Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

the Eudlo Co-operative

Sonya — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 03:08:28 -0700

We are about to start the process of forming a co-operative right here in Eudlo.

Other ideas include;
creating some type of social hub in our town - this need has been raised by new people who are moving here and don't know how to find out what's going on.

starting the EGG group - the Eudlo Grain Growers group - researching and growing grains in our local area.

If you live in or very near Eudlo and would like to be part of these initiatives, please contact eudlogardenofeatin@yahoo.com

Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

Regional Powerdown Blog

Sonya — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:36:05 -0700

Our region wide powerdown project continues... and the importance of relocalisation groups....

It's certainly taking a lot longer than I would like to get our region into serious powerdown action. Our EDAP is still underway - but that is okay. I've heard of other groups planning on taking one year to do theirs, and we are still well within that timeframe.

The Energy Descent Action Plan will be our plan of strategies and what needs to be done. It's our list of wishes, hopes, demands, and requests.

It covers education programs, demonstration sites, celebratary events, incentives and disincentives, and much more. The relocalisation network and the Transition Initiatives Network will be the way we engage the community to get all those actions underway.

While that is happening on a regional level, I've been working hard on getting my local town - Eudlo on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland Australia - into energy descent planning. The main catalyst for this has been creating a relocalisation group. We are now about to celebrate our one year anniversary with a community picnic in the park.

Over the past year we've developed links with local like minded people and the broader community - it seems everyone pretty much wants the same thing - we're just coming at it from different angles. Of course, our group is feeling the urgency of energy descent and has a much bigger picture of how important this all is.

It's great to look back on our past year - we've started up Permablitz working bees and created gardens in people's backyards, and helped those of us who are well established get even further ahead.

We've made raised vegie beds, compost systems, chook yards, green manure crops... we've fed and mulched fruit trees, weeded, planted, propagated, and more importantly, talked, sung and ate some great shared meals. We've also laughed a lot!

We've started a seed saving group, a bulk buying group and our newest project is starting a full-on co-operative! This is something I'm particularly excited about!

We're also researched grain types and grain crop growing, milling and setting up some type of social network with the local town hall committee.

Doing this on the ground, being part of a relocalisation group, being part of making my community more resilent, planning for a future with less oil, actually taking positive action... it has all been so worth it!

We are also a Transition Region (part of the UK network through Rob Hopkins), and we are starting to get a lot of interest about this - I wonder if it's because Australian's have stronger links with the UK (through families etc) than the US. I've found most people who know about TRs have a relative or someone they know well in the UK...

As I travel (the bane of peak oil presenters I know!) being able to actually demonstrate how a group can work on the ground at grassroots level has been absolutely invaluable. I'm walking the walk and talking the talk.

People are surprised how easy it is and they find what we are doing in Eudlo very inspiring.

If you are considering starting a group, thinking about taking things a little further in your area - I urge you to give it a go. It may not be the exact right time, but it soon will be.

Well done to the relocalisation teams around the world and thanks,
Sonya

Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

Hold a mirror

androphage — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:05:15 -0700

This is just a quick update. I am seeing a lot of people are reading my blog, but so far I have had very little actual feedback. My curiosity about who you are is burning a hole in my brain. I would love to see more comments- how about just telling me where you are and your general situation, so I can learn more about all of you.

Thanks

Shane

Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

Heavy rain cuts road access

Sonya — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 17:22:29 -0700

Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

Local Farmers' Markets

Sonya — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:38:39 -0700

Did you know that the Big Pineapple Farmers' Markets are now on every Saturday morning from 7am? Support local food supply chains, shop locally, buy direct from the grower, buy fresh food, support local business people, reduce your carbon emissions, cut down on food miles, and enjoy a true local feast!

The Noosa Farmers' Markets are on every Sunday morning at Noosaville.

Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

Nambour Organic Co-operative

Sonya — Sat, 31 May 2008 20:11:37 -0700

Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

Chevallum Permaculture Meeting

Sonya — Sat, 31 May 2008 20:03:29 -0700

Start: 2008-08-27 19:00

End: 2008-08-27 21:30

Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

Organic Gardening Course

Sonya — Sat, 31 May 2008 20:00:55 -0700

Start: 2008-08-03 09:00

End: 2008-08-03 15:00

Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

Relocalisation Group Meeting

Sonya — Sat, 31 May 2008 19:58:33 -0700

Start: 2008-08-03 08:30

End: 2008-08-03 09:30

Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

Chevallum Permaculture Meeting

Sonya — Sat, 31 May 2008 19:54:14 -0700

Start: 2008-07-23 19:00

End: 2008-07-23 21:30

Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

Queensland Home Garden Expo

Sonya — Sat, 31 May 2008 19:49:31 -0700

Start: 2008-07-11 09:00

End: 2008-07-13 16:00

Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

Relocalisation Group Meeting

Sonya — Sat, 31 May 2008 19:44:30 -0700

Start: 2008-07-06 08:30

End: 2008-07-06 10:30

Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

Organic Gardening Course

Sonya — Sat, 31 May 2008 19:40:51 -0700

Start: 2008-07-06 09:00

End: 2008-07-06 15:00

Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

Chevallum Permaculture Meeting

Sonya — Sat, 31 May 2008 19:37:27 -0700

Start: 2008-06-25 19:00

End: 2008-06-25 22:00

Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

World Environment Day

Sonya — Sat, 31 May 2008 19:32:28 -0700

Start: 2008-06-21 09:00

End: 2008-06-21 17:00

Sustainable Maleny Project

Building Sustainable Communities Ecovillages and Bioregions

pekadillo — Tue, 27 May 2008 06:32:44 -0700

Start: 2008-06-13 18:30

End: 2008-06-15 16:30

Sustainable Maleny Project

Building Sustainable Communities Ecovillages and Bioregions

pekadillo — Tue, 27 May 2008 06:29:26 -0700

Start: 2008-06-13 18:30

End: 2008-06-15 16:30

Creating a Sustainable Sunshine Coast - Nambour to Mooloolah

Newspaper article

Sonya — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:07:02 -0700

Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

Wet day, dry day

androphage — Tue, 13 May 2008 22:13:37 -0700

The main focus of this entry is dealing with the drying weather. It has been a couple of months since we had substantial rain, though summer this year was particularly wet. The grass is still green. But looking around the cultivated areas the bare soil is looking rather dead and lifeless, dusty even. To a casual observer it seems hard to believe that I have only just watered my lettuces once last weekend, and my brassicas a week before that. As in they got no water, even when I sowed the seed. Recently I put some valuable imported Quinoa seed strains into my summer vegetable garden green manure rotation to make sure I successfully bulked up my seed supply for next year. They germinated in a week, in recently disturbed dry looking soil, with no rain falling. The green manures around them are coming up as well. The deadness and dustiness of the soil is actually part of the system. By minimising the amount of leaves drawing on the soil moisture you extend the useful lifespan of your ground water reserves. This means you need to weed meticulously (a topic for an upcoming post). When irrigation isnt an option a last gasp trick to save a struggling crop in drying soil is to thin out every second plant. Those remaining will usually quickly perk up, giving you half an edible crop rather than all of an inedible one.

So why do people anxiously water their newly planted seeds? Unless you are well into a substantial drought there is no point in doing so- it is mostly to feel like you are contributing to the growth. Seeds germinate by absorbing humidity within the air spaces in the soil. Being trapped in water logged soil is often detrimental as the availability of oxygen for growth declines, and also because it usually lowers the temperature of the soil and slows germination. This is especially critical for sowing warmth loving crops early in spring when the soil is already cooler than the air.

Normally people water far too shallowly to have much effect anyway. They rely on cues such as the amount of moisture sitting on leaves or flying through the air to feel like they are doing a good job. In reality the moisture that matters is invisible, deep in the soil. By deeply cracking open that soil (without necessarily turning it) you help the soil to drink deeply when the heavy rains come, and give your plants a fast track to growing deep roots down to the stored water.

Watering newly planted seeds also carries some dangers. You are effectively making a promise to those seeds that you will supply them with all the water they need, regardless of how the season progresses. If you manage to keep your seedlings perfectly and generously moist during a dry season for a few weeks, or a month, but then forget to look at them for a week or two you can expect them to suffer severe moisture stress or death. In contrast if you put your seeds in and let the natural store of ground water do the job there is much less chance of things going wrong. The seedlings will develop deeper root systems and may appear to grow more slowly at first, but the reduced fluctuations in growth are of great benefit to the quality of the final crop. Planting seeds at the end of a dry season in anticipation of coming seasonal rains is the corollary of this process, and once again it is better to put the seed into dry soil and allow it to decide when it is time to grow. Strong healthy seeds are quite capable of waiting six months in dry soil to grow (though what comes out of commercial packets often lacks freshness and vigor).

When you do need to water, and it is quite reasonable to expect to water fast growing tender vegetable crops, you will want to do it properly and as infrequently as possible. The trick is to never exceed the soils capacity to take up the moisture, which for most of the heavier soils on the sunshine coast means a long slow dribble into the ground. I had a large concrete water tank installed uphill from my vegetable garden for this express purpose, partly as an insurance against future water restrictions. At current usage rates its generous 8000L capacity would keep my water demanding vegetable crops going for at least six months with no rain. The slow gravity feed relies on no external power, and matches my dark soils slow deep thirst. My raised beds come in handy too as they seep from the sides once they are filled up.

Out in the field crops the chickpeas are flowering and setting pods vigorously despite being at the higher, drier end of the row. At the lower, wetter end the shelling peas are are doing well after weathering pidgeon attacks, but would probably like some more moisture. These two crops together form a perfect pair to hedge against the changing moisture levels. Chickpeas will grow well in even our driest years, while the shelling peas will grow through moderate water logging. Plant some of each, varying the balance in response to the season that year, and you have a dependable source of legume protein for winter. It should be pointed out my field crops are never watered. In a region where "record breaking drought" means 700 mm a year you have to reflect on how unirrigated crops like wheat would find such an arrangement perfectly comfortable. The trick is learning to change our crops as the rain levels fluctuate, and to not throw up our hands in despair when the occasional season yields next to nothing.

So in summary try and take simple steps to improve your soils moisture holding capacity to make the most use of our ample but unpredictable rains. Cultivate deeply without completely disrupting the soil structure. Soil organic matter helps but deep decompaction is far quicker, cheaper and more effective (also opening up subsoil mineral stores). Time your sowings and plantings to make maximum use of rain when it comes, and liberate yourself whenever possible from the hose!

I have uploaded some photos of the farm. From left to right, top to bottom we have:
1- Winter vegetable crops coming along
2- Summer vegetable area with trash pile and green manures
3- My beloved rooster Clarence
4- Field row showing the first plantings of carrots and parsnips
5- Field row with shelling peas on cowcane
6- Same row as 5 showing chickpeas at drier end
7- Recently solarised row (being prepared for maize, kidney beans and pumpkins in spring)
8- Unsolarised row oversown with random green manures and crops (to be solarised for spring buckwheat soon)

Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

Relocalisation film night

Sonya — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:04:26 -0700

Start: 2008-05-28 19:00

End: 2008-05-28 22:00

Sustainable Maleny Project

Maleny Wood Expo

Sonya — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:47:11 -0700

Start: 2008-05-03 09:00

End: 2008-05-04 17:00

Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

Future Scenarios - David Holmgren

Sonya — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 15:42:38 -0700

Sustainable Maleny Project

Food Forests

Sonya — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:22:46 -0700

Start: 2008-06-21 09:00

End: 2008-06-21 15:00

Sustainable Maleny Project

Animals in the Permaculture system

Sonya — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:19:54 -0700

Start: 2008-06-14 09:00

End: 2008-06-14 15:00

Sustainable Maleny Project

Permaculture Plants & Seed Saving

Sonya — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:16:54 -0700

Start: 2008-06-07 09:00

End: 2008-06-07 15:00

Sustainable Maleny Project

Building Healthy Soil Part II

Sonya — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:14:18 -0700

Start: 2008-05-24 09:00

End: 2008-05-24 12:00

Sustainable Maleny Project

Building Healthy Soil Part I

Sonya — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:11:26 -0700

Start: 2008-05-17 09:00

End: 2008-05-17 12:00

Sustainable Maleny Project

Garden Design & Pest Management

Sonya — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:08:30 -0700

Start: 2008-05-11 09:00

End: 2008-05-11 12:00

Sustainable Maleny Project

Permaculture Principles

Sonya — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:05:20 -0700

Start: 2008-05-03 09:00

End: 2008-05-03 15:00

Sustainable Maleny Project

Introduction to Permaculture

Sonya — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:02:26 -0700

Start: 2008-04-26 09:00

End: 2008-04-26 15:00

Sustainable Maleny Project

Chevallum Permaculture Meeting

Sonya — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:56:29 -0700

Start: 2008-04-30 19:00

End: 2008-04-30 22:00

Sustainable Maleny Project

The Power of Community DVD screening

Sonya — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:25:19 -0700

Start: 2008-04-26 10:00

End: 2008-04-26 11:30

Sustainable Maleny Project

National summit ignores peak oil

Sonya — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:08:05 -0700

Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

Beneath my feet

androphage — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 01:39:03 -0700

In the spirit of making more regular contributions I am determined to keep progress on the property more up to date to avoid data-dumps like the last post.

The weather has well and truly turned the corner into the cooler end of the year. This is my absolute favourite time of year. Spring may be heavy with blossoms and perfume, but there is something flimsy about them, a tinge of unearned riches. Autumn is the best time of the year for preparation, hard work, long term planning. The air is cooler, the sunsets glorious, and the rain light and reliable most years.

Firstly the vegetable garden. The old summer crops on the lower end are gradually finishing up. I am still getting a fair amount of okra, snake beans, and the winged beans have finally come through (quite neutral but tasty). Rosellas are prolific and jam is piling up for winter. The capsicums and eggplants that finally made it past the slugs at seedling stage are fruiting. Eggplant "redskin" from eden was prolific with tiny fruits full off seeds and quite evil tasting. Result- root pruning and binned the seeds. The italian varieties like rosa bianca by comparison are big and meaty and heavenly when grilled to perfection. Conclusion- varieties matter, so don't beat yourself up when something doesnt perform the way you would like. The jicama did the same thing. I compared two seed sources- one made tiny inedible tubers, the other large crisp ones. If you really want to grow a particular kind of crop buy several varieties of seed from a few different sources and compare the results. It can be truly eye opening.

I have changed the summer veggie rotation to reflect moving a lot of the staple type crops out into the field. So now the most soil pathogen sensitive tomatos get a full six beds in a coordinated assault through spring to give one massive harvest of roma types for bottling and drying. These are followed up by heat loving and more disease tolerant capsicums and eggplants, grown in pots through spring to a decent size, giving them enough time to crop lightly going into winter. They are then over-wintered, allowing them to give early crops the following spring. After that a mix of beans, greens, okra and soft roots (like perennial leeks and spring onions) will follow on in the other half of the rotation. The summer bed is now gradually disappearing under rows of green manures. The bulk oats and barley I got through demeter are alternating with lupins from green harvest and commercial faba beans and lupulini beans (from a commercial wholesale food place in West End-much cheaper). One bed has been left as a trash pile to compost everything down in situ. And sweet peas have been dotted here and there on trellises to spice up the garden over winter/spring. The lobelia weed that went mad in summer is being eradicated, always starting from uphill and working down.

On the upper winter side the unturned raised beds with the manure sandwiched between soil layers have worked quite well. Apart from a little local subsidence as the manure decomposes there were no obvious penalties for not mixing the beds up like dirt smoothie. Lesson learned- endless turning and crumbling of already decent soil can be a waste of energy. Brassicas have been a magnet for pigeons again, meaning having to resow and improve the protective bird netting several times. The broccoli bed received the entire 6 months of food scrap compost to test how much nutrient they could use. As a result the bed shoots out a stream of massive worms any time you stick a trowel in it. The ducks figured this out and started jumping up and down on my broccoli seedlings, meaning I had to build a small fence to slow them down. To take up the space from the potato crop leaving the veggie garden I have added a strawberry rotation, hopefully avoiding the problem of choked permanent strawberry beds that people put in and never get around to thinning out, and giving us a massive crop to bottle. The root crops have been scaled back to onions (a trial, tricky to grow fast enough to bulb well, and daylight sensitive so you need dedicated subtropical varieties while most in circulation are temperate), leeks (a bit fussy) and a smaller amount of turnips and kohl rabi than last year (they tasted pretty ordinary to us). Lettuces have been planted alongside single trellises of snow peas to improve air circulation around the peas and minimise powdery mildew. These combo beds have been staggered (two started in March, one in April, one in May) to spread the harvest of lettuce and peas. The scraped out paths have definitely had less weeds, but the soil moved to the top of the beds needs a fair bit of time to weed by hand and butter knife, though as planned everything comes out very easily, and it is hard to ignore when it is right beside your prized seedlings.

The chickens in the middle of the veggie patch peaked at 5-6 eggs a day from six hens a month ago and have reduced down to 2-3 a day as their moult approaches. One has an injured eye and was always flighty and fearful, and another has a classic spinsters build (while the others are as boxy as tissue box covers) so these two will be culled shortly to make room for a batch of chicks in spring. This way we can replace half our laying birds each year. The gorgeous glossy rooster has turned out dumb and sweet natured, though he does crow when the moon is full, but it is a pleasant enough note since he isn’t a screechy tiny bantam.

In the field the fruit trees have made surprising growth after being waterlogged all summer. The odd precocious fig has been offered up and savoured, and our elderly neighbour let me collect about 20kg of persimmons that were ripened, pulped, and frozen for gradual use. Rough pineapple with persimmon pulp over the top is one of my favourite desserts now- the intensity and mellowness contrast beautifully. The two squares (4x4m each) of trial sweet potato varieties were harvested last week, giving around 50kg despite the lack of weeding, watering (well it was pouring this year) and minimal fertiliser. The interesting thing was that some varieties gave 10kg easily, and others gave zero usable roots. This again emphasises the importance of variety choice, and of not beating yourself up if things go poorly. Imagine if I had only planted the worst variety (“Im a failure”) or the best (“I’m a genius”). The parsnip crop is in and away, with seven squares planned, another one of carrots, probably giving 200kg of roots to get through. I am currently savouring a dish of mashed spiced sweet potato, now making about 30% of my total diet:

Ingredients
4kg sweet potato (or potato or parsnip). Peel, boil and mash. Set aside.

