather events are not simply an example of what climate change could bring. They are caused by climate change. The odds that natural variability created these extremes are minuscule, vanishingly small. To count on those odds would be like quitting your job and playing the lottery every morning to pay the bills.”

As climate change accelerates, it appears the Obama administration is in retreat. In an address on Thursday, the top climate negotiator for the United States rejected the administration’s formal commitment to keeping global warming less than two degrees Celsius (3.6°F) above pre-industrial levels. This about-face from agreements endorsed by President Barack Obama in 2009 and 2010 indicates a rejection of the United Nations climate negotiations process, as well as an implicit assertion that catastrophic global warming is now politically impossible to prevent.

.. that is a really depressing thought… but of of course the truth is what we have known all along, that the kind of change we need to bring about a genuinely sustainable society is not going to come from the top down.. it really is a step too far for Government that is basically bank rolled by mega corps and self interest. Change is going to come from the bottom up, simply with a better idea.. Freemarket capitalism has got us thus far… it has managed to feed and educate at least half the World and bought us to this big turning point in our evolution.. but it simply cannot get us any further, it is time to let go of that life raft and swim for ourwselves.

It is hard to fully understand how we seem willing to risk everything we have achieved as civilized society becuase of our lack of ability to make an evolutionary step in terms of the way we use energy and relate to our environment. The faster we can get off oil will be the true measure of our adaptiveness as a species.. this fossil fueled ride has to stop before we cause runaway damage that we simply cannot bring back under control. Most of the time I feel optimisitic about our ability to make this journey, this essential change.. but every now and then, especialy when I read articles like those one above I feel a deep dispair. Actually also a fear, in that our leaders and the global elites and corprations are effectively saying they are prepared to sacrifice the majority (i.e US) for the benefit of maintaining a staus quo that empowers the few. Crazy.

meanwhile, while the denial industry rolls on, I guess the best any of us can do is to build working models and alternatives…

I am working with colleagues in Newtown Wales to establish a community growing hub, working with volunteers and trainees. It is small, new and ambitious.. we know we dont have all the ansers to these huge global challenges but we are formulating local meaingful responses that will at elast keep us sane in the meanwhile, and hopefully contribute to the wider sustainability transition experience.

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Read all about it! How a cooperative saved a home, a wonderful story… by Carla Ranicki

July 11th 2012 Posted at cooperatives, sustainability
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Big thanks to Carla Ranicki for a story on Permanent Housing Cooperative, published on Stories.coop . 

I met Carla in the Spring, when I had been invited to North London to run a 2 day introduction to Permaculture course, at the cecil Sharp House by Anna Locke for their Transition group. So I had mentioned housing coops and some of my experiences with them and she had siezed on that story and interviewed me about it and I had put her in touch with Sue Doleman and Permanent Housing, so we got teh chance to tell our little story.

There are currently 4 generations of the same familly living at Pen Y Lan.. and it has been a protracted struggle to save the house from a long -looming divorce settlement , let alone to find the resources to make it properly habitable. comfortable and energy efficent to modern standards. Now with new solid wall insulation, a solar roof, solar hotwater, and refurbished extension it has found a new lease of life under cooperative ownership. Read all about it!

Turning a welsh cottage into a home for the future: Solar roof installation at Permanent Housing co-operative, March 2012

Aquaponics Video, from the Permaculture Association
This looked like an interesting video so I thought i would add it here to share

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From Gangs to Gardens..

June 1st 2012 Posted at current affairs, forest gardens, social change, sustainability
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Obviously, stories like this one below are very heartening, how community gardens transformed a gang-ridden drug-dealing neighbourhood into an inter-connected community.. but I guess the key question is what is the real lesson and how can we replicate this kind of success elsewhere? (Click on the image to visit the original article)

 

“A major reason our food system is so damaged —so dominated by corporate interests, rife with unhealthy products, and unbalanced by unequal access —is that we too often fail to consider food a social good or to understand that growing, selling, and eating food is by its nature a meaningful social act.”

Farmer Joel Salatin: Why Changing the Food System is Up to You

That is the farmer in the Food Inc movie talking above.. and he is so right. We need to reclaim food production for ourseles and to frame it according to our own values. My personal belief, which is developing ever stronger over time is that the core of our food, the day to day stuff, shouldn’t be part of the economy at all.. or rather certainly not the global economy.. we should be aiming to produce most of what we need to be healthy individuals locally, from local resources and outside of the globalised system. This is true resilience surely and it would generate thousands of jobs, right at the level and exactly where they were needed, locally.

So what is it that is stopping us from responding to this reality? Aside from access to land and the basic growing skills… which is a significant barrier I guess, there is also lack of time and perceived priorites of other activities which take us away from getting involved with the food system more directly. Cheap supermarket products have disempowered us really.. and made us slaves to the trollies and ailses. In many ways the spiralling energy and food prices can be seen as an opportunity or catalyst that can facilitate change in a more positive direction. The opportunites for community growing and for engaging with the areas of our communites where there are under-used resources; unemployed people, those in rehabilitation, retired, between things, looking to learn etc, coupled with the resources of under-used plots of land, the compost made from waste are simply immense.

