Freeconomy Blog

Shaking foundations & Guide to Freeconomic Living Part II

Wed, 24 September 2008 13:52:04 GMT

What a week it has been in terms of the global economy. It started badly (or brilliantly, depending on your perspective) with the fall of one of the world’s largest investment banks, got increasingly worse as the inevitable ripple effects caused panic throughout the markets, and subsequently improved with the news that our governments will use public money to bail the banks out, again. Cue front page photographs of lots of happy shoppers, patriotically out there consuming for their country. Last week was never going to turn out to be catastrophic. Western governments are still strong enough to be able to bail out companies like HBOS and AIG whenever they need to. Last week was merely a mini trial run of what is coming up in the future. And hopefully a wake up call for the masses. What continually amazes me is that the public – and even most economists – can’t see that this capitalist system we live in is fatally flawed. But the problem has actually little to do with the factors that manifested themselves in last weeks revelations. The real problem is that ecology isn’t a part of the curriculum when you study economics – I studied it for six years and not once did I hear the words ‘delicate ecosystem’ muttered. Capitalism depends on unlimited growth – four per cent every year, on top of all the four per cents of previous years. If it falls for a couple of periods in succession, we call it a recession and if it gets very grim we call it a depression, just to really cheer everyone up! So the system is dependent on growing towards infinity. The critical point here is that the earth’s resources are not infinite! In fact if the earth’s resources were a credit card, we’d be maxed out on our last card. It is fundamentally flawed and by its nature it cannot survive in the long term. I’ve no idea when exactly it will crumble – the corporations, especially in the banking and oil industry, will never reveal what mess they are in until the very last minute. So it’s difficult to tell when something very big will happen. But I predict it will be within the next three to ten years, with a bit of a depression and a short recovery coming before it. Credit has simultaneously been the main driving force behind the rapid growth of the global economy over the last century, and the environmental destruction we see around us. We are all living way beyond our means, and in effect living off future generations. Ask yourself this – if it wasn’t for your credit card, a loan or your overdraft, could you afford your car, that rather large house that you still see as being too small, all your gadgetry or even your annual foreign escape? I doubt it – but because credit lets us pretend we are rich, we can have it all, everything we’ve ever dreamed of! Until, that is, we realise that the whole thing is as illusory as a dream! Pretend that the Earth was a business. No good business liquidises its assets in order to increase profits for the year. It knows that it would mean the death of the business the following year. For example, a retail outlet won’t sell its shelving in order to put an extra grand on the bottom line. You need the shelves to sell products the next year. Therefore that would be suicidal. Yet that is exactly what we are doing with the Earth. We are consuming our own assets – the rainforests, our oil reserves, even the fertility of our soil. Yeah OK, it is making for short term profits, but you can only sell them once. Then your business is dead. Anyway that is all I will say about the problem, it’s not something I think is too healthy to dwell on. What I like – and what I think humans are really good at coming up with – is solutions! Yes we are faced with huge challenges in the future, but if we all face those challenges now, and together, not only can we survive it, we may even be happier for it! We humans have an immense capacity to destroy, but as Mike Reynolds, the inspirational Earthship builder states, we’ve the same potential as trees to actually improve the health of the planet, if only we woke up and realised it. One of the critical factors for me (here he goes again I hear you say!) is that we need to wean ourselves off money as soon as possible. I say this not because I think we are not going to have it in the future (though we will have to survive on much less in real terms) – a system of barter or exchange can always exist in some form – but because it stops us truly connecting with our local community in a real way, and it enables us to remain unskilled, or at best skilled in only one or two impractical things. In the last blog I introduced the fact that I am about to start a newly titled ‘Buy Nothing Year’, where I give and receive freely for twelve months. Preparations have been going pretty well and I have decided to start it on the 29th November, a day that Freegans worldwide know better as Buy Nothing Day. As I also said in Part I, I’ve had to break down every single aspect of my life and find ways of fulfilling my needs without using money. So far I’ve touched on housing and food, and even more importantly, reading! As the experiment will be completely off-grid, cooking and heating arose as an issue. So I decided to get myself a wood-burner made by a local freegan from an old gas bottle and some bicycle parts. Not only will this heat my caravan, it will also allow me to cook on top of it, killing two carbon birds with the one stone. The wood-burner is also placed facing my bed so I can watch the embers glow as I read book on those cold winter evenings. This is not about sacrifice. It’s about a appreciating the beautiful simplicity of life. During the summer, or at any time when it is too warm for the wood-burner, I will cook outside on my rocket stove, a very efficient device you can make from old olive tins. For lighting I will use a mixture of things. Making candles is pretty simple, all you need is some beeswax. In the medium term I want to keep my own bees, a very important activity in its own right. In the short term I want to build a mutually beneficial relationship with a local beekeeper, though that is still just a thought and something I need to work out. To compliment this, I have hooked up a solar panel to power a light. The same solar panel latched onto a 12V leisure battery will also, incidentally, power this laptop I write on now. And just on the off chance the sun doesn’t shine very often in the English winter, I have a little wind-up torch as back-up. I’ve also obtained a solar charger for my mobile, something I desperately want to get rid of but something I’ve convinced myself is necessary to enable the transition. It will of course just be for incoming calls, though in effect I am passing the buck onto the caller, so it is a real compromise for me – I’ll be sticking to the letter of the law, but not totally to the spirit of it. So how will I get around? To get in and out of the city I will obviously be walking and cycling. I recently got my hands on a bike trailer which I will be using to scavenge things like waste and dead wood for the wood-burner, and to transport sacks of grain from the city. On top of that I got a set of water proof panniers for transporting smaller quantities of stuff like food, clothing, a tent and sleeping bag, enabling me to have free, but quite local holidays. My dream is to cycle home to the north west of Ireland for Christmas. Only the sea stands in my way! However the nature of my life right now means I’ve also often got to go further afield. If it can be done on bike, I’ll do it. If not, I will use a great scheme called Liftshare, set up by a top bloke called Ali Clabburn. Failing that, you can always stick out your thumb, something which was the norm in my youth but which is now almost non-existent. I once hitched around New Zealand with a giant hand, and the extremely hitcher-friendly drivers there said they hadn’t seen one since a tourist was killed three years prior. Fear is a powerful and often irrational thing. Thousands get killed driving every year, doesn’t seem to put people off driving though. Anyway that’s enough for this week! Again, if anyone has any hints or tips, opinions or criticisms, please leave a comment by clicking on the link below. If you would like me to respond please ask as otherwise I will assume you are just airing your opinion. If you want a private response, please leave your email address. Lots of unconditional love.