2 Onions (or equivalent with shallots, leeks, garlic, etc)- chopped and fried lightly in olive oil
Spices and herbs (combine to taste: oregano, thyme, basil, rosemary, sage, sesame, black sesame, chilli, pepper, coriander/cumin/fennel seed, cardamom, etc) and fry to release the flavor. Consider timing of adding these ingredients. My failsafe method is to divide all these into 2-3 lots and add them at intervals to the frying onions. This gives a much deeper and more complex flavour as the volatile components are released by the heat in waves.
Put mashed roots into the pan and stir vigorously until a light browning is observed at the base of the pan (scrape it off as it forms to stop it burning). This will add that delicious baked vegetable flavor to the dish, without needing hours in the oven.
Optional- Add peanut butter, tahini or good quality butter (1-2 teaspoons max) to add an element of fat and enhance the mouth feel. Take off the heat immediately and stir it in to avoid oxidising the unstable vegetable fats.
This meal freezes and reheats beautifully, much to the envy of all my work colleagues who must sniff it on a daily basis.
A side helping of braised mushrooms and beans, or tomato sauce and chickpeas adds variety and protein. I also eat it with a boiled egg from my hens or ducks.

The rest of the parsnip field row has newly sourced varieties of quinoa. Local quinoa is hard to source (only from Eden seeds after needling them) and appears to be a food grade dead seed. These just went in after resolarising the bed to remove a fuzz of grassy weeds, so fingers crossed. The next row over has a mass of staggered shelling pea and broad bean plantings. I am trialling about eight varieties of each to compare performance and taste. They have been given old sorghum and cowcane stalks to climb up, saving money on stakes. At the top of this row there are chickpeas (from edible sources mostly, good germination), a few lentils, massed beds of garlic (oriental purple and Italian from NewGippsland seeds bulbed well for me last year growing from April to November- they must have their own space to dry off at the end of the season). The spelt sourced from Eden seeds have ~1% germination. The few plants that made it through will have to serve as a very bottle necked starter population for a better crop next year. Of the remaining two field rows one is being solarised in sections in preparation for a spring sowing of maize, dry beans and pumpkins/melons. The other is still pasture but has been oversown with wheat/barley/oats, lupin/field peas/vetch/fenugreek, sunflower/cosmos/marigold, mustard greens, coriander/parsley etc etc. It is fun to crawl around the grass looking for new species emerging. It will be cut low in late winter, solarised and then planted with a big spring buckwheat crop. I had better get busy on making a hand thresher to process the crop. It is basically a rotating drum covered in a gripping surface that turns against an adjustable board. Once it is spinning the reaped crop is fed into it and the lumpy seeds are stripped off. This mass of seeds and leaves is then spread out to dry and threshed again before winnowing to remove the chaff. Based on last years trial the 15 square row should yield 75kg of unhulled buckwheat.

The best news is that the muscovy ducks, which I was ready to give up on, are now sitting on two large batches of eggs. After blaming the poor sitting duck after several tries at breeding I finally caught the thief (a swamp hen) with an egg in its beak. So a bit more netting and security later and we should be weeks away from having a plague of little baby ducks. Two months of chaos later and we should have a freezer full of succulent dark duck meat.

The scale up continues, but the end is in sight of this phase. By the end of this year we should be producing most of our own calories for the immediate family (meaning plenty to share with the extended family). Up until now I have dealt with a measure of derision from my siblings, and bewilderment from my parents, without feeling massively unappreciated for the endless days of digging and hoeing. By the end of this year they will hopefully be able to see what one person with one set of hands can contribute. Growth in everything is exponential, painfully slow to begin, terrifying by the end.

Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

Monthly meeting

Sonya — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 14:19:30 -0700

Start: 2008-06-01 08:30

End: 2008-06-01 10:30

Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

Rising Sea Levels

elvirawhite — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 04:07:38 -0700

I would like to share an interesting site I found on possible rising sea levels. You can play with it endlessly and view almost anywhere in the world to see what a new sea height would do to the coastline. Very educational, and fun to find your own roof! Have a look!

www.flood.firetree.net

Sustainable Maleny Project

Food Festival to Promote Relocalization?

elvirawhite — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 02:43:54 -0700

A very interesting thing happened here last week. We had a public meeting sponsered by the Chamber of Commerce and two projects were chosen. One that I want to help with is a festival promoting local produce of all kind (local in the food mile sense, too!) All sorts of things could be showcased, including bush foods, plants and a farmers market, as well as products made locally from them. What an opportunity for educating our community about enjoying local produce! And perhaps growing some of their own, too! I'll let you know how we get on as we progress with organising it.

I dont know if we need to actually start a relocalize group yet officially. I looked at the form to fill in and I dont even know how to describe our goals in Kenilworth yet.

The other thing we are thinking of doing is revitalising our old CWA as its goals are very compatable with relocalising and they have insurance cover. We could meet in their building free if we were members. How do all the groups manage insurance issues for their member's activities? This could be important these days.

At the moment we are mostly getting our own vege gardens going. I am going to the seed saving workshop at Chevallum in May to get the info we need and tell the others who couldn't go.

Sustainable Maleny Project

Regional Powerdown Blog

Sonya — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 00:00:32 -0700

Well, it's one month today since the local council election and the amalgamation of three councils into one.

The EDAP is still being written, but in reality, we it wouldn't have been appropriate to deliver it to the old council and we need to give the new council a little breathing space before we deliver it to them.

Janet and I had a meeting with State Government this week, which was really encouraging. We have a relatively new Minister for a new portfolio called Climate Change, Sustainability and Innovation and he had already commissioned a report on oil vulnerability in our state prior to his appointment as Minister.

It was through his office that we had the meeting and discussed all the things we been setting up here on the Coast.

It all looks very promising, media interview requests are rolling in via the website as are other contacts in universities, councils and community groups around Australia.

Our next step is to meet with the new Mayor, discuss what we have done and plan to do. Keep in contact with State Govt, finish the EDAP and start developing a Transition Team Troika Network to start to really get this out in the community and around the region.

