Posts tagged with permaculture
-
19 November 2011 - Aquaponics – eFISHient food production in Palestine
Aquaponics in the West Bank
During our stay at Bustan Qaraaqa in Palestine, we have been lucky enough to volunteer one day a week with Phil and Lorena from Byspokes on aquaponic systems (their website is where the following information comes from). Aquaponics is a combination of aquaculture, which is growing fish in water, with hydroponics, which is growing plants in a liquid. Since they arrived in the West Bank in July 2010 they have been researching, developing and trialing the FIRST EVER aquaponic system constructed behind the Wall!
They have been developing integrated aquaculture/irrigation systems and aquaponic systems to enhance food security in rural areas of Palestine, where as much as 44% of the population are chronically food insecure. In general, water and space for agriculture here are in short supply, and this is nowhere more apparent than in high density urban areas such as refugee camps. For the last 60 … Read the rest
-
14 November 2011 - Talking rubbish – Turning trash into treasure
Here at Bustan Qaraaqa they don’t simply sort their recycling, compost their vegetable scraps and put out the rubbish to be collected weekly – they take REDUCE, REUSE and RECYCLE to a whole new level. With no municipal waste management in Palestine, they have adopted a policy of ‘what comes on site, stays on site’, often collecting other peoples waste too! Using permaculture, creativity, knowledge and passion they educate and demonstrate by living sustainably themselves and maintaining a philosophy that there is no such thing as waste - just a failure of imagination. They hope to inspire Palestinians to stop throwing their rubbish down hillsides or burning it on the side of the road and for foreign guests to understand their role in the waste cycle too. What would you do if your council didn’t collect your waste? How would you consume differently? What would you do with your rubbish?
This … Read the rest
-
2 October 2011 - Growing forests in deserts…
It has been a long time without posting… we do apologise for such a long silence but the truth is we’ve been extremely busy! We spent most of August hiking in the Swiss Alps and we do hope to be able to share with you our experience with the makers of the über-famous Gruyere cheese… Anyway, after this great holiday, we then went to Jordan to study permaculture. We ended up doing a Permaculture Design Course for two weeks in Amman (it’s now Carly’s second PDC!), followed by a week of conferences/discussions/experience sharing in the Wadi Rum desert, exchanging about agriculture and water harvesting in arid climates; cross-fertilisation of the aid and permaculture sectors; using permaculture in regions where there are land rights conflicts such as Israel and Palestine; using carbon footprint offset taxes to finance permaculture projects, etc… After that, we went to the Occupied Palestinian Territories to visit some of … Read the rest
-
12 June 2011 - Week 3 at Cob Camp – Community Matters
Most people want deeper links to a community as modern society is individualistic, insecure and fractured. Many don’t know where to start to lead different lives and those of us who do, seem to grapple with making ‘community’ work.
How do we live co-operatively, thoughtfully and simply with each other whilst conserving natural resources, sharing responsibility for work and providing meaningful, dignified and safe work – including successful projects?
All of us on this course are from Western societies where we’ve been encouraged to be highly individualistic. Given we need to learn new skills for living together with others (especially giving up personal space) this group has done remarkably well at banding together, without conflict, to get things done. But… it’s not all smooth sailing.
Proper management is important. My previous management experience is on big projects but there are many inspiring models to emulate, especially from small populations of … Read the rest
-
4 June 2011 - Week 2 at Cob Camp – Planting, rescuing, cooking and eating food. And making stuff out of leather…
Week 2 of the cob building course was (nearly) all about FOOD!! Planting food, skip diving for food, cooking creatively, making a stove and oven, eating, discussing… it really seemed to be our focus all week!
