I just got back from the first of my Renewable Energy MSc modules at The Centre for Alternative Technology and I’m feeling pretty blown away but utterly inspired in equal measure.

7 days straight studying, eating, sleeping and drinking with 79 really smart people that have a wide range of backgrounds covering a broad age spread. One thing is common, though. They all totally get the issues and challenges that we face surrounding fossil fuel usage and climate change and are there to find out more about the main (energy replacement) options open to us.

The facilities at CAT were excellent as was the quality of the lecturing with most of the topics being introductions to the various renewable energy technologies and their respective social and political contexts.

It was a pretty tough regime and this was just the intro module! I now have 2000 word essay and presentation to prepare before my next visit in 4 weeks. I think I’ve got a good essay subject it just needs some research to see if it’s got legs.

Thanks to Casey Cole for recommending me to the course, attending this week has certainly felt like a life changing event.

Info on the REBE MSc

Aunite Beryl enjoying the warm September sun while Bealers does a spot of carpentry

We have a neighbour who is a lovely lady called Beryl. She is the elderly auntie of one of the people who first bought the farm we live at almost two and a half years ago. Beryl is in her late eighties and in a wheelchair but lives here instead of in a old people’s care home.

She joins us each night at the communal meal in the big farmhouse kitchen, she is always happy to receive visitors for a chat and is taken her lunchtime sandwich by anyone of us who are around during the day. Beryl ran her own hair salon for 72 years and so is fully qualified to chat pleasantly about anything and everything with anyone.

Having her here provides us with extra diversity in our group but also another dependent person who along with our small children needs looking after (she needs someone to get her up, washed and dressed in the morning and in the evening requires putting to bed like a toddler does).

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Since our move here two weeks ago we’ve been enjoying the communal cooking and eating aspect hugely. It was one of the things I was looking forward to but I was also nervous about cooking for so many.

It feels a bit cheeky to have arrived at a time when there is a huge abundance of food waiting to be picked and eaten in the huge vegetable garden and also in the polytunnel but it has meant that for a newbie to self-sufficiency I am enjoying the ease at which menus for dinner present themselves by a brief wander around the plot to see what is in plentiful supply.

There is not yet a whole-community effort in growing the food and the practice of eating what is available before any additional extras are required seems ad-hoc and there isn’t quite enough of a glut of anything to demand a big chutney making session although a lot of fresh vegetables have been chopped and stored in freezers ready for use in the winter instead of having them and their parent plants go to waste (beans mainly). Potatoes have been harvested and sorted for ones that are blemish and blight free and have been dug into a ‘clamp’ (a shallow trough lined with straw), squashes are being harvested and put to dry in a small barn.

There is no work schedule and despite the huge number of vegetables becoming ripe and ready for harvest it is a case of one picking what one can and using as much of it for the evening meal. On Saturday a load of us are planning to harvest and preserve what we can (beans, tomatoes, courgettes, apples, plums) by making pickles and chutneys, freezing and even cooking some ‘ready meals’ and putting in tubs in the freezer. We will be so glad of them in the winter.

I’ve just had to add up the amount I owe the communal kitchen for all the delicious meals my family and our friends have enjoyed since we moved here mid August most of which have involved an enormous range of vegetables from the garden here and some I’ve even cooked or helped to prepare (despite my worries).

There is a simple tariff which ranges from 50p for a small snack or breakfast to £1.50 for a large main meal with an additional 50p for a portion of desert or a second helping of dinner. One writes the appropriate amount on a chart by the back door of the kitchen and settles up at the end of the month. Any food supplies I have bought for the communal kitchen (butter, bread, milk, oil, seasonings etc) are subtracted from the amount owed and receipts provided so an overall amount is due. As all three children and I have had meals in the communal kitchen most evenings since our arrival here we owed £110 but the shopping I had done came to £40 so I wrote a cheque today for £70. This system works well as one member of the community is a diligent administrator and bookkeeper.