Guide to Freeconomic Living – Part I

Sat, 13 September 2008 09:01:39 GMT

Since deciding to undertake a year without money, I have gained such an appreciation for the things that I currently consume in this world, stuff that I’ve completely taken for granted up until now. As I said in my last blog, it has made me really look into the nooks and crannies of my life. These days, whenever I notice something I currently consume I have a decision to make – to do without it soon, to find a way of making it with substances from my local surroundings, or to build a mutually beneficial relationship with someone from my local area. The latter may involve taking some waste products off their hands which normally they would have to pay to dispose of. In order to do this I have had to do, and am still doing, a huge amount of research. Which has been great as I have learned so much in the process. So I thought, through this blog over the next year and hopefully beyond, why not pass on all the lessons I’ve learned and any useful hints or tips I manage to discover (and receiving the same from you through the comments section, making it a great resource). So then if any of you out there are interested in doing something similar (whether because you agree with the philosophy behind it or simply because, like most, you are feeling the effects of the start of the economic crisis we are entering) you don’t have to do all the bull work I’ve had to do. To make it into a guide, I’ll be breaking life down into certain categories, covering a few in each blog. These won’t necessarily be in the order of importance either. The first thing I had to think about was shelter. I needed a roof over my head, but didn’t care what kind of roof that was. So I put an ad on my local Freecycle looking for ‘any type of living structure’, thinking I was really chancing my arm. I was preparing to make do with the great tent I already had, though that would’ve been very tough, but dreaming of someone contacting me about the yurt they no longer use! Lo and behold someone within an hour emails me to tell me they have a caravan they never use and is just costing them money to store, and that it’s mine if I want it! So it is safe to say I would recommend trying Freecycle – as long as you are patient you’ll get something eventually. Now I had a roof, where would I put it. The first thing that entered my head was wwoofing, which is a worldwide movement designed to help organic farmers. No matter where you are in the world, I can almost guarantee you there will be one near you. And what they usually have in abundance is land. What they usually have in desperate shortage is human help. So I decided to go and stay on a local organically run permaculture farm whilst volunteering with them for three days a week. Right down with shelter at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is food. How was I going to feed myself? Obviously the first option was to grow my own, between both the farm I will be staying on and an allotment. Throw into that working with another local box scheme farmer who gives volunteers some veggies at the end of the day and that should be my fruit and veg looked after. But what would I do for bread? I’ve decided to work with a local organic food business every now and then, and after a days labour get a bag of some grain – rye one day, oats another, in order to sustain me. On a normal financial comparison this wouldn’t work out very well at all – a day’s work for a stg£15 bag of grain, but that is only because at the moment food is so undervalued. To me, a bag of grain which will give me carbohydrates and protein for months is easily worth a days labour. Plus you get to help out the organic food movement, one that is ironically struggling just at the time when environmentally we need people to eat organic more than ever, because of what is happening economically at the moment. In order to make bread though you first need to turn that grain into flour. Given that my ability to produce electricity will be very low, I decided to get my hands on a hand cranked grain mill, a great off-grid device which turns grain into flour at the rate of about 1kg per minute! Once you have your flour, you can then make the last ingredient necessary for bread – yeast. Mixing it with de-chlorinated water (just leave a cup out for a few days), over a number of days at room temperature, will enable you to make your own sourdough starter, hence not needing to buy yeast ever again! To supplement all this, I will also be foraging food which will supply me with various things depending on the time of year, whilst also engaging in a bit of urban foraging. Growing, foraging and skipping are the three legs of the ‘'food for free' table. But life should be about more than simply fulfilling the bottom tier of Maslow’s pyramid, am I right?! If life ain’t fun what is the point of it all! For me, the first thing that sprang to mind was books – I really don’t want to give up reading, for a whole plethora of reasons. But I wondered – how do I get books if I don’t have any money? So I went online and stumbled on what is now one of my favourite websites called ReaditSwapit. However that still requires you to post a book most of the time, and I won’t be able to do that soon unless I can get the royal mail involved. Necessity, as they say though, is the mother of invention. So I am in the process of setting up a local, more personal and offline ‘Book-Swap’ club. The idea is that you would come along with all the books you've read but are happy to pass on to someone else (and also written down on a list). You would then take a look at all the books everyone else has brought, and when you see one you like you can show the person who previously stewarded the book your list, and if they like the look of one of yours you can swap! Pretty simple eh! On top of that again, I was also thinking of having a 'bring a dish' element to it, so not only could everyone share good books, but also good food and good company into the bargain! Also there will be a chance to talk about one of the books you've brought along and feel passionate about. It’s a win-win-win situation – it’s all free, it means less waste and more friendships and positive community spirit! In my next blog, and those thereafter, I will look at another handful of the things which make up my life, and pass on any knowledge I’ve accumulated regarding how to satisfy those needs (or wants!) without money.. If anyone out there has any hints or tips for me and everyone else regarding freeconomic living, please let us know through the comments section below. If you would like to contact me privately, you’ll find my email address in the contact us section at the bottom. Lots of unconditional love.

