East Suffolk Permaculture Group Newsletter

Deadline for entries for November Newsletter is 28th October.

Evening of relaxation & healing at Spexhall Village Hall on alternate Fridays beginning 20^th October 7-9pm, for further information contact 01986 781231

Now Mondays 6.30-7.30pm at Clover Forge Farm  

Are looking for paid consultants for eco-build in Patagonia and grey water treatment in Ecuador. For details contact 01986 874422

for Jack who currently only has an oil barrel for company. Jack is Cindy’s pony

Last Saturday of each month 9.30-12.30 local food and crafts at Metfield village hall. Details from Bob Edwards

Patrick Elder is looking for somewhere local to run a retreat for upto 50 people. Please contact him if you know of anywhere suitable

Halesworth LETS urgently need new people to take on the administrative roles. Please contact Dave Cartwright to find how you can help

Cally, veteran bike rider, organises regular local bike rides of about 25-30 miles. You will just have missed the last one when you get this newsletter, but contact him to get details of the next. 

Martin & Ann Wolfe went to the recent International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements meeting. There were 1,5000 people from 80 countries. The objective is to get international uniformity of standards and philosophy. Contact him if you want to find out what went on or to see the reports 

Wakelyns

Help required with the potato harvest, contact Ann & Martin 

They have had far more veg than expected this year and it looks beautiful, in large part due to learning from their agro-forestry experience, equipment and soil preparation.

Marion did deliver to some local customers this summer but thinks moving to a farm shop will be a better solution.

Ask yourself the following questions as an exercise in self awareness in your bioregion. Some questions can be answered easily while others may require a lifetime of intimate experience and mature understanding of your place. This is not a test to see how good a biorgionalist you are; no marks are awarded. Rather the aim is to stimulate your interest in the place where you live, to help you understand how you relate to it now, and to suggest ways in which you may wish to develop that relationship.

Adapted from a passage in Simple in Means, Rich in Ends, Bill Devall, Green Print, 1990.

Income Design

The design principles of permaculture can in theory be applied to any aspect of our lives.  In fact, if we are to achieve any kind of sustainable lifestyle, all aspects of our lives would benefit from the forethought, conscious design, and ethical base on which permaculture is founded.

If we do a ‘basic needs’ analysis of our lives we come up with shelter, food, water, friends/mates, medicines/health system, activities/exercise, and air (you may have thought of others).  In the West we also need ‘an income’ even before we get out of bed in the morning.  We have to pay for shelter, transport, sewage disposal, waste disposal, health care and so much more even without interacting with the world.  Rent/mortgage, council tax, transport, insurance…all require an income in the universal exchange unit of money.  However much we might reduce our ‘wants’ to reduce the size of income needed, there is still this need for an income. 

In our society this essentially comes from three sources: the family, the state, or via working directly for money oneself. One reason the state has to provide an income for those without one of their own is that we are prevented from providing our basic needs for ourselves.  We cannot just build our own shelter on a suitable piece of land and grow our food, medicine and clothes crops. We have to ‘buy’ into the self-sufficiency system. In the absence of capital and the presence of building regulations, we are left dependent on the state.  The alternative to this is not necessarily the massive sprawling shanty towns of developing countries because they exist where capitalism is combined with a lack of state provision. 

So the bottom line is that we need an income but how much do we need?  A reduction in consumption reduces the size of income needed to sustain the lifestyle we have.  Our lives in the West are ‘expensive’ both in terms of energy and resources—and consequently create huge amounts of pollution and waste.  Some of us are more expensive than others.  And it is this expensiveness combined with wastage that makes our lives less than sustainable in that they cannot go on for very long before problems feedback into the system.

Income therefore deserves some careful planning and design because it underpins our whole lifestyle and is at the root of sustainable living.

At the next meeting we will be having a income design workshop.

 The ethical basis of permaculture is Earth Care, People Care and Surplus Share which is similar to the Buddhist idea of Right Livelihood in which your income is obtained in such a way as to avoid harm to others (directly or indirectly).

I should point out that I consider money to be a totally neutral form of condensed energy, originating in labour (energy) or resources somewhere back down the line, and so there is no ethical reason why huge sums of money should be avoided if they can be obtained without harm to others.  As the Surplus Share ethic suggests, this wealth could then be put to good use….hmmm.

It occurs to me that very few people are likely to turn up to this meeting—us  British being so secretive about our money and us group members being so uptight about our ethical credentials…?  So, lets not get too precious about it.  It’s a bit of fun, a practise in permaculture design that might throw up some brilliant ideas for some of us.  Even if we only list the skills, resources and experience available to each other via the group, the meeting will have been worthwhile. The design principles we can look at include:

Relative location, Multifunctionality, Energy Efficiency, Biological resources, Energy cycling, Diversity, Edge, and Ethics.  I will describe them with examples at the workshop.

Our People Care ethic should ensure that we are not too hard on ourselves or each other.  Even an importer of endangered species doing a bit of slave trading on the quiet whilst investing in biological warfare is welcome with warm greetings.

Three Little Pigs

The first pig was sensible and he asked the authorities what to do. He built his house of brick and the inspectors came and checked it all conformed to regulation. And they advised him of all the grants he could get for clearing the hedges and unproductive woodland, and subsides he could get for growing particular crops, and cheap loans for buying big machinery.

And the weather changed and the floods washed his soil into his house and disease spoiled his crops. The government still demanded he paid his taxes for all the advice and administration. And they huffed and they puffed and they gave no more aid.

So he went to live with his sister.

His sister was clever and she had all the best architects build her a bright house of glass and concrete. And she had a financial advisor to get the best loans and mortgages.

And to pay back the banks she had to grow intensive cash crops for the supermarket. And she needed more loans to buy the seed and agro-chemicals. And soon all life on her land died, and the supermarket only wanted organic food. And the bank huffed and puffed and re-possessed her house.

So the two pigs went to live with their lazy brother. 

The third pig had lived for a long time in a bender just enjoying watching and learning from the land and chatting and playing with his neighbours.

Then he swapped some coppiced hazel for some straw bales and had a party for his friends to help build him a house of straw.

 And the government huffed and puffed, but he stayed put; and he spent and earned little, so they got little tax. And the banks huffed and puffed and tried to get him to take a loan, and the junk mail helped to start his fire.

And there were enough acorns and truffles growing wild for all three pigs and they lived happily ever after.

more pages:

Copyright © 2000 webNB   webnb@BTInternet.com
Last modified: October 09, 2000