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Contents FEATURES 3

WINTER IMMUNE BOOSTERS FROM KITCHEN & GARDEN Julie Bruton-Seal and Matthew Seal explore the useful remedies to be found close at hand.

DIY NATURAL SWIMMING POOL David Butler recounts the experience of creating his own.

ng r creati o f k r o w rame method f l a e c v i i t t c a a v pr an inno living; a f o s y a w onious, e m l r b a a h n i y a l t l ca sus at can g ecologi h n t i s p o m l e e t v s for de uctive sy d o r p d n a efficient nywhere. a , e n o y n ya be used b

12 OUTDOOR COOKING IN WINTER! Trish MacCurrach extols the virtues of cooking alfresco, even in the depths of winter.

REGULARS 16 Solutions!

29 CHOOSING A WOODBURNING STOVE Maddy Harland explains the benefits of a woodburning stove and the process she went through to choose the stove of her dreams.

17 Product Reviews

34 SACRED FORESTRY Reforestation of the sacred mountain of Arunachala, in South India, has been resoundingly successful. John Barrie Button explains his permacultural approach to the challenge.

65 Letters

43 GROWING VEG THE INCAN WAY Steve James adapts an ancient farming method to create a self-watering greenhouse.

80 Subscriptions & Renewals

37 Permaculture News 63 GEN News 69 Reviews 72 Courses 77 Classified Exchange

23 A WOLF IN DOG’S CLOTHING Rebecca Hosking and Tim Green, makers of the highly respected ‘A Farm For The Future’ film, turn their attention to the health of our domesticated dog population.

20 EDUCATION FOR A HANDMADE FUTURE Maddy Harland explores the stunning new Woodland Classroom built by Ben Law.

47 HOW TO GROW FOOD IN WINTER Janet Renouf-Miller explains how you can create a harvest of fresh, nutritious food throughout the cold months. 52 THE SITTING ROOM SESSIONS Brian Boothby sings the benefits of taking live music back home. 55 GROWING TOGETHER Louise Cartwright describes a way of growing food on a large scale, as a community.

60 DESERT TO OASIS Karen Olsen tells the story of living permaculture legend, Scott Pittman. www.permaculture.co.uk

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Welcome EDITOR Maddy Harland FOUNDING EDITOR Tim Harland GRAPHIC DESIGNER John Adams ADVERTISING, MARKETING & MEDIA Tony Rollinson ONLINE EDITOR Mark Anslow SUBSCRIPTIONS Hayley Harland ACCOUNTS Carolyn Pennington ADMINISTRATION ASSISTANT Sam Blanchette CONSULTANT EDITORS Patrick Whitefield, Chris Marsh, Michael Guerra, Andy Goldring, Hildur & Ross Jackson, Max Lindegger, Dieter Duhm, Vandana Shiva, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Jonathan Dawson SPECIAL THANKS Pete & Emma Cooper, Pete Ellington, Rebecca Hosking, Tim Green, Martin Crawford, Georgina Norfolk, Patrick Harland UK & WORLDWIDE DISTRIBUTOR COMAG Tavistock Road, West Drayton, Middlesex UB7 7QE Tel: 01895 433 600 US & CANADIAN DISTRIBUTOR Disticor Magazine Distribution www.disticor.com COVER PHOTO © David Butler

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The opinions expressed in PM are not necessarily those of the publisher. Whilst the publisher takes every care in checking the validity of information given in articles and other contributions, it cannot accept responsibility for its accuracy or liability for any form of damages incurred by the use of any such information.

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Winter is coming in the northern hemisphere and we have been preparing for the short days and the cold. The summer and autumn glut of vegetables is over and any we could store are safely racked in a cool room. Cold frames have been moved from the melon crop and now shelter the salads until a hard snap wipes them out. The meadows are cut, fruit trees and bushes are mulched with the cut and new bulbs have been planted. The greenhouse has been resown with crops that will hopefully fill the hungry gap next year. The raised beds are sown with next year’s garlic and broad beans. The woodstore is full. It’s been hard work cutting, splitting and stacking the seasoned wood but there is nothing more satisfying than sitting by a warm stove and passing the dark evenings together, preferably sharing stories by candlelight. The publishing cycle turns as well and we pause and review the year. This one has been busier than any before. Not only have we published four issues of PM, we have also produced two new films. One presented by Ben Law and filmed by Undercurrents, Roundwood Timber Framing, introducing and explaining this new, low impact architectural vernacular (see p.22 and 70). It is abundantly practical and inspirational, taking building back into the local community and we hope it will encourage people to make their own beautiful structures from local materials. The other film is by David Butler and is a step by step guide to making your own natural swimming pools (see p.7). It shows every detail of construction for larger scale pond making and gives the know-how to create healthy aquacultures, so clean you can swim in them yourself. This year, we have also produced Ben’s latest book by the same title as the DVD, Roundwood Timber Framing, plus Simon Fairlie’s controversial and scholarly text, Meat. This urges everyone to eat far less of the stuff and, if you do, farm or buy it in as low an impact and responsible way as possible. I have to admit it has been good to see this – essentially a permaculture book – being talked about in all the UK broadsheets, plus the New York Times and Time Magazine. I have no doubt that the debate will run on and on. Three more books will also be in print by the end of the year, Gaian Economics, David Holmgren’s Permaculture – Principles and Pathways and Sepp Holzer’s Permaculture, an extraordinary exploration of his way of farming. This autumn, we were joined by Mark Anslow, former editor of The Ecologist, who is working with us to relaunch PM online this winter. This will allow us to publish weekly permaculture news, reviews, articles and designs – all at www.permaculture .co.uk. We will also gather our blogs and our film media under one roof and offer you new blogs from prominent permaculturists. Our aim is to create the best possible permaculture information service, both for newcomers and for seasoned practitioners. Behind the scenes, we have completely relaunched Green Shopping online (www.green-shopping.co.uk) to provide you with a secure, efficient and useful service for books, tools and products that we personally recommend and use. 2010 has been a year of intense activity for all the PM team. We have watched the world slide more deeply into recession and many people and organisations experience financial difficulties. We have noted extreme weather events, the subsequent suffering of millions and the lack of global political will to deal with climate change. All these and other events have fuelled our passion for what we do and made our resolve more steely. We have scrutinised our work and stretched ourselves further in our attempts to raise our standards, learn new skills and absorb new ideas. We feel passionate about our work and privileged to be able to produce positive, life affirming and practical media. We hope you enjoy this magazine and the cutting edge thinking in its pages. We wish you well for 2011 and ask you to stick with us for the journey.

Maddy Harland and the Permaculture Magazine Team

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Winter Immune Boosters from

Kitchen & Garden Julie Bruton-Seal and Matthew Seal explore the useful remedies to be found close at hand

n the cold dark days of winter we are much more prone to sniffles, colds, ’flu and other infections. We tend to spend more time indoors than out in the fresh air, and we are not getting the benefit of vitamin D from strong sunshine. Luckily, there are plenty of remedies available from the garden and pantry that can keep us healthy and fight infections. Kitchen immune boosters include onion, garlic, chillies, ginger, pepper, thyme, marjoram, cinnamon, cloves and horseradish. The hot spices among them are especially helpful to keep the lungs and mucous membranes clear. There is nothing like a bowl of hot soup to comfort in cold weather, and there are all sorts of recipes that will help your immune system. Here are a few of our favourite recipes:

Soups Ginger & Onion Soup Chop up three onions. Sauté in a little oil until transparent, then add three cups of water or vegetable stock. Add three teaspoonfuls of grated fresh ginger. Then, add two cloves of garlic, pressed or chopped finely, one fresh chilli, chopped finely (or one teaspoonful of dried chilli powder) and one small stick of cinnamon (or one teaspoonful of cinnamon powder). Bring to the boil and simmer gently for a few minutes, then serve.

Immune–Boosting Soup Research in Japan and China has established over the last half century that shiitake and reishi mushrooms are strongly immune-supporting and display anti-cancer activity. What is fascinating is that new research suggests ordinary edible mushrooms share, to a greater extent than hitherto realised, the immunesupporting and cancer treating qualities of the explicitly medicinal mushrooms. For example, a 2009 study of 2,000

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Chinese women found that those who ate fresh mushrooms daily were 64% less likely to develop breast cancer; those who combined daily mushrooms with green tea reduced their risk by 90%. A 2008 paper reported in vitro trials of white button mushrooms enhanced maturation of bone marrow antigen cells.

Barley Soup Put in a saucepan: three cups water and ½ cup barley. Simmer for half an hour. Sauté one onion (finely diced), 1 teaspoon minced garlic, and ½ cup of sliced mushrooms until cooked, then add to the barley soup. Add miso, tamari or sea salt to taste. Add ½ cup chopped parsley and a handful of chopped chives or spring onions, cook for about a minute longer and then serve. If someone is very weak and ill, strain the soup and just give them the broth.

Vinegars Cider vinegar has its own antiviral properties, and is a good preservative for herbs to fight infections. Here are some easy recipes for thyme vinegar and for the famous ‘four thieves’ vinegar.

Br u to n-S

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Other research is ongoing into the antibacterial, liver protective, hypoglycaemic and immunomodulating potential of mushrooms. Take a dozen or so shiitake mushrooms or button mushrooms: use fresh if available (you may have grown your own), or soak dried ones in water until soft. Slice and set aside. Chop one small onion, slice one carrot and slice one potato. Heat olive oil in a pan, sauté the mushrooms, then add the onion. As onions brown, add in carrot and potato, plus one clove of chopped garlic and a teaspoon or so of grated ginger. Add more oil as needed to brown all the vegetables, then add stock or water (quantity depending on whether a more solid or liquid result is desired). Bring to the boil, add soy sauce or miso to taste, and/ or salt and pepper. Simmer for 10 minutes and serve hot. If you are congested and catarrhal, add some hot chillies or black pepper to the soup to help clear the mucous membranes.

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Thyme Vinegar Thymol, the main essential oil in thyme, is twenty times stronger than phenol (carbolic), the standard medical antiseptic. Thymol was first isolated in Germany in 1725 and has been in pharmaceutical use ever since. It was used to medicate bandages and made a local anaesthetic for dentists. Chewing fresh or dried thyme leaves at home brings emergency pain relief for toothache or inflamed gums. Thyme’s rich chemistry includes tannins and phenols that make it bitter medicinally, but it also contains an uplifting sweetness that can be tasted and smelled. In ancient Rome thyme was a mainstream remedy for melancholy. Numerous varieties of thyme are grown in gardens, and any of them can be used but few are as medicinal as common and wild thyme. Pick enough fresh thyme sprigs to fill a jar (use at least 464g or 1lb size); crush the herb in a mortar. Put into the jar and cover with a wine, cider or fruit vinegar. Keep the closed jar in a sunny spot for at least a month, then strain off the vinegar.

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The vinegar is good for headaches (rubbed onto temples and swallowed in small amounts), as a general antiseptic and for cleaning kitchen surfaces. Four Thieves Vinegar There are as many recipes for Four Thieves vinegar as there are versions of the myth. Basically, in early eighteenth century France four thieves were arrested for stealing from the homes of dead plague victims. They were given their lives and freedom in exchange for the recipe they used to keep free of the disease. The recipe entered the official pharmacopoeia, and it is still sold in France today as Le vinaigre des quatre voleurs. The essential ingredients are vinegar and garlic, and then you can add other aromatic herbs and spices as available: rosemary, sage, oregano, mint, lavender, cinnamon, cloves etc. Some people like to add an onion, and horseradish or hot chillies. It is worth making quite a big batch. Use roughly equal parts of crushed garlic and each of a selection of four or five other aromatic herbs. Put in a jar large enough to hold them and cover with red wine vinegar (or cider vinegar). Seal and put in a warm place for two or three weeks, then strain and bottle for use. Your thieves’ vinegar can be used several ways: ◗ Take a teaspoonful several times a day. ◗ Add to salad dressings. ◗ Use a tablespoon in the bath. ◗ Use topically as an antiseptic on the skin. ◗ Use as a topical spray for disinfecting kitchen surfaces. Honey Garlic Honey Peel a whole head of garlic. Mince finely by chopping or squeezing through a garlic press. Put in a mortar and pound until the garlic www.permaculture.co.uk

begins to go transparent. Spoon into a jar with 225g (½lb) of honey. Stir well, seal and label. It can be used straightaway or will keep for months. Dose: Half a teaspoonful daily as a tonic or preventative. For acute infections, take half a teaspoonful up to six times daily. This can be taken directly, or taken with ginger and lemon tea or cider vinegar. For infants and young children, rub onto the soles of the feet. Garlic honey can also be used directly on the skin for bites, and as a wound dressing for cuts and grazes. Tinctures Echinacea Echinacea is one of the best-known immune-stimulating herbs, and it is easily grown in the garden. Three main species are used medicinally, with Echinacea purpurea being the most common and easiest to grow. With this species, the flowering tops are used in addition to the root, so you don’t necessarily have to dig up your entire patch to make your Echinacea tincture. A good quality Echinacea should make your mouth tingle when you taste it.

St John’s Wort St John’s wort has powerful antiviral properties, and has the added benefit of lighting you up from inside with some summer sunshine – just what’s needed on a dark chilly day in winter. To make sure you have the right species of St John’s wort, Hypericum perforatum, hold a leaf up to the light. The medicinal species has tiny oil glands, which look like tiny perforations in the leaf. Both Echinacea and St John’s wort can be prepared as tinctures, which will keep for a year or more. How to make a tincture For making your own tinctures, vodka is one of the best alcohols to use. It has no flavour of its own, and allows the taste of the herbs to come through. Whisky, brandy or rum can also be used. Most commercial tinctures contain at least 25% alcohol. The process is straightforward: you simply fill a jar with the chosen herb or herbs and top up with alcohol, or you can put the whole lot in the blender first. The mixture is then kept out of the light to infuse

before being strained, bottled and labelled. Echinacea tops and root will need to infuse for about two weeks, as will St John’s wort flowering tops. You can use the colour as a guide – when most of the colour has gone out of the herb and into the liquid, it is ready to strain. St John’s wort tincture should be a lovely bright red colour. Glycerites Some herbs are better preserved as glycerites, as the glycerine preserves the fresh taste of the herbs better than alcohol. Elderflowers and berries, roses and lemon balm are tastiest when made as glycerites. How to make a glycerite Vegetable glycerine is extracted from coconut or other oil, and is a sweet syrupy substance available from herbalists and some chemists. It is particularly good for making medicines for children, and for soothing preparations intended for the throat and digestive tract, or coughs. A glycerite will keep well as long as the concentration of glycerine is at least 50% to 60% in the finished product.

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Glycerites are made the same way as tinctures, except the jar is kept in the sun or in a warm place to infuse. An Antiviral Formula This is a tasty mixture to ward off viral infections. Make each part over next summer and autumn when the plants are in season, and then combine them in roughly equal parts or to taste. Combining tinctures and glycerites improves the flavour of the final mixture. Combine elderberry glycerite, St John’s wort tincture, lemon balm glycerite or tincture and rose glycerite. Selfheal tincture can also be added

Julie Bruton-Seal is a medical herbalist and photographer. She is a council member of the Association of

Master Herbalists, a co-organiser of the annual HerbFest gathering, and editor of the quarterly journal, The Herbalist. Matthew Seal is a writer and freelance editor, and a former director of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. Together Julie and Matthew have written Hedgerow Medicine (2008) and Kitchen Medicine (September 2010). Contact them at: www.hedgerow medicine.com Resources Hedgerow Medicine and Kitchen Medicine by Julie Bruton-Seal & Matthew Seal, both £16.99 are available from www.green-shopping.co.uk or call us on 01730 823 311.

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Kitchen Medicine is featured in the reviews section on page 71.

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All photos © David Pagan-Butler

David Butler recounts the experience of creating his own www.permaculture.co.uk

DIY Natural Swimming Pool No. 66

Permaculture Magazine

round ten years ago, my partner Alison and I were lucky enough to buy an old derelict barn with two acres of land in Norfolk. The barn is still to be fully renovated but we have been living there in its half built state for the past four years. My energies have been diverted to a far more exciting building project: three years ago I started making our swimming pool.

Conceptual Beginnings I have always thought that it must be possible to build a swimming pool that doesn’t use chemicals to keep it clean. One summer, I had seen our water butts either choked with blanket weed or turning peagreen with other algae. Except for one: the neglected one with couch grass growing in it. Pulling up the floating mat of grass revealed stunningly clear water. I read a book on reedbed sewerage systems and realised it was basically the same biology as my couch grass water butt algae killer. Instead of reeds taking out the nutrients, it was couch grass. Surely it must also be possible to use other plants to clean a swimming pool? Searching the web to confirm the originality of my concept dashed all pretensions of genius. It had all been thought of before. Peter Petrich had been making them, along with others, for twenty years over in Austria and Germany. His company, Biotop, had made hundreds of them. I couldn’t afford to have a pool built professionally, so building it myself was the only option. At that time, in 2007, there was very little information available for self-build swimming ponds, so it was all a bit of an experiment.

Above: The natural swimming pool is enjoyed by the whole family. Left: Removing a floating mat of grass in a water butt reveals clear water below. Below: Swimming area defined by blockwork wall.

Swimming Pool Zones The Natural Swimming Pool (or Swimming Pond) is divided into two equal area zones: one zone for plants, the regeneration zone; and one zone for swimming. The plants have only sand or gravel to grow in so their only chance of getting nutrients is to take it from the water. Then hopefully the algae, like blanket weed, have little left to feed on. The regeneration zone is separated from the swimming zone by a submerged wall. This is to stop the plants colonising the whole pool. Planning & Digging I decided on a swimming area of 4.5 x 11.5m (15 x 38ft), about 2.2m (7ft) deep, with a shallow 3m (10ft) wide regeneration zone all around it. I needed an area roughly 20 x 15m (66 x 49ft). I chose one corner of the field sheltered by a bramble filled bund. I was also able to align it north – south, forming a pleasant sun trap at the south side against the bund. I hired a man with a digger for a few days and eventually I had a basic shape. My original intention was to build the wall from sandbags filled with sand and clay from the hole. But this was a disaster. When it rained the bags became squidgy, and started slithering and slumping until the wall gently collapsed. I tried again, this time filling them with clean sand. These were more stable but the sunlight started to turn the synthetic sandbag material into something no harder than tissue paper. They split and sand trickled out like 25 kilogram egg timers. The wall was punctured with sandbag-sized empty husks and heaps of sand. Building the Block Wall I reluctantly had to start again, this time digging out some foundations for a concrete block wall. I flung the sand from the sandbags into the mixer to make the concrete for the foundation. After a week I had built a block wall on the foundation, with solid 440 x 215 x 100mm (17 x 8.5 x 4in) concrete blocks, five courses, to just over 1m (39in) high. The void behind the wall was packed with sand and rammed with a tamper (a heavy metal lump on the end of a broom handle), left to settle, and rammed again over a period of weeks. This was to make sure the outward pressure of the water was not going to push the wall over.

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The land was free draining, containing some clay but mainly stony and sandy. This meant I could lay the liner (with an underliner) on a layer of building sand laid directly on the pool subsoil floor. If it had been a waterlogged site then the floor would have had to be concreted to stop ground water coming up and ‘floating’ the liner in a completed pool. This concrete box approach is used by some professional installers, as there is very little chance of it going wrong – but at a cost: a lot of resources and a lot of cash, £50k to £60k for a natural swimming pool is not uncommon. Outside the swimming zone the pool floor was formed into a giant basin shape and compacted with a petrol engine driven Wacker plate from a local tool hire company. Lining the Pool My greatest expense was the pool liner. It was also one of the hardest purchasing decisions. There is so much conflicting advice around, a lot of it from manufacturers claiming superiority of their product. Pond liners come in various thicknesses and materials. A thicker liner is obviously stronger and more expensive but it is also heavier to manipulate. I opted for 0.75mm EPDM from Flexible Lining Products. Although I think this was more a random choice born from a frustration of indecision, it seems to hold water, however, so not a bad decision in the end. The liner was going to be buried in shingle contained in a 0.3m (1ft) deep ditch around the perimeter of the pool, and formed into a curtain drain. This keeps water run-off from the field from entering the pool and introducing nutrients, which would encourage algae. So, taking this into account, I needed a liner 26 x 20m (85 x 66ft). It cost £2,300 – the most expensive bit of plastic I have ever bought. Underlining A fleece underliner, from the same supplier, was laid in strips over the whole floor and walls of the pool. As part of some film research I was doing, I had just been to see The Swimming Pond Company install a pond in Suffolk and I picked up a vital tip. The fleece underliner, supplied in a roll, is laid in strips. It needs to be stuck to the next strip to form a blanket over the whole pool area. Strips can be bonded to each other with a blowlamp. A very quick sweep of the flame along the edge melts a few fibres, so pressing this onto the edge of the next sheet makes them stick together. The Liner When the underliner was complete, the liner was brought next to the pond basin by a friendly farmer with a Teleporter (a tractor with a large retractable hydraulic arm) and placed onto a small scaffold rig. The roll was suspended on a scaffold pole threaded through the cardboard former the supplier had rolled the liner onto. Now it could be pulled and unrolled rather like a toilet roll, but bigger. The liner was 485kg (1,069lb) and it bent the scaffold pole. Nonetheless, my partner and I managed to roll it out. A 26m (85ft), half ton snake of liner folded like a concertina. We ‘rippled’ it along, inch by inch, with a fence post held between us and under the folded liner using a sort of peristaltic motion, rather like the pump in a dialysis machine. We then unfolded the liner and www.permaculture.co.uk

Above: Laying out the fleece underlining. The pieces were joined together by heating the edges with a blow lamp. Right: Insulating around the block walling before the 26m (85ft), half ton roll of lining was unrolled into the pool. Below: The liner finally unfolded into place.

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wafted the edges up and down to get air under to help it ‘fly’ over the whole area. I recommend you get as many friends as possible to help. It still would have been hard work even if there were ten of us. It was about this time when I spoke to Michael Littlewood and he sent me his book, Natural Swimming Pools, A Guide for Building.1 It was great to have some real information at last. I had made paper models of how the liner should be folded within the shape of my pool. This was very helpful because I knew what shape I was aiming for and where the big folds should come.

Above: Overliner in place and planting areas defined by tyre walls. Left: Soil being added to the planting areas. The swimming zone is separated off by a low sandbag wall. Below: The finished natural swimming pool. The planting zones and swimming zone are clearly defined.

Overlining & Drainage When the liner was in place and as many creases shuffled out of it as possible, a fleece overliner was laid on top. On top of this sand bags filled with a weak sand cement mix (10 parts sand, 1 cement) were placed immediately above the concrete wall defining the swimming zone. The wall was effectively continued up with more sandbags to a height of around 400mm (16in). Each row of sandbags pushed back about 25mm (1in) compared to the row below, making the wall lean outwards against the ballast it has to retain. Flexible drainage pipe was laid around the wall and then buried in shingle. The pipe terminated by emerging through the sandbag wall and into what would be the swimming area. This ultimately helps the water circulate below the roots of the regeneration zone. If necessary, a solar powered pump can be fitted but my pool water, so far, is perfectly happy without any artificial circulation. I put a geotextile membrane over the shingle and covered it with many tons of the stony sand that had been excavated from the hole to make the pool. This was all done by hand because machines would damage the various linings. Around the pool I put up a chestnut paling fence. This is for safety; keeping children or visitors from straying near the pool. It also helps as a windbreak while the newly planted bushes and trees are too small to contribute any resistance. Filling the Pool Naturally Then it was just a matter of letting the pool fill with rainwater. I pumped it from the water butts around the house as well. Even with this addition it still took about a year to fill up (over here in East Anglia we don’t get that much rain), but it was well worth waiting for. If I had used tap water the pool could have been more prone to algae problems. This is because of the phosphorous that is added to mains water, which is effectively a fertiliser. Having said this, commercial installers use mains water, but their pools then rely on powerful circulation pumps, and filters, including phosphorous filters to help remove the impurities in the water.

Costings 2,300 700 1,000 500 400 200 900 £6,000

liner underliner/over diggers shingle block cement other stuff Total

DVD COMING SOON! David Butler’s DIY Natural Swimming Pools DVD is to be published shortly by Permanent Publications.

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Planting Up It was deeply satisfying eventually putting plants into the sand. I had to select them to be ‘soft rooted’. I sought guidance from Michael Littlewood’s book. And today, the iris and Ranunculus, lilies and curly pondweed are all doing their job wonderfully. Most of the pool and the bank I have just left for wild plants to colonise and the sandy banks are now home to some beautiful tiny native flowers, as well as my friend, couch grass, some of it growing below the water line. And, so far, I have not needed to artificially pump the water around at all. The plants and animals keep the water crystal clear. Chemical free! A Meeting of Minds While I was building this pool, I made a film for BBC East ‘Inside Out’, on natural swimming ponds, and I was privileged enough to meet professional pool builders and Peter Petrich himself. As well as the interview and filming, I had the opportunity to discuss at length some of my non-conventional ideas on natural pools. I thought he would dismiss them, but instead, he was very supportive. It was heartening. I also spoke with Michael Littlewood. He, like me, also believed that some commercial companies make their pools far more complicated than they need to be. Natural Pool Benefits Building my own natural swimming pool has been my most rewarding experiment. Three years in the making, the ecosystem is stabilising and the water is sparkling clear. Just like that couch grassed water butt. I even became fitter than I have ever been with all that digging. And those couple of years of hard work ripple away with every splash of a bathing swallow, and each sight of a kingfisher hunting for water beetles. And, of course, there is the joy of swimming in soft rainwater! Your skin feels soft and healthy and your eyes don’t sting with chlorine. One day I think we will look back and wonder how we ever thought it was reasonable to let our children swim in anything other than natural water

Above: This underwater picture demonstrates the excellent water quality achieved. Right: Much of the planting is beautiful as well as useful. Below: Enjoying the pool.

