Random # 1 - The Beginning!

Civilised life as an adult is impossible without onions, garlic, coffee, milk, cheese, wine, beer, books, conversation, music and fun!  Fortunately, all of these things (OK, the “coffee” and “wine” are actually close substitutes!) are abundant, free and pleasant to make at Tymawr Farm.

Civilised and fulfilled life as a child is impossible without sausages, milk, Mummy and if possible,  Daddy*, songs, books, drawing, animals, walks, running and learning.  Fortunately, all of these things are abundant, free and pleasant to make at Tymawr Farm.

Anything that can be done at Tymawr Farm can be done on your own 0.67 acres per person!

I’m searching for something , many things.  Fulfilment, security, a sense of pride, the ability to look after my family in a meaningful way, good health, energy.  Increasingly, heightened I suppose by the arrivals of my two little children, Ben and Kate, I’m also searching for something tangible to pass on to the next generation.  I’m conscious that life when they are adults will be hugely different to that today, ‘Peak Oil’ has long since passed and in their lifetime it’s likely to run out all together. That means that things will inevitably change very dramatically, and an important legacy that I would like to leave would be to equip them with skills, tools and infrastructure to make life in that time pleasant and, if possible easy.  Finally, oil or no oil, I am desperate to give them an example of a sustainable, entrepreneurial, creative working life.  They may want to work in an office for a simpleton, with no connection to their "real life", and it they do and they’re happy then I will be happy too, but I would like to be able to show them that it doesn’t HAVE to be that way.

My children wear nylon,, mass produced clothes, they watch Disney, we drive in cars less than 10 years old, they are happy, we are happy, but we know that things will change.  We understand that things cannot go on as they are, we understand that we are powerless to stop things carrying on as they are, we understand that in our children’s life time we will be compelled to change.  Our aim is to be prepared for the change.

Poems # 1 - Winter Fields

To paraphrase Dylan Thomas "Working for someone else is the graveyard of creativity." and I guess the reason I've woken up feeling inspired is that I 'broke up' for Christmas yesterday!  Anyway, this came out all in rush this morning as I was tidying up, hope you enjoy it:

Winter Fields
Ensilvered grass, frozen,
brittle and bright
portends the banishment of night.
Which, usurped by Sun's
first feeble glow,
retreats before the light's advance across the snow.

Tymawr-Farm Events # 2 - Winter Woodland Walk

We had our first, annual Winter Woodland Walk on Sunday afternoon - we had a great turnout of 20 people, including family, neighbours and friends.  We started with a hot pork roll (saddleback), homemade mulled wine and a chat around a roaring log fire.  Then we put on our boots and coats and started our walk.  I gave an abridged version of the below, complete with homemade cider, Wurzels songs and badger mating calls!

Thanks to everyone who came - it was great to have you here & we hope you'll come again next year!

Tymawr-Farm Winter Woodland Walk – 16th December 2012

Fig 1: Tymawr-Farm Christmas 2009

(1):  In the back garden here we can see two essential parts of the cider-making process.  The first set of stones is an apple-mill.  The trough would be filled with apples, and the smaller stone which would have been mounted vertically would be rolled around the trough, mounted on an arm pivoting through the middle of the bigger stone.  This would make an apple mash or ‘Pomace’ which would then go into the cider-press.

The next stone is the base of a cider-press.  There is one complete with its woodwork in the Usk Museum of Rural Life (worth a visit – in many ways it is my fantasy shed!).  Two large oak uprights are linked with a cross-member and a sturdy screw to press the juice.  I’d love to get these stones set up again and working – I’ll get to our plans for an orchard later.

Fig 2: Cider Press in Usk Museum of Rural Life

(2): In the summer this lane is covered with Wild Strawberries – tiny little things.  Our neighbours told us that Auntie Catherine advised them to thread them onto a sturdy grass stem, and when it was full to eat them all at once.  Ben loves to search for them – they hide amongst the other plants at the base of the hedge, and when he finds one it goes immediately into his mouth – no chance for threading with him!

He’s a natural forager, I have a beautiful mental image of him one Friday afternoon in summertime, I drove home and found Jo and Ben picking blackberries on the Common.  From the nose down he was completely purple, with a great big grin!

(3): It’s cold tonight so I’m glad we’re all wrapped up warm.  We spent Christmas here in 2009 and I only just managed to get back here through the snow from work.  The next morning, although this is only a slight incline, it was impossible to get the car back up the road.  I now keep a shed full of rock-salt and a shovel on standby, and take a great interest in the grit container half way up the lane to make sure it’s full! 

