Freeconomy Blog
Sat
05 Apr
The local food, no plastic, no bin experiment...
| 28 comments |
After writing my last blog and realising that my food bill was almost half of my estimated annual costs for this year, I realised that working an allotment was not only something I really wanted to do, but a money-free imperative. So whilst applying for a plot on my nearest allotment site, a friend from the gardening world popped over to offer me his patch.
Full of excitement, I high-tailed it off up the road to take a look, and though it was in a bit of a state, I could visualise the broad beans growing there in August. However, after spending a couple of hours on it, I realised that if I wanted any kind of yield this summer I would really jeopardise the fertility of the soil in the long run. Designing it along the fundamental principles of permaculture is a must for me – I am not interested in going for the quick big yield in the same way intensive agriculture does.
This made me think about what I was proposing to do in my last blog, which was to go to a no-money lifestyle immediately. If I wanted to go money-free at some stage this year, I would have to start planting now. But for me the Freeconomy Community has never been about jumping to a money-free lifestyle tomorrow – it has always been about making the transition to it before the impending worldwide economic collapse that will almost inevitably accompany peak oil. I don’t want to live a life than isn’t possible for everyone eventually. For example, as much as I really admire what freegans are doing, it wouldn’t be possible for the masses to live that way eventually as food needs to be grown locally and there is not enough waste food in bins.
So not only did I decide to concentrate on building up soil fertility on my allotment this year, I also decided that I wanted to live my life exactly the way this project has stated from its conception – living more simply, more in harmony with Nature and in transition to a community life where no money changes.
Therefore I have decided to try what I call a ‘Transition Experiment’. Transition is all about making positive changes in our lives now for a time when we will not have cheap energy in the form of oil. So if I am serious about where I feel humanity needs to go, I need to be able to do it in my own life first.
So as from yesterday I decided to radically change my life NOW so that I can learn the information and skills, during this interim period between now and $200 a barrel oil, that I will need in ten years time. Firstly, I have decided to only eat food that comes 100% from the UK (and as local as is available) and which is both organic and vegan.
On top of that, I am refusing to buy anything made of, or packaged in,
plastic, a product as we all know is made from oil. Packaging is the one area in which we can change things relatively soon, as alternatives are already available, though they’re not perfect either.
On top of that, if I can’t recycle it, I don’t buy. Therefore the only bins I will have are my compost and recycle bins.
This experiment will be to see how easy or difficult it is to live without oil before we have to do it for real. I will document my frustrations, what skills I have had to learn to deal with it, what I miss most, what I love about it and how it affects me physically and spiritually. I’ll keep you posted in this blog, and for those of you who are interested in taking part in this experiment with me, I’ll blog the important things I discover along the way.
So no more chocolate, rice, orange juice or eating out for me! It sounds like an ordeal but I am actually really looking forward to it. It is going to force me to learn how to survive off foods that can grow here in the UK, and the skills I need in order to be able to make what I need from locally produced materials.
Oh and before anyone points it out, I know that food from the UK will still get to me using some oil, even if it is just a fraction. The point is that it has the potential to grow here whilst it will also keep me more in touch with the seasons. Bananas will never be able to grow here and so I need to wean myself off them now.
Now I’m off to bake some sourdough spelt bread whilst thinking about how I can cut out room rent in the long term – my dream has always been and always will be getting that elusive bit of land to set up a veganic community along the same spiritual principles as Gentle World, a community I lived in for a while whilst
wwoofing around New Zealand a few years ago. It’ll be a community where no money changes hands, all food and shelter come from the land we are on, and anyone can stay and attend courses and talks for free.
So watch this space…!!
And remember, be kind to each other and support each other out there, it can be a tough enough life without us making it even harder…
Comment on this Post:
Rae comments ...
Good luck with that - it sounds a great experiment and not unlike one I am doing myself. I’m a few baby steps behind you though and just focusing on recycling and composting rather than throwing things in the bin. I have a way to go before the zero waste / self sufficiency becomes a reality
I’ve written about it on my blog if you’re interested:
http://littlegreenblog.com/2008/03/29/my-rubbish-challenge/
What would be really useful for me, would be for you to list up what you are eating every day. I would like to eat only UK foods too, but I think it will be hard being a vegan who cannot eat nuts to stay healthy and maintain my weight! I eat a lot of rice and lentils, which obviously has a huge carbon footprint attached to it. So any inspiration will be welcome.
