Wed 10 Feb 2010
| Living Lightly 6 |
| Contents: Editorial Article: The Joy of Sensitive Living Book Review: ‘One Straw Revolution’ by Masanobu Fukuoka News: Pee to help make your garden grow Letters: Gardening advice wanted, ‘Compassionate Lifestyle’ project, Morocco Project |
| Editorial |
| Welcome to the Imbolc / Spring edition of Living Lightly. |
| I imagine you are all itching to get out in the garden, now that the long cold winter is over! |
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| You might be inspired to see our sustainable food gardens and alternative building project in County Leitrim – they are featured on the tv on Wednesday Feb 10th at 7pm on the Nationwide RTE1 programme (and on the RTE website subsequently). |
| We have some permacultural courses lined up for the summer, so check them out on our workshops pages. |
| And you might like to check out our latest YouTube film of an act of guerilla planting in Leitrim, with a song that I wrote especially. |
| Contributions to this site are encouraged. |
| Enjoy! |
| Yours permaculturally, |
| Alanna Moore |
| ‘The Joy of Sensitive Living’ |
| By Alanna Moore |
| February 2010 |
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| For the past 26 years I have worked as a geomancer, assessing and balancing the subtle energies of places with pendulum dowsing and meditational attunement. It’s akin to feng shui, but not formula oriented. A geomantic reading of a place seeks out the actual inherent energies there, so it’s rather more indigenous than informed by Chinese cultural conditioning, as feng shui is. It thus requires openness and keen sensitivity. You never know what might show up. I often find high-tech radiation, or geopathic stress from unhealthy underground energies; or perhaps a desecrated sacred site that’s causing ‘bad vibes’. |
| On the other hand, beneficial energies can also be created or amplified, harnessed for enhancing plant growth in the garden or for making one’s own backyard sacred site. Thus the hundreds of ‘Towers of Power’ I’ve been helping to create around Australasia and elsewhere (modeled on the ancient Round Towers of Ireland) have had some noteworthy effects for farmers and gardeners. I wrote a book on the subject in 2001 – ‘Stone Age Farming – ecoagriculture for the 21st century’. |
| For the past 22 years I have also been a keen permaculture practitioner. Permaculture is the ethical design of sustainable culture, mostly practiced in the form of eco-smart gardening systems. Developed in Australia in the 1970’s, it has gone on to have a very positive impact on food security in many parts of the world. But this sustainable system of land development may lack sensitivity in its implementation. A macho approach to bulldozing can often leave a bad vibe in a place, for example. |
| However, even earthworks can be done with sensitivity. Implementing a geomantically informed permaculture design for sustainable living may alleviate environmental problems on many levels. I’m finding that the more sensitive, spiritual approach to land planning and Earth care is gaining a welcome resonance amongst people who are weary of the negativity and unsustainability of today’s society. It can be a celebration of the sanctity of Mother Earth, indigenous Earth lore and the traditions of nature based spirituality. |
| The invisible dimensions of landscape are not merely energetic. They are also characterized by varying levels of consciousness, epitomised by universal traditions of the fairy realms. I divide my time between Australia and Ireland, both places where knowledge of geomancy and the fairy world has survived relatively well, in understated undercurrents at the least. The Australian Aborigines and native Irish are highly intuitive peoples. Like other animist societies, the Irish believed that fairy beings help to care for their crops and livestock and thus the ‘Good People’ must always be thanked, and their homes and pathways respected. The Aboriginal people were (and often still are) acutely aware of the nature spirits around them and they may be intimately connected to the totemic nature beings that act as familiars to them. (It’s interesting that elements of totemism linger on in modern Catholicism, that most pagan of Christian forms. Equating Jesus with wheat/bread, for example, is a direct rip-off from animist mystery traditions of sacred agrarian culture.) |
