Aims and Achievements

I’d been planning to put together a list of aims and achievements since I talked about it back in August. In the great pause between Christmas and New Year it seems appropriate to finally get around to it! So here is my quick brain dump. I’ll expand on this as I achieve some of them:

Food

• Build up a store of 1 year’s supply of food that we eat. Try to ensure that we are storing the ingredients for food that won’t keep – e.g. store UHT milk to make short-shelf-life dairy products as required, ingredients for bread etc.
  • Work out what we eat in a year
  • DONE! learn to bake bread from base ingredients
  • learn to bake good, light, everyday bread!
  • learn to make basic pastas
  • learn to make and wax hard cheese – cheddar, parmesan and more
  • learn to make soft cheeses that we use – feta (soft and hard), mozzarella,
  • learn to make other dairy products that we use – sour cream, yoghurt
  • learn to preserve and store fresh food that we grow, or that is only seasonally available locally.
  • learn to make jam
• Find a network of  local producers and suppliers, and use them as much as possible.
  • reduce our dependance on supermarkets to less than 50% of essential food
    • reduce our dependance on supermarkets to less than 10% of essential food
  • reduce our dependance on non-local food – less than 50% of essential food
    • reduce our dependance on non-local food – less than 10% of essential food
      • remove our dependance on non-local food – no essential food from further away than 100 miles, 90% within 50 miles

 Waste

• get milk (and juice if possible) delivered in reusable bottles
• shop for a month with no plastic bags
• compost all kitchen scraps, so that all waste from the house is “dry” and doesn’t need plastic bags
• halve the packaging we use in year 1
  • reduce it by 10% every year
• Halve our general refuse in year 1
  • reduce it by 10% every year thereafter
• put in a compost toilet
• put in a greywater recycling sytem for all water from bath, shower, washbasin, washing machine

Growing our own food

• setup our aquaponics system
  • harvest fish from our aquaponics system
    • breed our own fish, thereby closing the cycle
• harvest winter vegetables from our own plot
• get an allotment
• grow 50% of our own fruit and vegetable requirements
  • grow 80% of our own essential fruit and vegetables
• keep chickens for eggs

 Energy

• work out how much electricity we use, and try to devise a plan to provide that by renewable means
• reduce our fossil fuel use by 10% a year
• store at least a year’s supply of firewood
• have a heating/hot water system that will work with at least two different fuel sources
• have a cooking system that will work with at least two different fuel sources
• don’t buy or use a tumble dryer
• retire our powered mower
• provide all our essential power needs on-site, for at least a month
• provide 50% of non-essential power needs on site

General Resilience

• provide 100% of essential water requirements on-site for 3 months
• provide 50% of all water requirements for 3 months.
• “live” within a bikeable radius (public transport if necessary)
• learn to sharpen tools

Community

• Join local allotment / gardening groups
• Get involved in Manchester FOE
• Go to Green Drinks
• Team up with other local growers to ensure that we can have some “cover” if we ever go on holiday.

 

Resilience: Clean drinking water post-Peak-Oil

The number one item on my domestic resilience list is maintaining access to clean, safe, drinking water.

Coming from Brisbane, where the dams that supply our drinking water recently bottomed out at around 14% capacity, I am keenly aware of the importance of available water.  With increasingly unpredictable weather in the UK, and water treatment works subject to flooding and blackouts this is one area I don’t want to take chances on.

I am already planning significant rainwater storage (I’ll detail this in a separate post), but I need to make sure that water will be safe for us to drink. The best way to do this for moderate amounts seems to be a countertop water filter. The best one I’ve found so far seems to be a British Berkefeld (Berkey) Water Filter. It’s gravity fed, so no power is required, and it can produce up to 80 litres a day – easily enough for our drinking needs. Cost – around 90 quid. Even better – it’s made in the UK, so you’re also supporting local manufacturing when you buy one!