h.Energy Saver volunteer facilitator training.

I spent yesterday (Fri) doing this training, funded by Herefordshire New Leaf  as part of a project to actively engage Herefordshire residents in their own long-term household and personal energy descent plans.

The training has equipped me, and other people from around the county as h.Energy Savers, to work with small groups of 5 - 6 local people (friends, neighbours, community members) in order to start to address the energy efficiency needs of our households.

 The training was free of charge, and was provided by Hal Gillmore and Mary Popham of Transition Town Totnes. 

The h.Energy Savers training is based  on an adaptation of a proven, award-winning peer-to-peer model developed by Transition Town Totnes where groups of friends and neighbours meet every few weeks,  with a practical workbook to help seed ideas,  to make easy changes in how they use energy, water, food, packaging and transport.  

I help to get things going in my neighbourhood and go to the meetings to give any support needed as the group works through ideas from the workbook  but it is NOT my meeting and the workbook is NOT a text book which has to be followed to the letter but  more of a general guide, full of good ideas.  I like that :-)

As the h.Energy Savers website says

Previous experience suggests that householders working together in this way will save an average of £570 per annum and reduce carbon emissions by 1.3tonnes, whilst learning more about issues such as water use, waste, transport and food.

In addition to this the project hopes to generate up to 250 home energy assessments, carried out by accredited Green Deal Assessors. These homes will then be regarded as 'Green Deal Ready' - i.e. eligible for finance to support their recommended energy efficiency measures once the Green Deal provider network locally is established (work to develop this network is continuing alongside the h.Energy Savers project).

I know this pattern of engagement works as it is how the Master Composter and Master Gardener schemes work and I know they work really well!

I really believe we need to be building more sharing and resilient communities around us all  as the impact of Peak Oil and other issues begin to really hit home. I already try to help with this as a Master Gardener and Master Composter and the other things I try to do and this looks like a good way as well.

I really enjoyed the day of training ( although it was a very long  and tiring day's work!)  I am very excited to be a part of this.

Watch this space!

"The Age of Stupid". showing in Ledbury

7pm Friday 22 May

Free screening of "The Age of Stupid".

Venue: Main Theatre, John Masefield High School, Ledbury

PLEASE, if you are local , come and see this film!

Why not use cans?

I have been brewing this post for many weeks now!



This is the boot of my car, loaded up for a trip to a recycling site ( it doesn't matter which one, I have several around us) because I am going out in the car for another reason.....it might be to collect Compostgirl from school or to go to town and get some food and go to the library...but anyway the recycling goes in my boot JUST IN CASE I pass a recycling point.


All our waste collected on Tuesdays by the bin lorry goes into landfill, so it is up to US to make sure we recycle ( separately and at our own convenience, expense, washing, storing, sorting and transport) any recyclable waste.

This is what I put out for the collection this week...we do not have a kerbside(what's that?) collection of recyclables...we are " too rural" for Hereford shire Council to provide one: This week we put out a plastic laminated /cardboard box ...a mixed packaging box ( my pet hate!) which means neither the plastic film NOR the cardboard can be recycled...( my bad, I shouldn't have bought the paddling pool for Compostgirl which was in it...) and a (degradable) black plastic bin bag with a small amount of plastic packaging which cannot be recycled in my area...( Our council only recycles plastic milk bottles/pop/water bottles with the recycling symbols "1" or "2" on them....)





This is the corner of our kitchen where we sort out the recycling, compostable dry stuff ( the wet compostable stuff goes in a caddy by the sink, see the cider and wine posts a few pages back!) and the stuff which has to go into landfill. We try to minimise the stuff going into the landfill bin by not buying it in the first place as once in the landfill bin it goes to a big hole in the ground ( Landfill..nice euphemism!) - where it sits decomposing and generating Methane if otherwise compostable ( Methane is 23 times a more potent greenhouse gas than Carbon Dioxide!) OR just sits and does nothing useful except fill a hole in the ground and be part of a disgusting mess for future generations to be appalled at how wasteful the previous few generations were...EVEN THOUGH WE KNEW what a mess we were creating...

As you can probably guess EVERYTHING which can be composted here, gets composted....and if we can recycle it, we do, and we avoid buying it if we can't recycle it ( under normal circumstances... but read on...)