David Butler is the director of BBC East ‘Inside Out’ programme and with his partner Alison and four children, Jasper, Theo, Felix and Otter are enthusiastic newcomers to permaculture. They live in Norfolk in an old barn with two acres and thirty chickens. Resources Before building a pond, seek planning advice from your local planning authority on whether you need to apply for planning permission. For excellent guides to creating ponds, see: www.pondconservation.org.uk/advice/makeapond Peter Petrich’s company website: www.biotop-natural-pool.com Where David sourced his liner: www.flexibleliningshop.co.uk The Swimming Pond Company: www.theswimmingpondcompany.co.uk 1

Natural Swimming Pools: A Guide for Building by Michael Littlewood, price £39.95 + p&p, is available from www.greenshopping.co.uk or 01730 823 311.

Next Issue My latest project: building a sauna, using a wood burner gas bottle stove, so the pond comes alive in the winter as a plunge pool. www.permaculture.co.uk

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y experience of living in Serbia for seven years tells me that we all need an outdoor kitchen. At the moment mine consists only of a tripod, a hanging enamel kotlich/cooking pot, a grill with three chains to hang from the tripod and miscellaneous enamel bowls and utensils. An outdoor kitchen can be anything from what I have described, in a corner of the terrace, to a covered area, with maybe two walled sides to keep out the prevailing wind and rain, maybe a partial roof covering, sink with running water, work surfaces and chimney. I can’t wait to have my own place so I can really make a decent outdoor kitchen! The kotlich is a double dipped enamel cooking pot with an attractive grey and white easy to clean enamel inside. I never clean the outside and my kotlich lives in a bag ready for any adventure. Cooking with a kotlich is really straightforward and can be as sophisticated or as simple as you wish.

Trish’s Tips

O utdoor C ooking in W inter !

◗ Keep a good supply of wood. ◗ Make sure there is some liquid or oil in the kotlich when you hang it over the fire, and start slowly. It is easier to build up the fire than damp it down. ◗ Use more liquid in a stew than you would normally; the kotlich cooks by reduction. Once it is boiling, a meat stew will take about 1 hour and 20 minutes to cook, vegetables much less.

Trish MacCurrach extols the virtues of cooking alfresco, even in the depths of winter

◗ Keep an eye on your cooking and stir regularly. Don’t let it get dry. ◗ To clean, refill kotlich with water, hang over the fire for 5-10 minutes and wipe clean. Don’t use brillo unless you have a burning episode. If you have any windfalls or surplus fruit stored in your deep freeze get it out, light a fire and get preserving outside. The kotlich is perfect for jam making not least because you keep all that sticky mess out of the kitchen! Use all your favourite recipes but just do it outside for a change.

By October, apart from a few leeks, some sprouts and kale, my small plot is looking a bit sad. Pride of place still are pumpkins and gourds. I grow types with firm, dry and sweet flesh that are excellent for making soups, pumpkin pie and chutney, or delicious just roasted. Each plant has many fruiting bodies, maybe five or six each! They take up a lot of room but can be trained and tied up, or maybe simpler, just planted in a big space and left alone.

Above: Kotlich cooking in the snow. Left: Author Trish MacCurrach cooking at her simple outdoor kitchen. Right: Preparing to make pumpkin soup. Far right: Welsh lamb hotpot just waiting for the dumplings to be added. 12

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W elsh L amb H otpot There are many locals supplying Welsh lamb near us, and nothing can beat it. At this time of the year we want to make the most of what is in the vegetable plot, mostly onions, roots, brassica and squash. So here is a recipe for Welsh Lamb Hotpot with dumplings, using seasonal vegetables. For an 8l kotlich, roughly: Garlic 2 onions 1 swede/gourd 2-3 carrots 2 leeks/celery stalks/cabbage/chunks of marrow 400g (14oz) chopped lamb Stock, and maybe beer or cider to fill kotlich Tinned tomatoes, optional 2 tbs sweet paprika Chilli to taste Sour cream and chopped mixed herbs to garnish

All photos © Trish MacCurrach

P umpkin S oup A creamy smoky-tasting soup, for chilly days outside. 60g (2oz) butter 6 rashers smoked streaky bacon, finely chopped 0.9kg (2lb) pumpkin, cut into chunks 3 medium potatoes, cut into chunks 3 large tomatoes, skinned 1l (2pt) water or more Salt and pepper A little milk if necessary 3 large tablespoons of double cream A handful of chopped fresh herbs, to garnish

Gather whatever you have in your veg patch. At least three types taken from the list above. A simple measurement is to start with the kotlich approximately half full of solid ingredients – veg and meat – then fill to the top with stock/liquid. Chop the onions and garlic into small pieces, throw them into some oil, then simmer while stirring (until browned) over a small fire. Add diced lamb, stir in, browning quickly, then add stock, tinned tomatoes (optional) and bring to the boil. Allow to boil for ½ hour then add large chunks of potato. After another ½ hour add your finely cubed vegetables, and the beer or cider. When the meat is nearly cooked (approximately 1½ hours) add 2-3 tablespoons of red powdered sweet paprika. The potatoes will by now be letting out starch as you stir, which, plus the sweet paprika, will thicken the hot pot. Season with salt and pepper and chilli if you like it peppery. Serve with sour cream stirred into each portion and sprinkle with fresh chopped herbs. The dumpling recipe is on the side of the suet pack. Last time I mixed chilli into my dumpling mixture to great effect. They should be added to the pot about 45 minutes before the end.

The quantities can be doubled. Always make sure the potatoes and pumpkin are well covered with liquid. Fry the finely chopped bacon in the butter gently. Throw in the chopped pumpkin, potatoes and skinned tomatoes, (tinned tomatoes can be used instead), cover with the liquid and boil until well done. Whiz up, put over the fire again to reheat, add milk if necessary and finally the cream. Serve piping hot with herbs and fresh bread. A delicious alternative is to leave out the bacon and instead fry up onions and curry spices. Sprinkle with coriander before serving. www.permaculture.co.uk

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Left & right: Beautiful sweet fudge. Making it outdoors over an open fire minimises clearing up. Centre right: Some of the ingredients for making chai. It makes a pleasant, warming winter drink which can be enjoyed by all ages. Far right: A seasonal occupation for the hardy – making marmalade in the snow. A Sweet Treat I have tried something new and sweet in the kotlich, great to make for presents on a warm autumnal day – fudge. It is quite painstaking and you need to manage the fire well to prevent burning. However, I was able to make quite a large amount in a much shorter time than I would have done inside on the cooker. It was amazing how little clearing up I had to do afterwards. No sticky surfaces or saucepans to clean. F udge You will need: 0.9kg (2lb) brown sugar 0.3l (½pt) milk 110g (¼lb) butter 3 tbs powdered chocolate (optional) Vanilla essence Soak the sugar in the milk for an hour. Melt the sugar in the milk over the fire, slowly. Add butter and bring to the boil, stir regularly and twizzle kotlich to prevent burning. Adjust height. Heat for 10-15 minutes to reach ‘boiling point’, try not to splash mixture up the sides of the pot. The sides will start to crystallize and the centre will sink, test by dropping into a bowl of cold water. It should form a soft ball when you handle it. When ready, take off the fire and leave to stand for a few minutes. Add two drops of vanilla essence and beat with a wooden spoon or hand whisk. Mixture will become creamy and start to set. Quickly pour into a buttered tin and leave to cool. It does not need the fridge. In two hours it will be set and you can cut it into squares. It will keep for several weeks in a sealed jam jar. Ours usually gets eaten or given away within the week. Winter Warmer There are many opportunities to celebrate outside in autumn and winter. We all love Harvest Festival, and children enjoy Bonfire Night – in fact they love any chance to go outside after dark, look at the stars and hear the noises of the night. Don’t forget Christmas Day and Boxing Day. 14

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So here is a chai recipe which is great for an outdoor winter evening event with friends. I drank it first at a small festival in Devon and fell for it. It may be easier just to make mulled wine or cider but this is a little different and the children can drink it too. There are loads of chai recipes on the internet and they all include a mixture of the same ingredients in differing amounts. Very much a case of adapting to taste. C hai Tea of your choice Cardamom pods, crushed a little Cloves Cinnamon stick Fresh root ginger, sliced Black peppercorns Bay leaves Vanilla bean, cut up Nutmeg Kotlich ¾ full of water Honey or brown sugar to taste Try mixing a small amount first with a little of each spice in your favourite tea, in a small pan. When you decide which flavour you like predominantly then reproduce it in your kotlich for greater numbers. Vanilla is very expensive so you might decide to leave that out! Simmer for at least 15 minutes then raise the kotlich so it is just keeping warm and serve. However, I’m sure it does not matter if it simmers for a little longer. M armalade We will always remember our first year in Herefordshire as the year of the big snow, when we made our marmalade outside. I did chop and prepare the Seville oranges inside and sterilised the jars in my oven – but apart from that, we sat in the sun stirring the marmalade and waiting for setting point to be reached. We were in our thickest winter woollies, drinking coffee and feeling exhilarated. Choose any of your favourite marmalade recipes but for a change add some chopped fresh root ginger or some grapefruit skins. Cooking outside regularly throughout the winter might be a challenge. However, if you choose simple things to www.permaculture.co.uk

cook, always have a supply of suitable wood and are well organised, then you will not only save money by cooking off-grid but will give your family a different perspective on life, a sense of resilience and adventure Trish became an avid outdoor cook while working in Serbia for several years where cooking on a kotlich is a common sight. She recently moved to Herefordshire with her husband, who is a forester, where they live in rented accommodation and have a small veg patch. “For me Kotlich cooking combines several key elements. Being outside, growing, preparing really fresh food and using less energy.” Trish spends much of her time thinking up new vegetable recipes

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for the kotlich, new places to take it to cook, and developing the Outdoor Kitchen brand. Trish demonstrates ‘Kotlich Cooking’ and has even been a ‘cafe’ at a small green festival. Resources Cool Camping Cookbook by Tom Tuke-Hastings & Jonathan Knight, price £12.95* Serbian Kotlichs, Tripods & Grills – individual items and sets from £29.95 to £89.95* * Available from www.green-shopping.co.uk or call us on 01730 823 311.

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Permaculture Magazine Readers’ Solutions EASY FREE COLD FRAMES Place two 6 x 2in (150 x 50mm) boards cut to the size of the window, front and back. On the back board add a 4 x 2 (100 x 50mm) or another 6 x 2 if depending on the pitch you want. Nail them together with a short 4 x 2 on each end. Next nail on 6 x 2 end pieces flush with the ground. To get the angled piece, just set a 4 x 2 on the ends and draw or snap a line, cut and nail in place. Next build a 4 x 2 frame for the window to sit in and attach it to the base with hinges. I used salvaged hinges from an old door. They’re made of heavy brass, can be separated easily by removing the door pin (making the cold frame easier to transport in two sections) and they were free. The slider works well at maintaining the temperature because I can slide it open to control the heat build-up on sunny days. Strawberries are permanent residents with enough room left for tomato, cucumber and other tender starts. When the strawberries bloom I prop the top open to allow

germinate in the greenhouse. The germination rate was fantastic compared to what I was used to. Once they were growing well I wheeled them out into the garden. The crop was amazing for such a small area, with plentiful thinnings and then large carrots, often up to eight ounces each, with no sign of carrot fly.

the bees to do their thing. When the green buds show I can close it and open the window. The screen keeps out the slugs and also keeps the robins from their share of the bounty. Rick Brannan, Bainbridge Island, USA SHOPPING FOR CARROTS?! I have tried unsuccessfully to grow carrots for many years. I have struggled with germination at 900 feet in Cumbria when the last frosts are often into June. I have also tried many approaches to trick the pesky carrot fly to no avail. However, finding an abandoned shopping trolley got me thinking: knowing that carrot fly cannot fly higher than about two feet and a shopping trolley’s base is about that height, maybe it held the answer. I lined the sides with post-election campaign billboards and used a permeable lining taken from my children’s old sandpit for the bottom. I filled it with a mix of three parts sand to four parts compost to three parts garden soil. After sowing the seeds in the trolley I set them off to

We enjoyed a very dry couple of months at the beginning of summer followed by the usual Cumbrian monsoon after mid-July. I feel this method of growing is very suited to our northern British climate and is definitely one I shall be using again. Next year I shall be experimenting with different soil/sand mixes. My only disappointment in this year’s plan was not being able to wheel it around to my neighbour’s to water when I went on holiday as it was so heavy! Maybe I should try replacing the wheels with larger ones... Jane Corrie, Cumbria

FREE BOOKS Every contributor published on our next Solutions page will receive a FREE copy of one of the following:

Roundwood Timber Framing or Meat Please send your solution/s, stating your book preference, to: PERMACULTURE MAGAZINE The Sustainability Centre, East Meon, Hampshire GU32 1HR, U.K. Email: editorial@permaculture.co.uk

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PRODUCT

Reviews Power Struggles It’s October, cloudy and raining, so why am I outside testing solar products? Well, to see if they are really viable to use in winter. I have got three products out here in the rain with me, a

energy bulb has an output equivalent to a 45W mains one but it seems a lot brighter than that when surrounded by darkness (see above). The makers claim you can enjoy up to 7 hours light every night and while I am a bit sceptical about that, it certainly does charge well even in low light conditions and should be able to provide enough light to do routine tasks every evening. If you need more than this there are bigger SolarMate kits (see www.green-shopping.co.uk). Being based on a leisure battery these kits can of course provide many hours of light or power as a one off in an emergency. With winter power cuts in mind, I tried using the solar charged battery as an emergency power source. By attaching a 300W mains inverter (www.maplin. co.uk), I was able to get my combi-boiler gas central heating to run. I estimate that with the heat turned right up and the boiler fired up in bursts of an hour or so as required I could keep warm for a couple of days with a bit of solar

Solar Mate 1 off grid lighting kit, a PowerPlus Eco-powerstation and a PowerPlus Albatross solar panel. The Solar Mate 1 consist of a 5W rigid solar panel, a 9W 12volt long life bulb, bulb holder, wall switch, cables fuses, etc. Everything you need to set up a mini off grid lighting system in a stable, shed or polytunnel, except a 35 -70Ah, 12volt leisure battery (I got mine from www.alpha-batteries.co.uk). The system is easy to rig up, though I would have liked a bit more wire, and the resulting light is very good. The low Above: Solar Mate 1’s solar panel charging well despite the inclement weather. www.permaculture.co.uk

Above: Solar charged battery and 300W inverter running my 135W combi-boiler.

Top left: My studio lit by the Solar Mate1 kit. The solar panel is just visible at bottom right of the window. Below: PowerPlus Eco-powerstation and Albatross solar panel.

charging in between (Note: do not try this unless you are confident about all the safety aspects involved). Alternatively it would for instance, power a low energy lamp, laptop computer and modem for many hours. Another way of providing emergency backup and general portable power is the PowerPlus Eco-powerstation (also called an Elephant) which is a neat unit that resembles one of those jump-start kits garages use. Indeed it can be used to do this if required. There is a lot more to this unit than that though, it has a 14000 LUX led flashlight, and from its 12Ah battery can output 12V, 5V USB, and 230V AC via a built-in 100w mains

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Permaculture Magazine

inverter. It can be charged via a mains adapter, a 12V power supply, its hand cranked dynamo or by a suitable solar panel like the PowerPlus Albatross. The Albatross flexible solar panel had no trouble charging it despite the awful weather and the rather loose adaptor supplied for the purpose. In tests it was quite amazing to see an 11W mains uplighter running from this portable powerpack and had it been a real powercut would have been very comforting (it should be able to keep this up for 6-7 hours). As well as lights it can power a wide range of mains appliances providing they pull less than 100 watts (unfortunately this rules out the gas central heating trick) and charge your mobile phone etc., via the USB. Talking of phones, if your house phone relies on electricity to work, it won’t in a power cut but the Eco-powerstation could resolve that. These two products were never intended to compete but the Power Plus is a portable unit (you could even carry it around to keep your portable tool batteries charged up or take it camping), has more charging methods and is also an ideal stand-by unit for powercuts, etc. The SolarMate is a fixed unit which should provide useful light on a day to day basis. It does however use a much larger battery which could usefully be borrowed in the event of a power outage.

in my opinion a nicer display, a two year memory and user friendly software. It’s down to personal choice.

Above: Owl CM160 (left) and Current Cost’s Envi (right), go head to head.

More Power Struggles I am still convinced that one of the best ways to save electrical energy in the home is by being able to see how much you are using. If you regularly read this column you will know my favourite monitor is the Owl. It has an easy to read display which my whole family take notice of.

Since trying an AlertMe (www.alertme. com), however, which has no display but feeds data directly into the internet so you can view realtime and historical data via Google Powermeter, I realised what was needed was a monitor which had the attributes of both. So I was intrigued to try the Current Cost Envi monitor which not only displays current usage but, via a USB cable, can download data to a computer, which if internet connected, can be displayed in Google. The best of both worlds has arrived. Then, with just days to spare before this went to press, Owl announce the Owl CM160 which also has a USB port for data download. They sent me one and I set it up beside the Envi and plugged them both into my netbook. Surprisingly this worked and I could display both sets of data side by side. Envi was displayed via Google while the Owl’s data was displayed via its own windows software which came with it on a CD. Both units work well and have only minor pros and cons. I like the Envi’s porting to Google, the mains adaptor for the display and the seven year battery life of the sender unit. On the other hand the Owl is cheaper, has

Above: A joy to use, the Helle Eggen knife.

Above: The incredible Honey Stove.

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Old Favourites & New Ones Too I now own three of the Helle sheath knife range so I think it’s fair to say I like them. The latest, the Helle Eggen, has the same tri-steel super sharp blade as the others but has a curly birch handle that just fits the hand so well, that I had to have one. It didn’t really need testing but I used it to make kindling to test the wood burning capability of a Honey Stove. This is a hexagonal back-packing stove made of stainless steel which packs flat into an incredibly thin wallet. It can be fired by most cooking fuels from hexamine tablets to a gas burner but its real claim to fame is its ability to work as a woodburner. Having tried several small woodburning devices over the years I was very doubtful this would work. Boy, was I wrong! This little stove lit easily and then really went for it boiling my soup before I even had time to stir it properly. It’s just amazing, it didn’t scorch the log I stood it on and when cool, packed away into my pan set. It will certainly get a lot more use in the future. An instant favourite product. Another favourite which has been re-released is Burgon & Ball’s Potting Scoop. It has all the old functions; a curved pointed nose for digging, a scoop shape for carrying soil, serrated edges for cutting roots etc., and seed dispensing notches, only the size has changed slightly. This hand tool is a must have item for any gardener whether they own just a couple of pots or a couple of acres. Indispensable. John Adams http://tiny.cc/pmreviews

Above: Burgon & Ball’s Potting Scoop. www.permaculture.co.uk

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Permaculture Magazine

Education for a Handmade Future T

he Sustainability Centre was a project inspired by Agenda 21 in the early 1990s. A redundant Naval Base on top of the South Downs was to become an ‘executive’ housing estate with the remaining one third of the site – 52 acres of neglected plantation – gifted to what

Permaculture Magazine

Top: The woodland classroom has a naturally inviting quality. Left: Dipped roof on the north end.

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was to become an educational charity, The Earthworks Trust. When Tim and I visited the site in the mid ’90s, conventional foresters told us that this neglected squirrel and deer damaged plantation was worthless. Ordinarily it would be clear felled, but to retain ‘amenity value’ the Trust was advised it should fell and replant in blocks. Something in my heart sank at the thought of a woodland being so worthless. www.permaculture.co.uk

I was sure Ben Law would see more here than just firewood and woodchip for a biomass boiler. Over the years a biomass boiler was indeed installed to heat the Centre’s buildings and wood is harvested for it. Another part of the site has become a popular and well run woodland burial site. Children play and learn in the woods, and owls nest there too. New trees are being planted and orchids and other flora are naturally www.permaculture.co.uk

Top: The sloping site makes the structure appear to float above the ground. Above: Builder Ben Law.

Above: Cordwood and cob wall, earthen floor and Rumsford fireplace. Below: Looking up from inside.

Maddy Harland explores the stunning new Woodland Classroom built by Ben Law

regenerating as the softwoods are felled. I was still, however, yearning for something more to express the creativity and innovation of good permaculture design. I wanted a Ben Law building. In 2008, a local charity approached the centre with an offer of funding linked to our educational programme. Mary Lewis, the manager of the Centre, immediately suggested an outdoor classroom. We have a successful educational programme and were desperately short of space. It seemed natural to contact Ben and ask for his input. He quickly came up with a design that would use the timber on the site – mainly Lawson cypress (called Port Orford cedar in the USA) and Douglas fir – and would sit in the woods, opening out into the woodland. The roof was to be curved like the hull of a ship and the north end was to have a cordwood wall with a cob fireplace. Drawings were made and planning was applied for. Because the classroom is open-sided its woodland site wasn’t a ‘development’ issue and building regulations were a little more relaxed. Ben came and taught an ONC (Open College Network) course on woodland management and identified the trees required for the building as part of the training. They were felled from within 200 metres of the build site and then we waited until May this year for the Roundwood Timber Framers and four apprentices to arrive and start the build.

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In the meantime, Ben finished his latest book with us, Roundwood Timber Framing, whilst we raised the funds to make a professionally produced, step-by-step film (see box below) about this building method, using the construction of the classroom as the main example. Stacking function in true permaculture design style! The build was finished in late July 2010 – just three months after it was started – on time and on budget. It is extraordinary. Ben turned forestry on its head by using our slow growing, light-deprived softwoods and crafting them in the round. His design combines old traditions with new technologies and ideas, building from timber produced as locally as possible – and eschewing concrete foundations, cement, steel pins and skips to take the rubbish away at the end of the process. The classroom itself has a Lawson cypress frame that sits on pits of scalpings capped by reclaimed York padstones. The floor joists are Douglas fir and roof shingles and floor boards are locally sourced western red cedar – another locally abundant and durable wood that can

be substituted for many components of a building usually reserved for oak. Ben and his roundwood timber framers trained apprentices during the build and volunteers helped make the cordwood and cob wall and earthen floor that surround the energy efficient Count Rumsford fireplace. Training local people to build from local materials is important to Ben. He doesn’t want to win work outside his bioregion and needs more roundwood framers. Since finishing, one apprentice has emigrated to timber frame build in Canada, another has returned home to Greece and a third set up a roundwood timber framing business in Dorset. Roundwood timber framing itself is becoming a new vernacular in architecture and is as low impact and ecological as you can get. This is permaculture design at its best: intelligent, ecologically sustainable and involving the local community. It is also fluid, adapting design to local trees and materials, and looks ahead to our needs and resources in the future. It is ultimately beautiful, making our hearts sing. It was

always my dream to have one of Ben’s buildings at the Sustainability Centre, but what is more heartwarming is to see the reactions of our numerous visitors, young and old, from all walks of life. They too are captured by its magic. It gives me hope for a handmade future Ben Law is a woodsman and roundwood timber framer. He runs a variety of courses and open days. For more information see: www.ben-law.co.uk Ben’s new book, Roundwood Timber Framing, and DVD of the same title are now available (see box below). Ben is also author of The Woodland Year, The Woodland House and The Woodland Way. All the above are available from Green Shopping. Order online at: www.green-shopping.co.uk or by phone on: 01730 823 311. Further information about the Sustainability Centre: www.sustainability-centre.org 01730 823 166

Roundwood Timber Framing The NEW Book & DVD ROUNDWOOD TIMBER FRAMING BOOK This definitive manual marks the birth of a new vernacular for the 21st century. Over 400 colour photographs and step-by-step instructions guide you through the building of anything from a garden shed to your own woodland house. This practical ‘how to’ book will unquestionably be a benchmark for sustainable building using renewable local resources and evolving traditional skills to create durable, ecological and beautiful buildings. ISBN 978 1 85623 041 1 Hardback 168 pages £19.95 ROUNDWOOD TIMBER FRAMING DVD This DVD perfectly accompanies the book. Ben presents the stepby-step design and build process for a locally sourced beautiful roundwood timber framed building, as well as showing other examples of builds including houses, a shop and a small outhouse. Also includes guidance for the creation of cordwood walls and rammed earth floors. Highly informative and inspiring. ISBN 978 1 85623 057 5 60 minutes PAL Region 0 £19.95

“Arguably Britain’s greatest living woodsman.” Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall “Ben Law is a national treasure!” Felix Dennis

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Order today either online at www.green-shopping.co.uk or call 01730 823 311 www.permaculture.co.uk

Wolf in

Dog’s Clothing © Rebecca Hoskins & Tim Green

Rebecca Hosking and Tim Green, makers of the highly respected ‘A Farm For The Future’ film screened on BBC2 in 2009, turn their attention to the health of our domesticated dog population.

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social organisations, trade networks, politics... The applications are endless. Yet as we sat by our computers researching, theorising and designing, our new best friend, a border collie, lay at our feet somehow immune to our new found common sense. Above: Young Dave learning to herd. The sheep recognise him as a type of wolf, so why don’t we? Right: Tim Green and Rebecca Hoskins. No. 66

o much of permaculture design is about recognising the obvious, but in our muddled up world of advertising, self-delusion and false promises, this is, bizarrely, seldom obvious. A wake-up call is usually required. Being from farming stock, ours was the sudden realisation of the madness of fossil fuel dependent agriculture and the rapidly approaching limits to growth. Our search for solutions led us to discover holistic farming and then took us to permaculture. With our newly discovered permacultural mindset, we’d sit and apply the rules of ecology and natural systems to increasingly broad subjects; the ecology of the forest and veg patch could apply to an entire farm, the whole of agriculture,

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The Rules of the Wild It was clear to us that our herd of cattle were really a herd of oddly patterned wild ox and our hedge-lined fields were open scrub woodland arranged roughly into rectangles. So why couldn’t we see that our young collie, Dave, was just a wolf in dog’s clothing? Every breed of dog from a Pekinese to a Great Dane is a domesticated strain of grey wolf. They may differ dramatically in appearance but inside they are still wolves and the rules of the pack still apply. In the wild, wolves live in the way that suits them best and we should never fall into the trap of thinking that a life with us primates is an improvement. We are merely a less-than-perfect substitute for the pack. When we take on the responsibility of being a pet owner we take on all the responsibilities of the pack leader and, for the well-being of our dogs, we should strive to reproduce (as best we can) everything a wild pack provides. The absolute essentials are love, shelter, exercise, water, discipline and healthy food. Every good pet owner provides the first five without a second thought. Getting the sixth one right, however, requires considerably more than a second thought.