Mum can remember the great snow in 1947 - the drifts were so deep that the authorities were unable to clear the roads, and local people and groups of ‘borstal boys’ from Prescoed prison (opened in 1939) cleared pedestrian-width pathways along them.  Mum can remember walking from Griffithstown with her mother and brother to visit Tymawr-Farm as a little girl (a journey of 5 miles).  What a journey that must have been – it certainly puts the few inches of snow that we see nowadays into perspective! 

Fig 3: The Lane Christmas 2009

Even that Winter wasn’t the worst – in 1962 it started snowing on boxing day, and this lane was blocked until March 1963!

The late snow seems to recur - it snowed here on the 7^th March 1898 when my Grandmother was born, again on the 7^th March 1947, and again when my Great-Grandfather died on the 11^th March 1963.  I haven’t worked the pattern out yet but it wouldn’t surprise me if we’re stuck here again in the next few years. 

(4): Little quarries are often found in the open countryside adjacent to small hamlets – they provided the stone to build the farmhouses and barns of course.  Glascoed is no exception – there is evidence of two separate small quarries on Tymawr-Farm.  One is near the house in what is known as the ‘Bear-Pit’, and another is in the woodland.  In British toponyms ‘Bear-Pit’ usually refers to a place where real bears really were baited with dogs, most popularly from the 16^th to the 19^th centuries and very often in old quarries.  Probably not a tradition we would like to revive!

In this area rich deposits of what, in geological textbooks is known as Glascoed Mudstone are found.  This is actually a Silurian Limestone.  This kind of rock was formed around 430 million years ago when most of the Southern hemisphere was land (the supercontinent Gondwana), and most of the Northern hemisphere was a vast ocean.  It was during this period that life began to appear on land for the first time in the form of simple plants, although aquatic life was already prolific and quite advanced by this time.

In addition to being used as stone for building, probably from the middle-ages when monks from Tintern Abbey (founded in the 12^th century), established a ‘satellite’ at Monkswood (Capel coed y mynach) and quarried the limestone on an ‘open-cast’ basis.  From the 16^th century onwards this limestone was also processed in small kilns to make lime.  This in turn would be used to make a form of cement, used in mortar, render and whitewash for house building.  The local vernacular owes its smart whitewashed appearance to lime. 

The lime production process is very simple – it is just the burning of limestone in air in a simple kiln.  The skill of the lime burner was to achieve the highest yield using the least fuel.  Fuel in this area would have been coal from the 19^th century, and prior to that charcoal – a process which I’d like to revive here in these woodlands, but probably for a more modern use – the barbeque!  There is evidence of 2 kilns just over the road from here in a small woodland currently owned by the Badger Trust.

On a map dated 1892 in our woodland there is an ‘old lime kiln’ marked, in addition to 2 house-sized buildings which on an 1896 conveyance are described as ‘Bailey Edward’, and referred to as an ancient “messuage” (meaning a farmhouse and associated buildings). “Bailey” in this description is the same as the ‘Motte & Bailey’ castle: The ‘Motte’ was a circular earth mound, created by excavating a moat.  Upon this mound a wooden castle would have been built.  At the base of the castle, outside the moat, a fortified enclosure of perhaps an acre or so would have been built, and the community’s living accommodation, stores, well and animal housing would be situated inside.  Over time, the “Bailey”, or “Beili” in Welsh came to refer to any enclosure surrounding a farm house, and the “fortress” connotation was lost.  So it is likely that Bailey Edward was the farm-yard and paddock surrounding Edward’s, or the Edwards’ family’s farm.

By the 19^th century most lime for cement was produced on a larger scale, and the limestone quarried here at that time was more likely to have been crushed and used as road-surfacing material.

It would be really interesting to uncover and fire up the old kiln and have a go at making some lime.  I don’t know if it could be commercially interesting any more.  One fact I came across in my research was that almost all Tortillas are made using lime – the corn is soaked in a dilute solution prior to grinding to promote elasticity.  Perhaps we should start the Tymawr-Farm authentic Mexican foods company?

