Urban Farming 101

Urban Farming 101.

 

I found this today, interesting for you eco sustainability tread lightly on the planet people.

Sustainable Fridge by Emily Cummins

I am amazed and heartened all at the same time, the sustainable design award designer Emily Cummins. This young woman has come up with a brilliant solution to a difficult problem. She also talks a lot of sense in this article.

http://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/meet-inventor-electricity-free-fridge-powered-dirty-water

The Sustainable Fridge

Of course we all know why there is no incentive to companies to design and produce sustainable goods, the great public would not need to keep buying replacements and dirty technology is cash cheap technology. It has been there for years and doesn’t need investment in new machinery.

In fact, if we all made a sustainable fridge and reduced the amount of cold store items we buy, we would never need to buy another fridge. It may require a change of lifestyle, a more thoughtful approach to shopping and storing.

If we all lived more local (i.e. did not spend wasteful hours commuting, burning energy, doing work for free for our bosses who don’t give a tinkers cuss for us or our welfare) we would have more time to grow and store our own food.

If we didn’t have our gas guzzlers, of whatever description, there would be less pollution to suffocate the plants. More plants, more traditional non hybridised flowers would equal more essential insects without which we will not survive.

Of course no government would agree to the necessary measures, they want their big cars and expensive estates. Their chums need to be looked after so that, at the end of their reign, they can get a lucrative consultancy. Jet setting off to the four corners of the globe (is that an oxymoron?) instead of using good technology to increase communication without the need for travel.

My Garden today

I thought I had better make full use of the SUN, yes we have sun today. I mentioned my cherry tree earlier,

It is on the shaded side of the house.

Some other images from my garden this morning. The sun is so bright it has bleached out some of the colour and the dwarf apple was moving in the ‘breeze’ so it’s not very clear, oh well I tried. Hope you enjoy this small piece of saelig sussex.

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Huzzah

I am having a lazy morning before leaping off to work. As I type this there is a strange bright blue hue in the sky, after the last few days I was beginning to forget what sunshine looked like.

I can hear birds singing and the light breeze is gently caressing the blossom on my tiny morello cherry tree. It’s no good, I can’t sit here, the outdoors calls.

Look what I found …

I have been spending a little time browsing around on here this morning. I found something quite lovely, here http://viennarichards.org/2012/04/30/the-pure-beauty-of-this-planet/

Kind of puts the visible skies here in the UK to shame, at least where I live. The light pollution is so bad that even on my beloved South Downs at night it is hard to get a good view of the sky.

Birthday

Tumbleweed in ventricle
empty space silent echoes
once filled with sights and sounds

Sun rises on, This day
deepening darkness
driving chills deeper to the core

hope like a limescale tap
slowly slowly weakens
reach out touching nothing …

Cameron and his Posh Chums

Cameron said to Mrs may

My chums they feel the pinch

It’s up to you and Winsor too

To find some cash now do your bit

So Tom consulted, advised, considered

Report it followed first report

‘The upshot is, the Rozzers CAN

help out Cameron’s chums.

Reduce their pension, for which,

They can pay for longer more,

Work longer years to qualify,

For less than they got before.

Fitness test will reduce the old,

They’ll be forced to early retire,

They’ll never serve out ‘til the end,

So we save even more.

May goes to Cameron with her plan,

‘Oh wizard wheeze indeed.

My chums can find a use for this,

Another Lamborghini.

Cameron plays with family,

Its Sunday no work for he,

His mates have come for caviar,

Champers, oysters and some tea.

Marvellous Moped

I have been sad for the last few days. My poor little 1963 Raleigh Runabout failed it’s MOT.

Now, I have never been mechanically minded, but I am slowly learning (what’s that about old dogs and new tricks) how to come to grips with 1960’s British / French engineering.

Fortunately the only issue was a broken and loose spokes and a couple of nuts that needed tightening.

Now, where can I get some spokes for a 1963 moped? Fortunately my new best friend raleigh-ace was able to provide precisely the thing I needed.

Wheel removed, tyre taken off, disaster. What looked like the original tube, covered in patches begins to disintegrate in my hands. I now have only 48 hours before the MOT advisory expires and I will have to pay for a whole new test. Cunning plan, use the rear wheel off my other Runabout.

All went well until I realised the sprockets needed to come off and then having done that, the brake cables on Red Raleigh weren’t long enough for the White Bike’s break adjuster. S**t.

