This is my dream: To live as my forefathers once did - in harmony with the land that sustains us. A project to investigate and innovate the creation of a low impact home with methods of living in a form of permaculture designed to sustain my family and improve biodiversity. To leave the land richer than before and in doing so enable others to do so.
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Only smallness can save us!
Posted 28/07/08 by Matt B in the Feeding Yourself category
Thanet is a small island district of Kent in the UK. It is one of just two ideal locations for growing cauliflower but the credit crunch has exposed a single point of failure in the current aggricultural methodology - the supply of potash and phosphates the price of which has shot up.Kent News has an interview with one of Thanet's last few cauliflower farmers as the news slowly trickles through that the price Supermarkets pay and the cost of production do not match up.
the year before [...], Peter Linlington of Birchington, who Mr Philpott called “the best cauliflower grower ever”, stopped producing caulis on his 400 acres.
It is this very problem that is addressed by the creation of "micro farms", permaculture installations and the return of the owner farmer and the family run small holding. George Monbiot suggests that the most efficient farms are the small farms. He is talking about something called the "inverse-size yield relationship" [more] which basically stats that the productivity of the farm is inversely proportional to it's size.
Big business is killing small farming.states Monbiot
by developing plants which either won’t breed true or which don’t reproduce at all, it ensures that only those with access to capital can cultivate.
Yet the credit crunch is killing access to capital and with it our only reliable access to food. Now is the time to consider every way we can to take back control of our food production.
The clock is running down for life on this planet
Posted 21/07/08 by Matt B in the Unspecified category
According to the Green New Deal Group, humanity only has 100 months to prevent dangerous global warming.
That amounts to less than 8 and a half years. Not the tens we usually like to think we have. 8.5 years till the timer runs out.
Ouch.
Loss of forests
Posted 15/07/08 by Matt B in the Unspecified category
It would seem according to the BBC that by 2030 large areas of rain forest will need to be cut down unless we can be both more efficient and much more innovative.Demand for land to grow food, fuel crops and wood is set to outstrip supply, leading to the probable destruction of forests, a report warns.
[...]
But since the spectacular successes of the Green Revolution, advances have been slow. In some areas, yields are falling - a trend which is likely to be exacerbated by climate change.
However, eating into tropical forests to create extra agricultural land would, in turn, exacerbate climate change, with deforestation currently accounting for about 20% of greenhouse gas emissions.
To live the dream perchance to hope
Posted 05/07/08 by Matt B in the Online category
Fellow business man and pro blogger Mark from 45n5.com is in the process of buying himself some land to live on. It seems that the USA has less restrictive rules regarding building houses in farm land where as the UK has massively restrictive laws some of which are good and keep the land safe and some are downright stupid.Congratulations to the 45n5.com chief editor.
Shopping For The 45n5 Farm
So why am I feeling so "green" about this?
Simply because it is what I want to do too. I have been talking to a number of people and have drawn up a business plan to express my ideas. What I am proposing is the creation of an ecovillage in or near Kent (near London) in the UK. Ideally in the district of Thanet.
Almost everyone I tell about the idea gets really excited about it and I can see this project getting a lot of good moral support. I am also hoping to pick up some serious advice and help from builders, plumbers, designers, architects, vets and so forth. Some oft he articles of late (such as "Ecovillage Building", "Soap from Trees", "Planning...", "Ecovillages" and "An ecologically informed approach to education") have been sourced directly from the research and write up I have been doing for the business plan.
It is something I have been dreaming about for a long while and the time seems more than right to start doing something proactive to make the dream a reality.
What is your dream?
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