Here we are enjoying helping Steve harvest the potatoes he planted outside his log cabin – a big thumbs up from permaculturists as the plot was walked past each day Steve could easily tend to it without having to go out of his way.

Spuds for storing in a clamp.

I will try to make this a quick update as I’m hoping to get some more sleep before the night is over having been up since 3.30 with too much on my mind to sleep.

The children and I have been having a wonderful time here on the farm since we arrived 8 days ago. We’ve unexpectedly had back-to-back visitors staying with us or popping over for day trips from their holidays which has made a huge difference to us. Not only have we had the comfort and good company of people who know us well but an additional benefit was having to show people round making the new environment instantly feel like we definitely live here and our friends and family are the new visitors seeing it with new eyes.

Thankfully the weather has been kind to us so despite some very heavy rain showers on the whole the two eldest kids have been out playing with their friends (comprising of other children living here but also the children who are visiting and staying with other residents here), we’ve all been on the beach a fair few times and happily harvesting fresh vegetables for dinners. My littlest child loves being outside to watch the ducks waddle around the courtyard, throw the pigs some tasty pea pods and visit the pet rabbit living in a hutch not far from us.

I keep finding myself signing up to be the chef for the main communal meal which is odd as it was the one thing I was really worried about but I guess you can’t keep a food lover out of the kitchen for long even if it does mean cooking for up to 20 people with an eighteen month old cling to your leg or exploring the contents of the recycling bucket. Last night we cooked ‘rainbow risotto’ with loads of different veg, I made a quick simple tomato pasta for loads of kids one night too. A massive joy of living in such a close community is eating the wonderful food that others cook with great care. On the night we had a utility bonfire to burn hedges trimmings we had such a outdoor feast of really simple but such delicious things – sausages made from the meat of home-reared pigs, macaroni cheese, fresh fresh salad and lovely bright purple beetroot.

The one thing that is totally wrong with the intentional community we have moved to is that my dear husband is not with us (he is sadly chained to his computer in Worcestershire while one of his client’s projects nears completion until the latter part of this week). The children are missing their daddy and keep asking when he will come. Bealers still has the settling in period to go through where I feel my transition to learning how the farm is managed and how the community ticks is well underway. But hopefully he will enjoy a few more summery days when he does finally arrive and enjoy spending relaxed cups of tea on sunny steps having random chats with the people who live here as they pass by as I have done since we got here.

A quick post on the eve of my leaving our home in Worcs/Herefordshire to live with several other families in North Cornwall on a 30 acre smallholding with the long term aim of becoming as self-sufficient as possible.

We’re all very excited but also sad to be saying farewell to some of the most lovely people we have had in our lives since moving here just 9 months ago. In some ways our move here was necessary for us to realise that the rural life was something we wanted long-term. The people we have mixed with here are all people who have livestock and a deep love of country ways.

My poor eldest daughter has sobbed herself to sleep tonight so very sad about leaving the nextdoor neighbour’s cat behind so I have said to her that she may have a pet rabbit when we get the keys to the cottage we will be living in.

I am going down to the farm without Bealers but with the three children and will be staying in our caravan which is all rigged up and ready to be stayed in (washbags, toys, books, cot, pushchair etc all there and waiting for us). Next week the cottage which we are to live in will stop being rented out to holiday makers and so we will be able to walk across the courtyard and start sleeping in it. I have a little sketch on squared paper of where I think some of our furniture will fit when it eventually finds its way down to Cornwall but I suspect I have been over ambitious and will need to revise these plans a little.

I’m so excited about having so many interesting new projects to get involved in (permaculture design and the soon to be launched LAND initiative, seed saving and swapping, building projects, insulation projects, reed-bed water cleansing, rain water harvesting, The Soil Association’s Community Supported Agriculture program) and of course a ready made new community to enjoy.

One member of the community – Steve happened to be in our existing neighbourhood this week and came over for a brief cup of coffee. He is lovely and funny. It was great to see him but also for him to see where we currently are and see what kind of place we are moving from to be members of the farm community.

