Plenty Of Oil?

When I read the media, I often notice articles entering mainstream thought that are the opposite opinion of what I know to be true.  I look at things differently, so to speak, and think that I am a realist.

So take Peak Oil for instance.  Of late, there have been many articles in the international press, mainly opinion pieces, that claim that peak oil is and was a myth, and that we have drilled our way out of the problem.  Apparently we have plenty of oil!

This is simply not so.  If it is true, why are crude oil prices still above $100 a barrel and not fallen to 1990 prices of $20 a barrel.  If you have we have an global oil glut then why the high prices?  Articles here, here and here.

It seams that the real problem is that vested interests in Big Oil are the ones creating all of this hyperbole, which is obviously in their best interest to keep finding capital to continue drilling.  It seems that the more stories that claim that peak oil is a myth, the more it screams at me that we are in serious trouble and now going through the same denial and inaction as we have seen with climate change.  Remember the stages of change?  We are at the shock and/or disbelief stage of the cycle.

As any realist would know, fossil fuels are a finite resource, that take many tens of millions of years to replenish.  We have guzzled through the easy-to-get oil in just 200 years, and are now bending over backwards to find new ways of keeping up with demand.

I acknowledge that I am not oil expert, however, I do consider the facts in a realistic light, weighing the arguments for and against peak oil.  I believe that we did reach Peak Conventional Oil back around 2005, as documented by the International Energy Agency, and we are only keeping ahead of oil field depletion by deep-water drilling, digging up Tar sands, drilling like crazy for Shale Oil, and Fracking for Gas.  All of these methods are environmentally devastating.

Additionally these supplementary supplies are only viable when the price of crude oil hovers over $100 a barrel.

The age of cheap oil is well and truly over.  The peak happened, and we are now like drug addicts screaming for our next fix.  It can only get very messy from here on in.  Check out this video with some facts from the Post Carbon Institute.


There are some glimmers of fact out there like this article in UK The Telegraph, and a few rebuttals (this one by Jeremy Leggett - author of Half Gone) to a recent George Monbiot article, but other than those it is constant promotion of drill, baby, drill or better known in around the tar sands of Alberta, Canada as dig, baby, dig.

Our own rapid increase in Australia of coal seam gas fracking, and brown coal exploration is another example close to home, not forgetting to mention the recently approved Alpha mega coal mine in Queensland.  Are we just plain dumb or just too bloody greedy?  Probably the latter.

When will people begin to wake up that we need to move away from fossil fuels quickly?  Not just because of the impact of burning them upon our climactic systems, but because our entire civilization relies way to much on these energy forms for just about everything.

Time to start using less?  This is very difficult when China, India and Brazil are ramping up their consumption, and the developed countries have hit a plateau.  Demand keeps rising and it looks like we are heading for a crunch (again)!

Solutions?  Well re-localisation, renewable energy, Permaculture, and community building come to mind and I have written about all of them many times.

What plans have you made for the inevitable oil crunch?
 

Fabulous Front Orchard

From weedy mess, to fabulous front orchard.  Our winter neglect has now been remedied.  This is the journey we have been on for the past three weekends, and now it is finished!

Here are a few pictures of the finally finished front yard.  I reckon that it is the best it has been for many years, and the heavy mulching will help the fruit trees survive the long hot summer that is forecast to hit us hard this year.  All photographs courtesy of Ben, as part of his school-work for today.

Nectarine and Peach, with an ornamental Pear in the background which I will be grafting real pear onto when the season gets going.

The two cocktail pear trees in pots.

A view down the path.  It is quite a long front yard.

Supervisor Teddy making sure that Kim and Ben mulch the last bed properly.

Apricot and Olive tree #1.

The Plum tree bed.  The second plum tree is out of shot.  This photo was just before they finished mulching so you can see the newspaper and cardboard underneath.

Ben getting a bit artsy fartsy.

Supervisor Holly making sure that the Pear trees stay put.

The west side of the garden, with the photinia hedge growing well with lots of neglect.

Olive trees #2 and 3.  There is Lucerne growing in-between them, and I threw down a few handfuls of seed to fill in the gaps.  We then put the mulch over the top, and it should grow well.  The chooks love lucerne (alfalfa).

And finally our Cox Orange Pippin, and Granny Smith Apple trees, with more lucerne growing in-between.  Can't have enough lucerne I reckon.  We have 14 fruit trees growing well in this smallish space, most on dwarf root stock to keep them manageable.  It is amazing just how many you can squeeze in.