| Nature spirits (also known as devas) continue to be a dynamic force in landscapes, I’ve discovered in my life of professional dowsing experience, travel and teaching around the world. By dowsing and attunement I find exactly where the nature beings are stationed and thus help people to avoid disturbing them. I also seek the co-operation of the fairies to ensure harmonious co-existence. Swedish dowsers I’ve met have taken this approach further. They regularly consult with10 metre tall European forest trolls and they actively help the local devas to overcome debilitating effects of high-tech radiations, such as from mobile phone masts on hilltops. (This is the subject of a short film I have posted on-line, amongst my other Geomantica Films at YouTube.) Not just affecting the devas, sensitive people too (such as myself) suffer in the presence of such phone masts. Clusters of people reporting ‘Microwave Sickness’ symptoms are found in the vicinity of these insidious installations. Clearly, such energetic insults are not sustainable for continuing human existence. |
| Avoidance of such problems is always preferable and I actively defend sacred sites from such desecration wherever I can. In Australia in 2004, with a small group of determined locals, we fought a David and Goliath battle against Telstra erecting a 34m tall phone mast on top of the iconic Mount Franklin, the ‘Uluru’ of central Victoria, where I live (and famously depicted on Mt Franklin water bottles). After several days in a Melbourne VCAT tribunal, Telstra was defeated – for the first time ever! It was thanks to the heritage overlay on the mountain that acknowledged its sacredness to Aboriginal people. That you can’t screw with registered sacred sites this way is law in Australia and Telstra hadn’t done its homework. Other such victories against phone towers elsewhere have followed from this precedent. (I wrote about this saga in my 2004 book ‘Divining Earth Spirit’; plus there are many other articles of mine on related subjects on-line in Geomantica magazine at www.geomantica.com.) However the proliferation of debilitating high-tech radiation in our beautiful landscapes in still increasing, thanks to industry thrusting ever higher levels of (typically unnecessary) technological complexity at us, such as digital tv and wireless broadband, also massive wind farms and the like. We lap them up at our peril! |
| In my seventh and latest book – ‘Sensitive Permaculture – cultivating the way of the sacred Earth’*, I explain how eliciting nature’s help in the garden can foster harmonious feng shui, as well as nourish our own inner, spiritual gardens. It focuses on an energetic and loving approach to sustainable land planning. For when we connect to the sacred dimensions of life our activities can become positively life-affirming, festive and joyful. This is our universal heritage. |
| * ‘Sensitive Permaculture – cultivating the way of the sacred Earth’ |
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| This book is now available from Amazon UK and Amazon USA and it and Alanna Moore’s other books are described at www.pythonpress.com |
| Book Review |
| by Alanna Moore |
| ‘One Straw Revolution’ by Masanobu Fukuoka |
| Permaculture has been called a ‘revolution in gardening and living’ and it was no doubt informed by Fukuoka’s classic, radical manifesto of the development of his own revolution in broadscale farming in Japan. First published in 1975, this book was recently republished (by New York Review Books), with up-to-date prefaces by other astute writers, in 2009. It is as relevant today as it was back in the ‘70’s. |
| Fukuoka (1913 – 2008) describes his discovery of ways to produce grain crops naturally, with his methods based on keen observations of nature and the shunning of both chemicals and the tilling of the soil. As a result of implementing his ideas he was able to harvest crops in equal, if not greater amounts, to the best chemical farmers of the district and for more than 20 years. His system involves seeding several crops at once in a field and always maintaining a cover crop of clover or grain (in his case – rice grown without permanent inundation, plus barley and rye). Seeds that must wait patiently for the right season to germinate are pelleted with clay to avoid predation by birds, mice etc. After harvest all the straw is returned to the field to nourish it and also protect the seeds below. A little chicken manure is sprinkled over it all to help the straw to break down. (Originally he put a flock of ducks into the fields after harvest and they did a good job of fertilization and weed control, but a highway was built through there and prevented this from continuing.) |
| Fukuoka once said in an interview – “The real path to natural farming requires that a person know what unadulterated nature is, so that he or she can instinctively understand what needs to be done and what must not be done – to work in harmony with it’s processes.” Elsewhere in the book he stated that one should “…serve nature and all is well. Farming used to be sacred work… When the farmer began to grow crops to make money, he forgot the real principles of agriculture.” |
