It is a 5-day intensive coruse where participants will get to design our new community growing base, on the Coleg Powys campus in Newtown. You will come out witht eh confidence adn knowledge to be able to design a garden for your self and will have a good grasp of the key concpets in horticulture, permaculture and garden design. We think this is an unmissable opportunity for anyone interested in getting invovled with community gardens.

So I am excited to be thinking about going over to Portugal in June to teach on the PDC that Caryn Le Feuvre has organised on her stunning small holding in the central mountenous area of the country. There are still a few places available, and although I am expecting mainly people from the surrounding area to be attending, it will also be an ideal place to study your PDC, regardless of whether you are based in Portugal or not. This is a stunning venue See Pics here and should be a ground breaking course. There is a strong theme of eco-village development to this course, as there is local interest in developing the residential potential of the area and developing a stronger community network.

As you move around the world the details change.. but the overall patterns don’t… and permaculture is about seeing and understanding the underlying patterns without getting bogged down in the specifics of detail.

To Book a place: Please directly in touch with Caryn Le Feuvre, she has set up a FB event for the course and you can contact her through that.. Any problems, get in touch with me, Steve Jones on 0771 981 8959, or   steve at sector39 dot co dot uk

Eco Aldeia Permalógica

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.

• For an idea of the severity of the situation at Fukushima read this recent article, which has been published in a variety of places after a  recent  Congressional delegation trip to Japan, by Sen. Ron Wyden

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

Raised beds at Primrose organic garden

It is often boasted that per acre this is the most productive piece of land in the UK, mabe even Europe. Permaculture design, organic processes and lots of volunteers are the secret of this magnificant garden near Hay on Wye

Here is an excellent narated slideshow of the garden, produced by the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/audioslideshow/2011/jul/21/primrose-organics-audio-slideshow?fb=native

The video above is a rather heavy lecture, so by way of contrast here is a much shorter, punchier news story on Peak Oil from an Australian TV channel. I use this short video a lot in public talks and workshops, its an excellent teaching resource as it makes all the key points in 10 minutes without it being a lecture. I would like o be able to show the first video to eveyone but accept that most people cant endure something so slow.. so the second clip is the one I most use when engaging with new audiences about Peak Oil.

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.

Website of Llanrhaeadr Community Energy project

For the last month or so we have been working flat out, putting this project together. click on the image to visit the website… and please come and support our event this thursday.

Energy prices are on the rise again.. and there is a likelihood that they could surge again, like they did in the 70′s if a market panic sets in, or worse – some middle east upset. All the evidence says we are now at world Peak Oil and supply constriction is very likely, slowly choking the global economy… all this of course should urge us to redouble our efforts to reduce climate change emissions, and get off fossil fuels even more quickly. But we never seem to hear such a clear unequivocal message… and ever vague reassurance that normal economic growth service will resume as quickly as possible.

Well it seems that local energy projects should be all the rage from here on in…. audit your community energy use.. and work out a plan to reduce it. Promote that learning and hopefully get more people to take it on.. and then turn your attention to renewable generation and what is practically possible.

We have put a load of information together for this project, and will be sharing the results over the Internet in the coming weeks, stay tuned folks! We are looking forward to ur community event sharing the findings of our inital works and surveys… and getting a feel for what people out there thnk themselves. i think many folk are supicious of wind farms adn solar.. it is still alien to them as they have never had to thnk about energy much at all.. just plug in… but with prices rising and rising I think it could be agood time to start a dialogue.

I am going to be talking about permaculture and gardens and the secrets of working with nature. There will be slides and video clips to illustrate the key ideas.

There will be lots of space to share your own ideas, ask questions and help us shape where we go next with these ideas. We are keen to create a community orchard, but are also happy to hear other ideas and suggestions.

Permaculture offers us the most energy efficient and resilient form of horticulture, and has the potnetial to build very resilient productive systems to provide resources for our needs. With an uncertain energy future, and precarious economics the suggestion is that building our local food supply and production might prove to be a very wise precaution.