So with it all finished, just a little more work to do around the pool area, like planting three more grape vines, and a bit of landscaping around them, and we are all set to go.

Our address can now be found at www.sustainablehouseday.com

Hope to see you on Sunday 9th September if you are in the area, and looking forward to talking to those who have already said they will drop by!

Spring Seedlings and Planting

What a great time of the year, and certainly my favourite.  Some of the fruit trees are sporting masses of blossom from white to pinks, and leaves are growing quickly.

But best of all, I get to plant lots of veggies by seed.

Today was a marathon.  I sewed the following vegetables in punnets;

Pumpkins: Australian Butter, Queensland Blue, Butternut, Pennsylvania Crookneck, African Horned Melon, and a few mixed heirloom (not sure what they were, so a bit of a surprise).

Cucumbers: Lebanese, Spacemaster, Bush Champion, Sweet & Striped, Zucchini Black Beauty.

Tomatoes: Roma, Tigerella, Mortgage Lifter, Elfie, Yellow Current, Thai Pink Egg, Black Russian.

Capsicum: Yellow long, California Wonder, Sweet Chocolate,

Eggplant (Aubergine): Listada de Gandia

Rainbow Chard, Chilli (birdseye), Basil, Giant Sunflowers, Lazy Housewife Beans, and Celery.

I now have four large trays of planted seedlings.  Hopefully all will sprout.  All I have to do is wait for the soil in the garden beds to heat up, as well as the current crops reaching harvest!

This morning, Kim and I potted up the two cocktail pear trees that we dug out of the ground.

We used a good quality potting mix and added in a bit of homemade compost to give them a boost. The buds are just begining to swell, so we got them in the pots in time.  We are hoping for lots of growth this year now that these trees are free from the heavy clay soil.

I also hung a strawberry pot of sorts.  Kim calls it her Madonna booby!

She saw these cone hanging baskets on some telly show and fell in love with it, so being the dutiful hubby, I fixed the bracket to the wall.  It took me a good 30 minutes for something that should have taken 10.  I snapped off two crappy masonry drill bits whilst drilling holes for dynabolts to fasten the bracket in place.  Both broken bits were stuck in the holes, so I had to start all over again 10mm away from the original hole.

Anyway, Kim wanted flowers, however she compromised as I said I wanted strawberries, which also have flowers but are more productive.  She thought it was a great idea.

Also on the dutiful husband side of planting, I potted up three Princess Lavender for her in this nice terracotta pot.  They smell wonderful as you brush past them.  Kim is getting more confident with looking after plants, and has a growing collection of lavender and succulents in pots just outside her office door.

To cap all this off, I staked up the Broad Bean bed.  Due to strong northerly winds, many of the bean stalks had fallen over, so with some large stakes and lots of twine, I remedied the issue.

At least I can walk past the bed now, and get easy access to the greenhouse, which is a must at this time of year.

I am looking forward to getting back into the garden again tomorrow.  It is so addictive, and a lot healthier than any other narcotic I can think of!

How about you?  Have you spent much time prepping for Spring?

The Good Life Is Coming Soon

Did you know that in our town you can buy the good life if you just fork out $155,000 for land, and a lot more for a home built on it?

If you believe the billboard on the wall of our local shopping centre, then the good life is as simple as a massive mortgage and a nuclear family, and is always coming soon.  It makes me laugh.  This to me subtlety implies that you will not achieve this 'nirvana state' without buying their product.

It sounds a bit delusional of them to me, because I believe that I live the good life, and it is not coming soon nor as expensive as they claim.  It is here and it is now.  You don't need to buy much at all to have a good life.

The good life, in my mind, has two meanings, depending on your point of view.  It could be one that our peer pressure consumer society expects you to conform with, which is one where you buy everything you need from others.  I don't think that having lots of debt does not give one a good life.  I know that it made me miserable in the past.

Or it could be the meaning that I now subscribe to, which is one of the producer/consumer, whereby we try to grow a fair bit of our own food, cook it, and store it for later on in the year.  Our good life includes making things myself, which gives me immense satisfaction and a sense of pride in a job well done.

So don't believe every billboard you see, because you can have the good life where you are living right now!  You don't need a big block of land to make a go of a sustainable lifestyle.  I have found that by using space wisely, you can fit in a lot of great things without making it look like a disaster zone.