I understand perfectly about needing to eat with the seasons and I am not adverse to having to eat the same food for a couple of months, but I do lack inspiration on WHAT to eat that is locally sourced.
Have a great weekend; you’re processing a lot of stuff; it’s good that you talk it out here,
Rae x
Jo Nean comments ...
Hi Saoirse,
That is one hell of a challenge! I have ambitions to become plastic free but while thinking about it I have been noticing how much stuff comes wrapped in it, even in my veg box there is some. There is also stuff that comes in cardboard which on opening contains sneakily hidden plasitc.
My current aim is to go down to one bin liner a year of landfill rubbish. I heard once of a woman who lives in the woods, buys very little and grows all her own food. Apparently she wants to go down to one bin a year and is almost there. I’m currently on about 4 bins liners a year. I’m really not sure you will manage zero. Have you tried keeping a diary about what you eat and throw away for a while so you can see where you are now?
My friend Beth who I think you met in Brighton is about to go ’locovore’ (only local food) for one year and is taking lots of time preparing. It has been done before by a few people but is also very hard and they had to allow a certain number of ’cheats’.
Best of luck anyway, I’ll be reading with interest.
Jo xxx
P.S. Don’t forget that I have a blog too. Go read! :)
What your mother should tell you comments ...
So, first we’re going to live practically money-free in a city and now we’re eliminating all ’evil man-made products’. Are you going to not use cutlery because of the process in which it has been made? Are you only going to wear clothes you’ve made from leaves and nettles yourself?
What about water? Are you only going to collect rainwater in bowls made from twigs?
You could always just go and live in a cave somewhere to enable you to really live this romanticised primitive existence without compromising your beliefs.
You give up on everything you start to do so why will this be any different? Just face it - you want to live a life of ethical luxury with everyone else doing the hard work.
Go and get some therapy and stop hiding behind all these ’good causes’ to mask your ineptitude at living a normal, sane life.
Life is hard, deal with it and stop whinging or throw yourself off the nearest cliff, feeding the planet with your remains so you can, at last, do something truly contributary to the planet.
seb comments ...
Hi,
In response to "What your mother should tell you", contrary to you I think life is easy and nice. I regret that your is hard. I hope you will find a way to make it easier soon.
If life is difficult for some of us it is simply because some egoist poeple try to keep all the wealth of this planete for their personnal pleasure... which obviously doesn’t match with God’s plan and then make life difficult. Do you know that 5% of persons have 80% of the wealth? The problem is very clear, life is not hard but egoist people make it hard.
Have a good Sunday
eric the fool comments ...
id just like to say that having personally worked and walked with saoirse over the last 7 months or so, that he is actually one of the most hard working people i have come across. whatever else you think of him, you are wrong if you think hes workshy. i should know because i am ;0)
What your mother should tell you comments ...
7 months??!! More like just over 6 weeks.... Or was 30th January longer ago than that and someone hasn’t told me?
These frivolous ’projects’ that Saoirse keeps taking up are nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to big himself up.
If he really really REALLY wanted to make a difference, he’d stop trying to reinvent the wheel and join an established organisation that does extremely good work and is in desperate need of more hands-on help.
Or is that not glamorous enough?
Does that not get him enough attention?
And you lot should know better than encouraging him on this huge ego trip.
Mind you, with his track record, it’s likely to be the only successful trip he ever goes on.
Roxy from Romford comments ...
Dear Mark
I am becoming increasingly worried about you. If you try to feed yourself from an allotment without some proper planning, you are quite simply going to starve to death.
Incidentally, the notion that if you take over a plot in April you cannot get a decent crop of organic vegetables by the summer without damaging your soil’s fertility is utter tosh – you just need to know what you are doing. You need to plan and do a bit of hard work – instead of simply yakking all the time!
