Hello we’re Cathie (Ackers) and Darren (Bealers) and you’re reading our blog which follows our family’s transition towards a life where we aim to have lower energy requirements (and reliance) and where the stuff that we need is either produced by us or sourced locally. Ideally.

We got the idea for this blog after trying to explain to family and close friends what had changed about us. Why were we talking about getting rid of the telly? They asked. Why on earth are you thinking about moving into a commune like a bunch of hippies with my grandchildren? They thought. We felt that we needed coherent answers to these and other similar questions so we started keeping a diary that we’re now putting online here for anybody to see.

To give you some background it all started in 2006 when we partially downshifted from our London lives to rural Worcestershire. We started growing our own veg, we became much more aware of the seasons and we generally became focused on rural matters. We sold our house and decided to rent as we felt the housing market was a tad overheated. As a result we were constantly looking at houses online in the search to purchase our next, perfect, rest-of-our-lives, house at a reduced price.

During this initial period we had already witnessed some of the worst flooding in UK memory living as we did at the time in a small town on the banks of the river Severn. The drinking water supply faltered, I couldn’t get to work for a week due to road blockages, local shops ran out of food, the cashpoints were empty and were not resupplied for days. Then, the global economy popped. We’d been fully prepared for a house price correction and a recession of sorts – we’d let two staff go in preparation – but this was off the scale. We started realising with first-hand experience just how fragile the whole just-in-time system was and how unprepared we were for even a small shocks to it.

As we searched for a new home we came across some flats in a subdivided mansion house that had large shared grounds and where residents were expected to spend time helping with the large veg plot. Even though this particular place wasn’t suitable – not very child friendly – the concept really appealed to us so we did more research and it turned out that intentional communities like this had been around for a long time.

Further investigations lead us to go on an interest weekend at a community in Cornwall where we were blown away by how this bunch of ‘normal’ people were working together with a common goal of self reliance and having no focus on having to own a bunch of useless stuff to feel wealthy. We came away feeling enthused (and confused).

A smallholding was another very serious option. We couldn’t afford one where we lived but in Wales they were (relatively) reasonably priced. However we were unsure what would be involved in running our own so I attended a low impact smallholding course to get more of a lowdown. This was even more inspiring. Now what on earth were we to do!?

We can’t recall exactly triggered it but one day BANG we had our ‘End of Suburbia’ moment. “Oh no the world is totally f**ked”, we thought. We panicked. Should we start stock piling? Should we buy some land and live in a caravan? Buy guns & ammo? This ‘post-petroleum stress disorder’ was paralising and scary. We started consuming anything that we could lay our hands covering the three main subjects, namely peak oil, man made climate change and the global financial system. Many books were read and many movies watched.

We eventually started emerging from our malaise as we began to see things in a more positive light. Of particular note was the BBC’s excellent A Farm For The Future, documentary and the Transition Handbook both of which made us see that it was possible to change the way that we lived and consumed and still have a ‘nice’ and productive life.

Change. That’s the hard bit. You can do as much research as you want but will you act on it? Well in our case we both felt that we owed it to ourselves and our kids to start to make a concerted effort to become more resilient and to also live lighter on this planet.

We may be wrong. Maybe the magic science fairy will bring us a clean and limitless energy source (and no we’re not talking about Hydrogen). Who knows? Whatever we end up doing may ultimately not suit us. We may relapse.

We have to try, though. We’ve absolutely nothing to lose and so much to gain.

Thanks for reading.

Ackers & Bealers – April 2009