How have you tried to live the good life where you live now?

Pre-Spring Clean Up

Isn't it weird that when you are a gardener, you actually have to prepare for the most amazing season of all?  Our preparation is two fold, tidying up for Sustainable House Day, and getting ready for the onslaught of growth that is the Spring time garden.

So far, most of this preparation has consisted of weeding, sheet mulching and a general pre-spring clean.  Weeding to ensure that the fruit trees in the front orchard have the best possible chance at developing the very best fruit for our family, and mulching to ensure good moisture retention in the soil.

Here is what we have managed to do so far.

This bed holds two olive trees that I planted in Autumn.  They are now well established due to all the winter rain we have had, and are ready to put on the spring flush of growth.  The bed also has some lucerne which is resprouting, and there were many, many weeds which have mostly been pulled out.

What we do next is to sheet mulch.  Sheet mulching is easy, and keeps the Cooch and Kikuyu grass at bay for over a year.

We lay down layers of newspaper which we wet to keep in place.  About two to three pages think.

Then we lay down thick cardboard.  Here is an example of some cardboard saved from my two recent solar panels.

With my diggers knees on, I had to get down on all fours to lay this stuff in the bed.  Those knee pads are the best investment ever!

As you can see, this is a bit like a patchwork quilt in the making.  Ripping bits of cardboard to fit all those fiddly places around trees and shrubs.

Then we re-hydrate the mulch.  I prefer to use coconut husks, because it contains no dyes like most barks and wood chips you can purchase from landscaping stores, and it breaks down quickly to form a fantastic soil.  The worms just love it, and every bed I have uses it in has the darkest, richest soil that plants love to grow in.  The only problem is that it comes from Sri Lanka, and I cannot find a local source.  Sustainable to be using a by-product of the coconut industry, but the transportation miles are massive.

The mulch comes in compressed blocks, and one block expands to two wheelbarrow loads, which is quite impressive.

This bed was covered in golden oxalis (soursobs), and were sucking the moisture out of the soil.  As the peach and nectarine trees in this bed are now bursting into blossom, it was well worth the effort.

Here is the bed near the front gate that was absolutely covered in invasive grasses.  It took me over three hours to remove as much of the grass and roots as I could, hopefully making a dent it its growth prospects over the warmer months.  Some may ask why I just didn't spray the grass with Glyphosate, which is the key ingredient in Roundup and Zero.  Well, I don't use that stuff on my property because it is very nasty stuff, and not only does not kill Kikuyu very well, it leaches into the soil and kills just about everything else including the soil biota, mycorrhizal fungi (which is beneficial for tree growth), and earthworms.  Soil without these things is just dust and not good for growing anything of substance in a sustainable manner and without the massive need for artificial fertilizers.

So that is what we did yesterday.  Two beds complete with another four to go, but not half as weed infested, and they don't need to be sheet mulched with paper and cardboard.

The two site supervisors didn't even break into a sweat!  At least they could have handed me the spade when I need it.

Today we did some weeding around the pool, cleaned up the garage area, and had a photo shoot for a newspaper article that will be run in the Melton Weekly the week before Sustainable House Day.  A few photographs around the garden with Solar panels and greenhouse in the background, and a few in the rain of me holding Edwina Chicken in front of Cluckingham Palace.

Then it down came the freezing cold rain, and that was that.  Inside to have a rest and read a book.

More fun in the garden tomorrow, as I going to be planting up Tomatoes, capsicums, eggplants, and sundry other summer crops in punnets and put them in the greenhouse to germinate.  Ben will be giving me a hand as part of his gardening lesson for the day.  Should be great fun, planting with my son, and teaching him all the tricks and tips that I have learnt.

Rock on Spring!  Are you preparing you garden yet?
  

Sustainable House Day 2012

What to see our version of a sustainable home?  Do you live within 100km of Melton, Victoria?

Well come and visit our humble abode on Sunday 9th September 2012 from 10am - 4pm, to have a butchers at all the great sustainable projects that you have seen our family build/grow/create over the past six years.

See the clay oven.  See Cluckingham Palace.  See, not one, but two renewable energy systems.  Touch the worms, smell the compost, taste some mint, check out the irrigation system, say gidday to a chook, or just have a chat with Kim, Ben, myself, or many of the other volunteers that will be helping us from the Melton Sustainable Living Group.