Spokes fixed on the Red Raleigh wheel, this took about 10 minutes. I then spent three hours trying to mend punctures, holes, perished rubber. I knew from experience that the tubes are not that easy to come by.

Finally, my bike passed it’s MOT, just before the advisory expired. The icing on the cake, Rob my very special mechanic had an inner tube in stock and having seen this bike for the first time has christened it, ‘The Beast‘.

I am now back on the road and ready to burn up the town, at a whole 33 miles per hour! Apologies for the poor camera work!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZO9A9sPjaM&feature=youtu.be

Water Water everywhere still not for my hose …

I should like to start by saying a Big Thank You to Vicky, I don’t know how you did it but you did.

Here in my little corner of the South East we are in a bit of a rain shadow. Over the last few years the rainfall seems to have been reducing, the hose bans more frequent and drought warnings every year.

This year the ban came into effect in early April and the drought has been declared the worst for decades. Just recently, over the last week or so, we have had the odd bit of rain. Today,

My little patch of suburbia is flooding. So Vicky, thanks for sending the water, I’m very grateful. What’s the secret, having you been doing a rain dance?

Trumping Wind Power

I wonder what people think is more important, providing cheap sustainable electricity for the citizen, or a round of golf for the privileged?

Donald Trump, the well known ‘Green’ activist is apparently outraged.

Like or loathe Alex Salmond he has said that he wants Scotland to produce the equivalent of 100% of his countries, let’s not pretend they are really a part of the UK anymore, electricity needs from renewable sources by 2020. I would have thought this is a perfectly sane and rational decision from a Scottish Parliamentarian to take in his nations interests.

Mr Trump thinks that the presence of a mere 11 wind turbines in Aberdeen Bay will so blight the spot that his one billion pound golf resort will become less profitable. The turbines will spoil his customers sea view. Shouldn’t you keep your eye on the ball when playing golf? He claims that Scotland will become a third world wasteland that foreign investors will avoid. At least it’s citizens will be able to make tea into the future!

Thanks BBC for the information here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-17826561

Now far be from me to criticise Mr Trump, I am sure he is an altruistic kind of guy. He has said that he will spend 10 million pounds on fighting the wind turbines erection. The erection of the turbines will bring lasting fiscal benefit and employment opportunities stretching into the future beyond the demise of Mr Trump and his personal money making enterprises. He complains that wind power is not effective without subsidy. Well, if we all paid the actual cost of things instead of subsidised costs of things perhaps we would all be less inclined to use more than we need.

Who the hell does Trump think he is? He is not Scottish, he does not live in Scotland, he has only invested a paltry 1bn pounds. The offshore farm is worth 30bn of investment.

Trump cares about the planet I am sure, that is why he seems to take every opportunity to fly everywhere. He could surely have presented his evidence to the committee via internet conference call or whatever. However, he chose to fly to make a personal appearance.

Perhaps Mr Trump is feeling the pinch in these financially straightened times, in November 2011 he claimed to be worth 7bn dollars US. At 65 does he think he has time left to spend all the money he has made off the backs of the poor and the blighted?

Trump is supposed to be a businessman. A business man looks for opportunities for profit continuing into the future, rather than the blinkered view of the flash Harry quick buck merchant. Mr Trump it seems has become myopic in his dotage, he cannot see the extended profit of wind power. The capital cost may be large but the investment stream will last way beyond the grass he is cultivating.

Does Trump really believe that leisure should take precedence over investment in infrastructure? An infrastructure designed to work far beyond peak oil, when his customer base will no longer be able to fly, except maybe by airship or hot air balloon. He could probably provide all the hot air, at a cost, for his chums to inflate said balloons.

Employment for the local economy? I suppose Trumps customers can look forward to being caddied by exclusively Scots caddies? Accommodation serviced by exclusively Scots staff? I think not, cheap labour flown in from the Phillipines or wherever.  If they are looked after by Scots people, they will probably be humiliated by being forced to wear the Tartan Trump, wear plaid and walk around greeting guests with a cheery ‘Och aye the noo‘ and other US held stereotypical attributes given to the Scots.

Trump would probably rather we used oil, coal or nuclear. If the Scottish Parliament collapses and agrees not to put the wind farm in the bay, I hope they put a socking great nuclear plant right next door to Trumps Tee.

Mr Trump, you cannot be a nimby here, even your yard ain’t that big.