Care for the Earth

Care for people

The final skill we make sure to teach all interns is composting.

We use a hot composting system that has been successful at quickly processing a dead goat, dead ducks and – in this particular barrow load – our oldest chicken, Helen Clark. 😦

Composting is so important to teach because of its role in building soil health and reducing wastes sent to landfill. As well, it teaches humility and patience.

I submit that permaculture is not a set of principles to memorize and apply, but a way of seeing the world and interacting with it. It is a holistic view that contrasts starkly with the dominant reductionist Western paradigm. For those young people who are interested in coming to work and learn with us, it is a slow, experiential learning process. It involves working, reading, talking, reflecting and writing. We feel obligated to offer this opportunity to young people who are willing to think outside of the square and get their hands dirty. We can offer plenty of both here.

On a final note, each of our interns offers us their unique being. We learn from them, we laugh with them, and sometimes we play with them. We will remember Tom for his contributions to our Athletics softball team. We will remember Amy for her fence and incredible painting hanging in our lounge. We will remember John for his sunburn and his unbeatable work ethic. And, so far, my best memory of Jiqiao from last week was when we were underneath the house to do some minor plumbing work and prepare to sister up some bearers. As I explained to him the difference between a post, a bearer, a joist and a plate, he laid on his belly in the dark, covered in spiderwebs among the cat poops taking notes on his Smartphone. Priceless!

Peace, Estwing

In 50 years time, the 200 year flood will be the 100 year flood.

This is not a brain-teaser or a trick question. What this means is that currently the flood with a 0.5% chance of happening in any given year (ie, once every 200 years) will have a 1% chance of happening (ie, once every 100 years) in the year 2060. To make a long story short, our councils have decided to build stop banks to the current 200 year flood level, (which, in 50 years will be the 100 year flood level).

That was a very long way to introduce what I have been up to this week with our new intern from China (via Earlham College, USA) Jiquao.

To make a long story short, we’ve been putting up more wind netting to protect our fruit trees and vege gardens.

The winds here are strong…

…. strong enough to knock the Blacks off of the All Blacks! (A feet the Aussies and French could not do!) And strong enough to burn the leaves of our least protected apple trees.

The prevailing winds come from the northwest and can carry a load of salt from the Tasman Sea. They come over the fence in the photo above (with the green netting) and then are channeled between the house and a 2 meter-high fence where they did the damage to the apple tree in the photo directly above. So Jiquao and I erected two wind buffers yesterday:

the one atop the northwestern fence with green (1 meter); and one where the winds are channeled between the house and the iron fence (black, 1.8 meter).

This area has been used for firewood and other temporary storage and will be the location of our rainwater tank (seen above taking an afternoon nap). But as a good, practicing permaculturist, I have planned this newly fenced area to serve multiple functions as a new paddock for our fowl.

The only thing that makes more poo than chooks is ducks. We currently have 6 chooks and 3 ducks on 700 square metres, which poses problems for animal health, smell, flies and managing their valuable excretions for the benefit of our soils. After much observation, contemplation, trial and error, and learning, I have come up with what I think is the lowest effort / most effective system for keeping our birds healthy and our garden beds fertile. I’ll start with the red shavers. These ladies roost in this small storage shed.

The free weekly paper is nearly the perfect size for two unfolded sheets to cover the entire floor underneath the roost. These papers provide carbon to balance the nitrogen in the manure when the lot goes into the compost pile.

I fork out a depression in the compost pile before putting the “bedding”. Then I head over to the duck pen where they sleep in a shelter under which I placed a small section of roofing iron.

With my left hand I can lift one end of the shelter…

…and with my right hand I can pull out the roofing iron, which has collected a fair amount of their poos over the week.

I can rest the iron on top of the chook “bedding”…

… and use a trowel in the corrugations of the iron to scrape the manure onto the compost pile.

The nitrogen in the duck poo further balances the carbon in the newspaper.

In order to make sure the newspaper breaks down as quickly as possible, I cover it so that its at the centre of the pile where it remains moist.

Then it is back to the duck shelter to replace the iron.

Until I repeat the process again next week.

I do this every week, usually on Saturday. I feel it is very important to keep this regular to keep the birds healthy and happy. It is the obligation of a bird owner.

For our two wee bantams, we tractor them across the grass/clover “lawn” at the back of our section. They eat some grass and fertilize as they go. I shift them everyday. We have noticed a marked improvement in the composition of species making up the lawn: more favorable/palatable grasses and fewer weeds that usually thrive in poor soil conditions. In other words, by tractoring these ladies about our section we are improving the health of our soil organically while they provide us with eggs. Not bad for us or for them.

