September 2, 2009
Eating seasonable fruit and veg can be a great way to save yourself money, and reduce your impact on the environment. It can be hard though to work out what really is in season now that you can get pretty much anything at any time of year.
Luckily there’s a great new website – EatSeasonably.co.uk – that tells you what to eat now, and even what to grow. It’s all presented in a great format and can be printed out and stuck to the fridge. We’re going to try it out and see!
August 25, 2009
We’ve just had a great visit from Action for Sustainable Living. They’re a really inspirational local charity working on building a sustainable future in Machester and Trafford – they’ve even been nationally recognised for their work, winning the 2008 National Guardian Charity Awards.
They’re looking out for local people who are passionate about making their communities a better place, so we said we’d help get the word out!
Volunteering with Action for Sustainable Living is a good way to gain amazing work experience with an award winning charity. As a volunteer you’ll make a massive difference in your local community by designing and implementing a sustainable project. They’re looking for Local Project Managers to cover Stretford, Urmston and Sale areas, complementing the volunteers they already have throughout Trafford.
The role is a challenging yet rewarding one; you will develop new skills, meet new people and really feel like you are making a difference. If you are an enthusiastic, self-motivated individual able to offer at least eight hours per week to support AfSL’s activities, why not nominate yourself for this unique opportunity?
‘To me, the 8 hours per week that I contribute to Action for Sustainable Living are more meaningful than a full-time job in any non-sustainable organisation’.
AfSL Local Project Manager Manchester City Centre
You won’t need any previous experience, and there’s a lot you can get out of it personally:
Local Project Managers attend events, give talks and workshops and set up local action groups and projects (Don’t worry! AfSL will help you get ready for these). Previous Local Project Managers have set up community allotment projects, fair trade societies, energy action teams, composting schemes, local shop campaigns and a whole range of interesting, locally-relevant things. You just need to be able to commit eight hours a week for six months or more.
You do need to apply – the deadline for applications is on Friday 18th September at 12pm, and if you’re interested in finding out more you can contact AfSL (details below) or attend the LPM Introduction evening on Thurs 17th Sept at 5:30pm (contact them to confirm your place).
If you want an application pack or have any questions you can contact Helen at trafford@afsl.org.uk, or by calling o845 634 4510. And you can find out more about AfSL at their website - www.afsl.org.uk
August 10, 2009
If you only read one news item this week, make it this one. It’s the story of how Brazil’s fourth largest city moved to eradicate hunger, a great project, and a great piece of journalism highlighting it. At the time, this city of 2.5 million people was letting 20% of its children go to bed hungry. Not a pleasant thought. There are so many thought provoking quotes in this story. They really made me take a step back from my assumptions on how our society should work:
To search for solutions to hunger means to act within the principle that the status of a citizen surpasses that of a mere consumer.
Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy
So what did that mean on the ground?
The city agency developed dozens of innovations to assure everyone the right to food, especially by weaving together the interests of farmers and consumers. It offered local family farmers dozens of choice spots of public space on which to sell to urban consumers, essentially redistributing retailer mark-ups on produce—which often reached 100 percent—to consumers and the farmers. Farmers’ profits grew, since there was no wholesaler taking a cut. And poor people got access to fresh, healthy food.
The city makes good food available by offering entrepreneurs the opportunity to bid on the right to use well-trafficked plots of city land for “ABC” markets, from the Portuguese acronym for “food at low prices.” Today there are 34 such markets where the city determines a set price—about two-thirds of the market price—of about twenty healthy items, mostly from in-state farmers and chosen by store-owners. Everything else they can sell at the market price.
I particularly liked their ideas for “keeping the market honest”:
They survey the price of 45 basic foods and household items at dozens of supermarkets, then post the results at bus stops, online, on television and radio, and in newspapers so people know where the cheapest prices are.
And that with the benefits of the programme come responsibilities. For the farmers who benefit from the best market spots:
Every weekend they have to drive produce-laden trucks to the poor neighborhoods outside of the city center, so everyone can get good produce.
Isn’t that a great solution to the availability of fresh food in under-served areas? The cost of these efforts must be high though?
Around US$10 million annually, or less than 2 percent of the city budget. That’s about a cent a day per resident.
And how better to end than with the emotional words of one of the programme’s managers:
“I knew we had so much hunger in the world, but what is so upsetting, what I didn’t know when I started this, is it’s so easy. It’s so easy to end it.”
April 5, 2009
Just finished listening to the first podcast from The Downshift Project – a really interesting insight into the lives of budding escapees from this oil-based rat race.
I’ve never really got into listening to non-radio podcasts so this is a new one on me, an extra, personal, dimension to a blog. This podcast is an strangely intimate confessional, and as I found the content so interesting I didn’t really think about how vulnerable the author must feel, and I hadn’t had any thoughts about the quality of her podcast until she mentioned it at the end – which must be a good sign.