Very happy to be starting yet another adventure with my lovely husband and my three special littles and hope to keep people updated with interesting nuggets from time to time.

At last! I’m no longer classing myself as an ‘out there’ peak oil nutter as this is the week the things Bealers and I have been fretting about are suddenly Big News in the mainstream educated press.

(pic: The Economist – Derek Bacon)

Firstly Bealers came home on Saturday morning with a copy of The Economist with a cover page entitled ‘Britain’s Energy Crisis: How long before the lights go out‘ .

One of my bigger worries is around the unreliability of supplies of things we have become utterly accustomed to having all the time because they have always been there during our lifetimes. This article shows that before too long we may experience upsetting, unnerving and prolonged power cuts in the not too distant future due to politicians spending the last 30 years of North Sea power not talking about what to do when it runs out. I guess the journalist is hinting that it won’t just be occasional power cut like the ones we have round here on a windy night when a tree knocks into a rural overhead supply of electricity and very soon miraculously ‘They’ fix it for us), but really long ones where no-one knows when the power is likely to be supplied again and freezers defrost, lighting is not available and people have no access to tv or internet information.

Secondly I saw that that this week’s edition of MoneyWeek was running a key piece entitled:

Peak Oil: why we must take it seriously

Energy expert Dr Bakhtiari believes that oil production is entering a new era, during which it will undergo four stages of transition.

Finally as someone who takes no action to consume ‘news’ (or is it just infotainment these days which only provides people with stories which will sell newspapers and tv airtime?) my little toddler worked out how to turn the radio on for the first time this morning. She pressed the button just as the Secretary of State for Environment, Hilary Benn was telling the UK via the Today programme on Radio Four ‘We are heading for a perfect storm of food insecurity’ – the rocketing population of the planet, the seriousness of climate change and the increasing prices of petro-derived fertilisers (by this he means WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF OIL BUT IS NOT ABLE TO SAY ANYTHING IN CASE PEOPLE FEEL ANXIOUS ABOUT IT). Hilary Benn spoke in weak analogies of food ‘challenges’ and ended up being a comedy advert for GM foods but his opening gambit had me shouting out to Bealers ‘They’re finally talking about it on Radio 4 – come quickly!’

With the global increase in population of 2.5 to 3 billion in the next few decades – that’s a lot of additional mouths to feed. The challenge we have as a world and as a country is to increase food production at the same time as doing it sustainably because we know in particular that climate change is going to have an impact on our ability to do that and we know that food production is quite [QUITE?] heavily dependent on oil – we saw last year a big increase in food prices, in part because of the weather and the drought in Australia increasing the price of bread here in the UK but because the cost of oil went up and that effects fertiliser and fuel.

I think that was a wake up call. A lot of people maybe have taken food for granted and said that we’ll always be able to keep food production ahead of population growth (and we have succeeded in doing that in the past) but the circumstances in which we’ve got to do that again are going to become a bit [A BIT?] more challenging

I’m now wondering what has happened for these three pieces to be given such prominence. Has the memo finally gone to the people in charge round saying ‘Actually I think we should probably start talking about it after all’ or have we reached a tipping point where enough enquiring minds are worrying about the possible catastrophic scenarios of the future that we, and our progeny will face (and that many millions of people are already facing due to our wanton consumption and resulting destruction) to start writing about it  or has a load of data recently been released that proves we reached peak oil decades ago, the planet is about to run out of fresh water and all other resources we need to survive and its not going to be pretty if we don’t start reducing our impact with immediate effect?

Who knows but ‘m happy to see these things being broadcast and printed for a rare change.

Cathie and I disagree on how this is all going to play out.

Whilst Cathie thinks we’re going to have a number of major game-changing and horrible shocks over the coming years I think it’ll be a more gradual and under-the-radar bumpy downwards path. There will be some big shocks for sure. But I can’t see there being one single end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it event.