So, what has prompted my somewhat ranty post? Well, as regular readers may remember we have fairly recently acquired 3 new cats, Sid the nearly (now)year old cat, and Tom and Tabitha the (now) 6 month old kittens. We also have Kitty Cat the elderly resident puss. Kitty eats what he catches, supplemented with cat biscuits; the late beloved Monty Puss used to eat small quantities of cat meat and mainly biscuits so this wasn't an issue before, BUT now we have kittens we have suddenly started to get through a HUGE quantity of cat meat!

ANYWAY, with Monty, we always used the little foil cartons, as he had a small appetite and a can would go off or HE would go off IT before it was finished...so anyway, either can OR foil tray went into the metal recycling box and off to the recycling bin whenever Compostman or I were going past one.

But NOW we are buying "kitten" food, and can you get it in cans or foil trays? can you HELL....it all comes in plastic "pouches"...which of course are NOT recyclable!
SO I am faced with buying kitten food in plastic ( on the left) and throwing the empties in the landfill OR getting non kitten food in cans and being able to recycle the empties.














Whose bright idea was it to market plastic pouches? Did whoever think ..."Oh yes, lets sell cat food in non recycleable plastic rather than endlessly recycleable cans...." I am sure they didn't! but the end result is..a recyclable packaging option replaced with a non recyclable , fossil fuel using package...grrr.

Guess which option we chose to buy? Yes, the cans.....and before anyone shouts "Kitten cruelty!" We DO also feed them kitten biscuits ( which we get in a cardboard box...) .....so no accusations of kitten cruelty, please!

I really wish there was some joined up , adult type thinking over all this....why can't "TPTB" just decide that all packaging HAS to be recyclable...no ifs, no buts...and ideally easily compostable in home compost bins as well???


PS I feel ever so slightly guilty at the amount of food being bought for what are basically an indulgent luxury pet, when there are people who die from lack of food...but that's another post I think!)

A thought provoking post!

I had a very odd conversation with an energy supplier not so long ago who wanted us to switch from our current supplier ( Good Energy) and quized me as to why we had such a LARGE useage! Cheeky mare!

Well thinking about it I would say we actually have qute a SMALL electicity consumption considering what we have which needs electricity! And this got me thinking...and then the next day I read a post by one of the bloggers I admire ENORMOUSLY, Stonehead.

He had posted on a similar theme about his electrcity useage. We have similar energy consumption as Stonehead, have similar workshop/tool use and store our home grown produce in much the same way. Ok he does it on a bigger scale, but the principle is similar!

Like him, we cook our food from scratch, make home made booze from our own produce, jams , chutneys, bottle and freeze fruit and veg…we are mostly self sufficient in fruit and veg and I can’t remember the last time I bought jam or chutney! We, too have our own borehole and sewerage system.

Our total electricity LOOKS like a high consumption…..BUT, we actually consume very little which is optional ( TV, etc) nearly all our so called higher consumption is essential, to store food, cook from sctatch, preserve food, pump water, remove sewerage and treat it, run tools which help us to be more self sufficient etc!

as Stonehead so brilliantly posted on this very issue, other people don’t actually pay for a lot of the energy they consume…they don't use their own electicity to get their water piped in or their sewerage taken away ( they pay as part of their water rates, true, but not in with their electricity bill!)

They don't actually pay for all that energy/fossil fuel used to grow, harvest, transport, pack, transport, cook, pack, transport to the shop. They just travel to and from the shop to buy it…

and all they see is the cost of the small amount of electricity they use to heat up the ready meal….

( bangs head on wall…)

We effectively are the producer,transport, packer, transport, supermarket AND consumer of the food we eat, so no wonder we APPEAR to have a high energy usage!

So in reply to the twit from the power company, I would actually say more that we have a REALISTIC energy useage for our lifestyle! And that if all this is actually taken into account, our energy use MUST be quite small!

Earthwatch day event

I have been doing my "compostwoman" stuff at an event in Hereford for the last couple of days...this event tied in and celebrated "Earthwatch Day"...it was a series of stalls and talks at the Kindle Centre in Hereford...spread over 3 days.


My compost stall...I think it looks good now!
Some of the other stalls, just before the event opened and the rush began!


A lady playing my compost game...( you have to decide what goes in the compostbin..)




and finally...my friend and collegue from my environmental advocacy days...Paul Mobbs giving his VERY informative and interesting "Energy without Oil" talk...he is REALLY good and his book is a very good read indeed( If you EVER have the chance to go and hear him speak....DO SO!)

A day at a Spring Green Fair.

I spent all of yesterday doing my "compostwoman" stuff at the Spring Green Fair in Ledbury...it was great fun!

I took my compost stall and bins and display boards and 3 fellow Master composters came to lend a hand during the day.

