Crash Course- Preparing for Peak Oil June 23, 2008
Posted by Graham in : Food, Green Building, Overshoot, Peak Oil, Permaculture, Powerdown, survivalism , 1 comment so farBook Review
Crash Course- Preparing for Peak Oil
by Zachary Nowak
Green Door Publishing 2008
Peak Oil is upon us, and collective action on a large scale seems unlikely. Technical solutions are chimerical. Each of us must decide what the future may hold and begin working on a plan to face that future.
When Zachary Nowak began drafting this essential resource list oil was pushing $70 a barrel. Now nearly double that, peak oil seems ever more of a reality and its consequences are being felt even in the oil-guzzling west with an growing sense of urgency: the party really is over and all the chickens are coming home to roost (to mix metaphors): food riots, truckers strikes, inflation, rising unemployment, bankruptcies and the looming shadow of global recession.
It increasingly looks as if the time to prepare may have been yesterday, but as the title suggests, a crash course of emergency and more long-term preparation is still possible and Nowak provides an entertaining primer in the basics. (more…)
Charcoal Making at Manch June 8, 2008
Posted by Graham in : Food, Renewable Energy, Tools and technology , 4commentsI have recently been experimenting with some simple charcoal making in an oil drum. I did a couple of demonstrations a few weeks ago for first a Biodiversity day and second the Slow Food “Munch at the Manch” events at the Manch Forestry project, near Dunmanway.
Charcoal will potentially play an important role in the post-oil world, with many important uses including for use on a blacksmith’s forge-i it burns much hotter than wood; I have read that it can even reach welding temperatures. (more…)
Overpopulation? The Biggest Issue of your lifetime April 23, 2008
Posted by Graham in : Food, Overshoot, Population , 1 comment so farBantry beekeeper Tim Rowe delivered his first public talk last Monday night in Bantry on a topic that has been preoccupying him for some time- the consequences of overpopulation.
This fascinating and enlightening talk took us through the issue facing the world as the human species runs riot and reaches more than 6.7 billion in numbers- each one needing energy, food, water and other resources.
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…)
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.
Powerdown Roundup November 24, 2007
Posted by Graham in : Environment, Food, Gardens, Peak Oil, Permaculture, Powerdown , add a commentIt has been a busy few weeks and I only now have a chance to catch up by reporting on a few events I have attended over the last few weeks.
On November 8th and 9th I presented an introduction to permaculture workshop at the Tipperary institute, for final-year students on the Sustainable Rural Development degree course.
After an overview of permaculture design principles and some edible landscaping techniques, students were asked to do a design exercise on a proposed permaculture garden outside the canteen.
Making use of some of their proposals I will write up a design for the garden which the Institute will implement early next year. This is an exciting development for the TI and the garden will be partly managed by students on a new degree course starting next September, Environmental and Natural Resource Managment, which will include a Permaculture component. This is a ground-breaking new course designed to provide relevant third-level training to address the coming environmental and resource challenges we will be facing as we continue down the slippery slope of energy descent. (more…)
Wild Food November 19, 2007
Posted by Graham in : Food , 1 comment so farIn the mid-term break a few weeks ago some of the permaculture students joined me and the amazing Simone for a wild food day in Glengariff.
*Right: Simone shows us how to collect a wild salad
After meeting in the morning for acorn coffee, we spent the first half of the day gathering wild salads, nettles, dandelion roots and dock leaves- no I didnt know you could eat dock leaves either!- we then went back to Mel’s house and spent the rest of the day preparing , cooking and eating.
We had a great day and everyone left with full bellies. Here is one of Simone’s recipes, for Dock Turnovers:
Dock Turnovers
Collect Medium Dock leaves – 2 per person
Soak in boiled water for 5 mins
Dry in tea towel carefully
Paint oil on both sides
Take approx 3 spoons of pre cooked rice
Add chopped feta – garlic optional
Add seasoning to taste
Wrap ingredients securely inside leaf – gently fry in oil.
For desert, crabapple and myrtle berry crumble- exotic and delicious! (Myrtle berries are not strictly a “wild” food here but we found a garden escape bush in a field dripping with fruit.)
Seed Saving October 29, 2007
Posted by Graham in : Food, Gardens, General , 1 comment so far
A recent trip to Madeleine McKeever, founder of Brown Envelope Seeds, down near turk Head on the south coast, provided the permaculture class with a fascinating introduction to the world of seed-saving. (more…)
Surfing the Collapse October 26, 2007
Posted by Graham in : Environment, Food, Peak Oil , 2commentsThree important reports out in the last week highlight how utterly unsustainable the current human system is, locked in as it is to a process seeking the impossible, the unnatural and the undesirable: unending growth. (more…)
Pumpkin Seeds October 14, 2007
Posted by Graham in : Food, Gardens, Permaculture , 2commentsIf I were only to grow one vegetable, I think it would be pumpkins- easy to grow, nutritious and delicious, many of the smaller varieties- like Pompeon or the orange-fleshed Uchiki Kuri
are as sweet as sweet potatoes and store really well- until March or even April.
This year for the first time I grew a variety more know for its naked seeds- Lady Godiva. This variety is grown for its seeds which are “naked” ie they dont have husks so can be eaten straight out of the fruit, or dried and stored.
A neighbour gave me some seeds late in the season, so I didnt start them until late June but they still did quite well.
Here are the seeds from one of the pumpkins. Highly nutritious in themselves, being rich in magnesium, manganese and phosphorous, and a good source of iron, copper, protein, and zinc, pumpkin seeds store for even longer than the fruit and are well worth growing for this reason.