This week is very busy for me - I have meeting to plan the layout of a mock "Transition Town" at our World Environment Day celebrations in May, then on Thursday night Janet and I are presenting at a film screening of The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil which includes special guest Roberto Perez, then on Friday I'm helping Janet all day with a huge school garden seminar she has organised with 45 schools attending (teachers, principals, groundspeople and parents) to discuss how permaculture and all its uses can be incorporated into school curriculums.

On Saturday we have an all day expo on sustainability. Guest speakers include Roberto Perez, Geoff Lawton and locals Bob Cameron (sustainable business owner) and Frances Michael (Green Harvest business owner).

I'll be doing a presentation on Transition Towns and what the community can do about climate change and peak oil. Andi Hazelwood will be there talking Relocalisation and I'll also be doing a compost demonstration.

Busy times and momentum is definately building... exciting times and lots to do!

Sonya

Sustainable Maleny Project

Not Like Y2K!

elvirawhite — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:18:16 -0700

While talking to someone yesterday about peak oil and its possible effects on every aspect of life, I felt a bit like I did about Y2K. Do you all remember the hype and doomsday pictures that were predicted? Then nothing much happened(thank goodness!) and it all settled down. The person asked me if I REALLY thought it was all going to happen. I said, "Yes, but even if it wasn't as bad as all that we still needed to change a lot of things about our lives and communities to make them better." Has anyone assembled a good answer to the question as to whether Peak Oil changes to lifestyle will really happen that can be given briefly in a conversation without sounding fanatical? Any comments ?

Sustainable Maleny Project

Participating in Local Community Groups

elvirawhite — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:02:51 -0700

We have been thinking that one of the best ways to help relocalize our community is to join existing organisations that have similar aims and revitalise them! For example, the QCWA, that is, the Country Womens Association, has similar aims to strengthen the community and learn skills such as cooking and craft that would be of benefit in hard times. Also, if the community needs a focal place for markets etc, the local community hall would be vital, but the committee that runs it needs help as they are all aging. If we join them and give our support then a vital piece of already existing framework will be maintained.

In our local rural community, there is a falling away of volunteers for all of our organisations, due to increasing work committments and lack of childcare assistance, mainly.

Everyone can think of volunteer organisation in their areas that probably need support and often what they need is new blood and fresh ideas. Perhaps an efficient use of our time and resources would be to pitch in while spreading the relocalize message! The general population respect those who are not afraid to join in and help practically, and would be more likely to listen to any message thay have to give. Also, you would not have to reinvent the wheel in that situation. I think cities also have this same situation.

Events such as community forums are also a great oppertunity to have the message heard and meet others similarly minded. Suggest ideas that people will be able to agree with and support, such as community gardening being a great social connecter and promoting health and wellbeing, not just a neccessity in a collapsing society!

Has anyone had experience at these types of approach to relocalizing their communities and do you have any further suggestions along these lines?

Sustainable Maleny Project

Seed Saving Workshop

Sonya — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:49:14 -0700

Start: 2008-05-10 09:30

End: 2008-05-10 14:30

Sustainable Maleny Project

Permablitz Eudlo

Sonya — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:41:37 -0700

Start: 2008-05-04 08:30

End: 2008-05-04 10:30

Creating a Sustainable Sunshine Coast - Nambour to Mooloolah

Plan of chook run and food forest

elvirawhite — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 04:37:40 -0700

Here is a plan showing the food forest I am creating next to the chook run and then our cow/sheep paddock. The chook run has small compartments down it in which to grow veges and chook food. The hens can be let in or out as wanted through gates. They can also forage in the food forest when it is mature enough. The Midyim bushes are only 1-1.5m tall so wont shade the veges and the forest will get progressively taller towards the east. This will also help with frost protection, I hope! The forest needs to be dense enough to provide a cover for more frost sensitive things. I am mulching with cardboard from our local shops and the grass I rake up from the paddock. A mower wouldn't fit between the rows and petrol costs might make that impossible anyway, dont you think! Kikuyu is hard to kill off though, so I hope this works!
I want to inspire others to try this. I have to do it fairly much myself so it is a bit at a time and it will eventually be a forest. When I am old I hope to sit under it and eat the fruit of my labours (alongside the chooks!)

Creating a Sustainable Sunshine Coast - Nambour to Mooloolah

Food Forest

elvirawhite — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 02:40:39 -0700

With all the rain this Summer, I couldn't do much to my farm. Not even keep up with the grass! Now the weather is cooling,I am all inspired to get to work!
I have finally begun on my food forest that adjoins the long chook run. I plan to put low bushes next to the run to allow sunlight to get to the vegetable compartments down the run, and then plant sucsessivly taller trees until reaching the other side of the paddock. The paddock will be fenced to keep out the cow and any stray horses and keep in the chooks when they forage in the mature forest.
Well, the first plants are bought! I was at the Yandina Markets on Saturday and came across 70 little Midyim plants in tubes for a good price and snapped them all up! I will have just enough to plant them in two rows at about 1m apart. They are supposed to grow 1-1.5m tall and they will be perfect for the first row. They bear from Jan to June so will be very good to eat.
Next problem to overcome is the Kikuyu grass. I asked the local 4 square for cardboard and they have lots of it so I started putting it down over the grass and covering it with raked up grass. A long hot job but I think it will work. The plants have to be very close together to create a frost free understory so I cant mow between them. Anyway, with the price of petrol going up I wont be able to forever mow, will I?
I am going to tree guard them with the ones I made for the Gum trees last year, just in case the hares try to eat them as well.
A friend is going to help with the fence soon. I have almost all the materials I need bar the metal gate, and that isn't essential at the moment. There is lots to do with refreshing the chook run as well and finishing the compartments down it for the veges. I have one finished for vegetables. The chooks have been pecking it over and fertilising it all Summer and now it is ready for action! I just added lots of fresh grass straw and cut up branches to their straw yard and they are happy again! Molting is finished and they are starting to lay again. I have 10 old hens that are probably not laying and 10 younger ones that should be! Here's hoping!
I hope to inspire my community to start their own gardens and keep chooks like in the early days. Everyone did out here in Kenilworth but now they need encouraging again. People see me working from the road and wonder what I am doing:)
Anyone with helpful comments is welcome to sent some to me. It is all a bit of a Permaculture experiment!