 (5): There has been a strong Baptist church tradition in Glascoed for centuries, and an interesting note I came across not long ago referred to an annual ‘Cherry Tea’ to raise funds in the 1930s to build the Manse for the minister to live in opposite Mount Zion chapel (built in 1817).  Prior to that the minister had lived ‘remotely’ from the village, and the building of a Manse was thought to be necessary to attract a suitably qualified and reliable candidate.  Aberaeron House at that time had a large Cherry Orchard which provided the Cherries, and many people attended to eat their allotted ¼ lb of cherries, drink tea, sing songs, play games, chat and pay a small subscription towards the building fund.  The house at the end of our lane is called “Cherry Orchard” and it would be lovely to imagine a huge orchard stretching all the way from Aberaeron House, down past Tymawr and to Cherry Orchard. 

My Great-Grandfather Emmanuel Sainsbury was chapel secretary at the time of the Cherry Teas (and until his death in the 1960’s - he served in the role for over 60 years).  Also, and I hope coincidentally, after a 3 tender process, he was the building contractor selected for the job of building the Manse!

One of the games they played at the Tea was called ‘Kiss in the Ring’ – in this game all the players except one would sit down in a ring, and one person would be ‘it’.  The ‘it’ player would walk around the outside of the ring and drop a handkerchief behind one of the sitters.  They would then have to jump up and run around the circle in a clockwise direction while the ‘it’ player ran round anticlockwise – whoever managed to sit back down first was ‘in’ and the loser was ‘it’.  If ‘it’ managed to get someone out they were allowed to kiss them.  I can imagine in the slower-maturing 1930’s, particularly in rural communities where young people may not see unrelated members of the opposite sex very often, events like these teas may have been when many people met their future husbands and wives.  I remember Auntie Catherine once telling us how fascinating she found the ‘dark, bright-eyed boys’ at chapel – I wonder if she enjoyed playing ‘Kiss in the Ring’?

(6): On the subject of Orchards, at one time there would have been extensive apple orchards around this area for the production of cider.  It was normal practice to pay a part of worker’s wages during haymaking time in cider, and the farms with the best cider usually had their pick of the best workers.  My mother can remember taking my Great-Grandfather’s lunch out to the fields during haymaking – she told me that it usually included a white enamelled jug and a what she described as a mug, which sounded suspiciously like a tankard.  Although the orchard would have been long gone by that time I like to think that sometimes the refreshments may have been something cidery!

Fig 4: 2011 Cider making!

Just up the road from here (you can see their lights) are two houses, one named “Berllan” (Orchard in Welsh) and the other Orchard House.  Another piece of evidence which we’ll see shortly is a great, ancient Perry Pear tree.  Interestingly Perry Pear trees live for around 300 years, and Cider Apple trees for only around 100 years, so it’s quite common to find only a pear tree or two where once a great cider orchard would have stood.  The cider tradition is one which we are planning to revive here at Tymawr-Farm, we have draughted plans for a 2 acre orchard (around 700 trees), which should allow us to produce around 12,000 litres or 20,000 pints of cider one day.  I hope you’ll all come back to help with the 2022 haymaking – we would be glad to pay you in delicious cider – whether we’d succeed in actually making any hay may be a different matter!  In the meantime we have a few glasses of 2011 vintage cider which was made from apples from Tymawr, Mum’s garden, and also a few precious kilos of the tiny Perry-Pears still being produced by the great old tree, which I hope you’ll enjoy with us.  Please note at this stage only the non-drivers are allowed to have any cider – it is a bit potent!

(7): This little woodland is about 2 acres in size, and consists mostly of Ash, with a decent mix of other species – some are welcome like Wild Cherry, Oak, Silver Birch, Hazel, and Eucalyptus.  Others are basically weeds – like Elder and thorn trees (probably evidence of ancient hedge locations or escapees from existing hedges).  We’ll make sure we keep some of the Elder trees intact though – they make a really delicious country wine, especially when mixed with Sloes (the fruit of the Blackthorn tree).  We made 35 bottles last year, all of which have mysteriously disappeared!

We have several plans for this woodland – as we clear the ‘weeds’ and start to coppice the Hazel, we will make charcoal from the clearings.  My prototype charcoal making system consists of a 50 gallon steel drum, a shovel, a bag of sand, a long stick and plenty of hope!  I also hope that some of you will be barbecuing on Tymawr-Farm charcoal next summer!

To heat the barn & hot water currently uses about 2000 litres of oil per year, which will increase when we move into the big house.  I estimate that to totally heat the house with wood will require around 20 cubic metres of seasoned firewood per year.  That’s 20 65ft Ash or birch trees – that kind of size of tree would be about 30 years old.  We plan to fell and replant this woodland on a 40 year cycle – each year we would fell about 200 sq.m of woodland (that’s about 20 trees with the kind of density we have here), and replant with high-quality hardwood species.  So we should be able to be self-sufficient and carbon-neutral for heating.  Over time it may also be possible to create a surplus for sale, and diversify into related products like wood-chip, chipped bark, timber and so on.

