Here's Bob on the house...

We've been working on renewing the structure of the house from foundations up to ceiling level since last May...and it's this May we're looking at for possibly moving in. The new 'breathing' walls are insulated with warmcel (recycled newspaper and borax) plastered on the inside and externally clad with feather-edged boarding. It's weather-tight and we're now at the decorating stage! The rebuilding has gone well and made an enjoyable contrast to cabinet making! It felt special having Thomas return from Wales on two separate occasions helping push the project forward with his own brand of super energy!!

So much for zone 0, here's Mary for news of zones 1 and 2...

During the years I've spent gardening for others, I've put a lot of energy into attempting - on request - to transform clients gardens in various ways, but almost always with one of the main requirements being "speed of change" and usually with the hope that once the "transformation" has taken place, they'll be left with a low maintenance garden with interesting things to look at all year round...............

without the desire for speed this sounds similar to what we already have at Hill View although its maybe our interpretation of the brief that’s different... I love the bare branches, long grass and semi-evergreen native plants (weeds!!) that crowd out our beds at this time of year. But rather than feeling any sense of urgency to leap into action we've been enjoying a period of time getting aquatinted with all of the garden watching it as it changes from one season to another and waiting until we live there before embarking on any major projects. We've thinned out a few trees allowing more space for those left to grow into and planted a few more. We've grown and eaten a variety of vegetables and so have all the wildlife who at present live in the garden more than we do! Mice have feasted on our beetroot and the usual host of growing moths and butterflies have done so on our brassicas!. We've enjoyed a wonderful crop of apples and pears which kept us in fruit till Christmas and were picking raspberries till early December. Now here we are again choosing seed for next years harvest....and we're having lots of ideas of things we could do - but at the moment just basically letting it be...

The Feasibility Study completed last year. Now the project has entered that difficult time when nothing seems to be happening. Like a seed or bulb in the winter soil.

The top priority is to get funding to purchase the land. And like job hunting it is disheartening to collect the rejection slips. We had strong hopes for the Healthy Living Centres Lottery fund. However they have targets to provide facilities for 80% of the population, which effectively rules out rural bids, also they are not intended to fund buildings themselves.

Suffolk obtained some funds known as a Single Regeneration Bid, which we again thought we would be entitled to something from. However in this case our project was seen as too large.

Waveney District Council have told us they will not give us any money, (we had not even asked them!) and they thought the scheme to grand for Halesworth. We have not yet been able to get any commitment from the WDC that they would use any facilities if we provided them, eg day centre, tourist info etc.

A private theatre and arts group Panteknicon, have taken over an old Maltings in Halesworth. This will make it more difficult for us to get funds, and harder to provide profit making parts of the centre for the community. We hope to talk to them soon to see how the two schemes can compliment each other.

So we need to re-visit our business case before asking for more funds.

We know the need is there, so if you would like to help move this project forward please get in touch.

Slugs – Helen reported that her use of nematodes to control slugs last year, was successful, for about two weeks. But then the slugs returned from their hiding places amongst the mulch.

East Suffolk Organic Farmers, comprising mostly people from our permaculture group, have held an inaugural meeting. Their aim will be to increase the numbers of organic farmers in the area, and reduce costs, for instance by having a common registration, sharing equipment …

Thank you, to all came to the last meeting to help stir, and to Roy Wadland for providing the video on Bio-dynamics. Also on the video was an article on growing with weeds in Brazil. This was very interesting, but did not give many details of who & where this was; so I’ll try & do some research for the next newsletter. The main point seemed to be that if you grow non-native crops amongst native weeds, then the insects will prefer to eat the weeds.

Deadline for entries for March Newsletter is 28^th Febuary.

or give to me at next meeting. See you there Nigel

Not having read any works by Darwin before I was expecting a rather dry academic Victorian read. I have been pleasantly surprised. The style is chatty, as if talking to friends in his drawing room. It is gentlemanly science, making observations for curiosity and not for any profit. What value could there be in cutting out paper triangles and seeing how worms pulled them into their holes?

The value is highlighted in the introduction in this edition by Sir Albert Howard, writing in 1945, who states the work to be an ideal starting point to direct future agricultural research into biological channels.

Nigel

Explorations in Ecology and Performance
SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS AND PRESENTATIONS:
27-30 July 2000 Lancaster University

BETWEEN NATURE has already begun to generate great interest and many offers of papers and presentations from people in a wide range of fields. This second call invites those who would like to offer a proposal, but who have not yet sent one, to do so by February 15th.