A Healthy Diet We all live busy lives, so understandably we delegate the responsibility of devising a healthy diet for our animals to the specialists. As most of us are on a budget, this means we trust the pet food manufacturers with their teams of scientists and the global purchasing power to source nothing but the best ingredients to formulate the perfect balanced diet for ‘all your pet’s needs’. However, your pet’s health is no more the principal concern of the big pet food manufacturers than human health is the main concern of a chain of burger bars. Make it cheap, sell lots, make a profit... This isn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s the prevailing business model. Like the majority of pet owners, we trusted the pet food people and the ‘wholesome meaty goodness’ of our dog’s food... until he got sick. Poor Dave’s problems were serious and complicated. At only 11 months old he began having huge lifethreatening seizures. Dogs can have seizures for many reasons, so we set about trying to identify the cause and started on a journey of discovery that went far beyond canine epilepsy. We knew that dogs could have health problems but we were in no way prepared for the sheer range and ubiquity of canine illness. Dogs everywhere, it seems, have diseases of the joints, bones, heart, liver, kidney, immune system, eyes, ears, skin, teeth, gums, digestive system, nervous system; not to mention cancers and behavioural disorders. These conditions are not limited to aging dogs or those inbred for the showroom; sturdy mongrels and young pups are suffering as well. Does What It Says On The Tin?! We began asking whether this had anything to do with the commercial food we are now feeding our pets. I set about deciphering words like ‘extracts of vegetable origin’, ‘meat derivatives’ and ‘oils’ on a kibble packet and, after a few hours of code breaking, I had a list of ingredients in plain English. We’d been feeding Dave a cocktail of low-grade cereal grains, miller’s chaff scraped off the mill floor, woodchip, and diseased meat mixed with the old fat from restaurant fryers, all preserved with powerful anti-oxidants (banned in the UK for human consumption) proven to cause cancer, liver failure and neurological damage amongst other ailments. This wasn’t some bargain basement food either; this had Her Majesty’s Royal Seal stamped on the packet!

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Euthanised Snacks – North America-Style In North America ‘mammalian meat and bone meal’ – a key animal component in pet food – is known to contain the ground up remains of euthanised cats and dogs – collars, name tags, microchips and all – horrific! We couldn’t say if this junk food diet was the cause of Dave’s illness but it most certainly wasn’t helping. So what to do? The first reaction is to search around for a better brand of food. 80% of the world’s pet foods are manufactured by just four companies – Mars, Nestle, Proctor & Gamble and ColgatePalmolive – so you can be fairly sure that most brands Left: The natural diet for are much of a muchness. a wolf is raw meat. To There are a few independent maintain health, they will companies left that make a eat almost all of a kill better pet food but this is still including bone, skin and processed food. the internal organs. www.permaculture.co.uk

Replicating the ‘Wild Diet’ What to do with all this information is not as easy as you may think. We can’t send our dogs out to kill a deer and feast on what they want so we have to compromise somewhere. Effectively replicating a wild diet is a task not to be taken lightly and I urge you to exhaustively research the options yourself before you start. The most useful resources we found to guide us are listed at the bottom of this article. Living on a farm, we had access to a fair few rabbits, so for us that was a good place to start. As far as we could tell a small whole raw rabbit contained just about everything Dave needed in all the right proportions: guts, pre-digested vegetable matter, fur, bones, muscle tissue, organ meat, all perfectly balanced for a small carnivore. Feeding time was suddenly enjoyable and the entire bunny was demolished. Occasionally we’d throw him a reasonably fresh road-kill Right: Dave finishes off the pheasant, which went the remains of a fresh road-kill same way as the rabbits. pheasant. These along with Even on a farm rabbits aren’t rabbits, green tripe, hearts, always available so we’d fill livers and kidneys formed the freezer when we could the basis of his new diet. www.permaculture.co.uk

(paunches frozen separately) and had a stack of frozen meaty lamb bones courtesy of the local organic butcher. Then finally – and this isn’t for the faint hearted – we’d occasionally pop down the local slaughterhouse and pick up a couple of complete sheep paunches that the slaughterman was more than happy to part with. We cut up the stomachs into meal size portions and froze them in pots with some of the lovely grassy gravy from inside. This is known as green tripe and really is magic food for dogs; you’ll be pleased to know it is also available commercially, pre-frozen. The only things we ended up paying for were additional rabbits from a local shooter and a few lamb hearts, livers and kidneys from the butcher. The Effect So did this diet cure Dave? No, sadly it didn’t. Dave’s condition was progressive and we simply ran out of time. That’s not to say the dietary change was a failure, far from it. In the three months we had Dave on a wild-type diet we saw some remarkable improvements in his overall health and condition. Within days his rather manic behaviour had stabilized and he became a much more obedient, attentive dog.

The Natural Diet We were determined to finally apply the rigours of ecological thinking to our dog’s diet and bring it as close to a wild-type diet as we could manage. The glaringly obvious clues are in a dog’s physiology and anatomy. A dog’s carnassial teeth are one of its defining features; these have evolved over countless millennia to shear raw meat off the bone and crush them into digestible chunks. It has a thick muscular gut to protect itself from bone shards, and very strong stomach acid to dissolve bone and destroy the pathogens found on scavenged meat (as well as antiseptic saliva). Dogs can manufacture their own vitamin C, which is deficient in a pure meat diet and their whole digestive system extracts energy from animal protein not carbohydrates. Unlike you, your dog is very much a carnivore. The observation of wild canine behaviour is the other great source of information on how to feed our domestic friends. For instance, you don’t see wild dogs cooking their food. The simple act of cooking meat tends to destroy much of its nutritional value. Obviously we’re not suggesting this is why wolves don’t have barbecues, merely that the way pet food is produced is totally at odds with their evolutionary history and dietary requirements. After a pack has made a kill, the first thing they eat is the stomach. This is a very important component of the diet as the stomach of a herbivore contains large amounts of partially digested vegetable matter along with a host of digestive enzymes a carnivore cannot produce itself. Plant matter is very rich in various vitamins and minerals but members of the dog family are unable to digest them in their natural state. The herbivores’ gut does the work for them but also breaks down phytic acid which is found in most vegetable matter and which dogs and other carnivores are unable to digest. Phytic acid is referred to as an anti-nutrient and actually binds with essential vitamins and minerals in a dog’s stomach and prevents them being absorbed. As an aside, the heaviest source of phytic acid is cereal grains and soya which both make up the bulk of commercial dog food.

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(main) Dave after changing his diet – two days after a seizure – memory back and full of life.

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This page: (inset) Sick Dave – after a seizure he would lose his memory and would sit like this for days.

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Also within days his coat became super glossy and he completely lost that dog smell we assumed was normal. His teeth became pearly white and any signs of gum disease and bad breath disappeared. This is actually very important as tooth and gum problems are the single commonest disease in domestic dogs and are the precursors to a whole host of secondary ailments and untimely deaths. The reason his dental condition improved so drastically was the chewing of tough raw meat, bones and fur. These are nature’s toothbrushes for wolves and wild dogs. Other things we noted were that his mild skin allergies cleared up after a week, his eyes became brighter, gums became noticeably darker (indicating possible anaemia before) and, for those of you interested in such things, his poos were transformed into small, hard pellets with next to no odour and absolutely no affinity for the soles of your shoes. For a while, even the severity of his seizures was reduced and he recovered from them in hours rather than days.

Weaning Your Dog Off Commercially Produced Food

With all the vet bills for tests, medications and emergency treatments, our dear little Dave was as costly as a short university course, but what he taught us was priceless. We may have lost him but every dog we have from now on will be much happier and healthier as a result; and if you can apply the same detailed thinking to your pets as you do now for your permaculture garden, then so will yours

If you decide to wean your dog off commercial food there are some very important things to remember: 1. Do your research – there is a minefield of information out there, some good, some bad. Triple read, double check and cross reference everything. You are the one ultimately responsible and this is the welfare of your best friend we’re talking about. If you’re not certain then consult a holistic vet or canine nutritionist.

After retiring from full-time film-making Tim and Rebecca have quietly continued to live and work on their family farm. By studying the rules of nature around them, rediscovering some of the lost arts of farming and experimenting with the latest advances in ecological agriculture it is their aim to create a resilient farm that is both ecologically and economically sustainable. They both fully admit it is a lifetime’s work. As an aside and hopefully a happy ending, they have a new working border collie puppy on the way – he will be called Wilf. Tim and Rebecca will be travelling up-country to collect Wilf at the end of October. Resources

2. Beware the human food chain – your dog can deal with a lot of bacteria that would be harmful to us, but our industrial meat chain can culture pathogens dangerous to your dog. Select meats and bone wisely and know where they come from.

www.ukrmb.co.uk Invaluable yahoo forum for fledgeling raw feeders

3. Never feed your dog cooked bones; they could splinter and rupture the gut.

www.dogfoodproject.com

4. Avoid bones with sawn sharp edges. Bones broken at the joints are much safer.

www.rawmeatybones.com

www.rawfeed.com www.ukrmb.co.uk www.truecarnivores.com/greentripe.shtml The Complete Herbal Book for the Dog by Juliette De Bairacli Levy; second-hand copies available from Amazon in variable condition, from £4.67 - £25.00. The Complete Herbal Handbook for the Dog & Cat by Juliette De Bairacli Levy; second-hand copies available from Amazon in variable condition, from £8.45 - £27.99. www.permaculture.co.uk

inset © Redphotographer/Shutterstock background © Daniel Korzeniewski/Shutterstock

www.dogtorj.com

5. Don’t feed ‘bite-size’ bits of bone or carcass, these could be a choking hazard. As a rule of thumb go for something the size of your dog’s head. 6. Don’t rush it – your pet may have been on junk food for a while and a change to a healthier diet could come as a bit of a shock to their system. Make the changes gradually. 7. Do even more research – the Resources at the end of this article were a great help to us (be sure to study the FAQs).

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JOB OPPORTUNITIES at Permaculture Magazine

Accounts Manager & Admin/Sales Assistant Accounts Manager Full Time Post £19,000 pa

An exciting opportunity to join award winning green publisher, Permanent Publications, publishers of Permaculture Magazine, an international book list plus our e-commerce site www.greenshopping.co.uk. The ideal candidate will have experience of sales and purchase ledgers, credit control, bank reconciliations, month end VAT returns, customer service plus general office skills. Attention to detail and a working knowledge of Sage Accounting required. Flexibility, good communication skills and a passion for the environment essential.

Admin/Sales Assistant Part Time Post £6.50/hour

The position will be providing support to the Accounts Manager on various tasks, such as purchasing, general accounting and administration tasks plus customer service. Flexibility, good communication skills and a passion for the environment essential. Send CVs for either position by 29 October 2010 to: Job Application, Permanent Publications, The Sustainability Centre, East Meon, Hampshire GU32 1HR Tel: 01730 823 311 Email: info@permaculture.co.uk

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Choosing a

W oodburning S tove

Maddy Harland explains the benefits of a woodburning stove and the decision-making process she went through to choose the stove of her dreams. www.permaculture.co.uk

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All photos © Gail Harland

guess most of us have a dark green secret, a naughty carbon guzzling habit we’d rather keep to ourselves. Ours was the open fire in our living room. We live in a nineteenth century flint cottage and the Inglenook fireplace is the sort of size in which you could roast a small goat. 24 years ago we added a fire basket and a cast iron back plate from a local forge to theoretically belt the heat out, but in reality our fireplace was like an old Jaguar car: Classic but greedy. When the fire was lit it guzzled logs and was maybe 10% efficient, i.e. 90% of the heat went up its capacious chimney. When it wasn’t lit the central heating was heating the sky. It was wonderful for roasting chestnuts, lovely for toasting bread, useless for heating a house.

We have a woodburner in the ‘snug’. It is 30 years old, about 25% efficient and belts out the heat in the small room. We can cook on and inside it (with the help of an old biscuit tin). There are a lot of stove manufacturers springing up in Britain and for good reason. A new generation of stoves has appeared, inspired by the efficiency levels of our Scandinavian friends, changes in legislation, and by clean burning designs pioneered by Clearview Stoves. I wanted a fuel efficient modern stove that was at least 60% efficient or more and one that was British made to a very high standard, not manufactured in Eastern Europe or beyond and just assembled in Britain. I wanted

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Above: The new stove has improved comfort levels considerably and the Eco-fan on top helps to distribute heat around the room.

Right: Opening the front air vent, which is only used to get the fire started.

a stove that wasn’t too ‘olde worlde’, yet fitted in my cottage, and I wanted to be able to cook on it. I also wanted it to be installed by local people who knew their stuff. Lastly, I wanted to be able to see the flames so that my connection with Fire was not sacrificed in the quest for greater eco-efficiency. I pondered on whether I should plumb in a back boiler to heat the water, but I decided that the layout of the house made this too complicated (and expensive). In time, my old 25% efficient woodburner in the other room, located directly below the hot water tank, will be replaced with a new stove plus back boiler. Then there will be little need for any central heating in the house. www.permaculture.co.uk

Which Stove? Years ago I visited our friends, Angie and Andy Polkey in Wales and admired their Clearview Stove, a toasty smokeless stove with a large glass front. My research led me to another company too, Dunsley Heat, who have an excellent reputation and make smokeless stoves that are at least 70% efficient. I am sure there are more up and coming stove makers, but these two have been around for years and have been tried and tested by friends. The most important aspect to a good woodburner is that it is smokeless and has a double burn system. This means the stove is designed to allow a fresh supply of oxygen above the fire. When you burn wood in a hot stove woodgas is release. Add oxygen and the gases are burnt that are otherwise sucked up the chimney, creating secondary combustion and producing extra heat as well as reducing emissions. Clearview add another clever design by heating the supply of air before it reaches the fire box by drawing the air through channels next to the box in the hot stove. The gases ignite, creating a beautiful aurora borealis effect and also increase combustion and efficiency. Added to this, they developed the air wash system. This basically draws air from above the fire over the glazed door, preventing tar depositing on the glass. Clearview pioneered these designs and they are passionate about energy efficiency. They also talk to people on the phone. All this, plus their local installers, Focus Stoves, who make all the additional parts required for the installation, are just up the road from me. We measured up the room and Clearview helped me choose their Vision 500. This is a 8kW stove with a www.permaculture.co.uk

Below: Clearview stove air flow diagram.

single large glazed door that can warm the whole house. The stove itself is a heavy steel construction, welded inside and out for durability. If any parts break, Clearview will replace them. They are committed to the long life of the product and will upgrade models and add back boilers if required. The Vision 500 has two controls. The wheel at the front of the stove is opened fully on lighting. This allows

the firebox to initially draw in air at the front. It can be gradually shut down as the fire fully catches. Below the stove is an adjustable lever that allows air to draw into the firebox via the preheating channels adding oxygen above the fire for secondary combustion. We positioned the flue at the rear of the stove so we have a large flat top to cook and heat water on. If space is an issue you can pipe the flue out of the top. The firebox

Downward draft ‘washes’ glass – keeping it clear of tar

Rotary vent at front – used to create a draft to light fire only

Bottom air intake – pre-heats air that produces double combustion in the top of stove above the logs has a refractory lining and takes 38cm (15in) logs. All the hinges and door catch are adjustable which means you can maintain air tightness throughout the life of the door seals. The Installation Focus Stoves came and did a survey with a full explanation about the process, safety and building regulations. Since 2002, a fixed vent to the outside is required for all stoves over 5kW to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning. That in itself can be difficult in a flint cottage with 45cm No. 66

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(18in) thick exterior walls! We solved the problem by venting though the porch door and then the porch wall which is a modern construction. The installation itself was painless. Focus installed a register plate in the fireplace which has a layer of insulation on it. The difference was immediate – no more howling gales down, and suction draughts up, the chimney! They also installed a fireproof heat shield over the beam above the fireplace as it was within 450cm of the stove itself (another regulation). Then the stove itself was installed on the brick hearth with a 1mm flue pipe that joins the stove to the liner. This is a 0.12mm thick twin wall flexible liner, made of several layers of stainless steel. It was lowered down the chimney and capped with a stainless steel chimney net. This stops birds nesting in your chimney and the rain pouring down the flue. Focus Stoves manufacturer all these parts. We were issued with a HETAS certificate at the end of the installation. Without one, the stove does not meet building regulations and, if you have a chimney fire, you are no longer covered on your house insurance. You also need a carbon monoxide alarm with a seven year battery in the room. In addition, to satisfy building regulations it is also necessary to fit a data plate detailing any changes to the hearth or fireplace as well as details of the liner fitted.

who are passionate stove users. Some heat their houses and water entirely with their wood-burners. They don’t use logs but are urban foragers, using bike trailers to find untreated waste wood, tree prunings and broken pallets for fuel. The initial investment of a stove is expensive but with gas and oil bills rising every year, besides house insulation and double or triple glazing, a modern cleanburning woodstove would be my number one eco-renovation purchase now. It is a pure pleasure to live with. I wonder how we ever lived with that draughty old open fire

So How Does It Burn? The stove is easy to light. The vents are easy to manage. There is a rotary grate for riddling and a stainless steel ash pan inside. I empty it about once a week and it is surprising how fine the ash is. Everything is burnt, unlike the old open fire that left lumps of charcoal in the ash bed (appreciated by the dogs).

Once I get the stove fired up I have to add just one or two logs an hour and it maintains a constant temperature between 150 to 200ºC, depending on how much I load the firebox. It can go hotter. We cut all our own wood and season it, exposed to sun and wind but not rain – the top of the pile is covered. Two years is ideal. It’s hard work but more fun than the gym. If you use wetter wood the stove is forgiving (unlike some other makes) but it means you need to burn more wood to generate heat. I calculate that we are using at least 60% less wood than in our open fire days. The house is warmer even when the stove is unlit because the chimney is now sealed, and we’ll inevitably save on gas. The Clearview double glazed front is easy to keep clean. I wipe the glass with damp newspaper and a little ash from the fire once a week to remove any tiny traces of tar. Used properly, it shouldn’t ever tar over. So far I haven’t left the fire in overnight as the house is warm and it is easy to get it started again the next day. Woodstoves aren’t just for country cottages. I have friends

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Costings Clearview Vision 500 £1,269 Focus Installation £1,4001,600 (depending on model of stove, length of chimney etc.) Useful Contacts Clearview Stoves, Dinham House, Ludlow, Shropshire SY8 1EH Tel: 01584 878 100 Web: www.clearviewstoves.com Focus Stoves Ltd, Station Approach, Four Marks, Alton, Hampshire GU34 5HN Tel: 01420 561 010 Web: www.focusstoves.co.uk Focus work within a 35 mile radius of their factory in Hampshire and supply register plates and flues to the trade. Dunsley Heat Ltd, Bridge Mills, Huddersfield Road, Holmfirth, Yorkshire HD9 3TW Tel: 01484 682 635 Web: www.dunsleyheat.co.uk

Above: Maddy’s dream comes true. Starting up the Clearview Vision 500, woodburner.

Look for ‘I Love Woodstoves’ group on Facebook for practical advise and enthusiasm! A film detailing our installation so you can see for yourself, will be available soon at: www.youtube.com/user/ PermacultureMedia www.permaculture.co.uk

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SACRED FORESTRY © arunachala-ramana.org

Reforestation of the sacred mountain of Arunachala, in South India, has been resoundingly successful. John Barrie Button explains his permacultural approach to the challenge.

n 1989 I was asked to co-ordinate a reforestation project in south India, specifically, the sacred mountain Arunachala, recognized as Shiva in the form of Light or Fire. As the legend relates, Shiva, Lord of Destruction and Recreation, was asked to adjudicate an argument between Vishnu (Lord of Preservation) and Brahma (Lord of Creation), as to who had precedence. Having manifested Himself as a column of the pure light of consciousness, Shiva bade both of them to find His limits; one to seek the lowest point, and the other the highest. Neither apparently was successful, and in their awe of Shiva’s brilliance, they pleaded with Him to take a form less dazzling, which mere mortals could then behold. Shiva agreed and transformed Himself into the form of the mountain Arunachala, which has been venerated ever since. A Call to Action The request for help from the small and radical rainforest action group which I was associated with in Australia, arrived in the form of a very poetic letter which acknowledged that reforesting Arunachala 34

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had little to do with the kind of actions which the Rainforest Information Centre was usually was involved. This is because the arid and barren region where the holy mountain stands is far removed from rainforest. However, the letter pointed out, if the forests outside the receding rainforests of India were not enhanced, then there would be little chance of ensuring the survival of those rainforests themselves. A good point. I bought my plane ticket. Advice & Motivation Having done plenty of tree planting but with no experience of projects beyond my own neighbourhood, I sought all the advice I could find. My original teacher of permaculture and dear friend, Bill Mollison, suggested that if I didn’t have volunteers, then I wouldn’t have a project. His implication was that if local people didn’t believe in the aims of the project enough to offer their services, then it had little chance of success. Observe and interact. The other wisdom which comes to mind, was offered by a woman with long experience working with various

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overseas projects. “Write yourself a letter,” she advised, “about all the things you think you are going to do over there. As many as you can think of. When you have finished this list, put it in an envelope, seal it up, and place it safely in the luggage you take with you. Don’t open if for at least three months. Even longer would be better.” Do nothing, observe everything – Masunobu Fukuoka. Inspired by Bill’s advice, I had images of great chains of pilgrims passing seedlings up the mountain, our forest growing rapidly tall with the abundance of their enthusiasm. The problem is the solution. I imagined that my presence would be irrelevant after a couple of years.

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Realising The Challenge I still recall vividly my first view of the mountain, seen through the window of the bone-shaking bus. We were still 20 kilometres away and the dusty haze blurred any detail beyond the distinctive shape. Drawing closer, my perspective sharpened. It was so barren, brown, dry, and almost devoid of vegetation, much less trees. The work would start from zero. The full significance of the fire manifestation of Shiva came to light. The mountain ablaze was a common sight, deliberately lit to encourage the grasses used for thatching, and to discourage any trees or shrubs that may impede their growth. Not to mention the pyromania inspired by those coming to the mountain to pray for divine intervention to dissolve debt, deliver a son, cure a hernia, or an infinite number of other earthly needs. Shiva in his form of Fire was honoured with matches and cigarette lighters. Arunachala was little more than a great mound of rock.

The local librarian assured me otherwise. Having studied old texts, there were abundant records of great forests on the mountain, which had been renowned as a source of diverse medicines and a sanctuary for wild animals. Observation over time. All this, though, was negated by photos dating back almost a hundred years which depicted barren slopes with no more vegetation than there was on my arrival. Stepping Forward We raised a nursery nonetheless, watered from an open well in a secluded backstreet. For all it was worth, our first two significant plantings on the mountain were both abject failures. What the flames did not claim, the goats certainly did. “If you have no problems, buy a goat,” says one Sufi wisdom. We did not even need to buy our problems. Mistakes are tools for learning. One of our small team of volunteers inspired a major step forward. He

suggested approaching the main temple. Temples are often constructed on springs. In this case, several. Not only did it harbour this abundance, but the traditional design of the temples consists of many walled compounds focusing inwards to the sanctuary. Perfect protection. Furthermore, the temple authorities control 50% of the mountain, and a lot of land around it. Planting & Growing They were happy with our proposal to create a nursery while refurbishing the compounds with gardens that had not existed for many years. We selected our plants to supply their needs in flowers and coconuts, as well as planting sacred constellations long neglected. In the following years we raised between 200,000 and 350,000 saplings for planting on and around the mountain, and for sale to service the wages of our growing workforce. Optimize edges. In this case, it was the social edge between the spiritual and earthly life; for the first time local people volunteered their support in significant numbers. Make the least change for the greatest effect. Our next planting was much smaller in area. Use small-scale intensive systems. We selected our planting sites carefully, where the least likelihood of fire casualties lay, where we might zealously guard our vulnerable young ones. Use relative location. Ah, hard-earned success. Our trees grew, planted with the monsoon’s first drops. We had selected well, choosing the hardiest species that would need the least watering, if any. Multiple elements serving every function.

Confronting Scepticism Even the task of growing seedlings to plant on the desolate mountain was far from simple. In a district where the local population often had to line up for hours at a public tap just to get their most essential household water needs, lavishing water from a private well on plants to raise a nursery was hardly likely to nurture all that enthusiastic support I had dreamed of. “Give yourself up to the mountain, Shiva will prevail” was advice I heard more than once, offered by the spiritual seekers who flocked to the mountain. I was there to work, to get the task done, not to adhere to any doctrine or superstition. “Arunachala is a Fire mountain, and has always been rocks. You can’t grow a forest on Arunachala,” other sceptics declared.

Permaculture is an ecological design system. Using nature as its guide, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, permaculture’s co-originators, have developed sets of principles to guide the design process. The essence of many of these (in italics) are found in this article.

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Top left: Arunachula clothed in green after years of being barren rock. Bottom left: The mountain as it looked in the 1980s. Above: Carrying seedlings up the mountain for replanting. Right: Villagers tackle one of the fires that frequently threaten the trees.

What is Permaculture?

Careful Selection We planted at least 80 different species including shrubs and groundcovers, fast-growing pioneers, and climax

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swarm up the mountain to beat out the fire before it can grow. The mountain is not yet fully forested by any means but it will be. The sceptics are silent now. The biggest limit to abundance is creativity

species. Use and value diversity, follow natural succession. Fruiting species, trees for timber, plants for medicines and other uses. Each element performs multiple functions. Every plant was bunded with a microcatchment arc to catch and localise water, silt and organic material. Tree ‘smiles’. Catch and store energy. I heard some foreign pilgrims complaining that all the trees were spoiling the sunset view from the mountain. Ah, disgruntled whisperings of success! After less than two years, when a fire broke out amongst our plantings, local villagers spontaneously extinguished the fire. They knew the plants would be more value to them than rocks and grass. Real genuine success – the locals were volunteering. Creatively use and respond to change.

