Practice makes perfect so they say. I say that perfect practice makes perfect. So practice we do.
Each weekend, and any other time for that matter, we brush up on our skills. Skills that matter. Skills for the present and for the future.
So what has this got to do with simple or sustainable living? Well, I don’t think that it is a coincidence that the very same actions that help reduce impacts of climate change also helps you to prepare for resource depletion and energy descent. They are all intertwined.
To that end, over the last few days off I have been performing maintenance around the house. Fixing a door that wouldn’t close properly. Fixing some trellis that the Pepino bush threatened to drag to the ground.
I improved the chook house by adding a third perch to their roost. On the smaller run, I replaced a large gauge chicken wire with a smaller one to keep the remaining sparrows out of their food.
Kim cleaned the gate to Cluckingham Palace and I scrubbed the roof.
As you can see, it keeps the girls happy and healthy.
It was only simple little things but keeping on top of these types of jobs saves money and time in the long run. I would rather learn to do these things myself because once I have mastered them, I can pass the skills down the line to others.
I also made a double batch of Caerphilly cheese. Why make just one when it takes the same time to make two?
In three weeks we get to eat some of these wonderful creations.
Another form of practice has been transportation. Over the last month Ben and I have been peddling the local bike tracks, building up to something meaningful. As chance would have it Kim needed to pick up a prescription from here GP, so Ben and I jumped on our treddlies and rode to the other side of town via a safe route.
It took us 30 minutes to ride the 6 km. After a brief rest and a drink, we picked up the script and then rode home. A 12 km round trip. Lucky I have strong legs and the welcome assistance of my electric bike.
We always have great fun on our rides. It give you a sense of freedom, and if we had have driven, we would have missed so much. Ducks in the creek. The moon setting in the west. The chilly morning air in our faces, with tears of cold running down our cheeks and the odd car rushing past to nowhere in particular.
With about 2 km to travel, we stopped at the top of the new bridge that spans the Western Freeway. It felt surreal watching the lifeblood of civilisation whizzing underneath us being carried in long tankers to all part of the state. In the few minutes that we watched, we must have saw about 10 petrol tankers go by. Without transportation fuel, our civilisation will stop dead in its tracks.
It made me think about the next decade and the forthcoming energy descent. As we slowly slip down the depletion side of peak oil, what will the landscape look like. Will the vast suburban sprawl that lay before me, either side of the freeway degrade into slums or alternatively, thriving villages with backyard food production and cottage industries servicing the inhabitants and providing people with a living.
Hell, this really scares me. Knowing that people around me are somewhat oblivious to the changes that are upon us. But I suck it up and keep practicing.
I just hope all the preparation pays off, because sometimes I feel that I sound like a bit of a nut job or fruit loop when I talk about it to others. I feel a bit like the ant in Aesop’s fables, working diligently through the summer preparing for winter, while the grasshoppers of the world play their fiddles. Kim often says to me that I better be right about this when she feels a little bit down. I don’t blame her for feeling this way, especially when many around us are partying like its 1999 without a care in the world (except for the mountain of debt they have accumulated).
Deep down, I know that what we are doing is right. We also know that we will not be fully self sufficient, but you have to start somewhere and build the community that is required for them to be materially sufficient. Hey, you never know. I may be end up as the village cheese maker! That has a nice ring to it. All I have to do is find a farmer with cows or goats withing riding distance.
Now I realise that this post has been a bit of a ramble, but isn’t that just the way life is? A bit of a ramble, heading in the general direction of your goals. So here endith the story.
Let me leave you with a video mash up of the Paul Gilding TED talk “The Earth is Full”, edited by Sustainable Man. High visual impact, and mostly about what I have been talking about in this post. Call it the icing on the cake.
Eleven Fifty Nine from Sustainable Man on Vimeo
Do you regularly practice you post-peak skills?
How long do you think it will be before we start to see the wider impacts of the energy descent? Have you already seen telltale signs in your area which may even include economic downturn?