Have I convinced you with this corny ad?  No steak knives, but I guarantee a learning experience to remember.

Here is the official blurb from the great team at SHD.

Sustainable House Day 2012

Some of Australia’s greenest homes will open their doors to the public for the eleventh annual Sustainable House Day on Sunday 9 September - showcasing the country’s most environmentally sustainable and innovative homes that invest in renewable energy, recycling and other practices designed to reduce their carbon footprint. 

This is your personal invitation to see what sustainable homeowners have done and how these ideas can apply to you! 

If you’re thinking about improving your home’s energy, water or waste management efficiency, speaking to homeowners about their own experiences is a must. Seeing real sustainable projects in action, and learning what worked well and not so well, will help save you time and money. 

There will be plenty of information available on the day, with architects, builders and energy auditors on hand at many of the homes to provide you with expert tips on sustainable living. 

From retrofits to new builds, there are sure to be many inspirational ideas to adapt to your home. 

Entry to the houses is free. For house locations and more details visit www.sustainablehouseday.com  

We are excited to be a part of this wonderful event for the third year in a row, so if you are local, pop on in for a tour of the grounds, and see what is possible on an average suburban house block.

The address will be listed on www.sustainablehouseday.com two weeks before the event.

See you on the day!

Drunken Cow Update

It has been 17 days since I made my first Drunken Cow cheese, and I have been turning it every day.

Two days ago, it had shrunk so much that it cracked, top and bottom, so as this cheese has to mature for a full three months, I had no choice but to wax it.

Here is the top.  You will notice that the wine penetrated about 5mm (1/4") into the rind of the cheese, and deep into the holes that I pierced.

This is the bottom.  There is minimal mould build up, and it was easily washed off with a brine solution.

You can see how much it has shrunk by comparing the Drunken cow, now a deep purple after being cleaned prior to waxing, to a Caerphilly that I made on Saturday night.  The Drunken cow has lost about a quarter of its volume.

So here is the waxed cheese, all sealed and ready to continue its maturity at around 11C (51F).  We will crack it open on 3rd December 2012.

By the way, this cheese still smells divine.  It has a deep, sweet red wine aroma.  Both Kim and I cannot wait to sample it.

[Cross posted on Little Green Cheese]

10 Benefits Of Growing Your Own Food

This list was part of Ben's school work today and he even typed it all by himself. These are some of the things he learnt on Wednesday.

10 Benefits of Growing Your Own Food - A List by Ben Webber

1.   First of all you need to buy seeds and seedlings to plant. With a little hard work preparing the soil and with some help from the sun and watering you can grow your own vegetables.   In a few months you will be rewarded with some nice juicy fresh vegetables.

2.    It’s fun to be outside because nature is lovely when planting.  Most the time you will love the effort of your own vegetables growing!  It will be worth the hard work and if you enjoy working outside the benefits are even greater!

3.   It helps the environment as we don’t spray chemicals on the vegetables and fruit like farmers do.    We don’t waste fuel delivering it to supermarkets, instead we can just walk into our back garden and take the vegetables without wasting or harming the environment!  

4.   All food grown in your garden is healthy and good for you.  Supermarkets are getting expensive these days and it is going to save you money if you grow your own fruit and vegetables in your own back garden! I researched the yearly cost of what the average family spend on vegetables and fruit a year and most spend $2600 per annum.  So growing your own veg and fruit is worth it!

5.  It can help vegetarians, just like a healthy diet but if you’re a vegetarian you’re going to go crazy for healthy foods, having a vegetable patch in the garden can greatly help!  Especially if you want to make healthy meals with some spices or just have a better diet!

6.  The food tastes better and you know it has not been sprayed with chemicals.  You do not know how long the food has been stored for, this means that it might not taste as fresh as growing your own and being able to pick a fresh apple from your own tree.   When you cook with store bought vegetables you may find the flavour missing, by cooking your own vegetables this will allow for a better tasting experience.

7.  You can learn a lot!  When you are gardening you may learn about the weather, the soil and different types of gardening tools to use.   You will also learn about healthy alternatives for treating bugs and pest without using harmful Chemicals on your plants, it can be a fun learning experience!

8. As most people need vitamins from fruit you can easily get them from growing your own food as most fruit and vegetables contain most vitamins that you need daily. Which can keep you in shape and healthy!

 9.  You can also grow herbs which grow faster than most other plants.  Herbs can go great with many foods especially curries or soups.  By using these herbs this allows chefs or people who love cooking a great experience for experimenting!