Some of the people who will be contributing to BETWEEN NATURE are:
David Abram, Barbara Adam, Barbara Bender, Una Chaudhuri, Sue Clifford, David Crouch, Paul Evans, John Fox, Sarah Franklin, Ronald Grimes, David Haley, Alan Holland, John Jordan, Nick Kaye, Baz Kershaw, John Law, Nick Mayhew, Alberto Melucci, Malcolm Miles, Graeme Miller, Clare Patey, PLATFORM, Andrew Quick, Alan Read, Richard Roberts, Shelley Sacks, Kate Soper, Jackie Stacey, John Urry, Simon Whitehead, Brian Wynne

BETWEEN NATURE will be a major regional, national and international gathering for anyone concerned with ecology or performance. By bringing together these two domains the event aims to generate new understandings and modes of engagement at a time when rapid technological and cultural change is disrupting many received boundaries - between aesthetics and ethics, nature and artifice, private and public, knowledge and politics.

BETWEEN NATURE will be innovative in its approach, including all types of presentations from academic papers to interactive events, workshops and performances. It presents a unique opportunity to re-think and re-perform our relationship with nature. BETWEEN NATURE will address topics such as: recasting technologies - democracy as theatre - art as social practice - staging science - convening the city - landscape and embodied memory - the presentation of the ecological self - dance and nature - body and dwelling - ecological rites - gift, sacrifice and patent - TECH_gnosis - performing places - the feeling of the land - industry, design and agency - vernacular and global knowledges - timescales of technology - the politics of speech acts and silence - risk and security - institutions as theatre - environmental justice We invite proposals for all types of presentation from academics in the social sciences, arts and humanities and natural sciences, arts practitioners and performers, political and cultural activists, decision makers and citizens.
We are in discussion with a publisher for a planned publication based on papers and performance documents from the event.

BETWEEN NATURE is supported by The Granada Foundation

Cost £55-105 + accom £140-170
Contact:

Janet Hamid
Between Nature CSEC, Bowland Tower East, Lancaster University
Lancaster LA1 4YT
E-mail: j.hamid@lancaster.ac.uk
Phone: + 44 (0) 1524 592674
Fax: + 44 (0) 1524 846339
Web: www.lancs.ac.uk/users/csec/betweennature

UN Convention on Biological Diversity was established at the 1992 Earth Summit in Brazil. It tries to safeguard the variety of the Earth’s different life forms, which are becoming extinct at unprecedented rates, largely because of human expansion.

Further talks were held in Montreal last week.

Chairman of the talks, the Colombian Environment Minister Juan Mayr, opened the first session by acknowledging the widespread public concern over GM produce,

"Citizens are questioning whether they can trust industry and their governments to ensure the safety of modern biotechnology," he said.

These talks follow a stalemate over the Biosafety Protocol, at talks in Cartagena, Colombia last February. On that occasion, the US joined by Canada, Australia, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile - would not agree to a draft accepted by 125 other countries. They wanted any treaty to be subordinate to the rules of the WTO. (The US has not signed the biodiversity convention from Brazil ’92, so in theory should not be at these talks)

The aim of the talks was to agree a biosafety protocol, which would allow governments to regulate the international trade in genetically-modified organisms (GMOs - the Montreal meeting refers to them as "living modified organisms", LMOs).

The conference agreed that countries will have the right to restrict imports of such foods because of health and environmental concerns.

"The adoption of this protocol represents a victory for the environment," Mr Mayr said, fighting back tears.

EU Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom said "This will help ease the concerns of consumers. The most important thing is that there is a system for information and for importation. … I think it's a victory for the environment and for international trade,"

The deal covers food, seeds, animal feeds and medicine.

I don’t know if the talks managed to agree a set rules on who should be liable if something went wrong, but overall it appears to at least put the environment and trade on the same footing.

Nigel

Between 0.3 per cent or <5% (Soil Association) of the United Kingdom's land area was farmed organically in 1998.

There are more farms currently in conversion to organic than are certified as organic. Organically managed and in the UK increased from 0.5% of the total agricultural land in 1998, to 1.3% in 1999. This corresponds to more than 240,000ha, of which 75% was classified as in-conversion. Whilst the area of organically managed land has more than doubled, the number of organic producers increased by 50% (500 new farmers) between April 1998 and April 1999, indicating a continuing trend in the increasing size of organic holdings (Soil Assn ‘The Organic Food and Farming Report 1999’).

The Countryside Minister Elliot Morley put it much higher, he said the amount of farmland in organic production in the UK has increased five-fold over the last year (MAFF press release 339/99 4 October 1999) adding a further 42,000 hectares to the land already in organic production.

In April 1998, there were around 55,000 hectares being farmed organically. By April 1999 around 100,000 hectares were fully organic and 175,000 hectares were in conversion (MAFF press release 1/00 1 January 2000)

	The need for certification
	Certification bodies
	The Organic Farming Scheme
	How organic production fits in with other environmental schemes
	Conversion periods and planning
	Technical advice on organic production
	Markets for organic produce
	Further sources of information on organic issues

	not less than 30 percent by area of agricultural land in England, Wales and Northen Ireland is certified organic or is in the process of being converted to that status; and
	not less than 20 percent by volume of food consumed in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is certified as organic.

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Last modified: February 29, 2000