My advice is to stop listening to all the advice you are getting – er, except this piece of advice obviously! LOL!!!
Just stop up your ears and listen to what your body is telling you.
Any trained athlete will tell you that the secret of good performance is the balance between nutrition and exercise – and your balance is badly out of kilter.
The evidence? You set out for India and pack in before you leave Calais. Then you set out to go around Britain and pack in before you get to Cambridge.
This is abysmal! It is like an Olympic Marathon runner collapsing exhausted ten paces from the start line!
What has gone wrong? Well, reluctant though I am to criticise members of the sisterhood, I have to say the ladies who have been looking after you so far have not done a good job.
To put it bluntly I think they’ve been demanding too much sofa action, without giving you sufficient home-cooked, home-grown food in return.
The result is that you look absolutely frazzled – worn out, terribly pale and thin (although the sad, puppy dog eyes are very cute! LOL!!!).
You look as though you couldn’t knock the skin off an organic, fair trade rice pudding!
I can say with some confidence that this simply wouldn’t happen in Romford, with the help of the RADMWC (of which, incidentally, I am acting chair).
Of course we’d get you working – double digging both day and night if you know what I mean. LOL!!!
But we’d feed you up properly and give you a bit of essential horticultural knowledge about the earth’s natural fecundity at the same time!
Come and sow your seed in the fertile fields of Essex! (The offer of a train ticket still holds, btw).
Within weeks you’ll be fat, sleek and performing at your peak!
After that a pilgrimage to India would seem like a stroll in the park –that’s if we ever decide to let you go! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!
Mango comments ...
Eating all UK produce should be possible. There’s oats, barley, rye, wheat, spelt and potatoes for staples, green split peas and field beans for dried pulses, then there are broad beans and green beans for some of the year, a good variety of vegetables for most of the year, nutritious wild foods like nettles and fat hen, and UK fruit for most of the year. There’s also a few unusual things I’ve heard you can grow, like the hardy yam which could be a good staple. It would take very great skill and knowledge to grow all your own food in an allotment, though. I have read about someone who mainly lived on grass - "Fresh grass clippings sprinkled with lemon juice taste not unlike asparagus...", and the Chinese Zen master Xu Yun claimed to have lived mostly on pine needles for years at a time.
As for the people who have been using an unpleasant tone in their comments, I wonder why they feel this is necessary. There is sometimes some truth in what they are saying, but the way they are saying it and the political prejudices behind their arguments are very unpleasant. It seems that if someone lives a life which is unconventional in any way then their ethics are open to all kinds of criticism, whereas if someone has an entirely conventional lifestyle then their behaviour is somehow sacrosanct and not allowed to be criticised in any way.
No-one has an entirely consistent ethical belief system because human life and consciousness are inherently full of contradictions. This applies just as much to right-wing conformists as it does to left-wing idealists.
Saoirse comments ...
I’ve been asked about what I eat so here goes -
At the minute I am eating oats, spelt bread (made using safflower oil), barley grain, spelt grain, potatoes and loads of different veggies even though it is still the ’hungry gap’. I’ve just been off for a walk and we’ve been picking wild garlic leaves, hawthorn leaves and nettles, which are amazing btw. I plan on learning how to make leaf curd from nettles tonight, which is supposedly very high in protein.
I also plan on making my own spelt pasta, another skill I must learn. Spelt pasta by the way is great and much better that wheat for you in the long run.
Protein will be the hard one as I am also vegan. It is not that we cannot grow high protein plants in the UK, it is just that we live in a global marketplace where it is cheaper to grow it intensively somewhere else, and hence British farmers can’t compete and either grow something else or leave their farms (500 farmers and workers leave British farms each week btw). However there will be a lot more stuff in the coming months, it just isn’t great this time of year.
There isn’t much in the way of fruit at the minute, but it will pick up pretty soon, when there will be no end of stuff, especially wild, for most of the year. There will also be nuts in the summer, though again it suffers from competition from ’cheaper’ countries. Cheaper in the short term that is.
Before I started the walk I had already been doing only local veggies for about 15mths, so it’s not completely new to me, I’m just extending it to all the meals of the day instead of just the dinner meal.