The Mayor officially opened the Fair, announced by the "Bill the Bell" (the Ledbury Town Crier) with his hat, robes and bell......

and then Felicity Norman of the Herefordshire Green Party gave an opening address...Felicity is our Green parliamentary candidate for Leominster and is a tireless green campaigner on local and organic food, better public transport and slower speeds on our roads.

The Fair was organised by the Really Use-less group in Ledbury who are encouraging people to live a more sustainable, lower carbon emitting lifestyle.

Eco-friendly shopping bags were being given away ( made with recycled material) there were cake, book and plant stalls, presentations from local primary and secondary schools, some fabulous live music throughout the day, a cafe, members of the allotment group, a stand providing energy efficiency advice and, of course, our composting stall and demo bins!

It was great to be part of something so positive and inspiring...

Tools ( for self reliance)

Whilst at the Blossomtime event I was browsing a "Tools for Self Reliance" stall and found a wonderful old scythe...just what I have been after to tackle the long grass and nettles around the garden and wood...




it needed a bit of tlc, which compostman gave it..a new metal strap to hold the handle in place and the blade needed sharpening,
compostman has been trying it out on the daffodils and nettles around the garden...









There is something very satisfying about using a scythe, the swish sound as the blade cuts through the long stems and the fact you can hear the birds singing while you work which is not possible if you use a petrol strimmer to do the job!!

Wood

Compostman has been busy in the wood over the last few weeks, felling some dead trees and turning them into logs. He has made further space to store logs in the lean-to, using the pallets I "liberated" from a skip. Yes those pallets, the ones I injured my shoulder getting!
Still he has put them to good use and made another bay for the logs, so we now have 3 bays, one for "burn now", one for "one year old" wood and one for "felled this season".

We leave the felled logs to dry for a bit as big logs sometimes, or sometimes Compostman cuts them into woodburner lengths and leaves them in a pile in the wood to dry a bit, before bringing them in to stack up under cover.

So the wood is either ready to burn now, ready Winter 2008 or Winter 2009 depending on which bay you look at.

I do like a nice pile of wood!

More musings on hand mowing

I feel the need to be proud of myself...I have so far NOT used any petrol mowers in the garden!!

I have now mowed the whole garden and a fair bit of the grass in the compost bin area with the hand mower and some of the grass has been mowed several times now....

Its surprisingly easy!! and I can feel happy that I am doing my waistline AND my carbon footprint some good.

A one compostwoman mower...

I recently bought myself a push mower, propelled by ...ME!





I had been looking for one on Freecycle for ages but kept on being unlucky and missing it.

So I finally decided to buy a new one and found one in B and Q for a really good price.

And it is GREAT!!



I can push it along and still listen to the birds singing and my ears are not being assulted by the noise of the petrol engine.

I also can just do a small amount and feel happy to put the push mower away whereas when I get the petrol mower out, fill it up with fuel etc I feel I *must* do a fair bit of mowing to make it worthwhile starting up the engine!!So... over the last 10 days I have been slowly mowing all the grass for the first time this year...as the grass is quite long it has taken me some time ...and I have found the little push mower EXCELLENT!

The quiet push mower is really very little more work than the petrol mower and its a lot more pleasant work, too!


And, unlike the petrol mower, the hens don't mind it, either!!

A Rant about Bloody con trails!!!!

These are a couple of photos I took of the sunset today...lovely aren't they ? BUT...see the lines??

They are aeroplane condensation ( con) trails.............

See how many there are??

IMO loads of aeroplanes flying to mainly pointless destinations carrying people on mainly pointless journeys....wasting fuel and generating a shed load of Carbon Dioxide in the process....

Ok some flights are necessary, and some people need to make some flights...BUT come on..........

Ggggrrrrrrrrrr

It makes me very worried when every night I see more and more flights overhead whilst at the same time I read, hear and know about the CO2 driven climate change disaster our species seems determined to sleepwalk into...

OK I use fossil fuel...I drive a car..I use petrol in the mower etc . BUT we try to be as fuel frugal as we can and I do not fly to Paris for £10 or whatever the latest silly offer is...just because its a cheap offer!!!! In fact I have flown twice in the last 20 years ( both flights long haul) and I have pledged to myself not to fly again unless it is a family crisis or somesuch, something I will do my utmost to stick to.

Sometimes I think we (the Human race) deserve everything which is going to happen to us, climate change wise....

cos we can be SO stupid considering we are supposed to be SO intelligent........