Finally, I mentioned “Bailey Edward’s” messuage, the ruins of which were here near the pond in the late 19^th Century.  We would love to put 2 cabins, yurts or similar holiday lets here in the future.  We think it would be a magical place for families to come on holiday, build dens, enjoy the tranquillity, the peace of a wood fire and gaze at the stars.  Our plan is to be up and running with some cabins here in 2015.

I’d also love to let our rare-breed pigs roam here, but as Jo pointed out with her usual wisdom, not many people would like to go on holiday right next to a pig farm!

Fig.5: Beautiful Saddleback Pigs!

(8): On the subject of the stars, let’s stop for a minute and have a look at the sky. 

Look north to see the plough or big-dipper & Cassiopeia (the ‘W’ shaped one) – in Greek mythology she was the vain Queen of the Ethiopians, whose boast that she & her daughter Andromeda were more beautiful than the sea-nymphs brought down the wrath of Poseidon the sea-god who decided to unleash a fearsome sea-monster called the Cetus upon the country.  In order to appease him, on advice from a wise Oracle, Cassiopeia decided to sacrifice Andromeda by chaining her to a rock to be eaten by the Cetus.  Andromeda was saved in the nick of time by the hero Perseus, but Cassiopeia did not escape her punishment, and remains to this day imprisoned in her chair in the sky by Poseidon forever.  So, the constellation is supposed to represent Cassiopeia tied to her chair – I can’t see it yet, but perhaps after a bit more cider it will become clearer?!

Look South to see Orion, the hunter in Greek mythology (see his dog).

(9): In the 1890’s when my Great-Grandfather bought this land from his uncle he may have adopted the then still fairly novel practise of having a Christmas Tree in his home at New Inn.  We usually think of the Christmas Tree as something traditionally British but it actually only came to Britain in the 1830’s, imported from Germany.  Queen Victoria married Albert, her German cousin in 1840 and the British public started to embrace German customs like this as fashionable.  I’m sure this custom would have taken a while longer to reach rural Monmouthshire!  We plan to allocate an acre and a half to Christmas trees here, and in 7 or 8 years we would love to ask you to come back and ‘pick your own’, hopefully with a glass of our cider, hopefully you’ll be able to go home with a boot full of well-seasoned firewood, charcoal and pork too!

Thank you!  If you found this interesting please keep in touch and follow our progress on www.Tymawr-Farm.com!

References:

Casseiopeia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiopeia

Chapel: www.glascoed.com        Really interesting and useful resource covering family trees, history of old houses and churches and chapels in Glascoed.

Christmas Trees: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_tree

Lime Making Process: www.newtonabbot24.co.uk/newton-abbot-lime-kilns-c622.html

Limestone:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_Monmouthshire

Noises, Badger: www.badgerland.co.uk

Quarrying: www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php/50825-Glascoed-quarry-03-06-10

Various old indentures, conveyances and plans             

New Skills # 2 - Cheeseboards?

When I cut down a silver birch a while ago, I cut a couple of thin sections with the vague idea of making something out of them at some point.  They've been slowly drying in the house for the last few months, and I decided on the weekend to finish the 'seasoning' process by 'kiln drying' one of them in the oven.  After a few hours at 100C it was starting to look better and I decided to pull it out and put it on a cooling rack.

Hot & Fresh!

 At that moment Ben (my 2 year old) walked into the kitchen and pointed at the cooling rack, open mouthed with horror.  He looked at me and very clearly and loudly said "Daddy, I DON'T want to eat a log!"

What a joy and privilege it is to bring up children!

The next step with this particular 'log' is to de-bark, sand both sides to a shine, wipe with oil and give to a lucky mystery Christmas present recipient.  I can imagine it with 3 beautiful Monmouthshire cheeses, one on each 'lobe', with grapes in the middle!

New Skills #1 - Pride before a fall!