John Button, an Australian, has worked and played with permaculture for 30 years, designing, teaching, consulting and implementing diverse projects. His affair with permaculture began in the late 70s when, having bought 33 hectares (82 acres) of degraded cattle land, he realised he knew almost nothing about what to do with it, and was inspired to participate in a workshop by Bill Mollison. Having built his house and planted a botanical rainforest fantasy of 2,000 species, he was then asked to consult and teach. He has worked in India, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Holland, Germany, the Canary Islands, Russia and Italy, where he mostly lives, with his partner agronomist, Francesca Simonetti.

stumps. People can actually harvest the fuelwood from pioneer trees already dying off, and abundant medicinal plants are thriving. Obtain a yield. It is now more than 20 years since our first small failures. It has taken a lot of work, as all projects do at first. Transformation requires energy from somewhere. Many firebreaks have been cut by the different groups that have grown on the inspiration of the first successes. These days, when the first traces of smoke on the mountain are seen, watchmen with mobile phones quickly alert small armies of school and college students, who

You can email John at: johnnaturedesigns@yahoo.com Or visit his website: nuke.johnbutton-permaculture.net

Top: Part of the reforestation viewed from the one of the pilgrims’ paths up the mountain. Right: Author, John Barrie Button.

Biodiversity Returns Animals and birds not seen for years are now becoming commonplace. We create nothing; we can only support the conditions for creation to take place. Humility, always. Great bamboo groves not seen for tens of decades are now regenerating rapidly. The great trees that once covered the mountain are regenerating from their long-ravaged

Below right: KattuShiva tree nursery in the courtyard of the temple. Below left: Mountain of Medicine meetings led to the reintroduction of medicinal plants. Below centre: A talk circle ensures everyone’s views are heard.

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permaculture NEWS Ben Law’s Outdoor Sell Out London Permaculture Festival Classroom Opens – 2011 Date To Be Announced Photographs by James Piers Taylor, London Permaculture, http://www.flickr.com/photos/naturewise/

The Duchess of Norfolk & Ben Law at the Opening Ceremony

The Woodland Classroom at the Sustainability Centre was officially opened by Georgina, Duchess of Norfolk on 21 September 2010. Permanent Publications and the staff of the Sustainability Centre were joined by filmmakers, Undercurrents and a wide selection of representatives from NGOs and local and national government, environmentalists, timber framers and transitioners. A trailer from the new Roundwood Timber Framing DVD was shown (available from www.green-shopping.co.uk). Earlier this year Ben’s previous build, the Lodsworth Larder (see PM63), won the Sussex Heritage Award 2010 for the best community building. For the latest developments at the Sustainablity Centre call 01730 823 166 or view: www. sustainability-centre.org

DEADLINES Permaculture Magazine No.67 EDITORIAL 22 November 2010

The main hall during the London Permaculture Festival at the Cecil Sharp House was often full to bursting The 1st London Permaculture Festival turned out to be a great success, writes Stef Geyer of the London Permaculture Network. Over 850 people from all over London and beyond filled the Cecil Sharp House and gardens to capacity. It showed the level of interest that can be mustered even in London’s quiet mid-August period, and it highlighted that now more than ever is the right time to publicise the growing achievements of the permaculture and transition community in and around London. One of the most memorable things said to me at the festival was from Andy Goldring, CEO of the Permaculture Association. Apparently last time London had a Permaculture gathering (about 10 years ago) there were

DISPLAYS 30 November 2010 & CLASSIFIEDS PUBLICATION 24 January 2011 Contributions and enquiries to: PERMACULTURE MAGAZINE The Sustainability Centre East Meon Hampshire GU32 1HR, U.K. 0845 458 4150 or 01730 823 311 info@permaculture.co.uk

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Chris Hedley’s popular herb walk

around 80 attendants in total. This time the festival’s crew and workshop holders alone outnumbered that total! We really couldn’t have taken any more people. The main hall was crammed with groups and projects of all shapes and guises showing off what they are up to. The hall also played host to music, demonstrations and a ‘permaculture question time’ that could proved a popular feature. The film and workshop spaces were often packed to their limits (these included a web link talk by Patrick Whitefield) and people over-flowed out into the gardens or joined Chris Hedley on his herb walk around the venue’s immediate vicinity. We worked with the idea that we would offer a space for whoever wanted to do a talk, workshop or stall which fits in with our vision of permaculture. The only things that we sought out were local organic food and a programme for children. Everything else came in from all corners of London over the few months preceding. The event was really a chance for our community

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London-grown plants on sale to offer it’s knowledge to each other, the heat from the analysis of what was missing will, I’m sure, keep us warm all winter. As it was our first event it was a steep learning curve for the newly created co-ordination team, we had no idea of how many people would turn up, so we were very happy that it went mostly to plan. However, we unfortunately did commit the cardinal sin of running out of cake at the festival! We’ll make sure we have a whole team dedicated to that next year. For details on how to attend or take part in next year’s festival view: www.londonpermaculture. com and of course keep reading Permaculture Magazine www. permaculture.co.uk

Permaculture Magazine

NEWS IN BRIEF The Permaculture Association is compiling a list of forest gardens that will be planted this winter to help connect learners and volunteers with opportunities for practical experience. A research project is also planned to record designs, planting schedules and long term yields. Tell them about your project by contacting them at: research@ permaculture.org.uk Jagran Jan Vikas Samiti, a non-government organisation in Rajasthan, India are in need of volunteer permaculture students or graduates to help them. For details view: www.jjvs.org Access a map of traditional craftspeople in the UK at www. heritagecrafts.org.uk/map.html The Low Carbon Trust (www. lowcarbon.co.uk) has won the Green Building category of the Sussex Eco Awards for its Earthship Brighton project. The Awards board sited it as “a case study for eco-living.” The trustees of Emerson College have handed over the deeds for the building and the 20 acres of land around it, securing them as an education and research centre dedicated to biodynamics, permaculture and sustainable food production. View: www.bdacollege.org.uk Worth seeing! Gaia Theatre Collective’s play Tipping Point (pictured) is on at Hamilton House, Stokes Croft, Bristol, 1 - 11 December 2010. For further details please call 07932 074 201 or view www.gaiatheatre.org

Wide Range Of Activities At Permaculture Convergence Photographs by Jay Ashton, Permaculture Association

Many of the 360 attendees at the 2010 Permaculture Association Convergence, Lambourne End, Essex The Permaculture Association’s 2010 Convergence was held at Lambourne End in Essex, a 53 acre venue discovered during the Association’s LAND Project. The Association’s CEO, Andy Goldring, reports that 360 people attended. The programme featured workshops, talks, presentations and permaculture practicals such as scything, rocket stoves and a magnificent dragon cob oven. Core theory looked at everything from ethics to design tools, while people care sessions offered a range of powerful tools for use in life and work. The education group looked at the Association’s strategy, future thinking and Low Carbon Farming initiatives.

Work here at PM As part of our expansion Permaculture Magazine / Permanent Publications are looking to recruit an Accounts Manager and an Administration Assistant. The positions are based at the Sustainability Centre, East Meon, Hampshire. See the advert on page 28 of this issue for details on how to apply.

The new Diploma System 5 was launched (new applications are welcome) and there were reports on proposed polyculture research trials and community supported agriculture. With 100% of people saying that they would “thoroughly recommend” the convergence to a friend, we can say we were pleased. A lot was learnt, new plans were hatched, and we can hardly wait for the next one. It really does feel like we are breaking through to a new level globally. Memberships are up substantially, and following email discussions from Australia, it seems like it is bursting at the seems over there too.

For further information view: www.permaculture.org.uk

This year’s event got the thumbs up

Haiti, Chile, Tibet Relief Projects

Revival by Rhythms Del Mundo is the third collaboration with Artists Project Earth (APE) which promotes permaculture and supports the relief efforts in Haiti, Chile and Tibet following this year’s catastrophes in these regions. Each of these regions still

desperately need donations and volunteers and this CD is one way to make a contribution. Artists such as Bob Dylan, Gorillaz, Coldplay and Dizzee Rascal are given the trademark RDM Afro-Cuban twist. For further details of how APE are supporting some of the remarkable permaculture projects in Chile view their website and this link: www.apeuk.org/260Transition-Chile

Hollywood Star Joins Permaculture Design Course Students on a recent Permaculture Design Course led by Darren Doherty in Australia were delighted to be joined by Daryl Hannah, the Hollywood star of films such as Kill Bill, Splash and Blade Runner. Daryl, who is now just as well known for her commitment to environmental issues, told Permaculture Magazine “in these critical times permaculture 38

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solutions are some of the best tools we have for creating a viable and thriving future”. Over 3,000 copies of each issue of Permaculture Magazine are now sold in New Zealand and Australia (where permaculture began). Look out for forthcoming features from the Australian practitioners, teachers and writers who have helped define permaculture in these pages.

Ned, Eliza, Darren and Daryl www.permaculture.co.uk

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Welcome to the new-look Green Shopping website and catalogue supplement Purchasing from Green Shopping helps support Permaculture Magazine

Green Shopping is run by the team at Permaculture Magazine. As Permanent Publications we also specialise in publishing permaculture books. Our aim is to offer you inspirational books, tools, products and DVDs to help you live more sustainably. We hope you like our new look Green Shopping and enjoy shopping with us.

NEW BOOKS & DVDS

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THE GARDEN AT THE END OF THE WORLD DVD Gary Caganoff This is a deeply moving film about the nobility of the human spirit amid the horrors of war. Made in 2004, it records permaculturist Rosemary Morrow’s return to Afghanistan after 30 years absence, working with Mahboba’s Promise, a small NGO. It compares her understanding of past social and agricultural structures with the present. She explores how social and ecological design can restore a nation suffering from malnutrition and the loss of the majority of its adult male population. Highly recommended. 75mins DVD-GEW £19.95

I LOVE MY WORLD Chris Holland Far beyond a collection of outdoor learning activities, Chris takes a holistic view of our global environmental crisis and presents a heartfelt as well as intellectual response to it by taking young people outside to learn and play, and play to learn. Full of bushcraft, environmental art, nature awareness and outdoor play activities, as well as mentoring tips, this book is for parents, play rangers, forest school learners, teachers, uncles and aunties... actually anyone who loves this world and wants to spend time outdoors and share it with others. 200pp ILM £15.95

THE STORY OF WATER Alick Bartholomew This book is strongly influenced by the work of Viktor Schauberger and new quantum biological research (and I suspect Dr. Masaru Emoto). It controversially suggests that water not only shapes our landscape and sustains life, it is the medium of communication between all living organisms. Covered are all aspects of water from water in the cosmos, landscape, plants and our bodies to water’s cosmic role, memory in water and its relationship to the quantum field. It then looks at the future, the water crisis and ways to access ‘living’ water. 328pp SOW £12.99 READER’S OFFER £10.99 Saving £2.00 Offer code: SOW/PM65

HOW TO GROW FOOD IN YOUR POLYTUNNEL ALL YEAR ROUND Mark Gatter & Andy McKee Being a fan of Eliot Coleman (The Winter Harvest) I immediately picked up this UK book. I like the simple plan for year one, the way it is divided in to seasons monthby-month with preparation, sowing, growing, harvesting and problem solving tips including all possible pests for every fruit or veg covered. There’s a useful chapter devoted to ‘the hungry gap’, my larder nadir(!), and the whole book is organic. The perfect companion for the Incan greenhouse design featured in PM66 on p.43. 192pp HGF £10.95 READER’S OFFER £8.95 Saving £2.00 Offer code: HGF/PM65

THE BEE-FRIENDLY BEEKEEPER David Heaf PM recently published two articles by the author about Warré beehives and sustainable beekeeping. Here is a detailed investigation arising out of that research as to why conventional beekeeping is contributing to the drastic decline of the global bee population and the alternatives. It draws on bee biology and apiculture in order to call for more bee-appropriate ways of keeping bees. It presents a strong case for making natural honeycomb to boost healthy bees by allowing species specific behaviours to be expressed. Included are detailed Warré hive construction plans and modern management tips. A fascinating mine of information for the radical beekeeper! 150pp BFB £25.00

KITCHEN MEDICINE Bruton-Seal & Seal 224pp KM1 £16.99 Reviewed on page 71 MEAT – A Benign Extravagance Simon Fairlie 236pp MBE £19.95 Reviewed on page 69 ROUNDWOOD TIMBER FRAMING Ben Law 168pp RTF £19.95 Reviewed on page 70 ROUNDWOOD TIMBER FRAMING DVD Ben Law 80mins DVD-RTF £19.95 Reviewed on page 70 SOLAR DOMESTIC WATER HEATING * Chris Laughton 192pp SDW £34.99 Reviewed on page 71 STAND-ALONE SOLAR ELECTRIC SYSTEMS * Mark Hankins 224pp SAS £34.99 Reviewed on page 71 SUSTAINABLE HOME REFURBISHMENT * David Thorpe 256pp SHR1 £34.99 Reviewed on page 71 * READER’S OFFER Buy all 3 & get £5.00 off. Offer code: SSS/PM65

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supplement winter 2010 Permaculture Magazine No.green 66 shopping 39

THESE ARE A FEW OF OUR CHRISTMASSY FAVOURITE THINGS

Tony Rollinson

Maddy Harland

Kelly Kettle – just a totally classic product and now in Stainless Steel. KKC-SS3 £55.00

The Garden at the End of the World – this DVD about Afghanistan moved me deeply. Full of insight and human dignity. DVD-GEW £19.95

The Power Of Community – How Cuba Survived Peak Oil – a DVD that shows you what you can do as an individual, a community or as a whole country. DVD-PCH £14.95 Vegan Rustic Cooking – how to make the tasty most of seasonal produce and written by lovely people as well. VRC £9.95

EcoFan 800 – a beautifully engineered product that improves the heat distribution from your woodburner. CF-EF800 £114.95 The Moneyless Man – my current bedtime reading! Entertaining and thoughtprovoking. TMM £10.99

Carolyn Pennington

Mark Anslow

Meat – Packed with critical analysis of modern agricultural arguments, this wonderful book gives plenty of food for thought. MBE £19.95

Garden Tool Sharpener – If you’re baffled by wetstones this tool is brilliant. Put an edge on my shears in seconds! WB-S3 £12.50

Dowse It Yourself – A DVD of fun for the whole family. Learn how to dowse and tap into the earth’s energies. DVD-DIY £14.00 Flexcut Whittler’s Set – Ideal for those winter evenings by the fire. These popular knives will give hours of carving fun. BMC-WK £48.50

Permaculture & Aquaponics – It’s not all forest gardens... this inspiring DVD shows real system thinking in action, and producing great food to boot. DVD-PAA £19.95

Creating A Forest Garden – Beautiful and practical – an encyclopaedia of plants and wisdom for permaculture growing. CAFG £30.00

Further details of the products listed here can be found on the Green Shopping website and in the 2011 printed Green Shopping catalogue.

TO ORDER PLEASE EITHER PHONE 01730 823 311 OR ORDER ONLINE AT WWW.GREEN-SHOPPING.CO.UK

green shopping supplement winter 2010 40 Permaculture Magazine No. 66

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CHOSEN BY THE STAFF HERE AT PERMACULTURE MAGAZINE

John Adams

Hayley Harland

Bon-Fire Outdoor Kitchen – This is my system of choice for outdoor cooking both at home and away. LAMBSETFP £275.00

Starting With Chickens – Contains all the essential tips for anyone wanting these feathered friends for 2011. SWC1 £6.95

Potting Shed Collection – This is a beautifully made present for any enthusiastic gardener. NW-PSC £29.95

Game On – Make the most of your catch – the DVD for hunter gatherers. DVD-GON £24.95 Solar Home Design Manual for Cool Climates – a must for both new builders and retrofitters. SHD £29.99

Sam Blanchette A-Z of Bushcraft – This DVD demonstrates 26 skills of bushcraft including how to make shelters, identify edible plants, etc. DVD-AZB £14.99 101 Uses For Stinging Nettles – What could be better than finding 101 uses for this prolific weed? OUS2 £5.95 Bucket In A Bag – packs away small so its easy to keep around - loads of uses from foraging to watering your pets. BBL-BIB £15.95

Biodynamic Gardening – I will be giving this DVD to my other half this year, who’s dream is to grow biodynamic wine. DVD-BGT £18.50

Tim Harland Gränsfors Bruks Splitting Hatchet – Hand-forged with pride and bearing the forgers own stamp. My absolute favourite tool. GB-439 £59.95 Roundwood Timber Framing DVD – Both a documentary and a step-by-step guide. A perfect companion to Ben’s book of the same name. DVD-RTF £19.95 Find Your Power – Both the best ‘self help’ book I have ever read and the most powerful personal transformation tool for those wanting to give skilled responses to Peak Oil and Climate Change. FYP £12.95

Still stuck? Why not give a present that lasts all year: a gift subscription to Permaculture Magazine (see page 80 or www.green-shopping.co.uk).

TO ORDER PLEASE EITHER PHONE 01730 823 311 OR ORDER ONLINE AT WWW.GREEN-SHOPPING.CO.UK

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Permaculture Magazine No.green 66 shopping 41 supplement winter 2010

01730 823 311 www.green-shopping.co.uk

NEW TOOLS & PRODUCTS

All TOOL & PRODUCT prices include postage & packing (UK only)

OWL CM160 MONITOR WITH USB Monitor, transmitter, sensor jaw, batteries, USB connector and Windows software. New updated Owl monitor with USB connectivity. Shows you how much electricity you are using, how much it is costing you and the related CO2 emissions. Accommodates up to 6 tariffs, has a feature to enter a weekday/weekend tariff and can also work with either Economy 7 or Economy 10. Two year rolling data storage and Windows connectivity. OWL-CM160 £45.00 Reviewed on page 18

ENVI MONITOR & USB CONNECTER Monitor, power adapter, transmitter and sensor jaw, USB connector. Volts: 240AC This energy monitor, shows current energy use, trend, previous day/week/month, cost per day, cost per month, day/evening/night split, time and temperature. Seven year memory and transmitter battery life. Supplied with a USB connector to download data to your PC. Output can be displayed in Google Power Meter. TAN-ENVI-USB £55.00 Reviewed on page 18

POWER PLUS ECO-POWERSTATION Inputs: 100-240V AC, 17V DC, hand wind-up dynamo or optional solar panel (TAN-ALBA). Outputs: 230V AC, 12V DC and 5V DC USB An emergency/portable power pack with a range of inputs and outputs. As well as low voltage DC it can run small AC appliances and even jump start a car. TAN-PPE £149.99 Reviewed on page 17

SOLAR MATE ONE 5W solar panel, 12V long life 40W equivalent bulb, switch and fitting kit (requires a 35ah -70ah 12V leisure battery not included). Lights an area of up to 16m2 (148ft2). Ideal for use in sheds, stables, greenhouses, etc where mains electricity is not available. TAN-SM1 £89.95 Reviewed on page 17 SUBSCRIBER’S OFFER £85.00 Saving £4.95 Code: TAN-SM1/PM65

POTTING SCOOP Overall: 260mm (10.2in). Scoop: 135 x 60mm (5 x 2in). Stainless steel with wooden handle. Burgon and Ball have replaced the very popular American Soil Scoop with this slightly smaller Potting Scoop. It has the same great features, a digging point, good carrying capacity, serrated edges for cutting roots and built in seed dispensers. A must for any keen gardener. BBL-WTMS £19.95 Reviewed on page 18

HONEY STOVE Packed flat: 150 x 150 x 10mm (6 x 6 x 0.4in) Total weight: 339g (12oz). Stainless Steel. Made in the UK. A versatile wood burning backpacking stove which will work in a number of configurations, with a wide range of pans and several fuels types. Folds flat into a small pouch when not in use. BPL-HON £37.50 Reviewed on page 18

HELLE EGGEN KNIFE Blade: 100mm (4in), Stainless Steel, Handle: 115mm (4.5in), Curly Birch, Leather Sheath. Has the traditional look and feel of a Norwegian knife. The unique triple laminated stainless steel makes for a razor sharp blade which holds it’s edge. The handle fits the hand comfortably and the knife is a joy to use. WB-HEL75 £62.50 Reviewed on page 18

BUCK DIAMOND SHARPENER Size: 102 x 26 x 6mm (4 x 1 x 0.25in) A handy pocket sized 750 grit diamond sharpening stone from the famous makers of Buck Knives. Puts a fine edge on knives, small tools and even fish hooks. Can be used dry or water lubricated. Comes with a nylon pouch fitted with a belt loop.

GATCO Military Carbide SharpENer Size: 72 x 28 x 6mm (2.75 x 1 x 0.25in). A lightweight sharpener that quickly restores an edge to most knife blades. WB-MCS £14.95 GATCO Double Duty Sharpener Size: 72 x 68 x 11mm (2.75 x2.7 x 0.4in). A handy pocket knife sharpener that features both carbide tips and ceramic rods for a finer finish. WB-DDS £14.95

WB-BDS £19.95 SUBSCRIBER’S OFFER £17.95 Saving £2.00 Code: WB-BDS/PM65

To order any of the items in this supplement either use the order form in your Green Shopping catalogue 2011, order online at www.green-shopping.co.uk or by phone on 01730 823 311 (international:+44 1730 823 311.) N.B. Subscriber prices quoted in green and Reader’s Offer prices quoted in blue can only be used for phoned orders and do not apply to orders made online. Postage and packing charges apply unless otherwise stated. Online book orders over £15 are however postage & packing FREE for all UK customers. Discounts valid until publication of next issue, but may be altered at our discretion.

FIND EVEN MORE NEW BOOKS, DVDs, TOOLS & PRODUCTS ONLINE AT WWW.GREEN-SHOPPING.CO.UK

green shopping supplement winter 2010 42 Permaculture Magazine No. 66

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Growing Veg The Incan Way

Steve James adapts an ancient farming method to create a self-watering, temperature stabilised greenhouse All photos © Steve James

ood growing in Scotland’s cool climate is always a challenge, especially living at 240m (800ft). Journeys south of the border in spring and autumn seem like time travelling. You can almost see the waves of blossom and leaf fall sweeping slowly up and down the country. I was therefore intrigued by discoveries made by archaeologists reconstructing how the ancient Inca farmed 3,650m (12,000ft) up in the much more inhospitable region around Lake Titicaca.

Wisdom of the Incas Archeologists uncovered networks of metre-deep waterfilled channels between beds, raised high enough above the water level to let the roots breathe. The numerous interconnecting channels were home to various edible fish, and extended over thousands of hectares, creating a microclimate that protected the crops from seasonal drought by soaking into the beds, and from the year round frost danger by releasing daytime heat stored in the water. Aquatic plants grew abundantly in the channels, and fish manure settled as silt. Each year they would scoop plants and silt back onto the beds. Showing a rare practical interest in his subject, Clark L Erickson, an agrarian archeologist, encouraged the local Quechua to try these techniques for growing their own crops, with the stunning result that yields immediately increased tenfold. Impressed, local farmers started readopting the more sophisticated ways of their ancestors. Top: Plants thrive as their roots reach down to find the underground water (visible under the walkway). Left: The Incan inspired greenhouse is the right side of the ‘twist ‘n’ twang’ workshop (see PM65) behind the house.

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No. 66

Water, Water Everywhere These days we have polytunnels and greenhouses, making it possible to enjoy fruit and vegetables that would otherwise be impossible so far North, but they do have one major drawback – no rain. In Scotland that hits

Permaculture Magazine

particularly hard, as you stand, hosepipe in hand, deafened by the thunderous roar of yet another downpour on the polythene just above your head. Something is not joined up here. Isn’t this a sin in the permaculture bible? Piped water additives are another concern, as is the difficulty in going away for extended periods. Unless you can arrange for someone to do the watering for you, two or three weeks away in the height of summer is often unthinkable. So I started musing, how could I get the rain back inside? Catching it as it comes off the roof is the first issue. There are, I believe, self-adhesive gutters you can attach to a polytunnel directly, though I have no experience of them. A greenhouse is normally simple to rig up with gutters. As I had already built a guttered polytunnel (see PM65), I thought here was the chance to give it a go. My partner Eilidh had previously experimented with burying polythene underneath a bed to help it hold water longer on her allotment. Initially appalled at the thought of sour soil and drowned roots, I was surprised that it seemed to help quite a bit without injuring the plants. It still needed a lot of water hauling to fill, so the prime requirement for the mark II was a self-filling mechanism! The Experiment All these various threads came together in the experiment which is effectively a large sunken bathtub with the sky tap left running. Rain comes in one end, soaks sideways under the beds and any overflow runs out the far end. Rather than use some form of sprinkler or seep hose system, which would probably need a powered pump to work well, I remembered the Inca and decided to try gravity, letting water come up from

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below instead. As it turned out, this created an extremely dry soil surface, which inhibits slugs and weed germination. A drier atmosphere is also less conducive to the many moulds and fungi which thrive in the typically muggy environment under cover. A critical part of this system is having sufficient depth of soil (20cm/8in) to ensure the plant roots can make their own choices between warmth,

air and water. They can sense it beneath them and reach down into the ever damper earth until their thirst is satisfied. Tomatoes in particular headed straight for the borders by the walkway, closest to the free water, and spread many feet along it.

Above: Section through the growing system. Below: (left) Excavating the water storage tank; (right) Liner made of pieces of scrap plastic sheeting, water inlet and blocks for the walkway.