 10.  One of the benefits is that my dad can grow potatoes and that is my favourite vegetable because it is great for cooking and you can make lots of varieties of things like potato and chick pea curry, mashed potato, wedges, roast potatoes and baked potatoes.  I do like chips but Dad doesn’t know how to make those yet!

The Greening Of Ben

Thanks to all those who left a comment on Monday's post.  It took me a while after I wrote it to realise that I do actually teach lots of people how to grow food via this blog.  I suppose what I was referring to was teaching people in my family, and our local community.  

I am the only person in our family unit that has the detailed knowledge of what to plant when and how.  The older kids know how to construct things, like garden beds, greenhouses, chicken houses, of which they have all helped, but none of them have really shown too much interest in the food side of things.  I know that the day will come that they ask me to teach them the skills, so I wait.

As for Ben, who is just starting that teenager phase, everything is a chore.  Even spending time with dad in the garden is a task in itself.  

So to start the education, or The Greening of Ben, if you like, part of Ben's school day was spent out in the veggie patch with me being the teacher.  As I have been ill for the last five days, and just recovering now, it was a good time to go hands free and let the lad do the work.

Here is Ben looking very excited about his horticulture lesson.  He is holding a bunch of seeds that we selected, that I found in my seedbox that were well past their sow-by-date.  If nothing grows from them, no problem really, because I was going to throw the packets away this season anyway.

We found quite a few pots around the yard that were bare.  So Ben wheeled them around with the trolley, and we dug in a hand full of blood and bone, and a little dynamic lifter into each pot and watered them well.

Firstly, I showed Ben how to propagate Peppermint.  We dug out a little of the root from another pot with peppermint just starting to regrow, and he transplanted it into this grey pot.  Like all mints, it will flourish in no time.

Then on to transplanting some red mustard greens that a friend had given me about a month ago.  I had them sitting in one of the citrus pots getting irrigated, so thought it was high time to teach Ben how to transplant out of a punnet.  I showed him how to do one, then he planted the rest.

Then I found some Rocket seeds in these nifty little packs.  They look like a book of matches, but within each 'match' are seeds.

 The black line on the match shows how deep to plant them, and the point faces down in the dirt.  The packet suggests that you soak the matches for two hours, but we plonked them in some water for only and hour as it was getting close to dinner and the light was fading fast.

Here is the planted Rocket seeds, and I have just noticed the one is upside down!  They should grow, as Rocket seeds germinate quite well.

Next it was some pick-again lettuce.  These are some of the packets I had, so once the pot was prepared, I directed Ben to sprinkle the seeds on top of the soil.

Then I showed him how to finely sieve some sand over to just cover them.  Lettuce needs light to germinate, so you can either leave them on the surface, or very lightly cover with a fine sand.

We ran out of pots, so I had a look in the greenhouse and found some potting mix in tubes.  Ben tipped them all into this large pot and rehydrated the potting mix.  He added blood and bone and mixed it all in.  He then planted the radish seeds into it.

I found some red onion seedlings that I had also neglected, so Ben planted pulled out some spent sprouting broccoli and gave it to the chooks, then planted the seedlings in their place.

In total we planted the following vegetables; scarlet globe radishes, Lettuce freckles bunte, red deer tongue, Italian lollo mix, mesclun mix, wild arugula, and flame lettuce.  I think Ben was pleased with his work.

As for the rest of the garden, I have one head of Romanesco broccoli still growing, and nearly ready to harvest.

The tahitian lime tree is fruiting well, and we are picking a few a day.

The meyer lemon has big juicy lemon on it, and are ready for harvesting.

Mandarins are nearly ripe, and need a little more fertilizer by the looks of the yellowing leaves.

And finally the lemonade tree  is ready to harvest, and the broad beans are outstanding.

So as far as teaching Ben some of the methods I use, then I believe he learnt quite a lot.  We are going to plant some more on Sunday as I have many more pots.  By then the radishes should have sprouted, so it will give Ben some encouragement to sow some more seeds.  Even though he begrudgingly attended the lesson today, I feel that we got a lot out of it.  It was hard not getting my hands stuck into the work, but I resisted the temptation because Ben would not have learnt the skills otherwise.

A few more years and I will make a green thumb urban farmer out of him.  I think it will start to click when he harvests his own produce and cooks it himself.

What do you think, off to a good start?