I was cleaning the chimneys in the 'old house' this afternoon.  The first one, above the ancient, beautiful range was fairly straightforward and I lit a little fire just to make sure it was drawing well - all OK.  The next chimney is actually a flue, a stainless steel liner inside the old stack, and connected to a cast iron woodburning stove.  After a slightly grim start (mummified squirrel found inside long disused stove - completely dessicated - horrid!), it went well when I started joining and pushing the rods up the flue, not much soot.  In my head I had planned a simple, lucrative sideline in chimney-sweeping as one of the income streams necessary to make my family's independence a reality, "This is EASY!" I thought to myself.  Almost precisely at that point, the rod jammed and I couldn't push it up OR pull it back.  I kept my head, tried to twist the rod, tried to jerk the brush, tried to move smoothly, tried to combine all the possible variables to get unjammed.  No luck.  The next approach was the standard 'Brute force & ignorance" (as my Dad used to say) - to madly pull the brush back down with all my might, and when that didn't work, to push it as hard as I could.  Initially no luck, but all of a sudden it freed.  Brilliant!  I then tried to draw the brush back down the flue, but came to a definate and immovable stop!  I then pushed further up in the 'free' direction, and went outside (with my site light as it was dark by this point) to see what was going on.

Something's wrong - more investigation needed!

In the gloom I could see what I thought was the end of the brush drooping over at a crazy angle, like maybe one of the rods had folded.  I decided to push more rods through so I could get a better view.

The horrific truth!

As I probably should have noticed, there was a rain-cap on top of the flue, it was now firmly attached to my brush.  Two options were now available to me:
1. Undo the brush and try to withdraw the rods back down the chimney
2. Pull the brush from outside the house and try to pull all the rods up the flue and out
I decided to go with option 1.  It went well for the first few metres, then jammed again.  I have a set of modern plastic / brass rods (from www.screwfix.com) where the brass connection is more or less flush with the plastic rod, and when I need extra-length I also have a set of ancient bamboo rods.  The brass connections on these, depending on the particular bit of bamboo, can be significantly stepped up from the rod, and I guessed it was one of these which had got stuck on the lip of what was left of the stainless flue.
Option 2 then.  I pushed a few more sections through so I could grab the end from ground-level, and started to pull.  After a few worrying jams I finally managed to pull all (by now 25 metres!) of rods out and breathed a massive sigh of relief!
I lit a little 'test fire' in the woodburner - it drew brilliantly and looks great through the glass panel in the door.  Can't wait to get both fires fully stoked up and the ground floor of the house mistletoe'd, mulled, decorated etc. in time for the Winter Woodland Walk!

Vision # 10
I've got several concerns about keeping gramniverous stock (although I love my chickens and pigs), most importantly:

1.  Feed price fluctuations:  Grains are commodities, traded Worldwwide.  Like every commodity, the only winners in grain are the traders.  Price fluctuations and currency variations combine to make an unhedgeable risk  for a business on our scale.
2. Even if price was OK, the Transport Waste is unacceptable.  I want my animals to be fed from local feed ideally, and certainly not from feed which has been imported from the other side of the world.
3. Even if price was OK, the Overprocessing Waste is unacceptable.  Grain is typically grown in a monocultural system, poor soil kept on life support by chemicals.  Totally unsustainable.

The above combine to make keeping pigs and chickens as I currently keep them unsustainable.

Ideally I'd like to 'grow my own' pig & chicken feed, and have considered several 'free' foods which I can probably gather already from Tymawr-Farm, or establish here over time:

	Protein	Fat	Carbohydrate
Ideal Pig Food	17%	4%	34%
Acorns	7%	25%	42%
Walnuts	15%	65%	14%
Hazelnuts	15%	61%	17%
Apples	0%	0%	14%
Pears	0%	0%	15%
Jerusalem Artichokes	2%	0%	17%
Sweetcorn (on the cob)	4%	2%	22%
Skimmed Milk	3%	0%	5%

The 'Ideal Pig Food' percentages come from very roughly (with my finger!) measuring a chart in the very interesting http://www2.hawaii.edu/~halina/201/pigc.pdf [accessed on 5.12.2012].  All the other data comes from http://skipthepie.org// [accessed on 05.12.2012]. 

The most obvious issue with a home-made pig feed, when compared with a commercial 'concentrated feed' is how to provide the required amount of protein.  However, I guess the thing to remember is that 'normal' pig feeds, as their name suggests, are concentrated.  SO, it may be quite possible to feed twice (or even more) the weight of 'free' food, to give the same nutritional value.  Unfortunately, in these 'free' foods, protein seems to be fairly closely proportional to fat, which in the 'ideal pig food' makeup is fairly low.  It seems that nutritionally the pigs ideal food is something like steak and pasta!  Maybe if we're keeping the pigs outside 'free-range' or inside in relatively spacious pens (depending on the weather conditions), that more fat in the feed is acceptable (i.e. our pigs will burn that fat faster than a 'sedentary' industrially farmed pig!).