It is quite fascinating doing this, it is highlighting to me all the skills I need to learn and what types of food the UK are going to have to start growing again over the next couple of years to become more resilient to the inevitable changes. Food security in the UK definitely needs looking at, I can tell you that already.
Thank you to those of you who have offered advice, much appreciated, I’ll be needing more of the same!
Jakob. comments ...
You need to think carefully about ’only eating food from the UK’ for 2 reasons at least. One simple, one contentious...
1. Minimising the environmental impact means reducing food-miles. So if you live in Kent it makes much more sense to eat ’local’ French food than ’UK’ food from Skye.
2. I would rather eat fairtrade food that (theoretically at least) could help drag a 3rd world farmer out of poverty than UK food that further lines the bulging pockets of an (organic) agri-baron. Climate change is the first defence against this kind of argument but I think that people who can’t feed their kids are more worried about earning a living than increased rainfall in 2025.
Hello comments ...
I dont like eating meat, but i love chocolate and sweets and fast food and wearing leather and driving 1 mile and leaving lights on, your at the top of the food chain and you act like you dont deserve to be there. I can garantee ur wasting ur time and not enjoying whats on offer.
What your mother should tell you comments ...
Man, you are a real flake.
Flakey flakey flakey.
Is this latest thing REALLY conducive to not spending much money? And when exactly do you plan to sleep by the way?
Gathering berries, foraging for food, making your own pasta, no doubt working as well as I’m sure you won’t be sponging off people...... anymore - will you also have time to socialise, to speak to your family, to write your ’look at me! Look at me!’ blogs?
I can guarantee you won’t be doing this for very long either as it’s not in your nature. And I say that with what I’ve already seen from reading all your blogs and making an educated, calculated assessment on your character. In fact, I can just see you whinging to your friends "They don’t know me so how can they say those things!". Well matey, you reveal so much about yourself on here that anyone with half a brain can see how fickle you are.
And for those of you that STILL insist to encourage this poor little lost-it to continue his flightiness, LET IT GO!!! You cannot live your lives through him so go and sit down, think about what it is you REALLY want and take it from there.
I must admit though, this site is like a particularly gruesome car crash where you cannot help but look even though it makes you cringe and wince.
eric the fool comments ...
hi again mother.
i was actually working with saoirse for a few months before we set out on the walk, thats why i said 7 months
more importantly, id like to ask how can i help you? this is a serious offer
you can either leave me a comment here, or you can phone me on 07914006589
look forward to hearing from you
What your mother should tell you comments ...
As soon as I have a counter for you to wipe, Eric, I’ll let you know. Thanks for the offer though.
Rae comments ...
Hi Saoirse,
Thanks for the information.
So, sorry to go on here, but what are you actually eating? I’m looking to be educated so that I can be empowered. What does a couple of days meals look like for you?
Out of the items you listed I’m seeing
vegetable / nettle soup and bread
Stir fry with jacket potato
porrage made with water
perhaps vegetable stews and casseroles thickened with barley
Can you expand a little please?
TIA
Rae x
Dave S comments ...
As an alternative idea for feeding ourselves, my friends and I manage very well from our "skipping" expeditions.
Yes, it involves getting food out of bins. However, since a lot of food is wrapped in plastic these days anyway, and since most shops put stuff in binbags too, a lot of stuff (bread, cakes, flour, some veg) is double bagged. As for vegetables - chop off the odd bad bit, wash them well (which you have to do anyway) and it’s no problem.
A lot of the veg we skip from one shop is actually better quality than some of the stuff we buy from our (actually pretty decent) local greengrocers. Much of it - like the three whole boxes of plums I skipped the other week - is just on the verge of peak ripeness! Why they throw it away is a mystery, but from that one expedition, my friends and I probably now have enough plum jam to last us all several months, as well as a huge plum crumble.
No, in the long term it is not a sustainable way to live - just a temporary stop gap to address a tiny bit of the waste generated by capitalism. It probably wouldn’t work if "everybody" did it, as obviously the equation depends on a wasteful system leaving plenty of stuff behind for us less wasteful folks to recover.
