Fifty Pioneering Acres - a bit more about Lammas Ecovillage

So how do we move on from industrial agriculture to a sustainable way of producing food (...and everything else we need)? Here's a bit more about the Lammas project which certainly has at least some of the answers.
I thought it sounded brilliant when I first heard about it back in 2008 and went on to volunteer there several times. Check out their website too.

BEFORE: the fields of the 50 acre site were heavily grazed by sheep and didn't produce much of an income for one family

AFTER: a group of nine families bought the site and moved on, each developing their land and building their home on it in their own way. Planning permission was possible because of the Welsh One Planet Development initiative, many more sites have now been developed in this way. One of the planning stipulations was that each family should gain part of their income from working on the land, which they successfully do in various ways. I love the way it's teeming with life now!

There's a lot of preparation work in a project like this, planning roads, paths, fences, gates etc etc etc

Serious road making equipment, I wonder how many man hours it would have taken to put in the roads without fossil fuel...

Nigel and Cassie's plot, they're the couple I initially got in touch with and volunteered for, mainly on their roundhouse.

Start of the roof going up.

That's Simon Dale of grand design fame helping with the reciprocating timbers. His own website has more about his wonderful buildings and natural living philosophy.

That's me! Always though it was funny to be wearing hard hats when you were in much more danger from those wicked hazel spikes used to fix the straw bales to the wall.

The project attracted loads of volunteers and has had a wonderful rippling out effect of inspiration and experience. There's nothing like a practical demonstration of something - worth a hundred books.

Nigel, dry for once...

Nigel and Cassie's finished home.

At the top of the Lammas plot, This is Simon Dale's first house their, another roundhouse, nestling into the hillside.

Reclaimed windows form the inside of the Earthship style passive solar heating.

Simon let the roof timbers to the back of the house go down to the ground, making some useful storage space and allowing a very natural looking turf roof to sweep up over it.

The attached green house gathers the suns heat which is stored in all the earth mass.

Looking comfy!

Home sweet home.

Here's links to my original Ian's Eco Blog posts from 2009 about volunteering at Lammas:First Building Work at Lammas
Lammas: Nigel and Cassie's Roundhouse
Volunteers everywhere!
Simon and Jasmin's Roundhouse

FOOD! Dachas for Perth - why not?

The coronavirus has underlined just how reliant we are on a very long and fragile supply chain for our food. We've got used to getting not just luxury items but staple every day foods from all over the world. How much of the food we consume here in Perth was produced anywhere nearby? I'd guess about 5%? We're very vulnerable here to all sorts of upheaval: there's talk of a lack of people to work in the fields, let alone our changing weather patterns and the reliance on fossil fuel for our industrial agriculture.

Petrochemical use in every part of industrial food production, transport is just one. Notice the current oil price of $26 a barrel. If it costs $60 to produce that barrel of oil how long do you think companies will be producing it?

Meanwhile, the Russians grow about half of their own food on their "dachas" - sort of mini country estates. As I understand it, any Russian can apply for one of these at no cost to himself for the use of the land.

This is from an article in the Small Farmer's Journal.
"Dacha gardening accounts for about 3% of the arable land used in agriculture, but grows an astounding 50% by value of the food eaten by Russians. According to official government statistics in 2000, over 35 million families (approximately 105 million people or 71% of the population) were engaged in dacha gardening. These gardens provide 92% of Russia’s potatoes, 77% of its vegetables, 87% of the berries and fruit, 59% of its meat and 49% of the milk produced nationally. There are several studies that indicate that these figures may be underestimated, as they don’t take into account the self-provisioning efforts of wild harvesting or foraging of wild-growing plants, berries, nuts and mushrooms, as well as fishing and hunting that contributes to the local food economy."
So what's stopping us doing something like that around Perth?

Intrepid! Early Days at Lammas Eco Village

This is a repost from "Ian's Eco Blog", all about my times exploring what a sustainable way of life might look like in the flesh. Back in 2009/2010, I heard of inspiring work going on at the Lammas Eco Village in Pembrokeshire, Wales and made several trips to help out there. This was in the very early days of the project, strictly for the intrepid...
I spent most of my three weeks at Lammas helping Nigel and Cassie Leishman in building their roundhouse. They had the upright wooden framework or henge built (to left of picture above) and the start of the 18" low circular wall which will carry the straw bales forming the rest of the walls. Amazingly, they are living on site in a truck, a yurt and an army tent with their three children during their building work. It was tough going through the terrible November weather and they get huge respect from me! Nigel is managing to grin and wave in the photo in spite of the weather and all my terrible attempts at humour...


Everything takes much more effort than when you're living in a nice little suburban box. Water has to be carried in. Cooking, washing up and chopping wood are done partly by torch light and then there are the composting toilets.... you certainly don't hang around doing a crossword in these. Simon's is mostly open to the North and only partly covered by a tarpaulin to the South so it's quite an experience to use in wet and windy weather. The door blew off Nigel's and is just propped up as strength permits. You get used to them though, they are a great leveler and peel away yet another layer of suburban middle class attitude.
We just did as much as we could during the daylight, sheltering from the worst of the rain and gales. At nights we fired up the stoves and got warmed up again. I used to read stories to the younger two kids by wind-up torchlight which was good fun - the kids seem to be quite happy with their way of life, composting toilet and all. They squabble a bit like any kids but I don't remember them ever moaning about the cold, damp or mud - great kids!

Fellow volunteer Ailsa and I helped Cassie build up the stone wall. My only other experience of stone wall building was recently at Tombreck but I really got into it and we developed a way of making a strong wall with the rough stones laying around the site - "Use what you've got" - a good motto. The spikes set in the wall will help to keep the bales in place.

