I have just been cleaning out the chicken house and putting down fresh newspaper under the perches and it tickled me greatly that Ed Miliband's face which is splashed all over the weekend papers will now be splashed with something - well, recycled......
Nevertheless, I am glad - very - that Ed Miliband is the new Labour leader. His brother's part in the rendition scandal is still in question (see this article in The Guardian - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/sep/01/extraordinary-rendition-david-miliband) so I wouldn't have wanted him. Ed also appears the more courageous (ruthless?) character - I can't forget David's hesitant opportunism over challenging Gordon Brown, not least his lily-livered article in July 2008 in which he didn't have the balls to face down the then PM.
Ed has had a slightly more lightweight career than his brother, and this might be a reason why his nose is apparently cleaner (although not for long, the one on my chicken house floor) having been minister for the environment and climate change. I am pleased that someone with this background is now leader, although I acknowledge that his commitment to the environment may well be watered down now as he has other imperatives to deal with too. I hope not. I hope that he got into it enough to realise that it is the most important issue and one for which he will need all his courage to push up the political agenda.
Will he mention the environment in his speech to the Labour party conference this afternoon?? That will be a telling moment......
Tuesday 28 September 2010
Wednesday 22 September 2010
How Green is my Garden....
In the last year, we decided that our garden should become a working garden, with fruit trees, a vegetable patch and chickens. This, despite the fact that we have little knowledge about growing plants, no experience of looking after fowl, and were not a little concerned about whether we would have the patience, time or inclination for the extra work. Nevertheless, this summer we have had it all up and running and I want to record the happiness that this extra dimension has brought to our family’s life.
The most fundamental source of happiness the reconnection with the land upon which we live. We are out in it far more, in more types of weather, we work it, we care for it. Our habits have changed so that we have come to depend on it. In other words, we look after our land, and in return,our land supports us. Our garden is no longer just there for the view – it’s not enough anymore that it merely looks nice, is an extension of the house, has wonderful decking, and so on.
There are so many reasons to produce your own food from your garden. For instance – just how much more local can you get? I hate shopping so walking into my garden to collect the raw ingredients for supper feels glorious. Since I shop less, I drive less, and I buy less packaging materials which end up in landfill. That alone enriches our quality of life.
Also, just how good does food taste when it goes from plot to pot in less than 5 minutes? How much money are you saving? How good does it feel to have rescued 7 ex-battery chickens (even though one died shortly afterwards...)? How much fun have the kids had this summer looking after them? How uplifting is it to eat stuff that you have grown? How nice is it to swop home grown food with your neighbours, or even better, to give surplus away? And possibly most curious of all – why does one eat so much less when the food is so tasty and chemical free?
It’s only September, there is still stuff out there to harvest, and I am already looking forward to next year’s growing – what will I plant, what have I learnt, can I stretch the season?
If I sound smug, I hope that I’m not really. I could have done this years ago and didn’t. I’m just glad that it’s happened now.
So these are our ‘heart and soul’ reasons for growing a bit of broccoli, spinach and courgette, potatoes, onions, corn and so on. However, there are other, more ‘macro’ reasons for working your piece of earth. For example, if the price of fuel escalates, then food will cost a great deal more – oil fuels the growth, fertilisation, transportation, cold storage, packaging and selling areas of food. If its price increases, no supermarket will be able to absorb those costs and they will be passed straight onto the consumer. Also, crucially, the world has little enough land to support a growing population so that we need to plan carefully how we are going to utilise it. Maybe having a garden which is more than decorative is an idea whose time has come.
Growing your own brings people in touch – literally – with the seasons. It also gives you an awareness of the seasonality of food. Maybe that will lead onto a heightened consciousness of the all year round availability of fruit and veg in the supermarkets and a decision about whether we want to use our financial muscle to discourage the sale of foods with high food mileage. Maybe strawberries at Christmas will be regarded universally as ridiculous. Maybe the sharp taste of the first autumnal apple will be worth waiting for.
Anyway, I love it, from the planting of seeds and anxious glances into pots for the first signs of germination, to swopping seedlings, to excitement that other people are growing stuff too, to talking to older people about how they grew everything they could in war years, to washing the mud from under my nails, to taking a bucket full of food into the hens and bringing it out full of eggs, to tasting the sweet nuttiness of a squash....what a way to live, on the fat of the land.
