Pizza Oven! December 31, 2007
Posted by Graham in : Food, Green Building , 1 comment so farI am proud to present the brand new Earth Oven recently completed at Derryduff.
Just last night Sherry and Andy joined me for the first trial run pizza making session, which was a great success and resulted in much happy chomping. We also enjoyed sitting around the ultra-hot oven for some hours afterwards and watching the remarkable patterns of the flames inside curling around the oven while discussing the finer points of Quantum Theory. (more…)
The Last Christmas December 24, 2007
Posted by Graham in : Environment , 2commentsGuest writer Andy Wilson editor of Sustainability Magazine has kindly sent me this piece expressing his thoughts on Christmas:
The Last Christmas – A True Story?
Every Christian knows of the Last Supper, in which Jesus joined his disciples for the last time before being betrayed. The festival of Christmas, in which a billion or more people worldwide will ‘celebrate’ – if that is the right word - the birth of Christ, appears to have begun about 300 years after the death of Christ. Possibly, the Christian movement had gathered sufficient momentum by this time for it to require distinctive festivals of its own. It is probably no coincidence that the time of year chosen coincided with the much older pagan festival of the winter solstice, and this no doubt helped the new religion gain acceptance among the non-believers. (more…)
Solstice at Derryduff December 23, 2007
Posted by Graham in : Food, Gardens, Permaculture , 2comments
Please try and limit your consumption and reduce your ecological footprint this holiday season, and otherwise have a great time; but if you are not sure what to do with yourselves these long dark evenings and want to both save money AND do your bit for the environment, have a look at this. (thanks to minktoast)
Apologies for irregular blogs the last couple of weeks- loss of my wind turbine in a storm has meant restricted power. Stay tuned for the next installment of the back to nature series in the New year, and in the meantime here are a few notes and photos from recent garden activity:
Garlic This year I have planted two varieties of garlic from The Isle of Wight Garlic Farm - Lautrec Wight and Elephant garlic; 
also a local variety from some neighbours. The Elephant Garlic has to be seen to be believed- one clove is the size of a whole corm of regular garlic. Alliums are easy to grow and ideal for planting through a newspaper and straw mulch -slugs don’t trouble them too much.
I also harvested occa, machua and Jerusalem Artichokes this week.
Machua- tropaeolum tuberosum is an edible tuber originating in Peru. Pretty much pest free and easy to grow, with a climbing habit and attractive orange trumpet-like flowers,I harvested about 6 egg-sized nobbly tubers from each plant, so it is potentially quite productive. This is the first time Ive grown it so I was looking forward to tasting it, but it was not exactly delicious. Plants for a Future says:
“The tubers are quite popular in South America but can probably be best desricbed as an acquired taste”. They recommend freezing them or leaving them in the ground until after a frost to improve flavour.
I thought they had potential as part of a forest garden guild with oca oxalis tuberosum planted around them as a ground cover. Ive been growing oca for a few years now and although not high-yielding it is again easy to grow and tasty. A new Irish site dedicated to oca can be found here. Next year i am going to add Jerusalem Artichokes into the guild for the Machua to climb up -a sort of perennial “three sisters”. The idea is, like the Three Sisters of Corn, beans and squash, you can get three yields in the same space because of their different habits and niches.
Christmas Tree Planting for TTK December 11, 2007
Posted by Graham in : General , add a commentMany thanks to Liz Creed of Transition Towns Kinsale for sending me this photo of a recent fruit-tree planting on a community site in Kinsale.
About 20 fruit and nut trees were planted by the Transition Towns group on a communal green last weekend. More are planned. Congratulations to all involved, it’s a great project.
Back to nature #2: Deep Ecology- Nostalgia for Eden December 10, 2007
Posted by Graham in : Environment, Human Ecology, Science and Rationaltiy , 6commentsNostalgia for Eden
A widely held belief amongst environmentalists, Deep Ecologists and other “post-modern” humans who yearn for a return to the idyllic world of an imagined Garden of Eden is that the struggle for sustainability is a new one: for most of human history, hundreds of thousands of years, people have lived in stable societies with minimal impact on natural resources, and have had the wisdom and respect for the natural world that is required to be sustainable. (more…)
Back to Nature #1 December 1, 2007
Posted by Graham in : Environment, Human Ecology , 2commentsBack to Nature:
Exploring Humans’ Relationship to the Natural World
Modern humans have an uneasy relationship with the “natural world”: there is a sense of separation, of loss, but also an ambivalence and uncertainty in knowing how to relate to Nature.
What we even mean by “the Natural World” or “Nature” is unclear. Some might say, for example, that since culture has emerged from nature, it must in some ways still be governed by the forces of nature.
In what ways can it be said that we are still a part of nature? In what ways, if any, have we escaped the confines of natural processes with our tools and technologies, medicines and machines? And if human society is still governed primarily by the laws and limitations of the natural world, what does this mean for a future of diminishing natural resources and energy after Peak Oil?
This is the first of a series essays in which I want to explore some different approaches to the question of human’s relationship to nature. (more…)