The Method I began by digging out the shape of the tank, unearthing plenty of rocks in the process that would later form the rubble infill. You could well use a more flat bottomed tank, or indeed build the whole thing up above ground. I chose

www.permaculture.co.uk

Above: (left) Walkway, edging boards and rock layer; (right) Finished beds filled with soil. Left: Plan and section showing water, inlet, outlet and storage tank. Right: Rotatable elbow on the overflow allows adjustment of the water level. would leak, but very slowly, and the worms and beasties could wriggle their way in if they had a mind to, particularly as it would be the warmest place around. So, first a layer of skipped carpet on the bottom to avoid further punctures, then three layers of the poly covering the whole area of the greenhouse and stapled to a single plank edging running around the perimeter at ground level. Since nothing would grow underneath the walkway, it seemed sensible to store the bulk of the water there, and while I was at it try and trap some warmth by making it slatted so the sun could shine in and heat it up. This light and warmth has encouraged mosses and algae to grow in the dappled shade, and attracted spiders and toads. In time maybe a whole ecosubsystem may evolve under here! Stored heat is more erratic, as fresh rain flushes out the warmed water, usually of course on cooler days, but it does mean the reservoir never gets stagnant. sloping sides to test the widest possible range of soil moisture. I could have used a perfect membrane to ensure a completely watertight tank, but I’ve always been taken by the way worms love to party in old polythene lying about in the garden (I guess it’s warm and wet between the layers) and I had a stack of the damn stuff. Odd shapes, odd rips and punctures – not pretty, and not really much use for anything else. Several layers compressed together under the weight of the soil and water www.permaculture.co.uk

Channelling the Water I laid two lines of reclaimed concrete blocks directly on the poly, with approximately 10cm (4in) gaps as level as I could, to carry the central walkway, and hold back the soil. Resting on top of these are two 7.5 x 5cm (3 x 2in) battens, with the edging boards and walkway slats nailed to them. The downpipe from the gutter runs under the beds and emerges between the blocks under the top end of the walkway. No. 66

Permaculture Magazine

Peas, broad and French beans, courgettes, calabrese, several sorts of tomatoes, basil, leeks, coriander, pumpkin, cauliflower, lettuce, kale, red mustard, cabbage, walking onions, sorrel, nettle, grass and creeping buttercup, all did well. Obviously a serious grower would use such a system to ease their workload rather than replace it. If I had watered during the driest periods, pinched out trusses etc., given them all more love and less apologies I’m sure the yields would have been greater, but as a result of total and absolute neglect, I think they’re pretty encouraging. I had thought the central water channel might encourage slugs, but damage was surprisingly slight, with mice proving a greater threat in the midst of a hard winter, climbing the brassica stalks and nibbling out the hearts, the wee souls. The pumpkins probably did best, with half a dozen doublefist sized specimens as well as the champion illustrated.

The outlet was a standard Above: Most plants did 150mm (6in) drainpipe, which really well despite being empties into the rushes nearby. unwatered throughout the I fitted a 90º elbow which is growing season. easily rotated to control the high water level inside. To Below: Steve James with keep the walkway dry I set it his prized pumpkin. about 1cm (0.4in) below the tops of the concrete blocks. Rocks fill outside of the blocks. Any coarse rubble would do, to roughly the expected water level to let the water freely percolate under the beds, avoiding a completely waterlogged base to the soil which might turn anaerobic or leach nutrients and minerals. I collected many fine molehills from the surrounding grazing, mixed with compost, sheep manure and basalt rock dust. This soil mix was piled directly on top of the rubble, in contact with the water at its base approximately 20cm (8in) deep, and made to slope slightly from the edges to the centre (’cos it looks nice). In dry periods the water under the walkway almost disappears as it is drawn up by the plants and evaporation. However, although the surface is a dusty desert, dabbling your fingers in the warm topsoil shows the darker, damp soil beginning no more than 2cm (0.8in) down in even the hottest periods (bearing in mind this is Scotland).

In Conclusion I haven’t run this experiment long enough to tell the longterm effect on soil condition, but it is not really very different from growing in pots or on benching. As long as care is taken to feed and refresh the soil periodically, I don’t see why it should be any less successful. This system is not the answer to everyone’s prayers, but as a way of lessening the need for visits to a distant allotment, water bills, the impact of hosepipe bans and fretting about your darlings while you’re away, then less time spent putting the rain back on the ground may be worth the slight trouble involved in construction Steve James built his own luxury low-impact ecohome in Scotland, complete with a 9 x 7m (700ft2) workshop and greenhouse growing space. Resources Pre-Inca agriculture: www.sas.upenn.edu/~cerickso/articles/Exped.pdf More pictures: www.envisioneer.net

Being Cruel to be Kind? I wanted to see what this system could do, so my heartless procedure was to water in individual seeds and transplants when first introduced, and once or twice again in the next few days if they looked like they needed it. After that they were on their own. Apart from this lulling into a false sense of security, and some minor weeding, the entire greenhouse was unwatered by human hand from April right through to the following spring, and as you can see from the photos, almost everything thrived. The garlic was the only total failure, several bulbs were planted along the outside edge high above the shallow (south) end, where it was just too hot and dry, even for this sun-lover. Cacti would do well here! 46

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www.permaculture.co.uk

How to Grow Food In Winter Janet Renouf-Miller explains how you can create a harvest of fresh, nutritious food throughout the cold months.

ith the help of a bit of cover, and carefully selected varieties of seeds, it is possible to grow vegetables and herbs all year round in the United Kingdom, and presumably therefore in other temperate countries that have frosty winters. In my corner of Scotland, away from the sea and up in the hills, there is only one month of the year that can be guaranteed to be frost free and that is July. Most years we cannot grow courgettes or runner beans outside without cover. In our case, experimenting has paid off and we often have more produce in winter than in summer. Last year by the end of winter we were fed up with salad! www.permaculture.co.uk

Wintry Benefits There are a number of advantages to growing vegetables in winter: • Mature overwintered veg keeps growing until December under cover, stands for the winter then comes away fast in February. They can be picked for much of the winter. There might be lean pickings in January but there is usually something – perhaps a bit of kale, land cress, claytonia, lamb’s lettuce, herbs and carrots. • Later autumn sowings will overwinter as seedlings that get going quickly again in February and are ready long before spring sowings. This eliminates the ‘hungry gap’ – that period of time when seeds

have been sown in spring but little is ready to eat. • Vitamins and minerals are harder to obtain in winter, especially vitamin C. Having something fresh from the garden can make a big difference. • Fresh organic produce is more expensive in winter. Therefore winter veg saves you more money than summer veg. Rocket, radishes, salad leaves, parsley and mint are all expensive in winter yet easy to grow at home. • The ground is as well growing something as sitting there empty. Above: Tatsoi, cress and chickweed growing for winter salads.

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stuff took over. We had lamb’s lettuce galore from February till the end of April. Don’t forget that if you have a conservatory, food plants can be grown there in pots during the winter. Windowsills in the house tend to be too dark for plants that are going to be there for any length of time but work fine for salad sprouts (see later).

Get Protection Any protection that you can give plants over the winter will help them, although there are a number of things you can grow with no protection at all. A greenhouse or polytunnel gives the best protection and plenty of indoor space. We cover some of the plants with polypropylene floating mulch inside the tunnel or greenhouse for extra insulation. Cold frames are another good option and a layer of floating mulch or bubble wrap can be used on top of the plants inside the frame. Simple home-made frames work fine. Do remember to remove the bubble wrap and start watering again in the spring. Floating mulch laid over the soil outside gives weather proofing on its own and can be weighed down with bricks or stones. It prevents mud from being splashed onto salad crops as well as giving frost protection and making plants grow faster. We had great success last year with an old caravan window found in a lay-by which we put on top of some lamb’s lettuce. Lamb’s lettuce will grow outside all winter without protection but that which was covered was ready first, in early February. Once it was finished, the uncovered

Sowing Start sowing again from mid July onwards, as the ground is cleared by other crops, then continue until the weather gets too cold. That usually means until the end of August in the north or September further south. These sowings will grow at different rates. Sowing in succession actually works better at the end of the year than it does in spring, when all the sowings tend to catch up with one another. Earlier sowings will be ready from August to late September, and can be used as ‘cut and come again’ crops from then onwards. The more you cut them the longer they stand,

so keep cutting, making sure you leave a bit of green to keep the plant alive. They will eventually stop growing but will stand over the winter, and start to grow again in February. Later sowings will be part-grown at the end of the season. They are poised to finish growing in spring and to follow on from the earlier sowings. This two stage process means you will still be harvesting right up until the spring-sown vegetables begin to mature, and you will seldom be without some garden produce.

Every ‘Early’ Is Also A ‘Late’ Seeds that are described as ‘early’ on the packet can also be sown at the end of the season for overwintering. There is the odd exception, for example parsnips. If in doubt, experiment. Conversely, anything that says it is a ‘late’ also usually works as an ‘early’.

Above left: Lamb’s lettuce in a cold frame. Above right: Planting mint in a box. Right: Close up winter sowing. 48

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This year we obtained some onion sets that according to the bag were for autumn sowing. They were reduced to 50p when purchased in February. Half were sown outside in March and the other half in cold frames. The cold frame ones were ready to eat by June and the others followed on a couple of weeks later. Start Sprouting Once it is too cold to sow in the greenhouse, move indoors and sow seed trays of peas, cabbage, broccoli and kale on a south facing windowsill. These can be cut as seedlings once they are two to three weeks old and added to salads and soup. Grow salad sprouts in the normal way too, in a salad sprouter or sieve. The quickest ones are chick peas and lentils. Red cabbage sprouts add some colour to winter salads. What To Grow In Succession Perpetual spinach, chard, parsley, rocket, lettuce and radishes can all be sown at four week intervals from July onwards for both a winter crop and some seedlings to overwinter for fast take off in spring. Chard is less hardy than perpetual spinach so if you only grow one of them, grow the spinach. The radish ‘long white icicle’ does well and can be used as a vegetable as well as in salad. It will stand for a long time in winter undercover.

A variety of lettuce from Thompson and Morgan called ‘Freckles’ is good for autumn sowing. It is hardier than most and slugs don’t like it. We have kept plants going all winter under bubble wrap in a cold frame. Land cress and lamb’s lettuce are wonderful, hardy salad crops which will stand outside all winter in pretty much any weather. Leave a plant of each to go to seed and you will have a steady supply of plants at different ages and stages springing up everywhere. Lamb’s lettuce is sown from July onwards but you only need to sow it a couple of times, once indoors and once outside, to get a supply for months. It is expensive to buy and you often see it in those bags of ready-washed salad. Land cress can be sown from spring until September, but will stand for months from a single sowing if picked regularly. It has a similar taste and appearance to watercress. As well as using it in salads, make a mineral-rich soup using a watercress soup recipe. Claytonia is another easy winter salad crop, although it does need a bit of cover. If you have a polytunnel, greenhouse or cold frame it will keep going all winter, and will self seed. Slugs do not Left: Field beans plants and seeds. Above right: Polytunnel and frames. Right: Harvested blue salad potatoes.

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bother much with claytonia or with lamb’s lettuce and land cress. Pak choi, Chinese cabbage and other similar Chinese greens need to be sown after mid July or they will go to seed. They are best in a tunnel or cold frame. Slugs love them so keep an eye out for damage.

Garlic can be planted at most times of year but July plantings work well and are ready the following July. We put single cloves back in the ground whenever we harvest some and have it dotted all around the garden, to pull as required. If none is ready, the green tops can be cut and used. Spring cabbage can be used as a cut and come again crop as well for full sized cabbages. Carrots (stump-rooted) do well on most soil and will stand in the ground for a long time, to pull as needed. Celery is easy to grow pretty much anywhere. Sow it after mid July for winter crops, or it may to go to seed.

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There is no need to earth it up. We have been sowing a culinary celery seed, variety unknown, for several years with great success. It can also be sown in September and the small plants will overwinter and start growing again in the spring. Leeks, as most gardeners will already know are planted in spring and ready in autumn. They will stand in the ground all winter and can be eaten until the first shallots are ready in the spring. They are in many ways more useful to the winter gardener than onions, being very hardy and easy to grow. Kale can be sown as usual in midsummer for a winter crop or in September for a second, later crop. Sow kale and broccoli again under cover in early spring for some cut and come again tender leaves to add to salad. In fact, you can sow it pretty much any time and have plants at different stages of growth for a year round supply. It will stand most weather, although the variety ‘Nero’ with elongated, dark leaves is less hardy than the curly leaved varieties.

Kale pesto, made from tender young leaves is tasty and freezes well. Just use a recipe for basil pesto. Purple sprouting broccoli can be sown in June or July and grown over the winter for an early spring crop. The leaves can be eaten as well as the heads. Leave the old kale and broccoli plants in the ground in spring and they will continue to Above left: Spring cabbage. Above right: Purple sprouting broccoli. 50

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provide greens until well past midsummer. If you let a couple go to seed, they will self sow and cross with each other giving some interesting variations. We had a lovely purple sprouting kale this year! We usually grow spring cabbage. It lasts in the ground most of the summer and we are still eating spring cabbage, sown last year, as I write this in August. Most people grow too many cabbages and kale plants. 12 cabbages means one for each month of the year, which is enough for most of us. Most gardeners grow kale, cabbage and purple sprouting broccoli, but may not get the most from them. You can juice winter greens and also use them in salads; you can freeze cabbage, kale and leeks chopped up, they are then ready to use. Field beans are like smaller broad beans. They are hardier though and do better over winter. Sow them in spring and again in mid August after you lift the potatoes. To save the seed, pick a few mature pods and leave them on a windowsill to dry. Jerusalem artichoke tubers can be planted from spring to mid-summer for a crop from November to January. When you harvest them, resow a few of the tubers in a different spot for next year. Beetroot will overwinter outside but does better undercover, so put some in a cold frame. It does not like acid soil. Parsley and rocket can be sown in September under cover. Small seedlings will stand over the winter and grow on in spring. Slugs like parsley, so use organic slug control as needed. Potatoes can be planted in pots in a greenhouse or polytunnel and will be ready in a few weeks. Just keep back some seed potatoes to sow in the autumn. Potatoes can also be planted very early in a polytunnel

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or frame and then transplanted back outside when the weather improves. Instead of discarding any ‘rogue’ potatoes that come up in the wrong place, transplant those too. Moving Things Indoors At The End Of The Season When it gets colder, dig some plants up and replant them undercover. Alternatively put a cold frame or some floating mulch over them. Dig up mint roots and lay them lengthwise in a box or seed tray, covering them with compost or soil. Undercover or indoors on a windowsill, they will shoot all along their length. Partly grown spinach and chard can be moved successfully as can lettuces and other salad crops. Experiment and see what works for you. Who would have thought you could transplant potato plants, or use the celery seed off the kitchen shelf? Janet Renouf-Miller is a fibre artist; she teaches spinning, dying, crochet and knitting, and runs simple living workshops. She became interested in gardening as a small child when she had her own little plot, on which she preferred to grow vegetables rather than flowers. http://downshifterdiary.blogspot.com Resources The Winter Harvest Handbook by Eliot Coleman, price £24.95 available from www.green-shopping.co.uk or call us on 01730 823 311. www.permaculture.co.uk

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THE SITTING ROOM SESSIONS Brian Boothby sings the benefits of taking live music back home

magine the scene: 20 or 30 of your friends and acquaintances gathered in the intimate and congenial setting of a sitting room, a yurt, or even a bender. It’s been a cosy evening, with hot chai and home-made flapjacks, wine and fragrant olives. The candles are bright in the lanterns, a palpable sense of community and celebration has developed as three expert musicians weave an acoustic tapestry of songs, tales and music, transporting you to far off places and also to the inner spaces of the mind and heart. Clearly the musicians themselves are also deeply moved, delighted to play every note knowing that your participatory listening has honoured their craft. Such was the scene at our house in Derbyshire in last April. We were celebrating the launch of my first solo album for 15 years, with four such concerts over the span of a weekend.

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Real Music With few exceptions, mainstream media decrees that music is better if it’s loud, image-driven, marketable and played on the most prestigious stages, and who’s to deny the undoubted thrill of witnessing a brilliant band performing at that level? However, there are so many alternatives to this. For centuries, classical music has thrived and excelled in the pindrop silence of rapt listening; and jazz musicians the world over have refined music to explore those startling intervals and unusual rhythms which demand true listening. For many like myself, seeking an authentic expression of music and song, there is always the homely truth of folk, roots and world music, the nonexclusive shared oral tradition, linking us back to real human experience and the very roots of human sound... Permaculture in art. Magic Melody It is not just a question of doing things more simply, nor is it a desire to create new art forms or dismantle preconceptions. It’s simply that despite the undeniable power of playing electric through a massive PA, and despite the inescapable logistics of how a few musicians get to reach as many people as possible, and notwithstanding the infinitely longer time it takes to build a following when only playing to a few dozen people at a time, for me there is just no equal to what happens when people listen with complete attention to a musician in full flight, giving every ounce of their being. Magic happens. This realisation happened for me years ago in a big bender on a windswept Beltane camp, when we gathered round the burner, told stories and sang, knee to knee or heads on laps, inner eyes catching pictures in the flames. The vast sense of history and the tribal memory flooded through and connected me as never before to my ancestors on this land, all having done exactly this since the dawn of humanity. This later became the driving motivation behind the Music Spaces which developed at the Big Green Gathering and which still continue on the Healing Field at Glastonbury Festival. Sitting Room Sessions Here it is again, surfacing stronger than ever in this latest stage of my own musical journey. Judging by the overwhelmingly positive response from the 74 people who came to our four ‘Sitting Room Sessions’, it is also something that’s crying out to be reinstated in living spaces all over the world. For me it is not just a question of bringing back the sing-song round the old joanna, or giving everyone a chance, though it is that as well. It’s also to do with the way we listen and the way we honour our poets and musicians. By inviting them into our gatherings, sharing what they have to offer and thereby acknowledging their raison d’être and their trade, we reconnect to our own roots and bring more creativity to our communities. Performers aren’t gods for pedestals as the media seems to suggest, just skilled human beings offering a journey and seeking fulfilment. Similarly, you don’t have to wait for Mean Fiddler to arrange it, you too can be promoters If you would like to experience this, live at a settee near you, email Brian on: brianb@w3z.co.uk To sample video from the sessions, visit: www.myspace.com/brianboothby For more music and information: www.brianboothby.co.uk Photo © May Kindred Boothby

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Growing Together

Louise Cartwright describes a way of growing your own food on a large scale, as a community

ommunity Supported Agriculture schemes (CSAs) are radically different to supermarkets and the average veggie box scheme because they are reliant on a membership base of committed individuals and families. Members of CSAs pay upfront for their produce and often take part in organised field days and social events to help grow their own food. This commitment means that the growers have a reliable income even if there is a glut of one crop or another crop has failed. The growers also have a large group of people to call on during the busy months when everything needs to be planted.

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The relationship between CSAs and their members is mutually beneficial because the steady income, which is a result of members paying upfront means that food can be grown throughout the seasons. As a result, members are able to see where, how and who grows their food. CSAs originated in America as a way for small scale farmers to compete with the food giants and CSAs are now rising in popularity in Europe. Short History of Kippax CSA The story of how Kippax CSA, near Leeds, was set up is one of idealism, ‘jumping in with both feet’, coupled with disregard of any ‘nay’ sayers.

Above: Louise Cartwright harvesting potatoes with a Kippax CSA member

I set up the scheme, after completing a Masters degree in Product Design. I was lucky enough to spend a year studying in Canada, where I met an enterprising young family of growers based in

Right: The first potatoes of the year going in. No. 66

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varieties of all of the produce because we believe that it increases resilience and it’s fun to hear the members exclaim “What? You can get purple carrots?!”. We also try to save seed wherever we can and are increasing our knowledge to do this more effectively.

Caledon, Ontario. They had just started a CSA, which involved another unknown word, ‘permaculture’. This sowed the seed in my mind, and when I finished my degree I spent two weeks completing a permaculture design course. After the course I spent many months volunteering in France to understand the ins and outs of CSAs and similarly permaculture. On my return to England I was offered a job as a grower at Swillington CSA and a room with a friend in Ledston Luck village. As it turned out, Ledston Luck was devoid of any shops or amenities and was surrounded by arable farming land. I contacted the local farmer whose land abutted the village and casually asked if he had any land he wouldn’t mind renting out. As it happened, the farmer had 0.4 hectare (1 acre) of set-aside which was gathering dust; thus Kippax CSA was born. There was one small snag with this arrangement however: the site had no access to mains water or electricity. I also quickly discovered that working an acre of land with just a fork and a lot of goodwill is incredibly hard work. To rectify this sticky situation, I commandeered Neal Stanley as a partner. Neal’s joinery

Above: A Kippax CSA veggie box.

skills coupled with his great practical brain meant that the scheme could stay off grid.

Below: Raised no-dig beds filled with well rotted manure in the polytunnel.

What We Grow We grow all of the ‘staples’, i.e. potatoes, root veg (carrots, parsnips), brassicas (cabbages, purple sprouting broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, swede, turnips) legumes (broad beans, French beans, peas) spinach, chard, beetroot, squashes and a variety of salads. We also grew more exotic food this year including peppers, chillies, aubergines, cucumbers and melons. We grow different

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How We Grow We grow all of our food using organic principles, but we aren’t certified yet because we can’t afford the expense. We are keen for members to have their say about the permaculture design for the site. One of the numerous benefits of having a membership base is the amalgamation of skills and experience which can be shared and put towards a design. As well as declining to use pesticides, herbicides, and fertilisers, we also avoid petrolpowered machinery. This means that we have to be very creative and inventive with our weed control. To combat the onslaught of weeds that seem to come up overnight we have devised a no-dig bed system. To start a no-dig bed, we get out all of the noxious weeds in an area, and mark out the bed using cardboard. We then put a thick layer of well-rotted horse manure (at least two

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This, coupled with mulching, no dig beds and the pond situated on site, will see us through any dry spells. To cook food at Kippax CSA and create energy we use a rocket stove and a bicycle generator (see boxes).

Left: Members on a well-earned break by the multifunctional cabin.

Our Permaculture Design Using the polytunnel as an example of how we implement permaculture, we built the raised beds out of discarded pallets to maximise space and to reduce cost. We decided to use raised beds to increase yield and reduce soil compaction. Recycled cardboard bike boxes were used to line the beds, to ensure that weeds were suppressed and to minimise water evaporation from the edges. The beds were filled with organic well-rotted horse manure from a local stable to provide enough nitrogen for the hungry plants. To make the best use of the space and to increase the growing area, the raised beds were made with a point. This allows easy access with a wheelbarrow and means that we are using every available space. The polytunnel has multiple functions including raising delicate plants, dry-

Below: Rainwater harvesting. years old) and straw or hay on top. We also start no-dig beds using just cardboard and hay. For these beds, we plant straight into the soil instead of the manure layer and add extra mulch in the form of broad beans and sunflowers. Crops are grown using a three year rotation: we rotate legumes, brassicas and potatoes. We group the onion family with the legumes and root crops with the solanaceae family. Crops such as courgettes, sweetcorn, Swiss chard, spinach and most salads are planted wherever convenient, as they pose little problem for the rotation. We also grow green manures such as scarlet clover, crimson clover, broad beans, phacelia and sunflowers. The broad beans, sunflowers and phacelia are used as a green mulch. They are put down on the areas that we want to convert to no-dig beds and the clover is grown as a living mulch in between the brassica beds. Practical Cultivation Techniques To optimise the space in the polytunnel we have built a series of raised no-dig beds which we filled with well rotted manure. In subsequent years we intend to top up the beds with green manures and use a variety of compost teas (comfrey and nettle) for the more hungry crops. To water the polytunnel and the entire www.permaculture.co.uk

field we have devised a water harvesting system, which catches rain water off the polytunnel and the on site shipping container, fondly nicknamed ‘the cabin’. We currently have a 3,000 litre (660 gallons) water capacity.

Rocket Stove

he rocket stove is a modern version of an old idea, so called because of the jet flame and roaring sound when fully loaded with fuel. It is basically an insulated chimney. The stove used at Kippax CSA comprises a stainless steel chimney, which was cut from a flat sheet with a grinder, then clamped in a vice and bent with wooden blocks and hammer. The chimney is made in two parts and fixed together in strategic positions with stainless steel bolts to withstand the heat and to reduce warping. The chimney is housed in an old vegetable oil tin from a take away shop which is packed tightly with building grade vermiculite insulation. Another shortened vegetable oil tin sits on top of the chimney above the other tin to form an insulating ‘skirt’ which pots and pans are lowered down into. The pans sit on bolts fixed through the skirt to allow air flow from the chimney.

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Left: Planting design for the whole field.

ing clothes, storing wood and growing heat loving crops. Another example of permaculture design is the cabin. The cabin is used to store all of our tools, equipment, and produce, and is used as a makeshift kitchen. Neal made a series of shelves and tables using old pallets for tool storage, and he even fitted a kitchen sink so we

can wash up and prepare food hygienically. All of the off-cuts from the various shelves were used to power the rocket stove, which was used to provide meals for members on our first field days. We are constantly experimenting with different techniques to decrease labour and increase productivity. Kippax CSA is currently at the end of its second year and we fully expect failures as well as successes. We feel that any failures will make our system more resilient as we learn from them and develop new techniques into the design. A good design is never finished, but constantly evolves and develops. The beauty of a CSA is that members can have an input in the growing process and the overall design. This creativity and ingenuity will result in a truly sustainable food supply which will be resilient to change in the uncertain times ahead

Contact Us Kippax CSA is currently looking for more members. If you are interested in being part of a sustainable and inclusive food supply, please contact Louise and Neal on Email: kippaxcsa@gmail.com Tel: 07870 994 354 or 0113 262 3981 Web: www.kippaxcsa.co.uk Louise Cartwright is one of the head growers of Kippax CSA. She also works part-time for the Permaculture Association as the Network Co-ordinator of the LAND project. The LAND project is a four year project funded by the Local Food scheme which aims to create a publicly accessible Englandwide permaculture learning and demonstration network. For more information see: www.permaculture.org. uk/land or email: network@ permaculture.org.uk

Bike Generator The generator is connected to a 12V leisure battery which powers lights in the cabin which are required for share pick up during winter months and also to power an mp3 player for social occasions. The lights are 5 watts (LED’s would be more efficient but we already had these) and are powered directly from the battery. We use an inverter clipped onto the battery for anything requiring usual household electricity and anything with a plug that cannot be converted to 12V. Inverters are inefficient and take lots of power but allow intermittent use of normal household items which generally require cycling during use of the item (as with an mp3).

he lights in the cabin are powered using a bike generator. The bike generator is also used for social gatherings to play music. It is definitely a good keep fit piece of equipment because as soon as you stop pedalling the music disappears! The bike generator at Kippax CSA uses a bike stand with the back wheel of a road bike sitting directly onto a roller connected to a 12V DC generator. There would normally be a fly-wheel attached to the bike stand roller but instead a small aluminium coupling (made as a favour at Leeds University) joins the roller to the generator.