The most fundamental source of happiness the reconnection with the land upon which we live. We are out in it far more, in more types of weather, we work it, we care for it. Our habits have changed so that we have come to depend on it. In other words, we look after our land, and in return,our land supports us. Our garden is no longer just there for the view – it’s not enough anymore that it merely looks nice, is an extension of the house, has wonderful decking, and so on.
There are so many reasons to produce your own food from your garden. For instance – just how much more local can you get? I hate shopping so walking into my garden to collect the raw ingredients for supper feels glorious. Since I shop less, I drive less, and I buy less packaging materials which end up in landfill. That alone enriches our quality of life.
Also, just how good does food taste when it goes from plot to pot in less than 5 minutes? How much money are you saving? How good does it feel to have rescued 7 ex-battery chickens (even though one died shortly afterwards...)? How much fun have the kids had this summer looking after them? How uplifting is it to eat stuff that you have grown? How nice is it to swop home grown food with your neighbours, or even better, to give surplus away? And possibly most curious of all – why does one eat so much less when the food is so tasty and chemical free?
It’s only September, there is still stuff out there to harvest, and I am already looking forward to next year’s growing – what will I plant, what have I learnt, can I stretch the season?
If I sound smug, I hope that I’m not really. I could have done this years ago and didn’t. I’m just glad that it’s happened now.
So these are our ‘heart and soul’ reasons for growing a bit of broccoli, spinach and courgette, potatoes, onions, corn and so on. However, there are other, more ‘macro’ reasons for working your piece of earth. For example, if the price of fuel escalates, then food will cost a great deal more – oil fuels the growth, fertilisation, transportation, cold storage, packaging and selling areas of food. If its price increases, no supermarket will be able to absorb those costs and they will be passed straight onto the consumer. Also, crucially, the world has little enough land to support a growing population so that we need to plan carefully how we are going to utilise it. Maybe having a garden which is more than decorative is an idea whose time has come.
Growing your own brings people in touch – literally – with the seasons. It also gives you an awareness of the seasonality of food. Maybe that will lead onto a heightened consciousness of the all year round availability of fruit and veg in the supermarkets and a decision about whether we want to use our financial muscle to discourage the sale of foods with high food mileage. Maybe strawberries at Christmas will be regarded universally as ridiculous. Maybe the sharp taste of the first autumnal apple will be worth waiting for.
Anyway, I love it, from the planting of seeds and anxious glances into pots for the first signs of germination, to swopping seedlings, to excitement that other people are growing stuff too, to talking to older people about how they grew everything they could in war years, to washing the mud from under my nails, to taking a bucket full of food into the hens and bringing it out full of eggs, to tasting the sweet nuttiness of a squash....what a way to live, on the fat of the land.
Friday 7 May 2010
School trip - a rant
Yesterday, I accompanied my daughter's class on a visit to London Zoo. Zoos these days major on environmentalism - preservation of endangered species, recyclable packaging of food from the caff, and all sorts of laudable aims, if you can get over the ethical issue of keeping animals in undersized cages for small children to scream at.
So it was with a sinking feeling that I received the letter from the school outlining the arrangements for the trip. Each child was to bring their lunch in a plastic bag so that it could be dumped after the food had been consumed so that the little precious sweetlings wouldn't have to carry too much. Diddums.
I hate this policy. What it means is that 30 plastic bags are dumped in landfill, plus of course the 30 plastic bottles and drinks cartons. I visualise the black bin liner containing all our detritus enduring, as some sort of morbid time capsule, until someone digs it up in several hundred years' time (if we're not all under water by then) to find out just how embarrassing was the level of waste generated by this so-called civilised society in the early 21st century.
And of course, as we sat down to eat lunch, the reality was even worse. It is astonishing how much parents spend on kids' lunches, in terms of buying individually packaged stuff that must be so much more expensive than merely buying a good old lump of something nourishing and cutting off a hearty chunk. Out came the little individual plastic packets of cheese, individually wrapped cakes, tubes of yogurt (what's THAT about??) and plastic pots of cut fruit. Not only was the packaging outrageous, the fruit was often an unholy mix of mango and pineapple and other exotics - nothing seasonal or local. What's the problem with giving a child an apple or pear? There are still some around which were grown in the UK - although so late in the season they have to be a bit suspect, I guess.
To keep their darlings' foodie fresh, parents wrap it in aluminium foil, so then non-renewable metal is also dumped in landfill. ....and as predicted, kids had drinks in all sorts of non-re-usable containers that most of them chucked away half-full.