Does anyone else out there have good poo management strategies? Please poost a comment.

Keeping it real, Estwing

We are grateful for the positive feedback we’ve received on the Eco-Thrifty Renovation in the last few months. Thanks to the hard work by our interns and partners we’ve had an excellent first year, which has brought us even more partners who see the real value in the eco-thrifty approach. We are designing two new programs that we’ll share soon on this site.

I recently tried to define eco-thrifty on another website as:

Eco-Thrifty: an approach to lifestyle, building, renovating or growing food that combines low financial outlay with low ecological impact. In a broader sense, the approach is low-input and high performance, be it the productivity of a garden or thermal efficiency of a home. Eco-thrifty seeks to dispel the false impression that green living is for the wealthy. It is a realistic, workable approach for a world of climate volatility, increasing resource scarcity and lingering unemployment and underemployment.

To put eco-thrifty in context, let’s look at some systems that are not low input and high performance. For example, here is a well-known system that is high input and low performance.

Why eco-thrifty? These two recent headlines give some reasons.

And finally, eco-thrifty can also be applied to educational programs and projects. For example,

Peace, Estwing

I’ve just returned from 5 days away at the New Zealand Association for Environmental Education biannual conference to find burgeoning vegetable beds.

These gardens are one year old.

We have planted a diversity of vegetables.

And use low budget materials like bamboo and strips of fabric to support our tomatoes.

And we stagger our crops for continual production.

Additionally we planted 33 fruits trees, including 8 feijoas and a loquat in this hedge.

And a banana (hidden in this volunteer tomato).

And a tamarillo (somewhere in there). We have placed food plants in every nook and cranny of our section.

We have reaped the benefits in a year…like figs!

And garlic.

And, of course…

And some of the biggest brassicas I’ve ever seen.

And the heaviest. A six (plus) pound cauli!

But the abundance of this week was not limited to kai. I had an abundance of excellent conversations with other environmental educators at the conference and an abundance of positive feedback on our whole-community approach to sustainability education, including a shout out from Green Party MP Catherine Delahunty. What started as an idea a little over a year ago is now a thriving edible landscape, an energy efficient home and a well-received innovative model for sustainability education.

And its all getting better. Join us by becoming a partner for the planet.

Peace, Estwing

In just over a week I will be presenting two papers at the New Zealand Association for Environmental Education Biannual Conference. One of those papers is on my academic research and the other is on this project: The Eco-Thrifty Renovation. I’ll share some of the slides I’ve put together for a PowerPoint presentation.

Over the last year we have learned a lot about turning an abandoned house into an energy-efficient home, and using that experience as a model for whole community sustainability education. We have had our ups and downs, successes and failures. We have learned a lot about the tricky propositions of building partnerships and cultivating interest in low-budget / high performance home and garden design. We started out with the blog and workshop offerings.

Starting from scratch on the house and on these education initiatives has been extremely difficult, but also rewarding. We are dedicated to the highest standards of sustainability and sustainable education, and we are always seeking to partner with likeminded others. Are you one? Please let us know.

Peace, Estwing

I am both a keen learner of organic farming practices and an appreciator of alliteration and acronyms. Perhaps that is why a lesson I learned from notable farmer Eliot Coleman a decade ago has stuck with me: perspective prejudices perception (P-cubed). This idea has informed both our eco-renovation and my doctoral research on a permaculture approach to science education. One’s perspective on, say, the “waste stream” would determine one’s perception of, say, an apple core.

Where some see a piece of rubbish to send to the landfill, others see duck food or a compost ingredient. A holistic perspective informs much of what we do here from day to day practices to our design principles for the renovation. A holistic perspective contrasts with a reductionist perspective, which I believe is the dominant perspective of contemporary Western cultures, especially the USA, (and especially the Tea Party).

On the contrary, the original inhabitants of Turtle Island (North America) had a more holistic perspective often called the “Native American World View.” Similarly, it can be argued that traditional Maori had a more holistic perspective than most New Zealanders of European descent. A friend of mine told me about this short story on perspectives, growing your own food, self-sufficiency and the wisdom of many Maori elders.

Enjoy, Estwing

(Source: chipbruce.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/butterflies.pdf)

Butterflies

By Patricia Grace

The Grandmother plaited her granddaughter’s hair and then she said, “Get your lunch.

Put it in your bag. Get your apple. You come straight back after school, straight home here.

Listen to the teacher,” she said. “Do what she say.”

Her grandfather was out on the step. He walked down the path with her and out onto the

footpath. He said to a neighbor, “Our granddaughter goes to school. She lives with us now.”