In it, Tess, the creator of the podcast, discusses how she got from traditional daily life to living in a wooden cabin in west Wales. She talks about the difficulty in leaving your established career, something which often defines you in our work-based society. She confronts the fear of losing skills built up over many year, but a turning point comes when she makes the realisation that she couldn’t survive without Civilisation. That was a good point for me: how could we survive without the constant crutch of nearby shops, water and power? And I guess that really is the ultimate question we’re facing here at Gentle Descent. I liked her advice that the best way to free yourself from the constrictions of your existing job-and-skills mindset – focus on the future, and as you develop those new skills and interests, you’l leave your old “protective shell” behind without even noticing.
The description of their Narrow-Boat life was great – I liked the intimate connection to nature. Something that I remember from our un-insulated timber house in Brisbane. The community of narrowboaters sounded fun, and I wonder if our desire for land (and therefore space between us and others) is the sort of thing that reduces community bonds. It’ll be interesting to see if they can find that kind of community again in a rural, land-based world.
Their aim to be debt free, so they can minimise the time they have to work for others, really resonates with me. And the balance that they’re striking between life and career goals is certainly refreshing. I’ll be interested to see how their paid work/life/self sufficiency work balance pans out, and whether Tess manages to spend enough time writing and composing music or will her time all be taken up with producing food & fuel? Lets watch and see!
September 24, 2008
A great interview with Rob Hopkins, the international face of the Transition movement, and author of The Transition Handbook.
Buy the book, and get a move on.
September 17, 2008
This post was triggered by seeing this photo posted over at Powerswitch on avoiding the need for refrigeration. I think it is just such an uplifting picture – amongst discussions of doom, gloom, and rampaging hordes seeing it just makes my heart ache. The sheer organic nature of the construction, the multiple levels of greenery, the life just bursting out of the page . . . just . . . breathtaking.
The photo was from HardWorkingHippy from La Ferme de Sourrou, I’m not sure where to start on describing what I found most inspirational: they are living off-grid, have built their own gorgeous house and are now building an impressive extension. They have an Angora goat and sheep farm, and also keep pigs and chickens, and are making great strides towards self sufficiency. Plus, they take really great photos!
Here are some of the most beautiful ones I’ve found so far – their woodburning stove and this beautiful garden layout. Maybe I’ll skip work today, just curl up with the laptop and read their site from start to finish!
August 28, 2008
Well . . nothing but food and basic toiletries. And used items are OK, as they don’t directly contribute to new production.
What a fantastic challenge to set yourself – and a good preparation for a post-peak-oil world. I’m not sure I’d be up for it at this stage, but that’s the challenge that Amber has set herself in Canada, and is documenting in her blog Unstuffed. This is one of the most impressive efforts I have seen to really make a day-to-day difference. Not only is she not making new purchases, she is doing a tremendous job of buying local produce, minimising waste and – just as importantly - letting everyone know that this is possible.
It’s a really inspirational example, and one that I’d love to follow – just as soon as we’ve got through the next twelve months of re-equipping our lives after our move 
I really loved this recent post of hers – what a fantastic day, and a great way to slip in a new purchase. Well done Amber – I’ll watch the rest of your year with interest.
August 22, 2008
This is a fascinating, challenging article by Bill McKibben that does make me feel a lot better about the challenges facing us, and our children, in a world with less available energy: http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/03/reversal_of_fortune.html
I’m not entirely sure I fancy a return to a “Little House on the Prairie” lifestyle, but there are some really good points about us having over-shot the point where increasing growth is making us happier. As someone who is enjoying using Freecycle to declutter our house ready for our relocation, this really suits my current mood. We’ve only been here almost 9 years, but we’ve collected a huge amount of stuff. It makes me realise we really need to pause – stop and rethink – everytime we pull out a credit card. Going to keep that thought in my mind as we start to fill our new house with stuff!
August 21, 2008
Another real hero – an amazing amount of information on all of the work they’ve done to their house:
- Solar PV
- Wind Power
- A great Standy Power system with 12Volt Lighting
- A wood-burning stove
The real standout part of the site is all the information on using storing and growing wood that they have.
What an inspiration, and full of real, practical information on how changes were made and which equipment was used – have a look at Alternative Technology in Suffolk
August 20, 2008
This is great to see – someone really walking the walk!
Andy’s house – “Green Cottage“ - is an inspiration to anyone committed to improving the house they’ve got. It’s a great mix of everyday solutions and more advanced technologies. They have a wood burning stove with back boiler supplementing their Solar hot water. For power they have Solar panels as backup, and supplying a separate circuit in the house – so they are immune from blackouts – a great example to us all.
There’s even a whole, very useful, thread on Andy’s Solar PV installation over at Powerswitch - well worth reading to get an idea of all the intricacies of panels, batteries etc. It’s particularly interesting watching how he gets his daytime power consumption down to make the most use of the PV. And, in case my motivation ever wanes it’s worth reading Andy’s story about his power-independence during the power cuts in 2006 – you can find it here.