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D esert

Karen Olson tells the story of living

cott and Arina Pittman live in the village of Jacona, just north of Santa Fe. Their home is part of a unique 10 acre co-housing situation. Legally, the houses are considered condominiums. While the houses are owned individually, residents – who have agreed to two bylaws stating there will be no biocides or violence on the property – have some shared assets, including land. That’s where Scott and Arina Pittman have their Lots of Life In One Place permaculture demonstration farm. “Because of this structure, we have way more land and a higher quality of life than if we didn’t pool our assets together,” says Arina Pittman. “We wouldn’t be able to own this piece of land, to plant fruit trees and have goats.” In a lush oasis surrounded by dry scrubland, the farm provides nearly all of the Pittmans’ meat,

milk, eggs, greens, vegetables, and fruit. To keep their 60 foot diameter mandala garden growing, they use a dripirrigation system and plenty of straw mulch. They regularly soak the orchards, lavender field, and a fenced rotational pasture for heirloom poultry with water from a traditional irrigation canal – called an acequia – that has continuously flowed through the property since 1706. An abandoned swimming pool has been turned into a three-season greenhouse and goat-milking space. The property is also home to a 5 acre wetland restoration project that the residents – and the goats – like to walk around. Pittman and Bill Mollison designed the wetland using the chinampa, a Mesoamerican floating garden, as a model. Australian Doug Durrough and his cousin dug the large ponds and snaked channel. Today,

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the wetland is teeming with life. So is the Pittmans’ house.

Above: The arid New Mexico landscape surrounding the Pittman’s property.

In the House Along with their 2 year-old son Sasha, the Pittmans live in a hybrid strawbale/adobe structure that took six years to build. Scott Pittman, who also has three grown children, says the house is right for the climate. “It operates just like it is supposed to: warm in winter, cool in summer.” Additional winter heating needs are met through passive solar and a Russian masonry oven. The house is built around a courtyard enclosed with a roof, giving the Pittmans a climate-controlled space for growing bananas, fig trees, cherimoyas, and citrus – and giving small birds a place to live. The plants in this 600 foot green space get water from an underground Watson Wick pumice filtration system www.permaculture.co.uk

O asis

permaculture legend, Scott Pittman that handles all of the home’s black and gray wastewater. Together, this integrated indoor system provides food, humidifies the air, and creates a heat sink that helps modify interior temperature. When designing their home, the Pittmans also limited electromagnetic fields, used no toxic materials, and sourced their materials locally. “We used all natural materials which gives our home a wonderful ambience,” Pittman says. Close to Home In addition to his own property, Pittman has worked on many design projects and education programs around New Mexico. At the Seeds of Change Farm in El Guique, he used permaculture design techniques to enhance the company’s mission to provide open-pollinated seeds to the world. At actress www.permaculture.co.uk

Above: The Pittman’s property 13 years after implementing their permaculture design.

Shirley MacLaine’s ranch, he has enjoyed working on the restoration of a riparian watershed. “Over the course of a few years,” he said, “we saw an intermittent stream start to run year-round in the upper reaches of the watershed and vegetation return along with concomitant wildlife.” Pittman was recently asked by two different Navajo (Diné) groups to create programs, one for land restoration and the other to give youth skills for right livelihood so they can stay on tribal lands. He also wants to create a program in his local community to connect older farmers who no longer have the energy to farm their land with young farmers who can’t afford land and equipment. “There is a lot of land in my watershed that is sitting fallow, covered in weeds, because the owners can no longer care for it,” No. 66

says Pittman. “Combining the wisdom of these retired farmers with the energy and good intentions of young beginning farmers could engender a huge amount of goodwill in this community.” Pittman and the Permaculture Institute are currently working to develop a program with the Oklahoma National Guard to help people in Afghan villages develop more effective agriculture and pastoral practices. “I have always thought that the military could be an incredible force for good if used to restore environmental damage and to provide support to third world people who are trapped in a continuing cycle of disease and poverty,” says Pittman. On the Horizon On top of all his work in the physical world, Pittman is working on a book about the Permaculture Magazine

Left: The irrigated pasture used for sheep, chickens and dairy goats contains a variety of health giving herbs, brambles and fruit bearing forage plants for people and honey bees, as well as all the above animals. implicit lessons of permaculture. “While the visible and invisible structures of permaculture are what we speak about and use as examples in classes, there is the unspoken spirit of permaculture that, in my mind, is what gives it power and is the reason that it has grown all over the world with no help from the dominant culture or governments,” he says. “The Permaculture Design

course is often referred to as a ‘life changing’ experience, and it is. I believe that we draw some of the most dedicated and ethical people in the world to our growing tribe. It is passing strange to me that most people look at permaculture as a gardening technique. We are far more change-oriented than that. One might even go so far as to call it culturally revolutionary. In every course I have taught I

have found that people are incredibly moved in their hearts and share that change with their classmates and with me. “Teaching permaculture has given me the wonderful opportunity to be my genuine self with less and less trepidation. This in turn gives my students the opportunity to open up and be who they are. The whole process is incredibly liberating and, I believe, the way learning should happen.”

Right: Abundance at the oasis.

The Scott Pittman Story Scott Pittman grew up on a ranch in West Texas, spent four years in the U.S. Air Force in Turkey, and fought for civil rights while in college. He started a construction and woodworking business in Santa Fe, New Mexico, then tried his hand as an organic farmer. He was introduced to permaculture at a short workshop with Bill Mollison in 1985. That encounter inspired him to fly to Nepal to take what was supposed to be one of Mollison’s last courses before retirement. The next year, Pittman started traveling the world with Mollison teaching permaculture. Pittman, who just turned 70, has now taught around 200 Permaculture Design Certificate courses, including polyculture design for sustainable, small-scale cacao production in Haiti, energy-efficient housing design in Siberia, community-living necessities like waste management and community organizing for the Landless Workers’ Movement in Southern Brazil, rainwater harvesting methods in Guatemala, and a course in Ecuador that was attended by well over 100 participants representing a cross-section of the ethnic, cultural, and institutional diversity of the entire country. One of Pittman’s gifts to the world of permaculture is his ability to work with different communities. “He works with indigenous people, Hollywood stars, local ranchers, government officials and college kids,” says Toby Hemenway, author of Gaia’s Garden. “I hardly know anyone who is able to bridge those cultures so easily.” Over the years, Pittman has also constantly been working at home in New Mexico. He is the director of the Permaculture Institute, which he founded with Bill Mollison in 1997 as the sister organization to the Permaculture Institute of Australia. He started the Permaculture Drylands Journal (now defunct, but the archives will soon be available on the Institute’s website) and co-founded the Permaculture Credit Union with Manuel Abascal. It’s now ten years old and has over $5 million in assets. And he’s designed numerous properties, including his own with his wife Arina. Hemenway calls the property “a marvel of permaculture design”.

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Global Ecovillage Network NEWS GEN News In Brief

Kogis Visit Ecovillage Permaculture Helps To Change The World

Tamera: A Model for the Future written by resident journalist Leila Dregger, focuses on the current state of work at Tamera in three core areas: permaculture and water landscape, solar technology and peace education. See the advertisement on page 64 for details of how to order from www. green-shopping.co.uk Damanhur hosted the Global Ecovillage Network Europe General Assembly and the Ecovillages and Sustainable Living Conference, July 2010. Over 150 participants from nearly 30 countries and 6 continents attended. Damanhur also participated in the 10th anniversary Earth Charter event in June 2010 at the Peace Palace in the Hague, Netherlands. Read more about both events at: www. damanhur.org Farmers of San José de Apartadó, Colombia, have created The Global Campus of Mulatos in the jungle near their village. Focal points are co-operation with nature, development and application of sustainable technologies, the building of functioning communities, compassion and reconciliation. View: www.grace-pilgrimage.org

SUBMISSIONS DEADLINE for submissions to Permaculture Magazine No.67 30 November 2010 To contribute to the Global Ecovillage Network pages contact: David Yekutiel Email: nartan@argayall.com Web: gen.ecovillage.org The publishers reserve the right to select, edit or delete material according to the space available

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A Kogi Indian Priest Belgian Ecovillage Kasteel Nieuwenhoven was recently visited by a group of Kogi Indian Priests from Columbia. The visit was part of an event organised by the Total Health Foundation to launch a new film and promote support for preserving indigenous ways of life at The International Indigenous Peace Summit. The Kogis live in the mountains of Columbia and until recently avoided contact with civilization, preserving an ancient way of life. Their high priests, or Mamos, are chosen at birth for a special life attuned to a deep knowledge and union. They see themselves as humanity’s elder brothers and guardians of the planet and work towards healing the whole, not only their own tribe’s needs. The visiting Kogi Mamos expressed their approval of the ecovillage’s activities and held a healing and cleansing ritual with the residents of the castle. A resident said: “In the middle of all the activity of the event, the Kogis shone like an island of peace and simplicity”. Read more about the Kogis at: www.totalhealthfoundation.org and view all of the latest developments at Kasteel Nieuwenhoven’s ecovillage at: www.kasteelnieuwenhoven.be

During the summer of 2010 Change The World (CTW), a Norwegian based NGO, organised the first Permaculture Design Course north of the Arctic circle at Kvaløya, close to the city of Tromsø. The course was held on Sami territory, an indigenous group which traditionally were very much self sufficient and living in a close relation with nature. The modernity of western living has changed this relationship a great deal, something that the Sami representatives in the course would like to reverse. They wish to use permaculture as a tool to face the various challenges that globalisation and climate change bring. It is hoped that they will be able to spread the permacultural way of working with nature in order to strengthen their cultural roots. The participants were awarded a Permaculture Design Certification, as recognised by the Nordisk Permakultur Institut.

Examining coastal ecosystems Change The World is an international organisation founded in Norway by Latin American and African sustainability activists. Its members are engaged in

Members of the first arctic PDC organising and supporting events, courses and partner organisations engaged in permaculture, sustainability and sustainable education in Africa, Latin America and Europe. A few weeks after the Arctic PDC, CTW broke further new ground on the other side of the world, with the first Transition Town Trainings in Chile. A first event was organised with the National Network of Municipalities for Sustainability and drew over 30 participants. A second course was held in Santiago and more than 40 activists from Chile’s alternative movement took part. These are great examples of how NGOs can contribute to facilitating new processes towards a sustainable future. They help empower new world changers to make real differences in their own countries. Read more about CTW at: www.world-changers.org

Participants make a circle at Chile’s first Transition Town Training No. 66

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Dutch Ecovillage Build Spanish Eco-Housing More Visitors At ZEGG GEN-Africa Emerging

Yoga on Valdepiélagos village green

Laying the foundations at Brabant The first building of the new Ecodorp Brabant in southern Holland, a passive energy ecobuilding, is rising near the town of Den Bosch. A team of volunteers and future ecovillagers have been laying foundations and erecting the roundwood frames for the building which will be constructed entirely of waste and renewable materials. The current group consists of about 250 people who wish to establish an ecovillage but volunteers are welcome! Follow their development at: www.ecodorpbrabant.nl

Seventeen years after its initiation, the last houses of Valdepiélagos Ecovillage have been purchased and occupied by families joining the Ecohousing project near Madrid. It now has a total of 30 families with 80 people altogether. The co-operative endeavours to find a balance between the individual and the community. The project is self-funding and maintains two communal bank accounts, one for matters pertaining to the houses themselves, and the other for the communal spaces, the green zone, the reservoir, the parking area and the streets. For more details see: www. ecoaldeavaldepielagos.org

Several Festivals took place this summer at the ZEGG community in Germany. Each had a different theme, but all had one thing in common, more visitors came than ever before. The season started with the Whitsun festival, entitled The Empathy Experiment, where participants went on a journey from the country of blaming each other to the island of empathy. 10 days later in the Come Together Song Festival more than 350 people joined to sing and celebrate community through the gift of music. In the ZEGG Summer-camp guests from 17 different countries shared aspects of community life. View more information at: www.zegg.de

Hundreds having fun at ZEGG

The GEN General Assembly held in July at Damanhur, Italy, recognised the importance of the growing network of Ecovillages in Africa by awarding its annual excellence award to GEN-Senegal for its groundbreaking work with the Senegalese Government Initiative for Ecovillages. A special award was also created for South African Khula Dhamma Ecovillage. During the GA, African and European ecovillage leaders met and discussed strategy for the future of GEN-Africa. Guidelines for the recognition of indigenous and traditional villages as ecovillages were compiled by representatives from India, Thailand, Senegal, Congo, South Africa, Turkey and Italy. In future, Ecovillage Design Education (EDE) courses are planned in English and French to take place in South Africa and Senegal as well as various networking and fundraising events. For further details please visit: www.genafrica.org

TAMERA

A Model for the Future Leila Dregger If we want peace on Earth, we have to find out what peace really means. The Tamera Peace Research Village, founded in 1995, is developing a convincing model for a future world society. This inspiring book describes Tamera’s ground-breaking work in permaculture and water landscape, solar technology and peace education.

Hardback 136pp UK: £18.95

Order from: www.green-shopping.co.uk or call 01730 823 311

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REQUIEM RESPONSES Patrick Whitefield’s review of Requiem for a Species (PM65) deserves a few words in response. Patrick concludes on the basis that all we can do now is to ‘make our remaining time on Earth as pleasant and wholesome as possible’. Palliative permaculture, we might say. In fact, we will respond to climate change as www.permaculture.co.uk

and the accelerating loss of biodiversity pour in, the debate intensifies, and the only real certainty would seem to be the ultimate demise of our consumer-based culture, along with a considerable amount of nasty collateral damage to the environment. The timescale of the changes, the degrees of severity, and the effects of all this on living conditions are less certain, and make for a heady brew of conjecture, tailor-made to trap the ‘sensitive’ into confusing swings of hope and fear. Naturally we hope for a sea change in attitudes that will save us, and naturally we fear the inherent danger of chaos and anarchy; but if we allow ourselves to be governed by these swings of emotions, the picture will become ever less clear, and the opportunity for any genuine positive action will be lost. Whatever the scale of the unfolding catastrophe, I suggest that it can actually be embraced as an opportunity to bring about fundamental changes in the human condition. The gradual development from cave man to computer man has evidently been made in response to environmental challenges, and it could be that we are due for an update. This is a process, as it ticks on through time, of which we are all a part; and we can, if we choose, make a conscious contribution. These days there are many references to ‘lifeboats’ as a symbol of preserving meaningful essentials, and perhaps we are all capable of building and piloting our own personal lifeboats. I agree wholeheartedly with Patrick’s belief that ‘our aim must

smart humans always have to a crisis: adapt, adapt... and adapt again. But temporising and ad-hocery is not likely to take us anywhere we want to be. For that we need is a way to guide, structure and make sense of the state of things. We need a narrative, which goes something like this: we have received a Call to Adventure, albeit not one that we wanted. This call has been thrust upon us by the Earth because we have failed to respect it or each other; hence we are now in peril. This adventure has two possible ends: one is disaster for all; the other is finding our sustainable niche within the Earth’s system. This quest will be a desperate, continuing process lasting many generations. For the adventure to end well, each generation must now take its successors into account. In taking each step on the way we must respect the planet (Earthcare) and each other (Peoplecare). If these things are not done the quest will end badly, because it is our failure to do them so far that has left us looking down the throat of species extinction. But a successful outcome will be a new harmony with the Earth and its other inhabitants, one which can last somewhat longer than the industrialconsumer era. Permaculture, modified to meet the changes encountered on the journey, will give practical expression to the framework. In this the permaculturist is rather like the shaman who is summoned to a burdensome healing mission they may not want but can’t refuse. Brian J Fearnley, Suffolk In his review of Requiem for a Species, PM65, Patrick Whitefield posed some very pertinent questions as to our ultimate aims in practising permaculture, and as to whether we might need to reassess those aims. As the reports on climate change

A PRODUCTIVITY QUESTION Patrick Whitefield and Simon Fairlie make a persuasive case for livestock as part of permaculture farming in their articles in PM65. A part of Patrick’s article that resonated with me was his misgivings about planting trees on productive grassland instead of stocking it with ruminants. This is something I did on my holding (as described in PM51) and have slightly regretted ever since, so I’d endorse Patrick’s advice to think carefully before planting trees! One of the problems here is government policy, which is willing to pay us to plant trees but unwilling to let us move onto land to look after livestock. But I do wonder if there’s another side to the story. You don’t get much food value per acre from ruminants fed purely on grass (the equivalent of about half an allotment’s worth of potatoes, by my calculations). And, as Ben Law points out in PM65, there will probably be an increasing need in the future for timber, and the closer it is to where it’s needed the better. So why not experiment with stacked systems? I can imagine various possibilities – pollards and standards over grass for ruminant grazing; cropping leaves for tree hay; pigs or poultry raised extensively under standards. In earlier times there was a tradition of wood pasture commons in Britain, doubtless because ordinary people needed to get multiple outputs from the scarce land resource available to them. Perhaps this is a design lesson we can apply today. I’m still prepared to believe I did the wrong thing in planting my trees, but I’m planning to experiment on a small scale with some of the systems I mention above. I’d be interested in sharing ideas and experiences with anyone who has similar interests. Chris Smaje, Somerset

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Write us a letter and if we publish it we’ll give you a £10.00 voucher to spend with the Green Shopping Catalogue. Email: maddy@permaculture.co.uk

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be to make our remaining time on earth as pleasant and wholesome as possible’, but I feel the need to point out that this should not be taken to be a defeatist or an escapist attitude. ‘Wholesome’ is the operative word, and to explore one’s personal potential for wholesome enjoyment through the earthwise practice of permaculture is to open up a perspective that looks beyond the narrow-minded nature of anxiety into a world of creative opportunity. This is a journey well worth making for its own sake, with any by-product that might eventually help ‘save the planet’ being of course a happy and useful bonus. As a sustainable movement, permaculture should be prepared to negotiate any future changes in our cultural structure. As authorities inevitably exert more control, we would likely face a loss of the freedoms that we have come to take for granted. Subsequently, we could find ourselves adrift in an anarchy the character of which we cannot begin to imagine. We simply don’t know what will happen. We live in a world that values permanency, and the illusion of permanency is wearing thin. We clearly need a sense of meaning, without which our energies run low and we become frustrated and ineffectual. Permaculture, as a fast-evolving network of people and shared practices, achieved through the medium of modern communications, is an exciting movement. It provides a model with which to approach a time of upheaval, along with techniques and systems with which to engage in meaningful action. It is something of a great adventure, and – for the time being, at least – there exist plenty of possibilities to experiment with alternative methods and ways of life. Some people are braver than others, some have more resources, some are more educated, and some more talented, but anyone who really wants to do so can find a way to make meaningful changes in his or her personal life. It takes courage and enthusiasm to change familiar patterns, but there are enough people making the choice for it not to be just a lonely shot in the dark. The methods are basic and accessible and 66

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permaculture is a movement uniquely positioned to explore and to share the potential for a more naturally wholesome and enjoyable lifestyle. Jim Thomas PROMISING PALLETS Having taken inspiration from John Adams article in PM64 about making an Adirondack chair from a recycled pallet, I made a similar chair using ‘free’ wood scrounged from the waste bin of a furniture company. The wood used is a hardwood similar to teak. I decided to use slatted seat rails and a slatted back, all edges have been chamfered to improve the appearance and lighten the weight. Nevertheless the chair is heavy but should prove incredibly durable. I look forward to more inspiring articles from John. Mark Bowman, Cumbria PM INSPIRATION I have been inspired by PM for many years. We have a filing system for the articles we want to use in the future and keep them in poly pockets. Living in a simple suburban new build bungalow, we grow large quantities of fruit and vegetables in a fairly small garden on a hill so steep that our veg plot is the same height as the roof of the house! Every inch of space is used; we have nine cordon apple trees along the fence and a four hoop polytunnel. Here are some of the things PM has inspired us to do: • Grow veg all year round in Scotland. • Make sauerkraut – great recent article on this. • Garden creatively in a hilly place (much of which only had subsoil left 10 years ago thanks to the builder who erected the house). • Install a wood burning stove. • Grow coppiced willow on waste ground behind our garden and use when needed, for fuel and structures. • Turn our front garden into an awesome strawberry bed that yields 1-2kg a day for six weeks every year (now productive for eight years). • Build networks and relationships with those around us to swap produce and obtain waste wood for our stove.

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• Get solar panels (any day now!). • Learn canning skills using jam jars – this was a really useful tip. • Use urine as a liquid feed in the garden – another great tip. • Keep going because we know there are others like us out there, therefore we are not completely mad! Thank you and keep up the good work. Janet Renouf-Miller AN OILY SITUATION We try to cook and eat at home as much as possible as this is the cheapest and most ecological option, but when I make our own tempura (deep fried veggies or fish in batter), I end up with a lot of frying oil. I wonder if there is a responsible and clever way of disposing of it, except for making biodiesel? I usually pour it onto the compost heap, although I am not sure if this is the right thing to do. I also thought that perhaps I could try and burn it on the bonfire. I have searched the internet and browsed many books about composting, yet none of these sources told me how to dispose of used cooking oil. Am I the only person in the whole world who ends up with frying oil? Surely not. Andrea Paulini, Oxfordshire LETTER CORRECTION PM65 In PM65 we printed a letter by Amanda Hunter, entitled ‘Putting A Price On Sustainable Property’. However, during the editing process a word was added, which regrettably impacted on the content of the letter. Please note the correction below, with our apologies: I think we all realize that most property for sale in the UK is randomly priced by estate agents based on what they believe the ‘market’ will yield, and that the majority of home owners are paid nowhere near the price that they are asking for the property they wish to sell. Perhaps it is time to look at what a sustainable, permaculture-inspired pricing structure for housing should look like? To my mind, some people are planning to make an awful lot of profit from a basic human need, and that doesn’t match with permaculture principles. www.permaculture.co.uk

GM FREEZE CAMPAIGN In one of the greatest modern campaign success stories, Britain has remained virtually GM free for seven years. GM crops have never been grown commercially in this country, and there have been very few field trials of experimental varieties. This was the result of a grassroots campaign that to an unprecedented degree integrated solid political lobbying with direct action. Most organic growers remember being convinced that GM seed was bad. Yet because of the successes in the 1990s, there is now a whole new generation who may not know the story, or what has emerged since. In Canada, organic oil seed rape can no longer be grown because of the pollen pollution from GM varieties. Seed contamination through crosspollination has demonstrated that the coexistence of GM and non-GM varieties is simply impossible. GM seeds are patented, which has allowed biotech companies to sue farmers for theft of intellectual property rights if their crop accidentally becomes contaminated. Hundreds of farmers in America have lost their farms following legal action by biotech companies after accidental contamination with GM patented pollen. The patents allow the biotech companies to own all future generations of seed, effectively privatising fertility. This clearly has implications for anyone’s seed saving. GM crops with in-built pesticide were very effective in the short term, but soon serious concerns emerged about the effects the toxins were having on predators and other non-target species like butterflies. Many of the pest insects meanwhile have already developed resistance to the toxin through natural selection. The long term health implications of exposure to these toxins for secondary and tertiary consumers (e.g. permaculture people and their chickens!) is still unknown. In our new British government, pro-GM National Farmers Union members dominate the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). Heading up this group of intensive agriculture fans is Caroline Spelman, who believes there is no conflict of interests between her current job as the minister in charge of GM crop policy and her former role as a lobbyist for biotechnology. Recently, changes in EU legislation were proposed which would allow GM crops to be fast tracked through the approvals process. Up to 16 varieties are waiting to be rushed through, many which carry serious safety concerns. If successful, commercialisation of the first GM crops in the UK could be as little as two to four years away.

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GM Freeze is a campaign trying to prevent this new wave of GM trials and commercialisation, by raising awareness among MPs who will have to vote any new legislation on the subject into existence. In the 1990s, a well-coordinated and well-informed campaign convinced the great majority of MPs of the benefits of keeping Britain GM-free. The campaign worked last time because it exercised economic and public leverage in the fields, and political understanding among the supermarkets and MPs. A similar approach would promise success this time round. Which is where we hope you can help. Following the recent election, the Genetic Engineering Network finds that the political understanding of GM among parliamentarians is no longer there. According to some estimates, no more than ten MPs now even have a basic grasp of the issues. MPs rarely respond to emails and meetings proposed by anyone other than their own constituents, so this is work that can only be done by many people in their own localities. The GM Freeze aims to close this awareness gap. The campaign, supported by such institutions as Friends of the Earth, the Soil Association and Elm Farm Research Centre, is looking for people who are interested in becoming a GM pen friend to their MP. Your role would be simple and supported. GM Freeze will forward clear, solidly backed research in regular but not too frequent chunks that you then forward to your pen friend MP. By engaging with responses, and ideally raising the issues in person at an MP’s surgery, we can ensure that those in power both understand the implications of this technology and its importance to their voters. This is a timely intervention that needs people with a solid understanding of the importance of land and food, which we, as permaculturists, do have. If you can help, please contact www.gmfreeze.org either by emailing pete@gmfreeze.org or phone 0845 217 8992. Tomas Remiarz, London In each issue our star letter wins a £5 book credit and a book. This issue, Tomas Remiarz receives a copy of Roundwood Timber Framing by Ben Law.