“She’s fine,” the neighbor said. “She’s terrific with her two plaits in her hair.”

“And clever,” the grandfather said. “Writes every day in her book.”

“She’s fine,” the neighbor said.

The grandfather waited with his granddaughter by the crossing and then he said, “Go to

school. Listen to the teacher. Do what she say.”

When the granddaughter came home from school her grandfather was hoeing around the

cabbages. Her grandmother was picking beans. They stopped their work.

“You bring your book home?” the grandmother asked.

“Yes.”

“You write your story?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your story?”

“About the butterflies.”

“Get your book then. Read your story.”

The granddaughter took her book from her schoolbag and opened it.

“I killed all the butterflies,” she read. “This is me and this is all the butterflies.”

“And your teacher like your story, did she?”

“I don’t know.”

“What your teacher say?”

“She said butterflies are beautiful creatures. They hatch out and fly in the sun. The

butterflies visit all the pretty flowers, she said. They lay their eggs and then they die. You don’t

kill butterflies, that’s what she said.”

The grandmother and the grandfather were quiet for a long time, and their granddaughter,

holding the book, stood quite still in the warm garden.

“Because you see,” the grandfather said, “your teacher, she buy all her cabbages from the

supermarket and that’s why.”

The far corner is the north corner of the villa. If you look closely at the masthead above you can see a toilet there in the before picture. Yes, this house was moved here in the 1980s and placed with the toilet in the sunniest, warmest corner. As you may have noticed, toilets usually do not have very many windows, and so the villa remained cold on sunny, winter days. No longer. This corner is now bathed in sunlight in both winter and summer. There is so much nice afternoon light and warmth in the winter that we cut a double doorway into the lounge that had previously only received morning sun.

A reverse angle of the first images now looks like this.

What you’ll notice (aside from our trashed floors) is that we have two ranges side-by-side. Interestingly, they are both made by Shacklock, but that is where the similarities end. These two are just part of a greater system for cooking and heating that includes a solar cooker, an outdoor pizza oven and a rocket stove. We expect to use the electric range for less than 10% of our total cooking needs on an annual basis. But that is a future post. I’m sure you want to know how we did this for $2,000.

Here is a rough tally:

Bench top, sink and taps: $100 on TradeMe

Cabinets, drawers and timber: Reused

Electric range: $150 on TradeMe

Refrigerator: $50 at Hayward’s Auctions

Butcher block: $25 on TradeMe

Hutch: $150 at Hayward’s Auctions

Coal range: $250 on TradeMe

Coal range installation: $700

Pelmets: Reused weatherboards

Grain bins and drawers: $35 at Hayward’s Auctions

Plumbing: $550

Light fixtures: $50 at Hayward’s Auctions

Total: $2025

*Curtains: Ask the wife

You may also be interested in the choice of colours and curtain fabric. That credit does not go to me, nor does finding these lamps at the auction last month.

It’s not perfect, and the floors need to be redone, but it is a far sight better than what it was, and on a shoestring budget with a tiny ecological footprint. Ironically, our bathroom and kitchen combined come in at a price equal to or lower than 3 other items on our tally of expenses:

Solar hot water: $4,000

Insulation: $4,000

New Roof: $5,000

There are no hard set rules for eco-thrifty renovation, but these numbers should indicate where the priorities for expenditures might be.

Peace, Estwing

From where I sit gazing out our French doors, the world is one of abundance created by 13 months of applied permaculture design. The view includes our solar-powered clothes dryer, wood-fired pizza oven, one of many veggie gardens and a glimpse of a food forest out the back.

Apples grow and ripen as muscovies patrol for snails and slugs around fig trees, peaches and tagasastes.

While it will take a few more years for this perennial foodscape to mature, the annual gardens are already cranking away. This cauliflower thinks it is a tree with a sizable trunk…

… and canopy.

The cat is included for scale, but I think the sink offers a better perspective.

Note: This was not the biggest cauliflower of the season. That award went three weeks ago to her cousin.

And while the cauliflowers are destined for human bellies, the leaves feed the chooks in our four dimensional ecological design system. The leaves then become eggs and fertilizer.

As potatoes and garlic are harvested at the end of their growth…

… our first courgette forms.

And a host of other green things actively convert sunlight into nutrition.

But not to be outdone, Uncle B. steals the show.

Not Billy T. James, the cat, but what she is standing on.

Definitely the biggest I’ve ever grown or ever seen.

After filling the skillet, it was still too big for the cutting board. (George Bush, be afraid, be very afraid.) The moral of the story: compost, early and often.

Wishing you peace and abundance in your lives, Estwing