The Stockbridge village area of Liverpool

I am thinking about this a lot at the moment, through work with Get-Growing, developing community garden plots in the Marches here in Wales but more recently I have been invited to develop ideas and training sessions to develop community gardens in this area of Liverpool.

There is a lot of high density housing, both tower block and terraces deployed in what is actually a rather open landscape. It was obviously developed with a sort of garden city feel intension.. but really the result is large, open, rather dead spaces which the residents have very little connection with.

My first impression was that could be a significant area of opporunity here to develop a productive landscape. Without wanting to criticise an area I am not familier with, it does strike me as one of those developments that has not really succeded to meet the needs of the community that surround it.

So just today I have agreed in principle to work 80 days over the next 19 months with this community via Squash Nutrition towards these aims. It is a very exciting challenge for me and a chance to take permaculture into a new area altogether… by all accounts there is a great enthusiasm in the host community to learn how to grow food and at the same time I hope the process of starting this happening can really invigorate the whole community. The process has aready begun and my first community engagement session is scedualed for 14th June.. so lots more to follow on this story!

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No Nukes? and thoughts on establishing a crime of ‘Ecocide’

May 7th 2012 Posted at renewable energy, social change, sustainability
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Click on the image to see the linked article from Reuters, announcing that Japan has switched off its last nuclear power station for maintenance.. and is awaiting national approval before it can switch any of them back on again.

It’s a positioning stand-off that encapsulates the world energy situation. Faced with the frightening challenges of energy security and potential nuclear devastation, which would you choose? The pro-nuclear rhetoric of  ‘the new generation reactors are safe. .. etc.’ can’t wash very well in a nation that hangs in the balance over the outcome of its existing nuclear resource, let alone any potential future one.

If it really is that bad then firstly, God help us all…  what the fuck has been unleashed on the World?

There is still no answer of what to do with spent nuclear fuel rods.. so leaving them lying around in a big pile ends up being an option. There is also no clear idea of how we deal with a nuclear accident once it has happened.  Of course they are not supposed to happen, it is on this basis that we went into nuclear development in the first place.. but they have happened.. and by all accounts they will happen again. The World is headed into energy descent and this reduced energy world would mean that we will have less energy available to deal with the toxic legacy of the last 70 years or so. There are something in the region of 240 nuclear power stations around the World, so what happens as old nation states disintegrate into smaller, poorer ones? Who owns the toxic legacy? Who is responsible? how will we afford to safely decommission the existing plants and deal with the residues?

In his brilliant book Collapse,
Jared Diamond talks about the mining legacy of the US state of Montana… mineral and metal extraction from almost 100 years ago has left the rural state with slowly dilapidating mine infrastructure such as dams and tailings ponds that will cost billions to remediate, well beyond the reach of the state budget, and liabilities incurred by companies that essentially no longer exist; they  have been bought out and resold and historic liabilities have been shuffled off the balance sheets in one way or another. So who is responsible now, today, financially to take care of these huge environmental liabilities? This is an example of what will become a key challenge for the next economic generation, dealing with the long term consequences of short term thinking.

For us to contemplate filling our short term energy gap as we wean ourselves off the hugely destructive carbon fossil fuels , with what is still a hugely flawed technology such as nuclear is simply unthinkable until we have least answered the questions already raised by our collective pursuit of this technology. I will only support further nuclear development when all the existing power station are safe, managed by some global affiliation of nuclear operators and the questions of what to do with the waste has been properly answered. We need a fully fledged nuclear decommissioning industry in place before we invest another penny in building more of the wretched things.

Let us not forget the nuclear is also a fossil fuel industry… uranium has to be mined from the earth’s crust, and it is also a finite resource. The only option that will stand us in good  favour with our descendants will be a quick and total move to clean renewable sources of energy,  I simply don’t care how hard that is, how challenging to our economies, to the sacred alter of economic growth.. the transition away from fossil fuels is of paramount importance.

I read a definition of Permaculture from Patrick Whitefield the other week which seems very apt… Permaculture is the transition from Fossil fuels to design. From fossil fuel power to brain power. We will have to think and design our way out of this mess… investing in more of the same for the sake of short term aims is not going to get us anywhere.

Polly Higgins, talks about her quest to define an international law of Ecocide

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Dmitri Orlov on collapse

April 4th 2012 Posted at climate change, evolution, peak oil, sustainability
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Fans of James Howard Kunstler will have heard all about Dmitri Orlov. He who witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union, and can see all the signs of collapse in the USA currently. As we watch the global economic paradigm slowly unravel, what can we expect to see? What have we learned from the collapse that has already happened?
Orlov brings a very interesting perspective and analysis on the state of flux the World is currently entering into, asking some far-reaching and challenging questions. Although recored a few years ago, this is well worth watching now, his voice seems even more challenging coming from the perspecitive of a few years ago, he challenges you to think deeply about what are our priorites should be in these changing times.

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Vanadana Shiva talks about the rise of the corporate state

March 28th 2012 Posted at social change, sustainability
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Spokesperson for how many million Indian farmers and the poor and oppressed around the world, Vandana Shiva is a scientist, political activist and food champion. Always a powerful speaker, always worth paying attention to and always controversial… well worth watching.

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