Creating a Sustainable Sunshine Coast - Nambour to Mooloolah

Sustainable Maleny needs YOU

pekadillo — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 05:15:54 -0700

Start: 2008-03-29 14:00

End: 2008-03-29 16:00

Sustainable Maleny Project

Gathering my thoughts

androphage — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:29:51 -0700

Gathering my thoughts

March 08

It has been almost a year since I last blogged, so you must be thinking I have oodles of news. And in a way I do. But in another way I don’t.

The garden has been a roaring success, and a perpetual disaster, depending on how you want to look at it.

The winter season in 2007 turned out to be very generous despite the relatively dry weather, virgin unimproved soil and record frost. There was a constant ample supply of collards and kale, snow peas, and turnips and parsnips just to the point of saturation (~15kg each per 4 square meter standard bed, which is also conveniently 1/1000 of an acre), though they are all sorely missed now and their imminent return eagerly anticipated. Weeds were seldom a pressing problem in the winter veggie garden. As August passed the potatoes were put in and ended up yielding a similar amount of roots despite a wave of caterpillars in late spring (just as they were dying down anyway). My Dad pestered me to put in some of his childhood favourite spuds but I insisted it was too late. By the time I relented and let him try them it was way too late, and they were starting to grow just in time to catch the caterpillar plague. When we harvested them there was barely more than we planted, and they were shrivelled and evil looking. Dad wouldn’t let me throw them out at the time (I just tossed them in the compost last week!). Lesson learnt- timing is everything, and there is no shame in overwhelming the munchers with a wave of superabundance (not a cursed “monocrop”, more like the synchronised hatching of baby turtles to beat the seagulls).

Over winter I continued to push along initiating the summer veggie beds, always running behind schedule as the change of season loomed. Unlike the winter veggies I merely green manured these with oats and lupins, slashing repeatedly with my indispensable kama from Green Harvest, then adding a layer of our own horse manure as a coarse mulch. The winter beds by comparison had spottier green manure crops (timing was rushed), but had a few inches of composted commercial horse manure brought in (well worth the money, $150 for 5 cubic meters did the garden wonders as a start, but it shall not be a permanent input). I also prepared four field row squares by literally thrashing the kikuya to death with my bare hands to prepare pumpkin mounds. Kikuya is dormant in winter so solarising or spraying it is a waste of time, hence the heavy-handed approach. In each 4 x 4 m square four wheel barrows of fresh horse manure were piled up, with a few handfuls of either compost or copra (cool fuel) and a handful of lime, then the loose soil hoed and raked up over it. These grew slowly during the dry beginning of spring and got a couple of hand waterings. When the rain finally came they took off, eventually yielding a wheelbarrow of cucumbers, 20 or so rockmelons, and ~300 kg of queensland blue, blue hubbard and crown prince pumpkins (seven heavy wheel barrows full for scale). The watermelons planted alongside the more vigorous pumpkins were buried to start, only yielding three decent fruits.

The summer veggie garden was on reflection adequate but not spectacular. The constant rain made weeding and maintenance difficult, and a previously low priority well behaved Lobelia weed went berserk and spread runners everywhere. I adopted a pattern of always starting at the uphill area of the garden and working downhill, removing every scrap of weeds by hoe or butter knife. When I ran out of time or got sick of weeding I would get out my kama and slash everything with flowers in the rest of the garden to stop any seed ending up back in the soil. Be sure to collect it in a bucket and put it on a separate compost pile (or better yet future bonfire). Starting tomatos and capsicums was a pain- slugs took up residence in the coarse manure mulch and levelled everything as it germinated. In the end one bed of cherry and roma tomatos limped along and gave a meagre harvest(<5 kg per bed)- but this bed had a trickle running past it during the rain. Another drier bed of romas started later gave about 30kg of good fruit from just two plants. Varieties roma and san marzano were good, palmwoods failed twice to produce much. String beans yielded very heavily, but quality was dropping by late November. Snake beans filled the gap nicely (except they need to be cooked), and winged beans were meant to follow but the cool summer slowed them down enormously. They are flowering now but the pods are dropping…next year I guess. The stand-out success was the okra, though the variety star of david was spiny and unpleasant. The best way to cook them is to roll them in polenta and salt, (with optional moisture), then fry in a little oil until the polenta is golden. Delicious. They also went brilliantly with our tomatos, herbs, and homegrown black eyed peas to make a local version of gumbo. Quantifying yields on these regular fresh crops is tricky since they come on gradually over months. I was getting a large basket full of these crops twice a week, meeting our family’s needs. Jicama grew massively but roots are yet to fill out. It is flowering now so I will bide my time while I gather seed. Sweet corn went in late but was planted on top of fish heads and skins (after the chooks had a pick). They grew like rockets and yielded so much corn we were sick of it. In the perennial end of the veggie garden a massive patch of purple kumera (~15 square meters) has given about 20kg of roots so far, with a bit more to come. The Yacon has also done ok, but lost major roots to the rots. The blueberries have done well on a mound of mulch and pinebark dug in downhill from an overflow sump nearby, and will probably be expanded into this patch to fill it out as all berries, along with the rambunctious brambles (will have to wait until spring to see which ones chill enough to fruit).