One morning the weather didn't look too bad so Simon and the volunteers helping him on his own house further up the hill all came down to help us to put up the timbers for the reciprocating roof. (Nice bit of cooperation and skill sharing on the go there.) These are really clever structures - each pole is resting on its neighbour, there is very little in the way of cutting or fitting to do and there is supposed to be very little outward horizontal force directed into the structure. Two hours had the first ten main beams up. They were big bits of wood to move around though and I was glad to see them all bolted together eventually.



That's me up on the roof fixing smaller branches from around the site on to the main roof poles which will take the bales, pond liner and turf forming the completed roof.

WOODWORK COURSES at ZERO WASTE SPACE PERTH

It's been a lot of fun teaching basic woodwork at the Zero Waste Space here in Perth. Lots of fun and also very interesting in ways I wasn't really expecting, the sort of experience that makes me more hopeful about the future.

The first six-week intermediate course in full swing

?? SCOTLAND: COLLAPSE AS USUAL ??

Strange times... At last there's a general worldwide recognition of our Climate Emergency, but here in Scotland we're still drifting along in our same old gas-guzzling ways, and we're one of the more enlightened countries. I know we're producing a lot of electricity from renewables but our transport is still fueled mostly by oil, and our food security is consequently pathetic. Without those truck deliveries to our supermarkets those shelves would be empty in a couple of days.
Nicola Sturgeon's one of the few politicians I respect at all, yet on the one hand she declares a Climate Emergency and the other proposes to use Scotland's oil revenues to "tackle climate change", how does that add up?

Talk talk talk... Italian politicians do nothing while Venice floods

There's a general idea that planting some trees would be a good idea, but which trees (not Sitka Spruce I hope) and where? Nut trees, fruit trees, native woodland? On whose land? Who's going to look after them and put up and maintain fences round them? It misses the underlying idea of regenerating woodland anyway: see TREE-CONOMY.

I went along to the Scottish Land Commission public meeting. It's brilliant that these meetings happen at all, yet Climate Change was mentioned just once I think. There was some good discussion about land use, reclaiming derelict land and the idea of introducing a Land Tax, which sounds potentially very helpful. But there's still that underlying attitude of "Land Use", that our land is something you use, exploit to generate a financial profit.
I realised at the meeting that in fact there is still very little general understanding of our emergency, let alone any consensus on what to do, politicians operate on consensus, so they say, so...

...So collapse here we come, let's get ready for that as best we can.

!! CLIMATE BRAINSTORM !!

COMING UP SATURDAY 9th NOVEMBER

with Ian Watt & Friends

MORNING at Zero Waste Space, Bike Station, Perth

AFTERNOON at Perth Community Farm, Jeanfield Road, Perth

PERMACULTURE OVERVIEW

So what's Permaculture?
It's basically about working with Nature...
DESIGN
There's twelve principles which are amazingly helpful in the design and on-going development stages of a project, whether it's a garden or a whole settlement. The more we can set up ways of doing things that mimic natural processes the easier life will be for us and the more we can become part of a regenerating, abundant, happy and healthy Earth.

The twelve Permaculture Principles - the tried and tested work of Bill Mollison and David Holmgren

WORK FROM PATTERNS TO DETAILS
To focus on just one of the principles for now, it might seem obvious to "work from patterns to details" but people tend to jump into projects without thinking about the basic natural nuts and bolts of what's going on around them. It's easy to end up rushing around feeling that you must be accomplishing something just because you're busy when in fact you may just be digging yourself into a deeper and deeper hole. So take plenty of time in the planning stage and before then in observation, thinking, reading and discussion.
SUCCESSION
Most importantly get your head around the pattern of Succession. If you dig over and clear a bit of land, Mother Nature will do her best to turn it back to its natural state, which around here in Perth, Scotland is mostly woodland. If your plan is to grow annual vegetables or cereals there you will find yourself battling against what are called weeds but are simply the natural succession of plants and processes in the return to woodland, nettles, docks, brambles etc etc. A different approach would be to plant up a whole range of trees, shrubs, herbs in a perennial woodland style system, the Forest Gardening approach, (see Tree-conomy), giving you not just food but materials and medicinal plants as well, jumping past the initial stages of Succession to a later state. In practice it will still need looking after, especially in the early days, but that's the idea.
There's a large plot alongside Perth Community Farm which was ploughed up, rotavated, carefully prepared and planted up with potatoes. Then sadly, as the plot is managed with just sporadic help, it wasn't looked after and was completely taken over by weeds in a few weeks. It seemed a complete waste of time, money, energy, fuel...
EVOLUTION
Then if you can start to think about the patterns of how your plot of land has evolved right back from the Big Bang to the present day, you'll get an even better understanding of what's going to make your life there harder or easier...

RHINOS AND BLACKTHORN
Nothing in our world has evolved on its own, everything has evolved to its present state as part of a continuous, global pattern of interactions. Blackthorn has evolved with its hard spikes, and its ability to regenerate by sending out suckers underground, because it has evolved alongside animals like rhinos crashing through it and eating it. Brambles are another beautifully adapted woodland plant. They send out thorny tendrils from woodland edges, colonizing open spaces, helping to repair the damage done by animals passing through and forming nurseries for saplings which are less likely to be browsed.
OXYGEN
The fact that there's a suitable amount of oxygen in the air for us to breath is just part of process spanning billions of years, see Great Oxidation Event, and we've evolved as we are because of a whole succession of events like that. Our biosphere is a constantly changing world, everything interacts with everything else, and always has done.