Magic..2 the Holmgren Homestead.

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After lots of fun and caining plenty of money on alcohol, we were glad to be on our way to Hepburn Springs, Daylesford, to stay with Sue, Dave and Ollie Holmgren. Those of you familiar with Permiculture will probably recognise the name. The term Permaculture was coined in 1978 by Bill Morrison and David Holmgren in their book Permiculture One, and it comes from the terms Permanent agriculture. Quoting from the WWooF'ers (Willing Workers On Organic Farms) Handbook, 'Their definition of permiculture is: "...the concious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious intergration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way." The Permaculture movement aims to provide people with the information and skills that they need to design their land, homes and social systems so that they can make use of the existing natural resources without producing waste or degrading the enviroment. As everyone has different needs and different resources the design of each permaculture living system is individual.

Although not uncommon to me, having lived in Brighton on and off for the most part of 10 yrs, some permaculture ideas were familiar, although the depth at which I had made myself aware of them were to be highlighted and re-introduced, on a fully concious level.
From the second we arrived I felt an internal change, I knew I was in a what felt like a special place, you could feel the entire place alive, buzzing with positive energy, which has taken grass roots practise to cultivate.
Not unlike the Brighton Earthship their house was self sustaining. Built using 5000 mud bricks, not all made on their site, as it would have taken too long, but made locally. Rain water collected in concrete, opposed to plastic, which is increasingly becoming the most common form of storage container, although we don't know the long term studies of holding water in plastic, and which grade, although there was a study in which fish were becoming hemaphrodites due to the oestogen from the contaceptive pill…..What will plastics hold for humans?
Having had my head in the clouds for some time in Brighton, as Scotts nickname for me, Dizzy, this time away so far has helped me with grounding, and coming back down to earth. And there's nothing quite like getting back down to earth, with our first job weeding. Weeding the soul! Pulling weeds from the soul, that uncomfortable hole.. (will lead onto some lyrics later..)

With an array of veggies, from pumpkins, Tomatoes, Beans, Carrots, Lettuces, growing furthest from the house, and herbs such as bay leaf, rosemary, corriander and oregano, nearest, mulching, and weeding were always ongoing, much like, the sun and water that helped them to grow. Protecting the soil from the sun so as not to dry out, old weeds, such as percelaine could be put around the base of other plant to help the soil to stay damp when watered. The weeds however, especially Oxsalis and Bent Grass spread far and wide. Of course organics have no need for chemicals, like the monoculture farming that presents us with with problems using chemical sprays. Although we didn't get to milk the goats, Sue did every other day, and by heating the milk to 80 degrees, and adding Apple Cider Vinegar Aprox: 20 ml to 6 Litres, the most delicious cheese we ate. Harvesting the friut from the various fruit trees, including apples, Pears, some pears from the large tree that only harvested every 7 yrs, and the Nashi pears, two types of Plums and Peaches. Grading the fruit, Green, ripe and to be eaten, and Preserving the fruit. Any fruit that was bruised or eaten can have the bad bits removed (which are then fed to the chooks, (chickens), closing the cycle of waste, so the scraps are eaten) and put into sterilised jars, (the glass jars re-used every year, and sterlised by heating in the oven) with water and then sealed air tight.

Having worked with waste on and off for 4 yrs now, and seeing the reality of how much is produced and where it ends up, there is a need to be drawn towards permiculture. The idea that waste is something we do not deal with needs to be re-addressed into something we do not produce. Evaluating what I was doing in England, and getting to the heart of it. Anaysing rubbish, what’s the conclusion? Well even though there is less going to landfill there is still a lot to be said about re-cycling. One of the frirst conversations with Dave was the sustainability of rubbish. We kind of feel we are of the hook, so to speak, if now instead of three bags of rubbish a week we have one but our re-cycling bins are to the brim, great we’ve done our bit! Closing the cycle's of waste, our sewage, for example, the stuff most of us would rather not know about. The Romans may have given us sanitation, but along with this within so called 'civilisation', we have contaminated our water to the point where it is dead, even though it is safe to drink, the living energies are no longer coated within the structure of its cells. The answer, composting! Compost Loos, there's lots of great ways of doing it, and your wee is great nutrients for your plants, infact that was the loo for our wee, wee on a tree. And after 6-12 months your poo from the loo has either nearly completly decomposed (as one experiment from someone else we met who had a wheelie bin full for a year), or has made some fertiliser for you soil, full of nutrients and good stuff.

Why do we have rubbish? We could be re-cycling in our homes, the glass we can re use to store, and keep those beer bottles for home brew, who wants to go to the pub to get drunk on over priced beer, when we can brew our own...
However the energy involved in transporting re-cycling, and yes selling & shipping back to China, to create more plastic crap we really need (?) is hardly sustainable, and just difuses the guilt, but doesn’t get to the underlying problem, but we’ll realsise this when peak oil hits hard, and prices sore to heights unaffordable, where only the rich can drive freely, and the fear of picking up hitch-hickers means most of us withstain movement? You would of thought that us two girls hitch hiking back from a buddist ashram would have been fine, but after waiting hours for a lift and and it now dark we called a cab, the cabbie said that many people feared picking up hikers, even girls, if they looked dodgy, (dont know what that was saying about us), but the fact was people didn't seem to trust anyone. The other times we had hitched to the village, we were picked up either by someone visiting the area, or people our age, one guy, Aslam, who new Bedlam, and Robin Mutiod, soundsystems and party people from way back when, (just put that in to highlight the syncronisity thats been going down at many angles) so there was a common link, he was also the son of the partner of one of the ladies, Maureen, who worked where we were staying. The law of attraction was on our side and I guess it also makes the difference if its morning or evening, like the line from the arctic monkeys 'they say it changes when the sun goes down', is something to be wary of no matter where you are. As we later discover in Nw Zeland..

Dave, is a wealth of knowledge and information, we had many a night and day of listening to words of wisdom, and out of the context of Brighton, not being about anybody or thing I knew, which can easily end up being the centre of anybodies world, I was going to put into action from now on the New Years resolution I’d made…to shut the Bleep Up and Listen! Yes Mum you'll be pleased of that one! Peak Oil, and preparing for the enevitable, and how the industrial revolution has effected us all, psychologically, as well as how we rely on importation and energy from this fathomed generation, was encroached into our awareness on many levels of conversation, and rightly so. Getting back to the planet - Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share - Fair share of resources - Access to everything you need to live and exist. To those who know, and those who don't & those like me who are re-learning what we knew, or have never known. The mis-education of education, that standerdises, and subjects us to quality controlled information, and through religion, having attending a christian primary school, wasting precious time praising the lord, unless you got on well with some of the great teachers who gave you access to their left-winged doctrines of ideas outside the cage.

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Photos

Hepburn Homestead
Sue, David and Ollie's Home

and surrounding land.
Herbs and Veggies growing, exposed to much sun.

Pulling Weeds..
..from your soul, that uncomfortable hole. gardening with Nick.

Grading
Cat Grading the fruit.

Drying
Sliced up fruit dries on the roof of the house during the day.

Air tight..
Fruit put into plain water in jars, then into this device that when boiled makes the jars air- tight

Preserving
Fruit can then be preserved for winter.

Shelves in the basement
Preserved Fruits and Brewed beer,amoungst other things in the basement, imagine if we'd been this organised in Baden Rd.