Finally, and on a slightly different point, several kids were chomping into sandwiches of slimy looking ham - probably from Denmark or another cheap source where animal husbandry is notoriously callous. Don't get me started......
People often tell me that children 'get' the idea of recycling in a way that their parents do not. So why have all the responsible adults missed this opportunity to educate, or at least to reinforce ideas about recycling? The school, no matter what it teaches day to day in the classroom, has not only shown the children that it is ok to 'throw away' on a huge scale when it isn't really really easy to recycle, it has actually required them to do so. And to make matters even worse, parents are supplying the rubbish to be chucked out after a single use, thereby demonstrating to their children very clearly that 'stuff' has no value and that we should waste without a second thought. What a brutal lesson.
We are not an unsophisticated society, in terms of our education and our access to information. Many of us, and certainly the families from which the children on yesterday's trip were drawn, have a reasonable level of economic choice. Most are kind, humane and thoughtful.
So why do we go for the high waste options so thoughtlessly and gratuitously? I am sure that every child there is loved with intensity by his or her parents, who would protect that child from harm in every way possible. So how ironic is it that there is no consideration for the fact that by carrying on like this, we are thoughtlessly and casually trashing the planet for our children's future.
So it was with a sinking feeling that I received the letter from the school outlining the arrangements for the trip. Each child was to bring their lunch in a plastic bag so that it could be dumped after the food had been consumed so that the little precious sweetlings wouldn't have to carry too much. Diddums.
I hate this policy. What it means is that 30 plastic bags are dumped in landfill, plus of course the 30 plastic bottles and drinks cartons. I visualise the black bin liner containing all our detritus enduring, as some sort of morbid time capsule, until someone digs it up in several hundred years' time (if we're not all under water by then) to find out just how embarrassing was the level of waste generated by this so-called civilised society in the early 21st century.
And of course, as we sat down to eat lunch, the reality was even worse. It is astonishing how much parents spend on kids' lunches, in terms of buying individually packaged stuff that must be so much more expensive than merely buying a good old lump of something nourishing and cutting off a hearty chunk. Out came the little individual plastic packets of cheese, individually wrapped cakes, tubes of yogurt (what's THAT about??) and plastic pots of cut fruit. Not only was the packaging outrageous, the fruit was often an unholy mix of mango and pineapple and other exotics - nothing seasonal or local. What's the problem with giving a child an apple or pear? There are still some around which were grown in the UK - although so late in the season they have to be a bit suspect, I guess.
To keep their darlings' foodie fresh, parents wrap it in aluminium foil, so then non-renewable metal is also dumped in landfill. ....and as predicted, kids had drinks in all sorts of non-re-usable containers that most of them chucked away half-full.
Finally, and on a slightly different point, several kids were chomping into sandwiches of slimy looking ham - probably from Denmark or another cheap source where animal husbandry is notoriously callous. Don't get me started......
People often tell me that children 'get' the idea of recycling in a way that their parents do not. So why have all the responsible adults missed this opportunity to educate, or at least to reinforce ideas about recycling? The school, no matter what it teaches day to day in the classroom, has not only shown the children that it is ok to 'throw away' on a huge scale when it isn't really really easy to recycle, it has actually required them to do so. And to make matters even worse, parents are supplying the rubbish to be chucked out after a single use, thereby demonstrating to their children very clearly that 'stuff' has no value and that we should waste without a second thought. What a brutal lesson.
We are not an unsophisticated society, in terms of our education and our access to information. Many of us, and certainly the families from which the children on yesterday's trip were drawn, have a reasonable level of economic choice. Most are kind, humane and thoughtful.
So why do we go for the high waste options so thoughtlessly and gratuitously? I am sure that every child there is loved with intensity by his or her parents, who would protect that child from harm in every way possible. So how ironic is it that there is no consideration for the fact that by carrying on like this, we are thoughtlessly and casually trashing the planet for our children's future.
Wednesday 7 April 2010
Apples for Everyone
Why should anyone want to establish a community orchard? Who is it for and why bother?
These are questions that I have addressed as I am trying, with other members of a small environmental organisation, somewhere in the Chilterns, to find a piece of land to plant some apple and some pear trees. I belong to a local group called Change4Chalfont. We are in the process of joining the Transition movement, a grass roots movement of local communities committed to combating the effects of climate change. The movement is fast gaining in membership across the country, and throughout the world.