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Reviews

MEAT A Benign Extravagance Simon Fairlie Permanent Publications, 2010 230 x 156mm, 336pp £19.95

As a vegan I approached this book rather warily on account of its title but as I read it I abandoned my caution and found myself nodding in agreement at most, if not all, of its key points. My veganism is not borne out of a rigid belief that humans are not meant to eat meat but rather it stems from a complete abhorrence of the cruelty and inhumanity that goes on in an effort to satisfy people’s enormous carnivorous demands, coupled with a growing despair that such activity will speed up our process of devastating the planet we live on. I was encouraged to see that the central tenet of Simon Fairlie’s new book was that ‘we can’t go on like this’! His reasoning is largely the same as mine. In the past, the amount of meat and dairy products that were consumed was more or less governed by the resources available. The number of pigs in a community would depend pretty much on the amount of waste food and crops available. Pigs are great food recyclers. The number of other animals would be restricted to the availability of land after staple crops such as wheat and vegetables had been catered for. But then came a change: Population growth, wealth and subsequent demand for animal food products outstripped the supply and broke the ‘permaculture’ type equilibrium. The result was that extra resources had to be put into rearing www.permaculture.co.uk

and would urge anyone who has an interest in this subject to read the book. I hope it will kick start a new debate about how we feed ourselves and that meat and dairy might just return to the sustainable position of being an extravagance that is reserved more for special occasions rather than demanded every day for every meal by the majority. Richard Barnett co-chairs New Forest Transition www.newforesttransition.org

animals, and crops are now grown specifically to be fed to animals to give us food. It’s a very inefficient process energy-wise resulting in about 10 calories of energy being put in to get one back out in the form of meat protein. Additionally, the intensification of animal farming reduced livestock to mere commodities that were treated with increasingly horrific methods. I still find it amazing that most people who express concern for animal welfare are prepared to countenance what goes on in order to allow them cheap meat and dairy products. The environmental impact of this development is immense as was summarised in the United Nations report ‘Livestock’s Long Shadow’. Fairlie calls into question the validity of its finding that 18% of global CO2 emissions result from animal processing (you can’t call it farming any more) but the fact remains that it is very harmful and uses an unsustainable level of resources quite apart from being barbaric. Amazingly the UN report, rather than suggest we all cut down our meat consumption, actually suggests a growth in the level of intensive farming especially in the developing world. Given that we have to do something radical about the way meat/dairy is produced, Fairlie looks at the concept of veganism and works it through to its logical conclusion. Would it matter, for example, if we no longer had cows and pigs and sheep? The answer (which I have never really delved into too deeply up to now) is ‘yes’. Taken back to the basic level as already described, the presence of these animals is an important aspect of our ecosystem and they can exist without placing undue strain on energy demands as well as being treated with respect and high standards of animal welfare. This book is an immense academic work and Simon is to be heartily congratulated for his attention to detail and his knowledge. He presents the argument for reducing meat/dairy demand in a new way that has really given me cause to think long and hard. I am not about to start eating animal products again, but I can only concur with his overall thesis

SEPP HOLZER’S PERMACULTURE A Practical Guide For Farms, Orchards & Gardens Sepp Holzer Permanent Publications, 2010 230 x 156mm, 240pp £19.95

I recently had an email asking me if I could recommend anyone successfully practising permaculture on a farm rather than on a domestic scale, or any books about the same. Without a moment’s hesitation I directed her to Sepp Holzer and to this book. As far as I know there’s no better example of farm-scale permaculture anywhere in Europe than his farm, the Krameterhof, high in the mountains of Austria. While the surrounding mountain sides are covered in dark monocultures of spruce, the Krameterhof stands out like a beacon. It’s an intricate network of terraces, raised beds, ponds, waterways and tracks, well covered with fruit trees and other productive vegetation and with the farmhouse neatly nestling amongst them. The farm is not just and integrated part of the natural world, it’s also where Sepp Holzer and his wife Veronika make their living. It has taken a great deal of skill and knowledge to achieve this, and these things don’t come easily. Right from his childhood, when his mother gave him a small plot for his first garden, he has observed, questioned and experimented. After a lifetime of permaculture farming he knows the natural world like few other people do today. This book is a treasure trove of his knowledge and skill with full of colour photographs and diagrams on every page. It contains plenty of detailed information, such as extensive lists of fruit varieties he recommends for permaculture, and details of how he manages water and microclimates

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Reviews on this steep and chilly mountain farm. A word of warning here: what works for him on his Austrian mountain will not necessarily work for you on your own land. Here in Britain, for example, we have a cloudy maritime climate, in strong contrast to Austria’s continental climate. We lack the sunshine which is such a key element in the way he creates favourable microclimates. This is not to negate the value of the book for people who live outside Austria. – far from it. Much of the detailed information is highly relevant in any temperate country. But even more valuable than the information the book contains are the attitudes it teaches. Its message is not ‘this is how you do it’ but ‘this is the way you think about how to do it.’ Sepp Holzer’s way is the way of the future. In the fossil fuel age we’ve been able to impose our will on the land by throwing cheap energy at every problem. In the future that option won’t be open to us any more. We’ll have to tread the more subtle path, the path which patiently observes nature and seeks to imitate it. That future may not be as far off as we think. Patrick Whitefield is a permaculture author and teacher. www.patrick-whitefield.co.uk ROUNDWOOD TIMBER FRAMING Building Naturally From Local Materials Ben Law Permanent Publications, 2010 252 x 226mm, 168pp £19.95

vested on or near the building site. The entire structure, or skeleton, of the building is built with wood that has not been to a sawmill; nor has it been transported a great distance. Not unrelated to all this is the fact that these buildings look good from the outside and feel good to be within. The aesthetics of natural building. Full disclosure: I wrote the Foreword to this book, so I’m already a fan. But when I saw the actual book, as opposed to the electronic files I’d viewed beforehand, I was surprised at how beautifully it all came out. The photography is great, the color is good, and the book takes you step-by-step through planting and tending trees; the tools needed; the joining methods for this type of construction; as well as floor, wall, and roof techniques. In the last part of the book are photos of the sequential construction of seven different round pole buildings. The horticultural barn at Pestalozzi International Village is a beauty. Not everyone can build like this. You need to be where trees grow, and have some land. But for those who do, this book lays out the path for a more sustainable method of construction, for learning a trade, for using one’s own hands and local resources to create a good-feeling, nice-looking shelter. Lloyd Kahn is the author of Shelter, Homework & Builders of the Pacific Coast. www.shelterpub.com ROUND TIMBER FRAMING DVD Building Naturally From Local Materials Permanent Publications/Undercurrents, 2010 80 mins, PAL Region 2 £19.95

If I’d had Ben Law’s book Roundwood Timber Framing when I was learning to build in the ’60s, I’d have been inspired to plant and tend trees suitable for house framing and several buildings could have been framed by now as a result. That’s just one of the unique features about this beautiful new book: a step-by-step process for creating your own building materials. Another unusual feature here is use of a modified cruck frame in all the buildings shown here. This construction method consists of two or more ‘A-frames’, and was used in medieval times for houses, barns, and halls. Ben has adapted it structurally to triangulate and therefore brace rectilinear buildings. The posts, beams and crucks of these buildings are round poles, usually har70

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This stunning video, which accompanies the book, Roundwood Timber Framing, takes the viewer stage by stage through the construction process of the Woodland Classroom at the Sustainability Centre, Hampshire. Ben Law is probably best known for his first roundwood building, his own house which featured in the Grand Designs series a few years ago. Since then he has built several roundwood timber framed buildings, refining his techniques and developing a new vernacular in sustainable low impact construction. Using timber in the round has several

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advantages: a roundwood pole cut straight from the forest is considerably stronger in its natural form than an equivalent sized beam of sawn timber, but without the embodied energy from milling; small-diameter poles often not valued in commercial forestry are often ideal, as is the use of coppice timber; and roundwood poles retain the form and character of the original tree, creating an aesthetic both elegant and rustic. The DVD shows Ben to be not only a skilled woodsman and builder – the link between the management of the woods and the construction of the building is emphasised throughout – but also a very clear and methodical communicator. The whole process is enthralling, as Ben takes us through the build from foundations, frame-raising, shingling the roof and mixing cob and clay plasters for the fireplace, and I had a sense of being involved in the whole project myself. Along the way Ben introduces us to some of his team, and local characters he has worked with such as Peter Hindle of Ashencrafts who helped develop rounding planes for making the oak pegs used to fix the poles together. I had at first thought they were made on a pole lathe, but Peter had a still more ingenious solution for the challenge of making the 300-400 pegs required for such a building: a lathe for turning the wood in the rounding planes fitted to a Robin Reliant gear-box. In the DVD we also pay several visits to woods from where the materials originate. Ben explains his philosophy of architecture emerging out of the woods themselves, proposing that an architect might work more with the woodsman to design around what is available, the natural forms of the trees defining the form of the buildings. Although natural curves can be utilised, for example the use of curved trees to make cruck-framed buildings, in the Woodland Classroom featured in the DVD whole Lawson Cypress trees are steam-bent in order to make the sweeping curves around the roof. The use of Lawson Cypress is a fascinating detail, a durable and strong timber more commonly infamous as a hedging plant prone to becoming hopelessly overgrown in suburban gardens. Ben also shows us around hazel and chestnut coppice, and discusses another, lesser-known tree, Robinia pseudoacacia, the black locust, which may become more widely found in British forests in the future. Many details of construction are shown, including the mortice boxes for making supports, use of ratchet straps for holding the beams in place while fixing, laths and clay plasters for the wall, and much more. The shingles are handmade by a local craftsman from western red cedar. Extra features are included on tools, the offwww.permaculture.co.uk

Reviews grid Woodland House, frame-raising and Ben’s slideshow. Roundwood timber framing is clearly a skilled job, and building a structure like the Woodland Classroom involves a whole team and indeed support from the wider community. Many of the tasks such as use of shaving horse and draw-knife, or stripping bark from the poles where they are cut in the forest, are immediately accessible and could provide inspiration to learn more to anyone. The DVD has something for everyone. It works as a top rate instruction video, a documentary describing the creation of a marvellous community building, and a celebration and resurrection of the connection between trees, woods, buildings and community. Visually delectable throughout, anyone who loves trees and natural building, and who is looking for a new vision for the building industry, will love this DVD. Graham Strouts, is a teacher of permaculture and Natural Building at Kinsale College of Further Education www.zone5.org KITCHEN MEDICINE Household Remedies For Common Ailments & Domestic Emergencies Julie Bruton-Seal & Mathew Seal Merlin Unwin Books, 2010 248 x 192, 224pp, Hardback £16.99

botanical information, their political history and their medicinal traditions worldwide. The medicinal actions of the plants and the reasons why the treatments work, are covered clearly with an easy to follow scientific base. This is the best book I’ve seen on this subject and I just want to buy it for everyone I know! It encourages and inspires us to join in, to become part of this rich heritage and to experiment with developing our own medicines and recipes. It empowers us to realise that we don’t need to go out and buy expensive alternative medicines, we can make them ourselves from ingredients we have in our kitchens. This book is a great resource, an inspiration, a thing of great beauty and healing. Everyone should have a copy in their kitchens! Glennie Kindred is the author of numerous books, including Hedgerow Medicine. STAND-ALONE SOLAR ELECTRIC SYSTEMS Mark Hankins Earthscan, 2010 260 x 195, 234pp, Hardback £34.99 SUSTAINABLE HOME REFURBISHMENT David Thorpe Earthscan, 2010 260 x 195, 174pp, Hardback £34.99 SOLAR DOMESTIC WATER HEATING Chris Laughton Earthscan, 2010 260 x 195, 246pp, Hardback £34.99

Kitchen Medicine is a wonderful rich harvest of medicinal remedies made from ingredients found in our kitchens – and a treasure trove of interesting stories, history, quotes, medicinal facts and recipes – with a cosmopolitan feel. It is beautifully presented and every page has sumptuous photos taken by Julie herself. But this is no coffee table book. It is packed full with sound medicinal understanding and recipes we can all make using simple ingredients found in our kitchens. I really like the way it is laid out. Despite every page being crammed with information, it is easy to follow and a delight to use, and it has a good ‘quick reference by ailment’ section at the back. The book includes familiar spices, fruit, vegetables, drinks, condiments and many other things found in our kitchens. It transports us into a deeper and richer relationship with them by providing us with their www.permaculture.co.uk

relates this to lamps and appliances, covers wiring and fittings, planning an off-grid system, the installation process, and the management, maintenance and servicing of your system. There are also chapters on designing large off-grid systems and solar energy resources. Only the most basic grasp of physics is necessary to understand this book because it is clearly written by a hands-on practitioner. Solar Domestic Water gives a complete overview of the subject, describes various systems for hot and cold climates and explains how they work. Then it describes various collectors on the market and offers a little on self-build collectors (I would have liked more). The rest of the book tackles testing efficiency, choosing the right system, and adding additional components like piping, tanks and circulation pumps. There is also a section on heat exchangers and non-solar back up systems. The book finishes with designing a system, sizing and installing it and includes case studies from the UK, USA and Australia. If you are going to spend thousands of pounds, euros or dollars on a system, read this book. It will give you a thorough grounding in the subject and prompt you to ask the right questions of your installer. Last on the list is Sustainable Home Refurbishment. At last, a sensible book on eco-renovation that is full of useful facts. Dave tells us to draught-proof, insulate, double or triple glaze, eliminate thermal bridges, install passive stack or mechanical ventilation first and lastly supply renewable energy. Then he tells us how to do it. He explores products and materials, analyses their performance, offers strategies, and explains terminology. There are chapters on passive solar houses, windows and natural lighting, cooling and heating, water management, electricity efficiency (and PVs), even recommending old fashioned drying racks. This series is pitched at just the right level for non-specialists – detailed, well illustrated, full of information yet readable. You can buy similar books cheaper but you won’t get the level of detail or the clarity of explanation and illustrations. Maddy Harland

Retrofitting a home or installing renewable technology is neither simple or cheap. I have therefore been waiting for detailed, accessible books on these subjects for years. Earthscan bill these volumes as expert handbooks and they do not disappoint. They will also save you from making costly mistakes and are well worth the cover price. The Solar Electric guide gives an overview of the subject, explains how solar electrical systems work, then describes the differing cell modules, batteries, inverters, controllers and how to manage load. It then No. 66

All reviewed book and dvd titles are available to purchase from The Green Shopping Catalogue unless alternative contact details, or an ISBN, is given at the beginning of each review. www.green-shopping.co.uk 01730 823 311

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FULL PERMACULTURE DESIGN CORNWALL Venue: Keveral Farm Dates: 15 - 31 July 2011 Led by: Bryn Thomas, Klaudia van Gool, Bill Knight Phone: 01579 346 487 Email: klaudiavangool@hotmail.com

FRANCE Venue: Permaculture Eden Dates: 11 - 26 June 2011 2 - 17 July 2011 Led by: Steve & Fiona Hanson Phone: +33 254 064 523 Email: Steve@permacultureeden.com

DEVON Venue: Monkton Wyld Court, Bridport Dates: 22 January - 6 February 2011 Led by: Designed Visions Phone: 01271 817 509 Email: mel@designedvisions.com

GLOUCESTERSHIRE Venue: Ragmans Lane Farm Dates: 12 - 25 June 2011 Led by: Patrick & Cathy Whitefield Phone: 01485 832 317 Email: ka.tonga@virgin.net

DEVON Venue: Coombe Farm & Woodlands Trust, Tiverton Dates: 11 - 20 March 2011 Led by: Designed Visions Phone: 01271 817 509 Email: mel@designedvisions.com

HAMPSHIRE Venue: Sustainability Centre, East Meon Dates: TBA 2011 Phone: 01730 823 166 Email: courses@sustainability-centre.org

DEVON Venue: High Heathercombe Centre, Newton Abbot Dates: 6 - 21 November 2010 2 - 16 April 2011 Led by: Designed Visions Phone: 01271 817 509 Email: mel@designedvisions.com DORSET Venue: Monkton Wyld Court, Charmouth, Bridport Dates: December 2010 - March 2011 Led by: Designed Visions Phone: 01271 817 509 Email: mel@designedvisions.com DORSET Venue: Ourganics Evolving Systems, Dorchester Dates: Weekends Led by: Designed Visions Phone: 01271 817 509 Email: mel@designedvisions.com EAST SUSSEX Venue: Brighton & Sussex countryside Dates: February - May 2011 Led by: Alex Penn, Bryn Thomas, Jen Beaufoy, Daniel Holloway, Kate Hamilton, Pippa Johns Phone: 07746 185 927 Web: www.brightonpermaculture.co.uk ESSEX Venue: The Apricot Centre, Lawford Dates: October 2010 - June 2011 Led by: Hannah Thorogood, Marina O’Connell Phone: 01206 230 425 Web: www.apricotcentre.co.uk

Courses compiled with the assistance of the Permaculture Association (Britain) Tel: 0845 458 1805 Tel: 0113 262 1718 Web: www.permaculture.org.uk

IRELAND Venue: Kinsale Further Education College Dates: Annual course Led by: Graham Strouts Phone: + 353 214 772 275 Email: kinsalefurthered@eircom.net IRELAND Venue: CELT, East Clare, Co.Clare Dates: Various Led by: Various Phone: +353 61 640 765 Email: info@celtnet.org KENT Venue: Dates: Led by: Phone: Email:

Riflemans Cottage, Faversham 17 June - 2 July 2011 Designed Visions 01271 817 509 mel@designedvisions.com

KENYA Venue: Nyumbani Village and Badilisha Ecovillage Dates: 6 - 19 December 2010 4 - 18 March 2011 Led by: Warren Bush & local teachers Phone: +1 8058 867 239 Email: info@quailsprings.org LANCASHIRE Venue: Various Dates: Various weekends Led by: Angus Soutar Phone: 01254 771 555 Email: http://westpenninepermaculture. org.uk/events LONDON Venue: Various Dates: Various 2010/2011 Led by: Graham Burnett Email: graham@spiralseed.co.uk LONDON Venue: Waterside Centre, Tottenham Marshes Dates: Various 2010 Led by: Various Phone: 020 7272 1950 Email: londoncourses@naturewise.org.uk

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NEW ZEALAND Venue: Takaka, New Zealand Dates: Various 2011 Led by: Brian J Weston, BSc. Ag., PDC Email: bweston@ihug.co.nz

WORLDWIDE Venue: Worldwide Dates: Various 2011 Led by: Online Web: www.PermacultureVisions.com

NIGERIA Venue: Permaculture Design Course Dates: November - December 2010 Led by: John Button, Jan Fischer Phone: +49 3 089 208 488 Email: bueroberlin@permakulturakademie.net

YORKSHIRE Venue: Sheffield Dates: 12 - 13 December 2010 Led by: Suzi High, Joe Atkinson Phone: 0777 62537 743 Email: suzi_cherrytree@yahoo.com

NORFOLK Venue: Little Ellingham Dates: 6 - 18 June 2011 Led by: Richard Perkins, Richard Farnborough Phone: 07539 973 170 Email: integralpermanence@gmail.com NORTHUMBERLAND Venue: The Burnlaw Centre, Hexham Dates: November 2010 - March 2011 Led by: Wilf Richards Phone: 01434 345 359 Web: www.burnlaw.org.uk PEMBROKESHIRE Venue: The Lammas Project Dates: 11 - 24 April 2011 Led by: Jasmine Dale, Jodie Tellam Phone: 07990 684 040 Email: info@globalcitizensw.org PORTUGAL Venue: Varzea da Goncala Date: 9 - 27 March 2011 Led by: Lesley Martin Phone: +351 282 995 060 Email: mail@icanfeedmyself.com SCOTLAND Venue: Kilmartin House Museum, Argyll Date: Various weekends 2010 Led by: Angus Soutar Phone: 01546 510 278 Email: admin@kilmartin.org SOMERSET Venue: Frome & countryside Dates: January - June 2011, weekends Led by: Stephen Pritchard, Gladys Paulus, Chris Smaje Phone: 01373 467 884 Email: gladys@spiral-garden.co.uk

YORKSHIRE Venue: University of Bradford Dates: Spring 2011 Led by: Andy Goldring, Suzi High, Dr Ute Kelly, Ros Coulton Phone: 01274 233 210 Email: learning@bradford.ac.uk YORKSHIRE Venue: Hollybush Conservation Centre, Leeds Dates: 26 February - 3 July 2011 23 July - 7 August 2011 Led by: Andy Goldring, Niels Corfield, Joanna Dornan, Joe Atkinson Phone: 01132 047 726 Email: hollybush@btcv.org.uk YORKSHIRE Venue: Pottery Lane Strensall Dates: 17 - 29 April 2011 1 - 13 August 2011 Led by: Richard Perkins, Sam Trousdale Phone: 07539 973 170 Email: integralpermanence@gmail.com

Permaculture Teachers! Did you know we offer each of your new permaculture students: A FREE recent back issue of PM, 25% OFF all books published by Permanent Publications and 10% OFF other books, DVDs, tools and products from www.green-shopping.co.uk Contact Tony on 01730 823 311 or tony@permaculture.co.uk

COURSE LISTINGS Please present all course listings with exact details as shown in listings above at least 3 months in advance of the course date. Permaculture Intro/Design Courses are listed FREE. To cover administration costs Special Courses listings cost £10 per entry. Courses are also listed on our website for approx. 3 months from publication at: www.permaculture.co.uk UK: 0845 458 4150, Overseas: +44 1730 823 311, Email: tony@permaculture.co.uk Advertising your courses means that online subscribers can view your listings via: www.exacteditions.com/exact/magazine/409/460

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INTRODUCTION TO PERMACULTURE AUSTRALIA Venue: Permaculture Pathways, Eudlo Dates: Various 2011 Led by: Sonya Wallace & guests Phone: +61 754 573 961 Email: permaculturepathways@ yahoo.com.au AVON Venue: Dates: Led by: Phone: Email:

Windmill Hill City Farm, Bristol Various 2011 Ruth O’Brien 07949 294 364 course_enquiries@yahoo.co.uk

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE Venue: LILI, Redfield Community Dates: Various 2011 Led by: Bryn Thomas Phone: 01296 714 184 Email: lili@lowimpact.org DEVON Venue: Trill Farm, Axminster Dates: 19 - 21 November 2010 Led by: George Sobol Phone: 01297 631 113 Email: zoe@trillfarm.co.uk DORSET Venue: Dorset Centre for Rural Skills Dates: 8 - 9 January 2011 Led by: Designed Visions Phone: 01747 811 099 Email: info@dorsetruralskills.co.uk DORSET Venue: Kingcombe Environmental Centre Dates: 4 - 6 March 2011 Led by: Designed Visions Phone: 01300 320 684 Email: office@kingcombecentre.org.uk EAST SUSSEX Venue: Brighton & Sussex countryside Dates: Various 2011 Led by: Pippa Johns, Jen Coglin Phone: 07746 185 927 Web: www.brightonpermaculture.co.uk FRANCE Venue: La Brande Woodland, Poitiers Dates: Various 2011 Phone: 02076 106 452 Email: Labrande16@aol.com KENT Venue: Dates: Led by: Phone: Email:

Near Canterbury Last Thursday monthly Jo Barker, John Rudgard 01227 832 569 jo@dynamic-equilibrium.co.uk

LONDON Venue: Cecil Sharp House, NW1 Dates: 13 - 14 November 2011 Led by: London Permaculture Network Phone: 07776 184 666 Email: info@LondonPermaculture.com PEMBROKESHIRE Venue: The Lammas Project Dates: 3 - 6 December 2010 Led by: Jasmine Dale, Jodie Tellam Phone: 07990 684 040 Email: info@globalcitizensw.org PORTUGAL Venue: Varzea da Goncala, Algarve Dates: Various 2011 Led by: Christine Lewis Phone: +351 282 995 060 Email: mail@icanfeedmyself.com

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SCOTLAND Venue: Kilmartin House Museum, Argyll Date: 30 - 31 October 2010 Led by: Ed Tyler, David Blair Phone: 01546 510 278 SCOTLAND Venue: Kilmartin House Museum, Argyll Date: 27 - 28 November 2010 Led by: Jane Wilding, Angus Soutar Phone: 01546 510 278 SCOTLAND Venue: Kilmartin House Museum, Argyll Date: 29 - 30 January 2011 Led by: Lusi Aderslowe, Angus Soutar Phone: 01546 510 278 Email: admin@kilmartin.org SOMERSET Venue: Frome Dates: 13 November 2010 Led by: Gladys Paulus, Debbie Powell Phone: 01373 467 884 Email: gladys@spiral-garden.co.uk SOMERSET Permaculture In 5 Days Venue: Maiden Croft Farm Dates: 22 - 26 July 2011 Led by: Patrick & Cathy Whitefield Phone: 01485 832 317 Email: ka.tonga@virgin.net USA Venue: Dates: Led by: Phone: Email: WALES Venue: Dates: Led by: Phone: Email: WALES Venue: Dates: Led by: Phone: Email:

SPECIAL COURSES AQUACULTURE DESIGN Venue: Vosges, N.E. France Dates: Various 2011 Led by: Laurence, Hutchinson Phone: +33 (0)565 421 610 Email: ecologicalfish@btinternet.com BEN LAW Venue: Ben’s woodland, West Sussex Dates: Various 2011/2012 Led by: Ben Law Phone: 01730 823 311 Email: tony@permaculture.co.uk BUILDING SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES Venue: Brighton & Sussex countryside Dates: Various 2011 Led by: Brighton Permaculture Trust Phone: 07746 185 927 Web: www.brightonpermaculture.co.uk COMMUNITY ORCHARD TRAINING Venue: Stanmer Park, Brighton Dates: 24 & 29 May 2011 Led by: Brighton Permaculture Trust Phone: 07746 18 59 27 CRAFTS, CONSERVATION & SUSTAINABLE LIVING Venue: Denmark Farm, Ceredigion Dates: Various 2010-2011 Phone: 01570 493 358 Web: www.shared-earth-trust.org.uk

Several locations, Mid West Various 2011 Mark Shepard, Wayne Weiseman +1 8152 562 214 Bill@Stelle.net

EARTHED - COB BUILDING Venue: Various Led by: Annabel Fawcus, Alan Cameron-Duff Phone: 07917 361 580 Email: earthedworld@googlemail.com

Nr Cardigan 28 - 30 January 2011 Angie Polkey 01974 831 300 angand@permaculture. freeserve.co.uk

EARTHSHIP BRIGHTON TOURS Venue: Stanmer House, Brighton Dates: 1 & 3 Sunday of each month Led by: Low Carbon Network Phone: 07974 122 770 Email: tours@lowcarbon.co.uk

Centre for Alternative Technology 4 - 6 March 2011 Angie Polkey 01974 831 300 angand@permaculture. freeserve.co.uk