After our first skip dive at the local supermarket bin, we organised the camp kitchen and enthusiastically embraced communal cooking with our rescued food. We made scrambled eggs, with smoked salmon and goats cheese, frittata, salad nicoise, salsa, potato salad, creamy pesto pasta, coleslaw, ratatouille, couscous, nettle and goats cheese quiche, garlic pizza bread, chocolate brownies, spaghetti and more… but the best creation all week was Sunset Bin Crumble with Sam’s Special Sauce. This cob-camp specialty was essentially apple and rhubarb crumble cooked in Mr Oo (the cob oven we’ve recently made). The crumble was made from delicious, rescued bright pink biscuits and butter. The sauce was Samantha’s inventive concoction of cottage cheese, 2 … Read the rest
-
29 March 2011 - Researching Permaculture in London
Well, we arrived in London and immediately started researching local farmers markets so we could continue avoiding supermarkets. That turned out to be relatively easy thanks to London Farmers’ Market – all food and products are grown and produced within 100 miles of London. Some produce is organic, which is my preference when purchasing. This is a great way to meet local farmers but I wanted to find out more – so, this post is simply about sharing some of the Permaculture groups, initiatives and sites in London (UK) that I’ve been researching.
We are currently living in Zone 2 in West London and I have found it a challenge since I arrived to find permaculture sites within an hour’s travel time door to door on public transport. Space is limited and expensive and I guess the transient nature of central London’s residents isn’t conducive to these sorts of interests.… Read the rest
-
14 February 2011 - Sub-tropical Permaculture Design for Friends
Friends have recently purchased a house and they asked me to do a permaculture design for them. This post describes what I provided them with. I don’t have much experience (my only other full design is here) but I’ve had lots of fun thinking about it, feel really excited by some of the ideas I’ve provided and, of course, look forward to your feedback and suggestions which are always welcome.
There was no chance of getting a full design for my friend’s new house completed due to time, weather and other restrictions, so what I provided were some suggestions but warned them they would need to note the existing plants on the property and monitor the sun, wind, moisture, slope and movements to determine if these suggestions would indeed work. Also, I was aware that they wanted the first third of the backyard as a ‘show’ garden with the ‘hippy’ … Read the rest
-
3 February 2011 - Worldwide Permaculture Network
Back in September 2010 I (CJG) did a Permaculture Aid course with Geoff Lawton (founder of the Permaculture Research Institute) at his Zaytuna Farm in New South Wales. During that course he told us he was developing a kind of ‘Permaculture Facebook’ – a place for people and projects who have completed a Permaculture Design Certificate to share their exciting, solutions-based work being implemented worldwide.
And now… it’s HERE… well, the beta version anyway.
It looks pretty impressive so far. There are already hundreds of profiles created and over 30 projects entered. We are sure it will grow quickly with lots of inspiring people connecting and sharing their holistic, sustainable solutions.
For those of you who have completed your PDC, I encourage you to register.
-
31 January 2011 - Few days at the farm…
A few days ago, CJG and I were invited by Elisabeth Fekonia to spend few days at her farm, in order to give her a hand with the garden and the animals. We accepted gladly as we knew that in addition to being helpful, we’d also learn a lot. Indeed, Elisabeth is the person who taught us how to make homemade brie, cheddar, cottage cheese, butter, ghee, sour cream, yoghurt and kefir – all of this in a one day workshop only! But she also knows how to make sourdough bread, miso, saurkraut, rennet, soap (out of pig fat), sponge (out of the luffa vine), as well as how to build a house, make wooden furniture, digging dams, saving seeds, etc… We definitely encourage you to check out her website.
So we arrived there on Monday last week, and stayed until Thursday. A pretty short stay as you can … Read the rest
-
12 January 2011 - Harvesting during a flood
As we described in our first ‘harvest’ post, we want to share more photos from our garden with you.
At the moment our city is flooding severely. People are evacuating, packing up their things, thousands of homes have been filled with water and some have even lost their lives. On our side, we are lucky as we are on high ground. Many people have been “panic buying” supplies in preparation for isolation and lack of transport. Our CSA (community supported agriculture – see this post for information about CSAs), Food Connect, are having difficulty delivering fruit and vegetable boxes as their drivers can’t get through flooded roads. We have bought some fresh provisions we could carry from a nearby store (we don’t have a car) but we already have loads of grains, pasta, lentils and the like in our home to feel secure. Not to mention small gifts from … Read the rest
Blog top sites