Nature walk on Friday to see what free feed I can spot for my next batch of weaners!
 

Vision # 9 - "Lean-Living" or "Self-Abundance"

In Vision # 7 I calculated that there are 0.67 acres of farmed land in the UK per person.  That means, in order to live 'Self-Abundantly' our family should be able to not only survive, but prosper on 2.68 acres.  My ideal is for that to mean the land provides almost everything - food, drinks, fuel, shelter, clothing, furniture, 'things', entertainment, leisure and health!

Reflecting on ways of achieving such a lot with such a little I started to think about 'Lean' (a synonym for the 'Toyota Production System' (TPS)).  This may be an unusual source of inspiration for an aspiring 'Self-Abundantist' (??I know, it doesn't quite work does it?), and it would be tempting to think that the automotive industry, arch-polluter that it is, has nothing to offer to those who seek to make life sustainable, but ironically, the more I think about it the more I'm convinced that TPS may hold the solution.

The best introduction to the subject is 'Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production' by Ohno Taiichi, the genius-hero behind Toyota's modern day success.  Written in a beautifully simple, matter-of-fact and humble way, Ohno describes the origin of the system in post-war Japan.  I'll summarise it another time, but it's a book I love.

Ohno's system is, at it's core, a rigorous system of applied common-sense.  It uses simple, human-friendly, dogged techniques like 'asking why 5 times' to get to the root cause of problems so that they can be permanently corrected, and enumerates a system of 'waste-spotting' as an aide-memoir to workers and engineers to help to improve their processes.  It is this last 'waste-categorisation' technique which I think would be a great starting point - it already has great synergy with a lot 'sustainable' / 'environmental' literature.  Ohno describes 7 wastes:

1. Overproduction: Producing more than is required, or ahead of the time that it is required.
2. Transport: Unnecessary movement of people, materials and so on between places.
3. Inventory: Building unnecessarily large amounts of stock.
4. Motion:  Organising a work-place to mean that people's physical movements (reaching, walking etc.) are wasteful.
5: Overprocessing: Unnecessarily complicated processes, or processes that are wasteful of resources, or time.
6: Rework: Doing things again instead of doing them right the first time.
7: Waiting: Wasting time.

A few of the above immediately leap forward as being incredibly helpful in thinking about ways to resolve humanity's general predicament and our particular one. 

Transport, particularly when oil begins to become more and more expensive as 'conventionally extractable' supplies run out, and will ultimately be exhausted.  Toyota's strategy to minimise this waste was to 'localise' - they produce their products in the region in which they are used, they locate their suppliers adjacent to their own factories.  Huge synergy of ideas with the 'local-food' and 'food-miles' movements.
Overproduction & Inventory, essentially these are observations about the unsustainability of the old method of building / producing products to meet a general or speculative customer demand.  This leads to too much being produced, too soon, tieing up valuable cash and generally also leading to resources & people being idle when the 'product-mountain' is gradually consumed over a period of time.  Toyota's aim to counteract these wastes is to produce to order, to fulfil real customer requirements, as nearly as possible without stock.  Some observations from me on Overproduction and Inventory in the context of food > how much food is thrown away in the UK and how many chemicals / additives are introduced to food to artificially extend it's shelf life?  The additive 'solution' is a great example of failing to address the root cause of the problem - the issue is not that food doesn't last long enough but rather that instead of being produced in our homes or within our communities it is produced on the other side of country or even the world, and then spends days, weeks or months being transported or stored in warehouses.
Overprocessing & Rework: These wastes speak eloquently to the necessity to carefully use resources.

I've got to finish tonight, but I'm really excited about this idea!  More soon hopefully! 

Vision #8 - Some Post-Oil Basics (Draft!!)

Below are some un-ordered thoughts about what might happen when oil runs out - in due course I'd like our little farm to be an exemplar for the 'oil-free' life.

Thoughts on fossil-fuel

Leading estimates are that coal and oil will probably run out in my lifetime, and definately during my children's lifetime.   

Some areas of the world will be unaffected – they never acquired the addiction to oil in the first place; most parts of the world will be devastated.  Politicians know this to be the case, and yet what are their strategies?  Broadly twofold:

1.       Secure a relatively larger amount of the remaining supply for the use of our own particular country than our ‘competitor’ countries.  By doing so we will delay the inevitable for our own country, whilst hastening the demise of others, by a decade, or, optimistically perhaps two.  The recent wars between the ‘west’ (hopeless oil addicts) and the ‘east’ (possessor’s of the oil which is left) evidence this kind of strategy.