Hi Gavin,
Even if you are not “right” about all that will happen and when, you are still doing the right thing 🙂
Barb from Canada
No one knows for sure what will happen in the future but I look at it like the Ten Commandments in the Bible – you may not believe in it but they are a good and honest way to live your life. Living a life where you not only care about the Earths future and the future that we may leave the generations that come after us but actively doing something that will lighten your impact is also a good and honest way to live. You are setting a fine example to your friends and family.
I have to get those skills first Gav but im on my way. I did another 5 hr course on sustainable gardening as a launch for the council sponsored Home Harvest. Its a great booklet. Helen from SGA was an absolute scream. I know you are on the right track Gav and so do you and all the thousands of people who follow you. Its really hard to get people to wake up and then to CHANGE. Put it this way, if it all went bellyup tomorrow, id be living near you. If only for your cheese.
There was an interesting article in the NYTimes a couple days ago, about what it calls “the end of car culture” in the US. Seems we may have hit peak driving here in the US, both in terms of miles driven and vehicles owned. Both have been trending downward since 2005, even before the recession hit.
Still, what drives me nuts is the number of pickup trucks I see. It seems like every third vehicle is a huge, gas-sucking, pickup with only one driver and no sign that the truck is ever used for much of anything besides hauling people. The vast majority of pickups are the club cab type – that has a backseat for the kids – so the cargo bed is short and very limited. I have far more cargo capacity with my small SUV + trailer but Truck Boys wouldn’t be caught dead driving something like that. This truck obsession is all about image.
But still, if we’ve hit peak driving here in the US, that’s a start. Link to the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/sunday-review/the-end-of-car-culture.html?pagewanted=all
Hi Kathy, Generally speaking I agree with you about the truck drivers, but here is our story. We downsized last year to one vehicle, and it was a tough decision. I walk to work everyday and my husband has an electric assist bike. We decided to keep our 15yr old, mint condition, long box diesel 3/4 ton truck as it was the most versatile for us. We use it to get fire wood, go for groceries and put our old camper on it for recreation. Eventually we will either get a hybrid or electric car, if we feel the need to replace it. Folks think we are strange because we sold our car, but I very rarely miss it, and I sure don’t miss the extra cost of a second vehicle. We also don’t drive as much as we did when we had the car to just tootle around in.
Gav, take heart. If we are wrong then we will get to enjoy our returements, free from all debt and mortgage and we can live it up big then. However, I KNOW we are right and sadly we are headed into the decline. The other bright side is that when it all happens we will be far to busy to even contemplate resting on our laurels and others will be too interested in trying to learn what we’ve learned or scrambling for survival to say a thing. It will all become totally unimportant.
The double batch of cheese sounds great and I am so looking forward to making some more cheese. I look forward even more to having our own goat milk (some way off yet) to make raw and almost totally local cheese. 🙂
I know where you are coming from Gavin. I tried explaining to DD2 yesterday why the skills we were practising (preserving veg for the freezer) were so important. She sort of “got” it. Yes she enjoyed the process but told me there was no way she would have a veg garden as she could buy all she wanted from the shops. Told her if the SHTF then there would be no veg in the shops. She just couldn’t see that happening. Sigh. One step at a time. Keep on inspiring us Gavin. You are doing the right thing for not only your family but also the planet.
I loved this post. There are days when I feel like Kim too. We have only had a mortgage for 4 years and we have been paying it off like mad. We also decided last year we will be moving to NZ to be near my family and have purchased a 5.5 acre plot of land that we will build on. Other than these mortgages we have no other debt. We are in the planning stage at the moment and are really thinking about what our needs will be in the future. There is so much to consider and there are times when I worry that we do not have enough skills to last into the future. However I am working on building a library of reference material in the hope that this will help fill in our skill gaps.
ABC has a doco on Sunday Best on the 14th called No Impact Man. A year in the life and trials of Colin Beaven and his family. Might be worth a look. should be on I-view after.
steve
Cheers Steve. I saw that doco a while ago. It is a great experiment by Colin. You will see that his wife is not too enthusiastic at the beginning. Worth taking time to watch it.
Gav