Welcome to the very first
edition of ‘Living Lightly’,
The bi-monthly magazine for Permaculture Ireland,
edited by Alanna Moore and published on the 1st of the month
each February, May, June, Aug, October, December.
This on-line magazine intends to offer new writings on sustainable living and the cutting edge of permaculture design, focussing on positive solutions to environmental problems in Ireland (and beyond!)
We find this positive approach to be self-empowering for people, an antidote to the disempowering doom and gloom being peddled by current mainstream media.
Permaculture is about positive action and it has changed the lives of many people for the better, not to mention lightening the eco-footprint of mankind.
So in the spirit of promoting positive permaculture solutions for all, we invite you to read on and discover something of this framework for sustainable living, that starts in our homes and backyards, but can help change the whole world in the process!
Happy winter solstice!
Alanna Moore
Permaculture is catching on!
“While permaculture has had a low profile in the West, it has been the key to self-sufficiency for many people in the developing world. Given that climate change and sustainable development are dominating world headlines, the concept is finally beginning to get mainstream recognition in Australia – the home of permaculture. Rachel Sullivan spoke to co-originator David Holmgren in Australia’s ECOS Magazine, issue 144.
LL features new and newish writings of relevance to permaculture in Ireland (and elsewhere) today. Contributions are welcomed. Next issue – April/May.
Contents:
* Eco-Living Festival in June – mark your calendars, offer your help.
* Permaculture Ireland films: Permaculture Pioneers Permaculture Poultry P is for Permaculture
* ‘Ducks, the perfect poultry for Ireland’, by Alanna Moore
* ‘Famine’ – lessons from Ireland’s Past’, by Alanna Moore
* ‘A Return to Normal’ Peter Cowman expresses his horror at the thought
* Book review – ‘Stone Age Farming’ by Alanna Moore
* Book review – ‘We Want Real Food’ by Graham Harvey
Eco-Living Fest
June 6-7th 2009
Drumsna, Co. Leitrim
Come join us in celebrating all things wholesome, slow, crafty, fun and simply sustainable at this special event being organised by Permaculture Ireland.
We want to showcase the sustainable living movement and make it grow, so we are planting seeds right now!
Mark your calendars and offer us your help. We need YOU! We ask people involved in the following areas to come forward and share their wisdom and show their wares to the public on this exciting weekend festival:
Farming heritage
Traditional crafts and music
Building traditions
Local food production
Wild foods
Recycling and re-using ‘waste’
Sustainable transport alternatives
Low-tech living
Modern eco-living for today
We want to charge minimal entrance fees to the public and stall holders. Field trips are also being organised, so that people can see sustainable living in action.
We aim to have a program of speakers and events available for the next issue of Living Lightly in April/May, so be quick with your offers!
Contact Peter Cowman at: sheltermaker @ gmail.com (leaving out the blanks) or phone 076 602 6046
A Return to Normal
Is this a joke that I am not getting?
Normal is the cause of economic collapse.
Normal is destroying the environment.
Normal is contaminated food.
Normal is the hole in the ozone layer.
Normal is burning precious fossil fuels.
Normal is property bubbles.
Normal is greed.
Normal is debt.
Normal is melting icecaps.
Normal is overpriced homes.
Normal is endless growth.
Normal is deceit and lies.
Normal is unjust wars.
Normal is slick.
Normal is fast.
Normal is the sold-out media.
Normal is unsustainable.
‘Stone Age Farming’ by Alanna Moore 2001
Review by Bob Ewing, June 2002.
The opening words of Stone Age Farming echo a crucial message. You may have heard these words or something like them before: We humans are destroying the Earth upon which we depend for our very lives. Industrial forestry and industrial farming have and continue to damage the soil upon which existence rests. What makes Moore’s words stand out is that she is not preaching doom and gloom but simply setting the scene before presenting a way out, in fact several ways out.
That there are alternatives, readily available alternatives to our current industrial agricultural methods is the central message of Stone Age Farming. This book provides the farmer, the urban gardener and all of us with not just hope, but a hope that is based upon research and development. A hope which rises from tried and tested techniques which have improved the health and vitality of the soil and those living on and dependent upon that soil.