Admittedly one pretty big shock did happen recently and that’s the current ‘global economic crisis’ which some argue convincingly was a direct result of peak oil; I’ve no doubt that it played a part. Others say that our climate is approaching a tipping point due to the vast quantities of Co₂ that we’re pumping into our atmosphere, fuelled (excuse the hilarious pun) by this too-cheap energy. I can’t decide what’s more scary: a world system predicated on cheap energy that must grow economically just to stand still AND that energy is about to run out, or, as a result of using this too-cheap energy, we utterly screw up the place that we live and kill ourselves off. Climate change *slaps wrist* sorry I mean Anthropogenic Global Warming is so mind numbingly frightening that it’s no wonder that so many really clever people either deny it’s happening at all or just start chanting La La La La, stick their fingers in their ears and head into town to buy some more (cheap) crap.

Richard Heinburg  gives some excellent comment on this continual growth insanity buried within his recent guest posting on The Oil Drum:

During the past century growth has become institutionalized in the very sinews of our economic system. Every city and business wants to grow. This is understandable merely in terms of human nature: nearly everyone wants a competitive advantage over someone else, and growth provides the opportunity to achieve it. But there is also a financial survival motive at work: without growth, businesses and governments are unable to service their debt. And debt has become endemic to the industrial system. During the past couple of decades, the financial services industry has grown faster than any other sector of the American economy, even outpacing the rise in health care expenditures, accounting for a third of all growth in the U.S. economy. From 1990 to the present, the ratio of debt-to-GDP expanded from 165 percent to over 350 percent. In essence, the present welfare of the economy rests on debt, and the collateral for that debt consists of a wager that next year’s levels of production and consumption will be higher than this year’s.
Given that growth cannot continue on a finite planet, this wager, and its embodiment in the institutions of finance, can be said to constitute history’s greatest Ponzi scheme. We have justified present borrowing with the irrational belief that perpetual growth is possible, necessary, and inevitable. In effect we have borrowed from future generations so that we could gamble away their capital today.

I digress…

Huge climate events or meteorites hitting the earth to one side, I think it’ll be lots of ‘small’ crises: mass redundancies, petrol being a bit more expensive wobbling up then down but always tending upwards. More floods, droughts and freak weather. Ice caps melting just a bit more each year. Deserts getting that bit bigger each year. There being a bit less drinking water because that ice on those mountains up there melts too quickly and isn’t replenished because the snowy season is much shorter. Food becoming a bit more expensive because the fertilisers, oil based of course, are more expensive. As is the cost of picking it, transporting it, packaging it and running the shops we go to buy it in (which is more expensive as it costs more to drive there).

Looking back in 30 years time I feel sure that our society will look very different to that one we see today in ways that great big swathes of the global population just would not [want to] believe if confronted with right now . Energy will be very expensive. Water will be very precious in a lot more places and arable land – that’ll be productive arable land that can grow things on it without needing fertilisers –  will be in shorter supply. People will also pay the real cost for their goods that take into account the total energy cost of the product as well as the materials used. If they are not already dead then there will be lots more poor and that [lack of] wealth will be measured not just in terms of assets owned but in terms of energy resources one has access to.

A good example of unthinkable change is Sharon Astyk’s excellent post Will the Internet Still Be Here in Tough Times? It makes points that will seem ridiculous to some:

I think the assumption that we are making, that the internet will always be here for all of us – and I think it is an assumption made even by many people who should know better – risks enormous negative consequences.  Whether we are printing out valuable information (on the backs of other paper, of course) or remembering that even though we may like the people on the internet better, we still will have to live with our neighbours, perhaps exclusively, our assumptions should be that we may not always have things, just because we find it unthinkable to live without them.

A 16 year old with a modern internet connection would probably not be able to conceive of a world just 10 years hence where downloading a 20MB file would have taken at least a couple of hours and cost a fortune in telephone bills. Internet not always on? You had to manually connect? Unbelievable.