2.       Reduce the rate of consumption.  Examples include mandated fuel-efficiency targets for cars and ‘speed limits’ for container ships.  Again, this is a ‘delay the inevitable’ strategy, buying ten or twenty years of continued stability before chaos ensues.

To start to imagine a future without oil and coal it is probably helpful to first think about what the western world was like before those fuels were discovered, or at any rate, before they were widely used.  It would also be helpful to consider societies which never developed the addiction in the first place.

The world will change in our lifetime and the change, albeit hard in the short-term, like many changes will ultimately be for the better.

1.       The cost of oil, and hence ‘logistics’ will continue to rise exponentially.

2.       The people in ‘low cost countries’ will continue to demand higher wages, and no longer be content to produce electronic goods and luxuries whilst not being able to afford them themselves.

3.       1. & 2., above, will mean that the manufacture of products local to the consumption of those products will once again be economically viable.  Intuitively we all know that shipping materials half-way around the globe MUST be wasteful, but hitherto the unimaginative have been able to produce evidence to the contrary.  This will very soon be impossible, short of committing fraud.

4.       This will allow the ‘benefits’ culture to be largely eliminated, except in cases of real want, by replacing ‘benefits’ with ‘local jobs’.

Economists assume several correlations:

1.       (Economic i.e. Paper-Money) Prosperity is in proportion with good health.

2.       (Economic i.e. Paper-Money) Prosperity is in proportion with good education.

3.       (Economic i.e. Paper-Money) Prosperity is in inverse proportion with crime.

Statistics show all of these to be incorrect.  In our hearts we knew.  We knew that Cuba, despite being as poor as the proverbial church-mouse has the highest adult literacy rate in the world.   We knew that the USA, despite having one of the highest GDPs per capita in the world is close to the bottom in terms of health.

Great ships also traversed the globe in the age of sail.  (Compare time taken to sail from India to UK now and then, compare mass / carrying capacity of ships).

“Lean Living” means minimum input food production.  Our tastes may need to change if the human race is going to continue.  In the West we may need to learn to love apples again (in their normal season) instead of bananas.  In the West Indies they will need to learn to love bananas instead of apples.

The “Lean Living” concept could be really useful – the 5 main points of lean:

1.       Define value from the Customer’s point of view

2.       Eliminate waste from each individual process step

3.       Arrange process steps to minimise inventory and promote flow

4.       Blah

5.       Continually re-examine 1-4 to pursue perfection.

Are mostly applicable – the obsession with inventory is sometimes unhelpful with a food-production context, however, necessary minimum levels are also context-specific.

We’ll need to stop our obsession with making logistics more efficient – instead we’ll need to produce everything we need at the place (and if possible point) of consumption, making logistics, however efficient, obsolete.

What % of wool clothing in the UK is produced in the UK?  What happens to the ‘UK clip’?  What % of clothing in the UK is made of wool?  Where do the materials for UK clothing come from?

Extraction of all minerals and ores is dead.  We’re now into re-using or re-cycling what we’ve already got.

Steel will soon be replaced by wood for many structural and decorative applications.  The cost of steel will rise exponentially, related both to the cost of fossil fuel and the increasing scarcity of the ore, meaning that extraction is more difficult and hence more costly.

Local self-abundance will be the future.  Holidays will be dead – people will be born, grow up, live, relax, work, in the same locality. 

Granularity will be key – people will need to start to see the ‘little picture’, intensively managing small areas of land without wasting a thing.

A ‘pre-coal’ world-view will need to be redeveloped, with modern home-comforts.

Prices and priorities will be rebalanced.  More time and money will be spent on sourcing and preparing food and fuel.  Less time will be spent on paid work, partly because there will be less of it to do, and partly because we won’t be able to afford to do it.

By 2050 we will all be cottagers.

Electricity will continue (what % is wasted getting it from a remote, centralised power station to our home?  Compare this with Combined Heating & Power options).

Centralisation is ALWAYS wrong.

The REAL cost of ‘cheap’ furniture, ‘cheap’ fashion etc. will be understood – people will be more economically literate.

In the future, most people will use inherited homes, furniture and belongings.  If someone in the micro-community needs a table, chair or house, one will be made to the pattern of the best one in the community (or if possible, improved using the experience & ingenuity of the community).  Even better, one which is surplus to requirements will be released from the ‘community 5S’ store (the new charity store of the micro-community).