There is an old gardening saying that goes like this: feed the soil. This is precisely what Moore is talking about when she discusses the effects that adding rock dust to your land will have. ” A healthy soils requires an extensive range of trace elements to feed micro-organisms and sustain the humus complex, and the finer the particles these are supplied in, the quicker the microbes can incorporate into it. Basalt rock dust is one of the best sources of minerals, having a wide range of trace elements.” (p.9)
Stone Age Farming also provides insights into the role that paramagnetism, which is defined as a weak attraction to a magnet, plays in the development of healthy soil. “In soil it (paramagnetism) is a measure of the soil’s ability to attract and hold energy.”(p11)
Moore’s exploration of the world of subtle energies may be difficult for some to accept but for those who are seeking ways to improve plant growth her well researched and documented work provides the reader with genuine opportunities that need serious consideration. If you are concerned about the world’s food supply, the disappearance of topsoil, the shortage of water or simply want to raise good, healthy crops for your family then read Stone Age Farming. The time it will take you to finish the book will be time well invested in your and your family’s future.
…I think this is an important book for anyone who is concerned about the quality of food that is available and the future of our food supply. (Source- on-line)
Book Review by Alanna Moore:
‘We Want Real Food’ by Graham Harvey, published by Constable and Robinson, London, 2006 and revised and updated in 2008.
Wow! This is the book to make you want to grow your own food! The author tested many samples of organically produced foodstuffs and was rather shocked to find them often sadly lacking in vitamins and minerals.
Harvey advocates strongly for the remineralisation of farm soils using basalt rock dust and speaks a little about the SEER Centre in Perthshire, Scotland, where amazing growth of vegtables in poor country resulted from the application of such rock dust and now this centre is a showcase of sustainable agriculture.
He details why we need a host of minerals and trace elements in our diet if we want to be healthy and describes the de-vitalising processes involved with making processed foods, such as white bread. You won’t want to eat wheat bix, either, ever again!
He gives us tips for what to look for on the label, how to avoid too many ‘food miles’ and provides directories of farmer’s markets and farm gate shops across the UK. Which are the healthiest foods are listed and the best places to get them.
Everyone needs this book on their shelf!
Permaculture Your World!
By Alanna Moore December 2008
Permaculture, the integrated approach to edible landscape design for permanent agriculture/culture, was developed in the 1970s by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, but its impact there has not been as strong as its advocates might have hoped for. Many struggling communities in India, Asia and elsewhere have achieved much higher levels of food security and quality of life, thanks to the creation of permaculture eco-systems, but in the western world people have had it easy for too long and become content to source their food from soul and ethics free supermarkets, where food quality is dubious.
But the deterioration of the global economic system in 2008 has changed things. Not since the Great Depression has there been such a movement towards backyard food production, with seed companies in Australia and the UK reporting the rapid uptake of vegetable seeds that have overtaken the sales of flower seeds for the first time. The interest in permaculture is now surging as a new generation of people look to it to solve some of the world’s environmental problems by starting in their own backyard.
Food and shelter are the basics of life. But our culture has created a schism in that we look to specialists to provide these for us, when in the past everybody had the necessary know-how to produce their own. Building rules and regulations make sheltermaking seem more complex than is necessary, but it doesn’t have to be rocket science at all. Certainly there are skills required and these are sadly lacking in the general population.
What is the permaculture approach?
Permaculture is about eco-friendly edible landscape design and the relationship between the elements of the design. It aims to reduce our environmental impact, cutting the food miles our sustenance travels and the nitrogen and phosphorus footprint entailed in its production. Permaculturists aim to be kind to nature and to each other, to foster community cohesion and the sharing of our surpluses. For instance if you became good at growing beans and only had room for some bean trellises in the garden, you could swop your surplus with neighbours for different vegetables.
Some of the keypoints of permaculture design are to identify and harness the natural energies available to a site, such as solar, water, gravity and wind energy (as opposed to designing just with the use of fossil fuels in mind). To do this, one must initially read the landscape and get to know it pretty well. Find out what are the hazards presented, such as flooding, spray drift from farms etc. When does the sun shine at different locations at times of the year? Where does water flow when heavy rain falls and how to collect and store it for when it’s needed (such as in May 2008, when there was a mini-drought)?