Based in Chalfont St Peter, our initiative aims to reduce our local area’s contribution to climate change and our dependence on fossil fuels. We are going about this task in various ways, and one approach is to encourage people to think about sourcing their food locally and making choices that include lower ‘food miles’. This is a reason why we should like to plant and tend a community orchard in our village.
There are many benefits of planting an orchard. Some of them are as follows:
• To cultivate local and more unusual varieties of fruit.
• To be an open and free amenity for the public to enjoy.
• To encourage wildlife.
• To provide an educational resource for local schools.
• To be used as a meeting place for older people and to host local events such as Apple Days.
• To raise awareness of orchard projects.
• To promote the health benefits of eating fruit.
• To encourage people to plant fruit trees in their own gardens.
By way of a brief background, since 1970 half of the pear orchards in Britain have been destroyed. The situation with apple growing is even worse: in the mid 1950s there were three thousand commercial apple growers in Britain, whereas now there are just eight hundred and many of these are on a very small scale. Instead, we import and today seventy-six per cent of apples consumed in the UK come from overseas, mostly from China (which produces pretty much all the apples from which we make apple juice) and Turkey.
There is now, however, a growing movement to rediscover local fruit varieties and to plant new orchards. Common Ground, an organisation dedicated to promoting the planting of new orchards and recovering abandoned orchards throughout England, says there are already more than 300 community orchards in the UK run by and for local people.
We are looking for land situated as centrally as possible upon which to plant the fruit trees, which we intend should be both apples and pears of types that have historically been grown in this area, rather than the usually homogenous varieties. There is a triangle of land at one end of our local allotments which has been left to grass for as long as I remember. Since there appears to be little demand for it as cultivated allotments, we are trying to persuade the owner, the local parish council, to let us have it so that we may use it to benefit the community as a whole, as the site of our orchard.
We do not wish to upset anyone by planting an orchard and clearly current allotment holders could feel imposed upon if we are not careful. From this point of view, the location of this land is ideal: if trees are planted on it, they would not shade other people’s plants; it is also on the edge of the allotments so would not cause pedestrians (or their pooing dogs) to wander from existing paths. The site would also be clearly marked as a community orchard and we would display signs which make it clear that whilst people have the right to help themselves to the fruit, they may not pick anything elsewhere.
We aim to make all aspects of the establishment of the orchard as inclusive as possible; in particular we would like to encourage local schools and organisations such as scout and guide groups to raise money to buy their own tree. We plan to organise a day when everyone who has contributed or is interested can get together to plant the trees.
The trees will be financed through sponsorship as outlined above, individual donations and grants. In particular, our local district council runs a Community Grant Scheme which is designed to support local community voluntary groups and not for profit organisations which deliver community projects and services that improve the quality of life for Chiltern residents. Our scheme clearly fits the criteria for this scheme as we are able to demonstrate how it links into Chiltern’s Sustainable Community Strategy and the Council’s key objectives. We understand that grants are made of up to £1,500 per year for any project.
We intend to plant the trees in the late autumn so that they may establish themselves over winter and spring. We have sufficient volunteers to take care of the trees and keep them well-watered when necessary, so we will not depend for any outside help.
We hope that the planting of a community orchard will go ahead in our village as we believe it would enhance community spirit, and contribute to awareness raising and action against climate change.
These are questions that I have addressed as I am trying, with other members of a small environmental organisation, somewhere in the Chilterns, to find a piece of land to plant some apple and some pear trees. I belong to a local group called Change4Chalfont. We are in the process of joining the Transition movement, a grass roots movement of local communities committed to combating the effects of climate change. The movement is fast gaining in membership across the country, and throughout the world.
Based in Chalfont St Peter, our initiative aims to reduce our local area’s contribution to climate change and our dependence on fossil fuels. We are going about this task in various ways, and one approach is to encourage people to think about sourcing their food locally and making choices that include lower ‘food miles’. This is a reason why we should like to plant and tend a community orchard in our village.
There are many benefits of planting an orchard. Some of them are as follows:
• To cultivate local and more unusual varieties of fruit.
• To be an open and free amenity for the public to enjoy.
• To encourage wildlife.
• To provide an educational resource for local schools.
• To be used as a meeting place for older people and to host local events such as Apple Days.
• To raise awareness of orchard projects.
• To promote the health benefits of eating fruit.
• To encourage people to plant fruit trees in their own gardens.