Out in the field I managed to prepare around one row of 15 field squares for summer (4x4m between trees) to trial staple crops. By staple crops I mean grains, pseudograins, pulses and roots that can be grown with little extra fertility, little weeding, and no irrigation during an average season. From three squares of buckwheat I harvested, threshed and winnowed 15kg of grains. All in all less than three days of work gave 30 days worth of calories- not a bad return. Sorghum grew and set well but was a magnet to the hoards of parrots in our area. Think carefully about where you plant as it is a pain to remove by hand due to its deep roots. Black eyed peas and black kidney beans gave about half a kilo each from half a field square. Millet (mixed proso and foxtail) gave about a kilo from a similar area. The buckwheat has been carefully ground in my hand grinder to feed the starter culture for my fermented oat porridges in the mornings. I cheated a bit in the winter veggie garden and put in more field crop trials instead of a full green manure rotation. More sorghums, buckwheat and beans behaved similarly. Three strains of Amaranth gave good yields of 0.5-1kg per 4m2 bed. This is where the scale to the acre comes in handy- we could grow 1000kg (a tonne) of amaranth if we planted our entire 1 acre/4000sq m field, a consistent behaviour with typical subsistence systems. This is the amount Fukuoka refers to in his Natural Farming book, and I suspect that the energy (chaff and roots) returned to the soil each year, and the green manure rest, allows the soil to draw up any basic mineral nutrients from deep in the soil at a limited rate. Of course you can boost this if the basic geology is deficient, or help out by returning as many wastes as possible (humanure is the next experiment to get right). Next season has just been planted in the field, with the area now doubled. Moving around a big roll of thick black plastic ($160 for 4m x 50m) has made bed preparation a breeze but it only works during the warmer months. The basic balance is between parsnips/carrots, quinoa, spelt/chickpeas/lentils, and field peas/broad beans from May until August. After the frost it should change over to potatos, buckwheat, kidney beans, maize and pumpkins from September until December. Then January to April will be kumera, amaranth, black-eyed peas/cowpeas and millets/sorghum. Only two of the four field rows at any one time will carry a crop, each one starting in spring then cycling back into a deep mixed green manure thicket after a year. These will be slashed by hand (keep it fleshy enough for a short scythe to glide through) with the row about to be recropped mulched with its own growth and with that of the other row, hopefully providing enough density to smother the growth and do without the plastic in the long run. The field green manure rotation will include the veggie garden species but add on other controllable species like Nasturtium, Parsley, Coriander, Daikon, Mustard greens, and some trial ornamentals like shrimp plant (Justicia), African snapdragon (Brilliantasia), some gingers (slow to dig out?), etc etc as trials figure out what works.

Green manures did finally get into most of the beds in the winter veggie garden by January, leaving time for a few slashes before the next cycle. The soil in the winter veggie garden ended up very rich in some places, and stubbornly hard in others. The two worst spots are side-by-side near the drive way, so may be spilled fill, one of them near a water stream, so a little top soil may have been lost. They also got less manure last cycle since they were supporting peas and parsnips. I’ll keep working on them and see how they change with time. The odd thing is even apparently hard soil in some places is finely honeycombed with roots and channels when you look closely. I think you have to get out of the mindset that a root and a finger have the same experience penetrating soil.

The winter veggie bed was slashed and pulled bare in mid February, and just recently I got a final load of manure (now $180!) that will cover both ends of the veggie garden this time. I layered a few inches on top of the green manure wastes, then broke up the top 10cm of the paths in between the beds, and dug them up and on top of the bed uphill from them to work against the direction of erosion. This approach is supposed to do a few things. It makes a deeper bed for the crop roots to spread down into. It also raises them so they are less prone to rotting during heavy rains. The contours in the soil profile mean than run off will get trapped and given more time to soak into the ground. And finally all the weed seeds in the top few centimetres of the compacted paths are moved onto the softer beds, making it easier to remove the weeds and leaving a clean path (recently seeded with milk thistle, my chicken’s favourite). I have been spreading our own horse manure in the hollowed out paths in run off places to act as another water sponge, and to allow me to compost this down and reduce the number of weed seeds in another spongy substrate to make weeding easier. All this was a lot of hard work (now ¾ done in the smaller winter garden, summer to come next before its green manure rotation), hence my reluctance to do anything more than pry deep cracks into the original beds to give the roots and worms a fast lane to the subsoil. Mixing it all up by hand seemed like it may be unnecessary, and some sources say it speeds the loss of organic carbon in the soil. Instead I just used a hand trowel to mix the manure and dirt layers where I am planting seeds, saving a lot of labour. Ill let you know how the experiment turns out. Looking back over summer the green manure crop could have been more effective, not just in terms of being in place for longer. When it was cut down it took quite some time to recover and grow again (2-3 weeks). Next season I am planning on planting the paths with the low species (cowpea, marigold, Japanese millet) and scraping the top off the bed to cover the seeds on the paths, then the beds can be sown with taller species (malu-khia, pidgeon pea, sunflower etc) that can be slashed just to half height, giving them more biomass for growing back quickly, and deeper roots to bring up leached nutrients. The winter green manures are a bit trickier- oats and lupins are excellent low plants but tall plants are less obvious. Ill run a few trials and sort it out. This combo did amazing things to the soil though- oat roots turned it dark and crumbly. The main criteria, apart from nitrogen fixing legumes, and a wide diversity of plant families, is to have fast controllable growth that is easy to slash, easy to remove entirely, and has controllable reproduction (large seeds, or distinct flowering spikes, or propagated from human driven cuttings).

Livestock wise the chickens have recently started laying at 6 months age. I got them as a box of day old hatchlings in September and had them peeping at the bottom of my bed for a couple of months. They are all grown up now and no longer love their mother (unless I have a grasshopper to share). I got an unsexed dozen plus one that died the day it got home, from which I got five roosters and seven hens. One rooster died suddenly during a rainy period (probably gut infection from eating mud), one rooster went to breed on a friend’s farm, and two went into the pot. Killing them was easy (one person holds them down, the other chops) then they were strung up by their feet and skinned. Plucking feathers takes forever, skinning takes mere minutes. They were filleted and ended up giving many meals, including lots of invaluable stock. We are now getting two eggs a day, still small pullet eggs, but of excellent quality. One hen was eaten by an adventurous python, with the enclosure since covered in finer wire. The chooks eat lots of weeds that when pooped on makes a valuable enriched mulch for the veggies. The Australorps have been good natured and quite thrifty with food inputs so far, and their gorgeous glossy black plumage never ceases to impress me.