Once these types of things are all noted, one selects plants that have multi-functionality, ‘stacking’ them in multi-tiered food forests if space permits. For instance a windbreak tree may also produce useful sticks when occasionally coppiced.
Our homes can also be designed for solar orientation and multi-functionality, ideally becoming smaller and more flexible than the current ‘go big’ approach. Increased flexibility can manifest as moveable interior walls for homes, for example, that can help us to adapt to life’s changes, so that extensions are not required.
Even one’s activities can have multi-functionality. Thus when I collect fallen leaves I then pile them up and mix them with llama poo and other additives to make next year’s compost for fertilising the garden. There is no need to import fertiliser that itself is a product of fossil fuels.
One’s urine is also a very valuable fertiliser and ideally is never flushed down the loo, as we take responsibility for our nitrogen footprint! (This action alone can save about a third of the potable water used each day in a household.) We also have a worm farm toilet and thus our own waste becomes food for bacteria, worms and ultimately plants and us – rather than just being pollution. Naturally one attempts to produce as little un-re-usable waste material as possible on the path to sustainability.
Permaculture demands increasing plant biodiversity, ideally selecting a range of crops rather than a few. For instance, flowers grown in the vegetable garden ensure a good habitat for useful insect life. (And some flowers are also edible.) A range of vegetable varieties ensures that something will be harvested in the event of extreme weather, which we must come to expect. These are planted in ‘guilds’, grouped with companion plants and located according to the water, sun and soil requirements they have in common.
An indigenous approach to permaculture is also very worthwhile in plant selection. For too long the permaculture movement has been responsible for introducing weed species to places, when an appropriate native plant would have done the job perfectly well. So I encourage people to ‘go native’ whenever possible.
Gardening in Leitrim
Gardening can be challenging in the damp, boggy meadow where I live in Leitrim. Most of the site flooded in August 2008, but the vegetables were on a raised area and survived. So to succeed I have to think about providing good drainage and make raised beds for them – these are a bit like the old ‘lazy beds’ made for potato growing.
Too much rain and not enough sun demands appropriate strategies if we want to produce abundant food. The climate change scenario seems to be making Irish summers wetter and winters drier. This can create new opportunities for different crops to prosper. Managing water in the landscape can be a crucial key to success.
Coming from a dry part of southern Australia (inland from Melbourne) I rejoice at the quantities of water available for growing! And the wild foods growing everywhere! But it seems that too much of a good thing can be ignored or invisible to the locals. Few people seem to have ponds or capitalise on the abundant fresh water everywhere. And rainwater seems to be an unrealised resource too. It’s far better to water your vegetables with rainwater than chemically treated mains tap water, the chlorine being a killer for soil bacteria. It’s healthier for people to drink rainwater too!
At the beginning of one’s permaculture design implementation a judicious phase of earthworks can go a long way. One can quickly create usable garden niches, such as terraces from slopes, or channel rain run-off into ponds.
But some people can go to extremes. I remember seeing Bill Mollison’s five acre farm in a high rainfall part of north-east New South Wales, when he was there in the 1990s. It was totally covered in ponds and he was passionate about the ability of water based food production to out produce land based growing. I felt it was a bit over the top and I prefer a more gentle and sensitive approach to landscape design. I find that geomancy is a perfect tool to use with permaculture for achieving Earthly harmony.
There are many strategies for growing food in Ireland for people on the permaculture path and I will be covering these practical considerations in summer 2009 when Peter Cowman and myself are holding two ‘Permaculture: Food and Shelter’ weekends, which will also look into strategies for creating homes that are havens of sustainability. We want to create a little learning community, where we can share ideas, plants and seeds, and discover the fun of how to live sustainably.
We are also organising an Eco-Living Festival, where people involved with permaculture, renewable energy, natural products and building etc will be showcasing their work and wares, on June 6- 7th, at the Drumsna Community Resource Centre in Drumsna, Leitrim. Stay tuned for details!
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