| Fukuoka’s mission to reform agriculture back to more sustainable traditions of the past encouraged many others to follow suit. His system can be adapted to anywhere that crops are grown in succession. And his gentle philosophy of life is evermore needed today. It is an important exposition of Slow Living. |
| In the preface by Francis Moore Lappe one learns of a 2007 study by the University of Michigan which projected that overall food availability could be increased by about half if the whole world moved to “ecologically sane farming”. She also states that it was estimated in the 1970’s that a third of the total amount of grains produced in the world were fed to livestock. |
| Fukuoka determined that one of his quarter acre fields growing grains could support 5 to 10 people, each investing less than one hours daily labour (using his natural farming methods). However if the produce of that quarter acre was only pasture for livestock or if the grains grown there were fed to cattle, then only one person could be supported. |
| “If we do have a food crisis it will not be caused by the insufficiency of nature’s productive power, but by the extravagance of human desire,” Fukuoka wrote. |
| This is one of the all-important messages in the book, which I think is essential reading for all concerned planetary citizens. |
| Pee to help make your garden grow |
| Gardeners at a National Trust property in Cambridgeshire UK are urging people to relieve themselves outdoors to help gardens grow greener. |
| A three-metre long “pee bale” has been installed at Wimpole Hall. Head gardener Philip Whaites is urging his male colleagues to pee on the straw bale to activate the composting process on the estate’s compost heap. |
| He said the “pee bale” is only in use out of visitor hours, since “we don’t want to scare the public”. By the end of the year, the estate estimates that it will have saved up to 30% of its daily water use by not having to flush the loo so many times. |
| Rosemary Hooper, Wimpole estate’s in-house master composter, said: “Most people can compost in some way in their own gardens. Peeing on a compost heap activates the composting process, helps to produce a ready supply of lovely organic matter to add back to the garden. Adding a little pee just helps get it all going; it’s totally safe and a bit of fun too.” |
| Extracted from: BBC |
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| Of course – households don’t need a 3m long strawbale to do this. On a smaller scale, a bucket with a lid, half filled with straw or sawdust or leaves, will do the trick (and the organic matter in it will ensure no splashback and reduce odours). And it’s female friendly too. With it you can make perfect compost, with no need for animal manure! |
| LETTERS |
| Hello, I am researching permaculture and organic gardening in Ireland and I am having trouble finding resources. Can you recommend a guide book with monthly planting and harvesting instructions/information and a good resource to learn about permaculture in Ireland? |
| Many thanks in advance, Jackie Kilroe |
| Perhaps readers may have some suggestions for Jackie? |
| Hi Alanna |
| I have just started a community project concerning the ‘Compassionate Lifestyle’, vegetarianism and solutions to climatic changes. |
| So far I have designed a flyer and one web-page, as well as organized a few meetings. Please view our flyer (in pdf) on www.karunaflame.com/veg.html |
| From 4th January we intend to start a national campaign of ‘Meat-free Mondays and Fridays’ in Ireland to help to slow down climatic changes, brought in part by global life-stock farming industry. |
| Soon we will have a new website, entirely dedicated to this issue. |
| Love and Light
Kris |
| Morocco Project |
| Hi, This might be of interest to Irish permaculture people. The project is in Morocco, but we are Irish based. |
| We are building a permaculture project to restore an entire watershed in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. We’re starting off with a small plot where we are building a school and community centre, which will serve as a base for the wider project, and provide permaculture training and internet facilities for the local people, as well as the design certificate courses we will be running as part of the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia’s Permaculture Centres Worldwide initiative. |
| There’s more about the centre HERE |
| and the course page is HERE |
| The main purpose, apart from returning the area to fertility, is to help make connections between the traditional Berbers and other communities in Ireland and elsewhere. This would be done via the courses, but also by linking the school with schools here, and through travel exchange opportunities, trading of goods like herbs and spices, and other things the people themselves want to do. |
| All the best,
Andy |