Rainy days and Washdays

I hate drying wet washing in the house. We're short of space anyway and have a bit of a mould problem as it is, so the last thing we need is to add extra moisture. Using the tumble dryer is just too environmentally unfriendly. Enter the new wet weather solar laundry dehydrator.

AKA drying the washing in our better than averagely ventilated green house. It's been used a lot this summer but even in the depths of winter it does a fairly good job. There's ventilation down low at the front, and up high at the back so it has a bit a solar chimney effect. And there's still room to grow salad stuff underneath. This was just a temporary solution quickly thrown together last year. I plan to lift the lines a bit higher to claim back a bit more growing space, but I'll get round to that when it stops raining.

Hay Box Cooker

I promised Uncle James a Hay Box Cooker post.

My hay box cooker, also known as the slow cooker, is just an old Coolbox stuffed with shredded paper that lives under the stairs (loads of extra insulation from all the junk in there).

First get the food bubbling hot

Then load it into the hay box and completely surround with shreddings to continue cooking.

This arrangement will keep food hot over night. I use it for stews, curries and pasta sauces and anything else that benefits from long slow cooking. It also makes perfect rice using the absorption method, something I can't manage any other way.

I did take it camping once, where I found it didn't retain enough heat to cook anything, thus proving how much extra insulation a house and an under the stairs cupboard provide.

permaculture- can ya tell what it is yet?

It's probably down to the Australian connection, but this post started when the question above popped into my head in a distinct Rolf Harris accent. (Remember those big paintings where he drew a few squiggles in one corner, some crosses and squares in the middle, stood back,asked "Can you tell what it is yet?" and with a final couple of dots and strokes the whole New York skyline appeared).

So I've spent a fair bit of time over the weekend looking for a snappy, succinct definition of permaculture. There's the original Bill Mollison one liner

"Permaculture is a design system for creating sustainable human environments"

which I found with a load of other definitions here. And I quite liked

"Permaculture is a way of thinking that gives you the tools to create sustainable systems - in all areas of human endeavour."

from eco-logic books, though it does run to two lines. In fact most explanations of permaculture end up pretty wordy, because , like one of Rolf's paintings, you need to fill in quite a lot of details before the whole picture emerges.


Rather then try to reinvent the wheel with my own introduction, here are some interesting links

You can start with the ethics or core values - Earth Care, People Care and Fair Shares.

Then you need the principles. There are quite a few of them (about 12) and they vary a bit in how they're stated. there's a good list of them here http://www.spiralseed.co.uk/permaculture/ or
here
http://www.aranyagardens.co.uk/Permaculture.htm

http://www.permaculture-info.co.uk/ is a good place to start, with an introduction and some good "design bites"
Off the links on its home page you'll find http://www.permaculture-magazine.co.uk/. A peruse of the articles will start to show the scope of ideas that fall under the permaculture label.

Peter's Permaculture Accreditation Event

was a fabulous day out, like a mini convergence and a chance to meet up with Permaculture friends old and new. It was held at Steward Wood, the low impact ecological community where he lives.

Peter had worked fantastically hard to make it a bright, visually interesting event, with all his designs on colourful boards around the new longhouse build. Unfortunately none of the photo's I took came out very well ( a combination of low light levels and shaky hands) so I'm hoping the fair shares principle will kick in and someone with steadier hands will donate me some. We were treated to a couple of his songs (Grass Roots Sustainable Futures and Living in Circles, available here), an interactive play in the middle, and dinner and a party to follow.

The diploma work is assessed against two essential criteria and four complimentary criteria.

The essentials are:

design skills – has the candidate used a variety of design methodologies
including both analytical and more creative strategies and
are these appropriate to the designs presented?

theory in action – how well has the candidate applied permaculture
principles and theory to make their own life more
sustainable?

Complimentary criteria:

dissemination – what have they done to increase the availability of good PC information to the wider community

community building – in what ways have they contributed to local,
national or international communities

symmetry – how have they fed back into the systems that helped to support them, in particular the permaculture academy and network

evaluation and costings – have they given attention to evaluating and
and costing their work

First Post

Tomorrow is my friend peter's permaculture accreditation event. I've been thinking of setting out on the diploma path myself for a while now, and seeing Peter's work should help give me a clearer idea of what I'll be undertaking. It's also given me a wee boost to at least think about some content for this blog, which is supposed to be partly about recording/organising my thoughts on permaculture as applied to my life and artwork.