Reflect on how babies / children / old people will be cared for in the future.  Note to self: There were Doctors and Universities before coal!

Watchwords of the future will be:

·         Cooperative

·         Individuality

·         Family

·         Community

·         Self reliance

·         Generosity

·         Abundance

·         Humanity

·         Responsibility

·         Ingenuity

·         Innovation

Ambition will take a different form from that displayed by those who currently pursue ‘big-jobs’ working for others in their acquisitive pursuit of fulfilment.  In the future such people will find their skills surplus to requirements.

Business owners, farmers and x, will step forward to provide leadership when required in the new small communities.

Politicians in the conventional sense (wanton spenders of other people’s money) will find little place.

Globalisation in the form which we currently understand it will end.

Make do, mend, extend and re-use will

Globalization will be limited to the exchange of ideas and not goods or people.

Wood is the answer:

·         Fuel – as wood, as charcoal, as other stuff to be invented in the future….

·         Healing the atmosphere (as a net absorber of CO2).

·         Construction material – houses, machines and things

·         Food – for humans and animals

·         Soil stabilisation

·         Soil improvement – to bring minerals to the surface, mulch etc.

·         Animal habitat – for game – link to “minimum input” food production philosophy

Get passive!

Beware of so called “Green” technologies which require fossil-based fuels to produce.

Check that it’s possible fully reprocess copper, steel and aluminium using electricity, and not ‘raw state’ fossil fuels.  Assuming these things can be reprocessed using electricity, then this can be generated using hydro / wind / solar / CHP / biomass.

1000 examples:

1.       Shoes will be made of leather, wood, cotton, wool and latex.  Not oil.

2.       Blah

1000. Blah

There’s nothing like necessity to bring people together, align their interests, aims, energy and hearts.  Peak oil is the necessity, the imperative.  It should be welcomed, encouraged and embraced instead of deferred and feared.

The Rules:

1.       Immediately stop doing things that you know to be wrong:

a.       Don’t buy food which is produced far away from where you live.  Change your tastes if necessary to follow this rule.

b.      Don’t buy ANYTHING from a ‘logistics’ company (by which I mean a Supermarket or ANY national or multi-national company).

2.       Blah

10. Blah

Vision # 7 - Metrics 

Some numbers which I found interesting below - from http://www.ukagriculture.com/uk_farming.cfm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom.

I read the key points as follows:

1.  In order to be completely self-abundant each person in the UK needs to obtain all of their food and drink from 0.67 acres of farmland.
2. To contribute it's 'fair share' Tymawr-Farm should sustain 24 people!

If  you assume that each person eats and drinks say, £20 per week, that means sales of £24960 on our 16 acres.

Scary!  Would be wonderful if it could be possible.  In order for the UK to be 'self-abundant', it MUST be possible!

Tymawr-Farm Events! #1 - Winter Wonderland Walk

In addition to our famous annual 'Lads & Dad's Camping Weekend' (same weekend as the Usk Show), we have now added a 'Winter Wonderland' walk through our woodland to the Tymawr-Farm calendar, which we hope will also become an annual event.

The plan is that people will start arriving at about 3PM and have some home-made cider punch, sloe-gin or hot chocolate for the kids / drivers.  While we have some light we'll go and feed the pigs and collect the eggs, and then go back into the house to have a yummy pork roll by a roaring log fire.

By this time it should be getting dark so we'll then walk up the lane, and into the Woodland.  I've been busy this afternoon laying woodchip on the path which is VERY muddy, and starting to build a bonfire in the clearing near the great, ancient Perry Pear tree which will be the focal point of the walk.  The plan is to light up the paths with some Christmas lights and uplight some of the beautiful trees to make the woodland look really magical.

As we make our way through the Woodland I'll tell people about the current make-up of the woodland (species, management), it's history (some interesting lime quarrying / burning activity), and our plans for the future (see Vision #4, charcoal #1).  That should take us to our first pause, lamps near the pond illuminating some more punch / drinks / nibbles and some goody bags for the kids (TBD).

A few more minutes will take us to the bonfire, where we'll do some more chatting, snacking and punch-drinking, and have a good warm up before making our way back through the Woodland and home!

Loads of work left to do but can't wait!

Vision #6 - Independence Plan Detail

In a previous post I described a chart I was putting together.  Here it is!

I'd be very interested in anyone's comments!  It's best printed on A0 or used with a microscope!