By way of a brief background, since 1970 half of the pear orchards in Britain have been destroyed. The situation with apple growing is even worse: in the mid 1950s there were three thousand commercial apple growers in Britain, whereas now there are just eight hundred and many of these are on a very small scale. Instead, we import and today seventy-six per cent of apples consumed in the UK come from overseas, mostly from China (which produces pretty much all the apples from which we make apple juice) and Turkey.
There is now, however, a growing movement to rediscover local fruit varieties and to plant new orchards. Common Ground, an organisation dedicated to promoting the planting of new orchards and recovering abandoned orchards throughout England, says there are already more than 300 community orchards in the UK run by and for local people.
We are looking for land situated as centrally as possible upon which to plant the fruit trees, which we intend should be both apples and pears of types that have historically been grown in this area, rather than the usually homogenous varieties. There is a triangle of land at one end of our local allotments which has been left to grass for as long as I remember. Since there appears to be little demand for it as cultivated allotments, we are trying to persuade the owner, the local parish council, to let us have it so that we may use it to benefit the community as a whole, as the site of our orchard.
We do not wish to upset anyone by planting an orchard and clearly current allotment holders could feel imposed upon if we are not careful. From this point of view, the location of this land is ideal: if trees are planted on it, they would not shade other people’s plants; it is also on the edge of the allotments so would not cause pedestrians (or their pooing dogs) to wander from existing paths. The site would also be clearly marked as a community orchard and we would display signs which make it clear that whilst people have the right to help themselves to the fruit, they may not pick anything elsewhere.
We aim to make all aspects of the establishment of the orchard as inclusive as possible; in particular we would like to encourage local schools and organisations such as scout and guide groups to raise money to buy their own tree. We plan to organise a day when everyone who has contributed or is interested can get together to plant the trees.
The trees will be financed through sponsorship as outlined above, individual donations and grants. In particular, our local district council runs a Community Grant Scheme which is designed to support local community voluntary groups and not for profit organisations which deliver community projects and services that improve the quality of life for Chiltern residents. Our scheme clearly fits the criteria for this scheme as we are able to demonstrate how it links into Chiltern’s Sustainable Community Strategy and the Council’s key objectives. We understand that grants are made of up to £1,500 per year for any project.
We intend to plant the trees in the late autumn so that they may establish themselves over winter and spring. We have sufficient volunteers to take care of the trees and keep them well-watered when necessary, so we will not depend for any outside help.
We hope that the planting of a community orchard will go ahead in our village as we believe it would enhance community spirit, and contribute to awareness raising and action against climate change.
Tuesday 26 January 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ
This is a very good video on youtube - you could also search against 'the most terrifying video you'll ever see'. However, it's not to terrify you, it simply puts a logical argument in favour of taking action.
Saturday 9 January 2010
What will you do for 10:10?
2010 – the year of 10:10. All very nice, but what should we do to reduce our household’s carbon footprint? And as with all New Year’s resolutions (because this is surely what this pledge amounts to) how do you keep it up?? Resolutions can rapidly become rhetoric, and flounder on the rocks of practicality or fatigue, and most frequently, established habit.
One way is to build changes into your routine so that it just becomes the way that you do things. Another is to get ‘buy-in’ from everyone in the household. It’s hard to regress to the way we used to do things if our kids are watching self-righteously and saying ‘but you said we shouldn’t do that any more…’ or you know that everyone is making an effort and you can’t let them down.
Yet another is to work out the collateral advantages of your actions. So if you are using less electricity or fuel, for example, you are saving money. If you are walking more, you are building exercise into your busy life.
Here are a few things that our family sat down on 31 December 2009 and agreed to do. We don’t think that they will make us feel worthy or deprived. Please feel free to add other constructive suggestions that you are considering.
1. Monday is now a telly-free day. In fact it is a screen-free day so that people don’t just migrate from the telly to the computer.
2. We will turn off the computer earlier.
3. We will now drive to supermarkets a maximum of half as often as we used to, and use them primarily to stock up on store cupboard items. We will source fruit and veg from local shops and meat and sustainable fish directly from farms, producers and farmers markets.
4. Following on from this, we will spend more of our income in the village and buy less consumables elsewhere.
5. We will use our shopping trolley to carry stuff home from the local shops and hold our heads up high even when people laugh…..
6. We will drive at a maximum of 70 mph on motorways and try to chill out more when travelling and not to zip from A to B as fast as possible. We will drive slower on minor roads.
7. We will carry on turning down heating, turning off lights and making sure that electrical items aren’t left on standby.
Other ideas have previously been written on this blog – please scroll down to see!
Happy New Year.......
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