In a way I think that not having these big shocks is A Good Thing, it’ll mean we’ve time to get our business in order. However I do wonder whether bigger shocks would actually give us the kick up the ass to DO SOMETHING about the underlying problems. Living sustainably and within our means would be a nice start.

So I’m not expecting big shocks, no end of the word, just lots of small dips that can almost be missed on their own. When we get to the other side it’ll either be too late and the game is up, or – as I sincerely hope – we’ll have made the tough decisions needed and will be living within our means more.

On an ending note I thought it interesting to see articles on coming energy shortages in both this week’s Money Week (Are we about to hit peak oil?) and The Economist, the latter having the front cover with the headline “How long till the lights go out?”

I am only just  starting to really understand the challenges that we are faced with to keep those lights on. Best crack on eh?

I got one of my Raleigh Grifter’s ‘Supergrips’ made into a belt. Isn’t it great?

On our recent Permaculture course I could see that Ruth was wearing a belt made from an old bike tyre and I thought that was pretty cool. So when I got back I googled and found TyreBelt.

I had an emailed conversation with Duncan the guy that runs it to see if the tyre from my old 1983 Grifter was going to be suitable. There were some concerns about the rubber being cracked as it was so old but he was happy for me to send it up to him on the basis that he’d give me a refund and send me my rare old tyre back should it turn out to be not suitable.

Evidently there was nothing to be worried about as it’s turned out brilliant.

Kudos to Duncan for his excellent service. What a great way to turn an old tyre into something useful.

http://tyrebelt.co.uk

Next week I shall be moving away from our current home to start our new life at the recently formed south west of England eco-village. It is really very early days for the community because up until now although they have had great ideas and plans on how to become self-sufficient in food, energy and water but there has been a lack of people to do the work and finances to help shift things along.

We will be among a large ‘new wave’ of new people joining the group. Since the original eleven people bought the smallholding in 2007, two have moved out, a new family of three has moved in to become ‘stage one’ members and a new baby has been born.

At the same time as our move down, another young family of five will be moving in as well as another family of three so the new wave influx will double the original population and will hopefully provide new energy, new ideas, new ways of getting things done, new finance and also just loads more muscle power (to weed the veg patch, dig a reed-bed water purification system, insulate current houses against the brisk Atlantic winter winds and to build office spaces in one of the barns, think about wind turbines, allotments for the local community etc).

We’re really happy to be moving in. The decision process for us has been a long one but now we are hoping to make the farm our new home for at least a year while the other community members and we decide whether or not it will be somewhere we will want to live permanently.

This week a couple who were very serious about moving in at the same time as us made what seemed to be the very sudden decision not to join the community after all. They were kind enough to share the reasons that made them realise that this community would not be a suitable place for them to make their home in a long email to us all.

Most of the reasons were around the fact that the community was not yet operating in a self-sufficient, sustainable manner. At the moment meals that are cooked and eaten communally are often made using some fresh veg from thew garden but also augmented by ingredients from the local supermarket, these ingredients often include meat products from a questionable source (ie. not organic), the rain water harvesting and reuse system is not yet in place and although we have plans to build lots of composting toilets for people to use in order to save  flushing litres of drinking water away each time the use the loo the system is still only in the planning stages. The couple (who I was very much looking forward to being neighbours with as they have so many years of gardening and woodland management knowledge) are also very concerned with the way that there is not a community work ethos and various people work on various land-based projects when they fancy but there is not a need for everyone on site to ensure they have spent some time working on a community project. For this couple who have spent many years living lightly on the earth as vegans and commune members this would have been to hard to bear.

For us, however, the fact that the community is a work-in-progress project is very much one of the attractions.

We are hoping to learn how to be self-sufficient at the same pace as the others who have decided to live there. We are hoping to gain huge amounts of rich experience by partaking in so many projects and hope that very soon with so many great minds and so much human energy available the community will move from becoming self-sufficient to being truly sustainable and can proudly call itself a well functioning eco-village.