The other livestock are our muscovy ducks. These were moved into the field in a low enclosure with a secure night box. One of the females got bloated in the chicken pen earlier and was quickly despatched (fantastic low fat dark meat- think kangaroo without the hazards of toughness). The other two were joined by a drake and have botched a few attempts at raising a batch of ducklings. We suspect the eggs were infertile and the drake not doing his job, so he is due to be replaced soon. A batch of fertile eggs is currently being incubated. The ducks are consuming a lot of time and giving little in return compared to the chickens, though we could have done a better job in setting them up properly. They are now roaming the orchard and neighbours forest and seem very happy collecting seeds, leaves and bugs, but may become a problem when my field crop seedlings are germinating, so they may be locked up a few weeks to let them get a go on. The orchard is due to be enclosed in a hedge of giant NZ flax as a barrier to them wandering too far and dogs getting in. An electric fence to hold back our moldy old horse is probably needed before I do that. We double fenced a windbreak planting to shield the veggie garden and he has turned it into spaghetti leaning in to nibble on the lablab bean and scratch his neck. Bees might be the next experiment, maybe this spring.

So that is a long, highly detailed, but probably frustratingly vague account of my first real year in the garden. Production is scaling up rapidly and I am learning all the tricks to make things go as quickly and as smoothly as possible, and also learning not to bite off more than I can chew. A lot of people have lost control during the rainy summer- my only advice is to start in one place and work outwards, and get a good sharp hoe and kama to stop longer lasting damage being done.

Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

Regional Powerdown Blog

Sonya — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 20:13:34 -0800

Second meeting with one of the mayoral candidates went very well. The election date is the next key timeline point for the region.

Once the new Mayor is elected and he (there are only two candidates, both male) is in place and the councillors up and running it will be time to kick start the real powerdown work in the region.

The document is still under construction, but we do have the March 15 election date and we can't do anything before that, so we have a little lee way in time at the moment.

Staff within council have been presenting peak oil seminars and an introduction to the EDAP in-house and it is being very well received.

It will be a huge undertaking to actually get this document ratified, endorsed, and the implementation process started, but I'm hoping there will also be opportunities for employment in there too. Doing this voluntarily is okay, but not sustainable - for me at least.

Lots of behind the scenes work going on in the lead up to the March 15 date; meetings, letters, writing, ideas exchanges, last minute additions to the EDAP etc etc. Also one of the students from course has devised a survey to test all candidates knowledge of and committment to both peak oil and climate change solutions. Looking forward to seeing the results.

We have one chance with this... if we do it well, we open the door for many others to follow behind us. If we stuff it up, we've made things a whole lot harder for the next EDAP.

The document will be peer reviewed to ensure credibility and strength. We need it to be bullet proof and most of resilient (just like we need all our communities to be too.)

I'll let you know who wins the election and what it means to our EDAP!

Sunshine Coast Relocalisation- Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE)

Climate change & Peak oil are not a problem

Sonya — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:43:45 -0800

I don't think climate change and peak oil are a problem... let me explain.

There is so much media, government and public attention focused on the ‘problem’ of climate change and, to a lesser degree peak oil, but aren’t we all looking at this from the wrong angle?

I see the changes in our climate and our impending energy descent as symptoms, not problems.

The problem is much deeper and much more personal.

The problem is the way we – those of us in developed countries – are living our lives.

It’s the way we consume way beyond what we actually need, it’s about the food we throw away, the culture of consumerism we’ve created and have now become enslaved to.

Try telling someone that they don’t need the latest model car, they don’t need a wardrobe full of clothes they don’t wear, that we don’t actually need shopping malls full of useless ‘crap’ and see how far you get.

Somewhere, somehow, we all started believing we had the right to live the high life. Marketers jumped on the bandwagon – or perhaps kicked it all off – and we were on our way. The latest handbags, boxes and boxes of shoes, the latest in-season fashion. Live like a celebrity!

What’s hot and what’s not? Our passion for fashion (not just clothes of course, but the latest model kitchen appliance, the celebrity style overseas get away …) is directly related to what’s hot that’s for sure. And another thing that’s hot is the climate.

Human behaviour – consumerism, land use, deforestation, fossil fuel burning – has now changed the world’s weather patterns – perhaps irreversibly. Warning after warning, each more dire than the one before and appearing in our newspapers, our nightly news programs yet… where is the revolution?

Yet, we continue on our merry way, worshipping the consumerism of today’s life… very few people have really made any serious effort to change the way they live. Our societies make it hard for those of us who would like to seriously change the way we live – you try living without a car on the Sunshine Coast!

We continue to pump out (the problem) carbon emissions in huge amounts (the symptom) despite knowing it is going to cause extinction of species (note to all – WE are a species!), destruction of the environment, major disruptions to food supply and loss of available land…

As for peak oil, do you think an ant cares that we are running out of oil, or a bird, or an elephant?

We care that we are running out of oil because we’ve built ourselves into a corner. A corner built on oil, lives dependant on oil, economies dependant on oil, employment, housing, food, mobility… all dependant on oil.

We’re running out because we’ve consumed what was available at an alarming rate. We’ve wasted oil on frivolous, meaningless things that have done nothing to really improve our lives. We’re less happy and more stressed than our pre-oil ancestors.

Looking at climate change as an environmental problem is taking us off course and away from where we should be focussing. We are losing valuable time and wasting valuable energy if we look at this as an environmental problem.

Because what happens is councils and other organisations, thinking they are doing the right thing – climate change is about the environment right? – employ environmental scientists to get to work fixing the problem.

But then, the poor person put in that position realises the problem is not the environment, the problem is people - social, economic, psychological, planning, infrastructure, systems, systems, systems.

Yes, climate change is about the environment, but climate change is only a symptom, not the problem. Same with peak oil – if we didn’t use (waste?) so much of this precious fuel and if we hadn’t designed our whole lives to revolve around it – it wouldn’t be reaching it’s peak and if it was, we wouldn’t care.

When I worked in the medical field, often patients would be being treated and hospitalised for their symptoms, not the problem. Our health system is a reflection of our current crisis.

Yes we can treat symptoms, we can mask symptoms – but unless we treat the underlying problem – and in this case it’s human behaviour and abuse of earth’s resources – we are only ever going to have a bandaid effect.

Let’s instead bite the bullet and address the real issues 1) consumption – or more to the point overconsumption and 2) a change away from linear globalised systems – resource in waste out – extraordinary transport miles and carbon emissions attached to everything we buy.

Let’s be brave and let's be visionaries
reduce consumption,
produce locally,
build resilient communities
relocalise and
make the transition to our post carbon future with our eyes wide open and looking forward.