WEST SUSSEX Venue: Cowdray Chapel, Midhurst Dates: 14 - 15 May 2011 Led by: Designed Visions Phone: 01271 817 509 Email: mel@designedvisions.com WEST YORKSHIRE Venue: Horton Village Hall, Bradford Dates: 6 - 20 November 2010 Led by: Suzi High Phone: 07776 253 743 Email: suzi_cherrytree@yahoo.com WEST YORKSHIRE Venue: Hollybush Centre, Leeds Dates: 29 - 30 January 2011 Led by: Suzi High Phone: 07776 253 743 WEST YORKSHIRE Venue: Hull Dates: 26 - 27 February 2011 Led by: Suzi High Phone: 07776 253 743 Email: suzi_cherrytree@yahoo.com

ECO OPEN HOUSES Venue: Brighton & Hove, East Sussex Dates: Various 2011 Led by: Brighton Permaculture Trust Phone: 07746 185 927 FESTIVE WILLOW CRAFT Venue: Sustainability Centre, East Meon Dates: 5 December 2010 Led by: Ganesh Phone: 01730 823 166 Email: courses@sustainability-centre.org GARDENING & COOKING FOR LIFE & A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE Venue: Primrose Earth Centre Dates: April and October 2011 Led by: Paul & Jan Benham Phone: 01497 847636 Email: paul.benham@ukonline.co.uk GREEN WOODWORK & CHAIRMAKING Venue: Brookhouse Wood, Herefordshire Dates: Various Led by: Mike Abbott Phone: 01531 640 005 Web: www.living-wood.co.uk HURDLE MAKING Venue: Sustainability Centre, East Meon Dates: 20 - 21 November 2010 Led by: Darren Hammerton Phone: 01730 823 166

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INTRODUCTION TO SUSTAINABLE LIVING Venue: Varzea da Goncala Date: Various 2010/2011 Led by: Christine Lewis Phone: +351 282 995 060 Email: mail@icanfeedmyself.com MORE THAN HATHA Venue: Gers, SW France Dates: Various Led by: Danuta Karpinska Web: www.radhacaudet.com MUSHROOM CULTIVATION Venue: Brighton & Sussex countryside Dates: 7 - 8 May 2011 Led by: Brighton Permaculture Trust Phone: 07746 185 927 Web: www.brightonpermaculture.org.uk OCN SUSTAINABLE WOODLAND MANAGEMENT Venue: Sustainability Centre, East Meon Dates: Rescheduled, early in 2011 Led by: Ben Law Phone: 01730 823 166 Email: courses@sustainability-centre.org PERMACULTURE AT YOUR PLACE Venue: Your Place Dates: Whenever Led by: Sustainable Designs Phone: 08454 582 638 Email: forage@doon5.fsnet.co.uk PERMACULTURE EDUCATORS Venue: Friland, Denmark Dates: 22 - 29 October 2010 Led by: Andy Goldring Phone: +45 86 680 505 Email: jomorandin@gmail.com PRACTICAL COPPICING Venue: Sustainability Centre, East Meon Dates: 23 - 24 October 2010 Led by: Darren Hammerton Phone: 01730 823 166 Email: courses@sustainability-centre.org PRUNING OLD FRUIT TREES Venue: Stanmer Park, Brighton Dates: 15 - 16 January 2011 18 - 19 January 2011 Led by: Bryn Thomas Phone: 07746 185 927 Web: www.brightonpermaculture.org.uk RURAL CRAFTS Venue: Nr. Montignac, Dordogne, France Dates: 2011 monthly Led by: Diane Hammill Phone: 07814 313 161 Email: wild.harvest@yahoo.co.uk SUSTAINABLE LAND USE Venue: Ragmans Lane Farm, Gloucestershire Dates: 24 January - 4 March 2011 Led by: Patrick Whitefield, Joe Newton, Mike Gardner, Sarah Pugh Phone: 01594 860 244 Email: katonga@virgin.net WILLOW DOME CONSTRUCTION Venue: Brattleby House Farm, Lincoln Dates: 20 November 2010 Led by: Jason Hadley Phone: 07969 533 504 Email: had.jason@googlemail.com

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OCN COPPICING with Ben Law & Darren Hammerton OCN Sustainable Woodland Management with Ben Law Hurdle Making with Darren Hammerton Festive Willow Craft with Ganesh

Course gift vouchers available for Christmas

Practical Coppicing with Darren Hammerton Green Building Permaculture Campcraft Craft Skills, Renewable Energy & much more... Contact Raina: 01730 823166 www.sustainability-centre.org courses@sustainability-centre.org Courses all year round Ecohostel & camping available

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ACCOMMODATION CENTRAL LONDON B&B, family run. Quote ‘Permaculture’ for a 10% discount on standard rooms. Tel: 0207 837 9140. Email: stathans@ukonline.co.uk Web: www.stathanshotel.com DOUBLE BEDROOM IN SHARED HOME available in beautifully wooded Pembrokeshire Valley renowned for people living self sufficiently. Shared area includes south facing terraces for growing, large kitchen and garden. 2 miles from Newport town. Non-smoking vegetarian(s) preferred – would suit active couple. £300 pcm + bills. Call Emma on 01239 820 951. REMOTE ISLAND RETREAT. Cottage to let on island of Hoy, Orkney Islands. Long term let preferred. This pretty, stone built two bedroomed cottage has solid fuel central heating, attractive garden and stunning views over the Pentland Firth towards the uninhabited islands of Stroma and Swona and Scottish mainland. There is a vibrant local arts community which includes theatre. Safe environment for children. Would suit writer or artist. Rent £500 pcm. Contact: jane.hewer@uhi.ac.uk TWO BEDROOM TERRACED COTTAGE to let (long term), near Blaenau Ffestiniog, North Wales. Handcrafted interior, gardens (veg, fruit and flowers). Great views! Rent £95/week. Contact Nicola: nico.ingham@yahoo.co.uk WANTED REMOTE COUNTRYSIDE LOCATION. Looking to rent detached property. Need to get back to nature to restore my health. Perhaps an outbuilding on a farm or in woodland. Anything considered. Contact Ryan 020 8133 0451. Email: ryanaw2@googlemail.com COURSES A WAKE-UP CALL – Kickstart your own creativity with a basic course in practical useful skills. Earthworks, drystone, tile mosaic, wet carved concrete, decorative cement, composting and general garden related arts. Surprise yourself this winter-spring. Comfortable Greek island estate. Email: irinijim@ otenet.gr Web: http://tothegarden.org

When you advertise in PM your classified also appears on both our website www.permaculture.co.uk and the online version of the magazine: www.exacteditions.com/exact/magazine/409/460 Next issue deadline: 30 November 2010 Tel: 01730 823 311 Email: tony@permaculture.co.uk

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COURSES contd...

EVENTS

GARDENING & COOKING FOR LIFE & A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE. Covering permaculture design, the theory & practical skills involved in developing & maintaining the award winning sustainable Primrose Organic Centre nr Hay-on-Wye; low carbon food; wild foraging; preparing and preserving food to maximise flavour, nutrients and vitality. April and October 2011. Telephone Paul on 01497 847 636. Email: paul.benham@ukonline.co.uk Web: www.primroseearthcentre.co.uk

EUROPEAN BIONEERS CONFERENCE 2010. Findhorn is please to collaborate with the successful Bioneers network in the USA to bring inspiration from the heart of nature to Europe. Speakers: Kenny Ausubel, Vandana Shiva, Nina Simons, Ann Pettifor, Maddy Harland, Peter Harper and many more. 30 October to 2 November 2010. For more info contact college@ findhorncollege.org or see www.findhorn.org

PERMACULTURE DESIGN COURSE Brian J Weston BSc. Ag., PDC Special emphasis on small properties. Economically priced! Contact: Brian J Weston, Box 125, Takaka, New Zealand. Email: goldenbayz@gmail.com Detailed info: www.pohara.com/weston RESIDENTIAL VEGETARIAN/VEGAN COURSES available throughout the year. Improve your health and your life style in a stunning environment. Permaculture magazine readers quote ‘Permaculture’ for a 10% discount. Email: info@healthetcetera. com Web: www@healthetcetera.com WOODLAND COURSES with Ben Law. Roundwood Timber Framing, Practical Coppicing, Charcoal Burning, Woodlands & Permaculture each booking for 2011. Open Days at Ben’s Woodland House booking for 2012. View: www.ben-law.co.uk

GREEN EVENTS. The ‘Time Out’ of alternative living. Includes a comprehensive calendar of upcoming events, demonstrations, seminars, courses & exhibitions and a directory of services that empower participants to lead conscious, sustainable and purposeful lives. A4 6 issues per year 12pp. INK Subscription Rate 2 years UK: £12. Web: www.greenevents.co.uk/london FOR SALE COPPER GARDEN TOOLS handcrafted, hardwearing, unattractive to slugs, guaranteed to last. Contact: Implementations PO Box 2568 Nuneaton CV10 9YR. Tel: 08453 303 148. Web: www.implementations.co.uk EXQUISITE WOODEN JEWELLERY lovingly hand carved in Scotland from reclaimed off-cuts. As featured in PM60 (pages 27-30). Buy online: www.woodlandtreasures.co.uk FOR SALE. VICTORIAN FORMER SCHOOL BUILDING, stone built, walls about 2 feet thick. Approx 60ft x 22ft (internal measurements). For conversion to domestic dwelling(s). Water and electricity to site. Located Northern Scotland (Caithness) with sea views. 1/3 acre of land. More land could be available to people interested in organic veg and soft fruit production. £75,000. For more details phone 01593 751 343. Email sblanshard@hotmail.com

DESIGN SERVICES EDIBLE LANDSCAPE LLP. Challenging the monocultural mindset. Food forests, fish and fungi; permaculture systems designed and implemented. Tel: 01761 434 349. Web: www. ediblelandscape.co.uk FRESHWATER SOLUTIONS: Self-Sustaining Ecological Aquaculture Systems. Site Resource Evaluations. Action Plans and Designs. Environmental Habitat Enhancement. Lake and Pond Restoration. Quality Freshwater Swimming Pools. Develop your natural freshwater resources. Contact Laurence Hutchinson (Director). Tel: +33 (0)565 421 610 (France). Email: ecologicalfish@btinternet.com Web: www.ecological-aquaculture.co.uk INTEGRALPERMANENCE Integrative Ecosocial Permaculture design/consultancy/teaching services. For details call Richard on 07539 973 170 or email: Integralpermanence@gmail.com Web: Integralpermanence.org NEED HELP? Want to permaculture your garden, smallholding, farm or woodland? For expert, friendly advice call Patrick Whitefield on 01458 832 317 or email: ka.tonga@virgin.net

GENERAL CHARCOAL PEOPLE – FILTERING WATER, NATURALLY. Bamboo charcoal for a refreshingly simple and eco-friendly way to filter your tap water. Try it and see! For details call 020 8549 2772 or visit www.charcoalpeople.co.uk DOWNSHIFTING, SUSTAINABLE LIVING, SUSTAINABLE SMALL BUSINESS. Are you earning a stressful living when you’d rather be living your dream? Have a helping hand in quitting the rat race with personal coaching, courses, articles and a free email newsletter from www.sallylever.co.uk

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Permaculture Magazine

Classified Exchange GENERAL cont... FRUIT TREES. Quality fruit trees – apples, plums, pears, cherries, etc. delivered direct to you from the growers – Walcot Organic Nursery. Sustainably grown, competitively priced & Soil Association certified. Available barerooted when dormant. Detailed catalogue available. Phone 01905 841 587 or online at www.walcotnursery.co.uk WEBSITES, ONLINE SHOPS, INTRANETS – £250 inclusive of design, setup, personal tuition and hosting. Established 2003, with dozens of satisfied customers, we specialise in easy amendit-yourself websites for permaculture projects, charities, green businesses, craftspeople etc. Tel: 07729 103 263. Email: peter@ethicalinternet. co.uk Web: www.ethicalinternet.co.uk HOLIDAYS BEAUTIFUL, RUGGED PEMBROKESHIRE. Two eco-friendly converted barns on smallholding. Each sleeps 4. Coastal path 2 miles. Tel: 01348 891 286. Email: holdays@stonescottages. co.uk Web: www.stonescottages.co.uk BRITTANY. COSY COB AND STONE COTTAGE on developing permaculture smallholding. Sleeps two. Wood stove. Private woodland. Close to Dinan and beautiful beaches. Tel: +33 296 274 465. Websites: www. brittanycountrygite.com and www.permaculture inbrittany.blogspot.com CORNISH STRAW BALE BARN ON ORGANIC SMALLHOLDING Self-contained studio with kitchen, shower & woodburner, compost loo outside (treebog style). We grow organic veg & are trying to live as sustainably as possible. Energy from wind-turbine, solar panels & woodburners fuelled by our managed woodland. Beautiful location. Would suit 1-2 people. £200 per week inc food. Tel: 01726 844 867. Email: sara@cotna.co.uk Web: www.cotna.co.uk EXCITING HOLIDAY SELF-CATERING accommodation in Yorkshire. Flamborough Peninsular – house sleeps 8, cliff walk to RSPB Bempton sea birds, nature reserve – 100,000 breeding seabirds (puffins, gannets, etc.), April to October. Also, house sleeps 4 at Skipton Castle Woods, ideal base to explore the Yorkshire Dales. Contact Jill and Nick on 01756 790 934. Email: woodnicholas@gmail.com FRANCE DORDOGNE. Stone farm house to let November – May/June or to suit. Large garden, 3 bedrooms, living room, kitchen, woodstoves. Situated in quiet hamlet near villages and towns. £450 per month plus bills. House and caravan also available for summer holidays. Tel: +33 553 603 416. Tel: 01629 824 960. Web: www.frenchfarmhouse.org.uk NORTH CORNWALL, GYPSY CARAVANS. St Breock Downs near Wadebridge. Two bow top gypsy caravans with a hut containing kitchen and shower room with wc, outside open fire. From £60 per night. For more information call 01208 815 436 or 07966 231 609. Email: servantesmichelle@yahoo.co.uk

Permaculture Magazine

GENERAL cont...

PERSONAL

OFF-GRID B&B – as far as we know, the only one in England. Smallholding, workshops, vegetarian food, en suite rooms, local craftsman made furniture, organic bedding, incredible wildlife. Children welcome. North Pennines AONB. 01388 537 292. Web: www.slackhousefarm.com

DUNCAN, YOUNG 54, calm, jovial, very practical & realistic, self-reliant bloke, into veg and soft fruit growing, coppice, chickens and a cat, has 1.75 acres near Inverness. WLTM busy, fun, tolerant lady to share the future. Apparently attractive, fair, slim and 1.75m. Please phone 01667 453 501 or email duncanstuart2020@ btinternet.com

SEASIDE HOLIDAY HOUSE. Superb for family holidays and romantic hideaway breaks, 1 minute’s walk from sea. Cosy Victorian house in Seaview, Isle of Wight, sleeps 5. Next to wetland wildfowl reserve on one side and wooded estate on the other. Sizeable games room/kid’s zone at end of garden. Accessible by public transport. Bike hire available. Contact: tim@permaculture.co.uk for PM readers’ offseason discounts. Web: www.oaksatseaview.info THE ECOLODGE – a simpler way to relax. Set alone in woods & meadows, near Lincolnshire coast and wolds. Sleeps 4. Short Breaks £180. One week £360 Discounts for returners, train and bike travellers. Contact Geri Clarke 01205 870 062/871 396. Web: www.ecolodge.me.uk WEST CORNWALL – BEAUTIFULLY RESTORED GRANITE BARN near Lands End. Peaceful rural eco retreat 5 miles from Penzance, 10 minutes walk from Boscawen-noon stone circle. Surf beaches within 3 miles. The barn is heated by two wood burners and sleeps between 2 and 6. Reduced rates for lower occupancy. Wild food foraging and yoga workshops available to book during your stay. Phone Caroline on 01736 810 156. Email: caroline@fathen.org or see www. fathen.org for further information and tariff. WEST DORSET, PEACEFUL SELF-CATERING organic garden cottage. Axe valley countryside views. Near Marshwood Vale and Lyme Bay. Sleeps 2+2. Ideal walking and sketching. Art tuition/ceramics. Tel: 01460 220 201. Email: tangramwest@onetel.com OPPORTUNITIES COMPETENT WOODWORKING/BUILDING/ GARDENING volunteers, male or female needed in return for good food and comfortable room on Greek island garden estate, perfect outdoor weather, salvaged oak, good creative fun at the handbuilt hotel and gardens. Email: irinijim@otenet.gr Web: http://tothegarden.org COUNTRYSIDE JOBS SERVICE. The place to find a job, volunteer position or course in the countryside, environment & conservation sectors. Tel: 01947 896 007. Web: www.countryside-jobs.com INQUIRIES ARE INVITED by the Peredur Trust from market gardeners interested in organic/ biodynamic production on 2 acres with 3 greenhouses plus the possibility of additional land. SW Rudel, Peredur Trust, Basill Manor, St Clether, Launceston, Cornwall PL15 8QJ Tel: 01566 86075. PLANNED COMMUNITY based on permaculture and cohousing principles seeks like minded individuals and families to join with us. Some capital will be required. Currently looking for suitable property in the Devon area following group preparatory work. Call Lyn on 01837 840 516 or see www.prospectcommunity.org.uk

No. 66

EARTH WISE SINGLES. Find friendship and romance with people who practice Earthcare, Peoplecare and Fairshare. Free to post your profile. Free to send messages. We make it easy for you to connect! www.EWSingles.com PROPERTY & LAND BARGAIN HOUSE FOR SALE. Spacious ecohouse in alternative hamlet in Southern Spain. Ideal place for small permaculture community. One acre orange and olive orchard with veggie garden and water rights. Includes smaller self contained annexe with own garden now only £125,00. For more information see www.cathylotus.co.uk BLUEBELL WOODLANDS FOR SALE. Essex/ Suffolk border, near Sudbury. Mature oak and ash with hazel understorey. Varied habitat, ponds, good access. 6.25 acres for £58,000 or 4.25 acres for £45,000. Further details call 01223 208 035 or view www.treesandbees.me.uk CHIOS ISLAND – GREECE 2400m2 land for sale, 500m from sea, mastic and olive tree surroundings, sea view, caravan on permanent base with pergola, shower toilet storage facilities, water, no electricity, young fruit and mastic trees, 3km from lively village, shops, post office, etc. ‘Blank canvas’ for creativity. E35,000. Also, 355m2 plot (builds 200m2) E24,000, two storey renovated 1741 stone house 150m2 E185,000 in traditional village. Details tel: +30 2271 061 119. Email: katkalam@yahoo.gr COTTAGE FOR SALE – Ireland – £72,500/ p86,500. See: www.ballinamorecottage.webspace. virginmedia.com DISS, NORFOLK. 2 bed end of terrace cottage in private lane. New Scan woodburner and DG. Large timber studio and guest annexe with bathroom and south facing veranda. Raised bed veggie patch, wild garden to Suffolk Wildlife Trust’s Roydon Fen. About ¼ acre. £247,500. Email: gill.heriz@zen.co.uk DORSET COHOUSING – TWO BED COTTAGE for sale £130,000. Emphasis on green lifestyle including car pool, shared laundry, veg garden, guest rooms etc. Tel: 01392 211 794 for cottage details. Visit www.thresholdcentre. org.uk for info on the centre. FRANCE. FOR SALE OR TO RENT. Traditional two bedroom stone cottage in beautiful Normandie countryside, near to unspoilt beaches. Great potential for permaculture/ organic growing, forest gardening, sustainable building etc. Offers in region of £240,000. Rent negotiable in exchange for assistance in maintaining and developing cottage and land using permaculture methods. Phone: 01534 522 331. Email: cobweb5@live.co.uk

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Classified Exchange PROPERTY & LAND contd...

PUBLICATIONS

GALICIA, NORTH SPAIN. Beautiful rural location. Self-sufficient. Large renovated house, 3 bedrooms. Barn conversion needs completing. Half acre, organic/permaculture vegetable garden, orchard. Own electricity (solar/wind), well, 2 full bathrooms + composting toilet in house. Greenhouse, henhouse. £138,000/offers. Details, photos email: shanti@mail2spain.com

THE DENDROLOGIST, the quarterly news and information to bring all tree enthusiasts and interest groups together. Join by sending £10.00 to ‘The Dendrologist’, PO Box 341, Chesham, Bucks, HP5 2RD.

LANDDEWI BREFI, WEST WALES. One acre, 3 greenhouses, raised beds, workshop, huge garage, log cabin. Stone and slate house, 3 receptions, 3 bedrooms, full oil c.h. plus multifuel stove. Village has 2 pubs, shop, visiting PO van, frequent buses, junior school, River Teifi nearby. £275,000. Tel: 01974 298 586. Email: sagalouts@brynvilla.orangehome.co.uk SMALLHOLDING FOR SALE, NORTHWEST FRANCE. Situated in lovely rural village in the pays de l’Loire region, only 1.5hrs from ferry. Spacious 2 bedroom house with wood fuelled cooking and heating. Separate holiday cottage (sleeps 4-6) with bookings for 2011. Planning permission granted for loft and outbuilding conversion if more accommodation required. Set in 2.5 acres of fertile organically farmed land. Mature orchard, huge vegetable and soft fruit garden, sheep paddock, chicken housing. Dutch barn and several outbuildings for storage or animal shelter. Excellent opportunity for communal living, self sufficiency/permaculture. Offers in the region of E205,000. Tel: +33 243 030 304 or maria.steel@club-internet.fr SOUTH WALES – NEAR CARDIFF lovely maisonette for sale in sought after village. South-facing organic garden with herbs, fruit, shrubs, lots of birds! 2 double bedrooms, gch, double glazing, quiet. Good amenities including local shop, allotments, PO, primary school, library, surgery. Lovely country walks & pubs. 5 miles main rail station & on frequent bus route. Good first-time buy or downsize £108,950 ono. Phone Chris on: 07745 758 204 or email for further details via: mividafuente@gmail.com TAKE YOUR PLACE IN NATURE. A beautiful, unique property looking for a family. So, if you would like to live sustainably, intimately connected to nature, walk in any direction, listen and swim in the river, and watch the night sky, come and meet the house and land. House, extensive barns, 2¾ acres, hydro powered development approved, wood fired water and heating, spring water and organically managed for 30 years. Mid-Wales. For details contact Susan: 01974 282 323. 3 BEDROOM HOUSE FOR SALE or rent in town on edge of Brecon Beacons, (SA18 1BG). Solar hot water, wood burner, conservatory, large south facing garden with polytunnel, fruit bushes and trees. £125K Tel: 01269 822 786 or email Looby@designedvisions.com YOUNG FAMILY SEEKING LAND to plant trees, grow veg and live simply. Would consider anything, anywhere. £45,000 budget. Tel: 07849 726 852. Email: mazandtom@yahoo.co.uk

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WANTED contd... WANTED ACCOUNTS MANAGER & Administration Assistant for Permaculture Magazine/Permanent Publications, based here at the Sustinability Centre, Hampshire. See the advert on page 28 of this issue for details on how to apply.

FUNKY RAW exists to help you to eat a healthy raw vegetarian diet. Our quarterly magazine covers cleansing and rebuilding, spirituality, eco life and has recipes, events, etc. Also online shop, workshops, summer festival and more. Tel: 0845 003 9515. Web: www.funkyraw.com ‘SENSITIVE PERMACULTURE’, new book by Alanna Moore, now available from Amazon. See pythonpress.com WANTED GARDEN WORKSHOP CO-ORDINATOR WANTED. The Camphill Village Trust Delrow Community has a vacancy for an experienced gardener to work alongside adults with a learning disability and/or mental health issues, in our garden workshop. The hours are 09.00 to 17.00 with an hour lunch break, Monday to Friday. Pay is £16.41 per hour with a stakeholder pension available. Duties include: Teaching horticultural skills to people with learning disability and/or mental health issues; growing organic/bio-dynamic vegetables/fruit/herbs for the community. Camphill strongly believes in the earth as a living being and this is reflected in how the organisation works with the land. Closing date for applications 1st November 2010. For more information and to request an application form please contact : Human Resources, c/o Tom Leonard at Delrow House, Hilfield Lane, Aldenham, Watford WD25 8DJ. Tel: 01923 856 006 or email tom.leonard@ delrow.co.uk

WANTED PM LIBRARY SUBSCRIPTIONS. The current economic climate threatens one of our most crucial, and ecologically sound, public services – that of the public library. The first libraries date back to almost 5,000 years ago. The main objective has always been to be a source of knowledge and a means to share that knowledge with others. Libraries fit into the idea of sustainable culture – offering people a way to share books, CDs, DVDs, computers and of course to access information on permaculture. It is ironic that the very economic downturn that could increase the usage of libraries by encouraging people to borrow rather than buy, could also threaten it through lack of public funding, at a time when the service is needed the most. It is better to help libraries have titles on their shelves which are actually useful to people. One of our regular readers, who works in a library herself, suggests that one way to support libraries and help spread knowledge about sustainable living is to buy a subscription of Permaculture Magazine for your local library. She says don’t be shy, pop along to your local library and see what permaculture books they have and make some suggestions (see our advert on the inside front cover of this issue). If they don’t have the funds to subscribe to PM why not help and subscribe on the library’s behalf? Subscribe via post, telephone or online via our secure site: www.green-shopping.co.uk

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LIFE SHARING EXPERIENCE – West of Ireland. Female Carer needed, aged 25-40, to enable a young woman aged 19 who is wheelchair bound to live independently alongside the main family dwelling, in her own home. Beautiful land, beautiful lifestyle. Please contact the +353 61 924 186 for payment and further instruction. 2 MOTIVATED SUPPORT WORKERS WANTED, preferably 1 with building skills for minimum 6 months, to help run commercial, organic business on inspiring permaculture + education centre; sustainability, education + a deep respect for the earth. £50/week + food and accommodation. Contact Paul, Primrose Organic Centre, Felindre, Brecon, Powys LD3 0ST. Tel: 01497 847 636. Email: paul.benham@ ukonline.co.uk

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VOLUNTEERS NEEDED. We are a permaculture farm in the central mountains of Portugal. Would you like to be a part of an ecological strawbale and roundwood chestnut frame building project, create a natural pool and forest, in exchange for accommodation and fresh home produced organic food, all abilities and interests welcome, the projects and landscape can be challenging. For more information email us at: javabiscuit@aol.com

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