No, we can’t feed ourselves like this all the time - but often we come pretty close.
For example, once some friends found over 80kg of wholemeal bread flour that still had quite a few months left until it went out of date. We ate virtually free bread for several months because of that.
To be honest, the worst thing about skipping isn’t diving into bins - most bins are pretty clean. It’s deciding what to do when you are confronted by (say) two whole binbags of cakes.
I think it would probably be possible to get very fat indeed from skipping, even when the spoils are shared among 30+ people as they are with our little group.
As for skipped meat - I don’t go there. Most of our loose skipping "collective" are veggie or vegan. One veggie girl feeds some of the better skipped meat to her dog from time to time. Personally, I wouldn’t touch the stuff with a bargepole - but I’d say that about all factory farmed meat anyway, so it’s neither here nor there.
But for veggies - on average we get a big haul once a week, and depending on what we get and who is around, it usually keeps at least 10 of us well fed for most of the week. Bread, cakes and pizza bases are also very easy to come by, so more often than not we have 1-day-out-of-date skipped bread. Clothes are also easy to come by - particularly if you skip from "up market" charity shops like Oxfam, who throw out an incredible amount of stuff.
If you think jumping in and out of bins sucks - well, better 15 minutes of that a couple of times a week than a crappy 9-5 job! Eating skipped food frees up an incredible amount of time for doing other stuff - in my case music, art, activism, whatever!
Yes, I work as well, but only part time - and I hold my head high as I embrace thrift, minimal participation in the money system, and a small but important form of environmental activism almost every day!
Saoirse comments ...
For Rae (and anyone else who is interested!)
I wish I could really empower you with a million recipes but this really is the ’hungry gap’. It will be great in a few months but it may sound a bit boring at the minute! But it honestly doesn’t taste broing!
I’ll give you an example of my meals today -
- Porridge made with water (soak them over night for oat milk!)
- Spelt bread with a dash of hemp oil for the omega’s (local hemp oil eh!)
- Grated carrots, beetroot, cabbage with spelt bread again for lunch.
- Potatoes with steamed beetroot, carrots, celeriac, turnip, parsnip and carrots for dinner, alongside some raw mushrooms and grated cabbage covered in safflower oil.
- Trying to make leaf curd later, that seems to be my best bet of protein at the minute!
- To everyone who wants to use this blog to debate stuff -
I would like to once again suggest everyone turns the attention to actions and not actresses / actors, as I want everyone to be able to add to the debate here without getting attacked. Some of the comments on this particular blog have been getting a bit childish, but it is your space at the end of the day...
Rae comments ...
That’s great - thank you Saoirse. I wasn’t expecting miracles, just an example of what you eat, which you have now given me. :)
I’m very much a ’chuck it on the plate and see’ girl, so I don’t need exotic recipes, just examples of how you put things together. I think it is very easy to get stuck in a rut and not to be able to think creatively.
But, if you have the freshest of seasonal ingredients, just a plate of steamed vegetables can taste as if it has arrived first class from heaven. You’ll know all about that.
With a daughter who has been known to eat porrage with marmite on it and marmite and honey sandwiches, I’m not adverse to putting ’strange’ foods together. This week we had swede with very unBritish vanilla seeds mashed into it - it was amazing!
Keep up the great work with this, but do keep updating please!
Rae x
Dave S comments ...
It’s all about the herbs and spices... or rather, it’s about how you combine them to get different combinations. In the last year or so, I’ve also been discovering that less is often more - as in, better to have just a couple of herbs and spices in many dishes and really get something from their flavour, rather than have 10+ in each dish and end-up with a slightly generic "mixed spice" flavour each time.
Make every meal into an experiment and cook like it’s a work of art, and with a bit of consideration you won’t go far wrong. If and when you do go a bit wrong, just make sure you work out why and learn from it!
To me, cooking is yet another creative activity I enjoy (just like art or music), and it’s one I get to enjoy most days. People who "can’t cook" (because they won’t make the effort) are missing out on one of life’s biggest pleasures in an unimaginably huge way.
Not that I’d ever want to be a professional chef (hahaha!) but there are few things I enjoy more than cooking.
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