A Year without Money...a social experiment.

Thu, 28 August 2008 23:07:51 GMT

What is it about the summer that makes us want to do everything we can possibly think of all at the same time? Is it the fact that for thousands of years we have had to harvest during this season, in which case we’ve evolved with the expectation of being busy? Or is it because we traditionally get more sugars and energy in our bodies due to the increase in the food supply? Or maybe I’m just clutching at straws, hoping that we have still retained some of our old habits in our physiological memory. Either way I’m having a mad time of it, mostly down to my own inability to say the word ‘no’, my excitement about this point in history I seem to have myself landed in, and an extreme case of impatience. I woke up one morning a few weeks ago and had a good hard look at myself in the mirror. I thought about whether I was actually being the change I want to see in the world, or whether it is a half-hearted effort under the self-induced illusion of ‘doing my bit’. I am very outspoken about money - or more precisely, the human need for it - yet continue to use it myself. Quite hypocritical I believe. I’ve also been thinking more about a revelation I had some time ago. I realised that as long as we humans are disconnected from what we consume we will never stop the environmental destruction that comes from rampant consumerism. Because we have so much waste, we consume so much of our precious earth’s goodness and return it to in the form of pollutants and intoxicants. Let me explain. If you grow your own food, as I’m sure many of you do, you’ll agree that you don't waste a spoonful of it. If you make your own candles, you blow them out the second you don't need light. If you have to hand wash your clothes, you don't wear 7 outfits a week. If you have to make your own clothes, they never go out of fashion and you always repair them as it is much easier to repair than to make a whole new garment. You have so much respect for what you use because you know how much real energy went into making it. Which has led me to believe that until we reconnect in some way with what we consume, all the problems we face environmentally today will remain the same. In the last six months I’ve been trying to learn more and more about self-sufficiency – or what I call interdependent-sufficiency, as I believe ‘independence’ to be an illusion – you eat food therefore you are dependent at least on bees, micro-bacteria and earthworms. And for the last couple of years I’ve been trying to reduce my reliance on money. But it’s only been in the last few weeks that I realised that they are also the two sides of the same non-monetary coin, both the same path. So being the impatient bugger that I am I’ve decided that I’ve got to stop being a hypocrite as soon as humanly possible and start living out what I believe. So I have decided to do ‘A Year without Money’. No prepayment of bills, no storing up of food, no using the plug socket in the library. I will be completely off-grid, using what I call ‘transitional tools’ such as the laptop and phone (which I use to communicate to this global world I find myself in) only in as much as the sun can power them. Everything I consume I will either get from growing or making myself or by building a mutually beneficial relationship with someone in my local community – infrastructure excepted. In the last month I have examined every single part of my life and what gets consumed in it, and the further you dig the more insane this experiment gets. For example, how do I light the fire for my wood-burner, or how do I get the paper I write on? As I have always said, I see the period we are in now as a transitional period, a chance to use the materials that are already around us to set ourselves up to be interdependent-sufficient. So I will be putting in place the infrastructure I need to make it happen in the coming months, mostly through Freecycle and second hand stuff, but also some with the dreaded ‘m’ word! I feel the same about money as I do with oil – I think if we have to use it (which we don't and which our climatic conditions ask that we don't) we should at least be using it to build real security for the next seven generations. I have set no deadline as when to start this, though my nature probably means it will be sooner rather than later. However much work needs to be done and a million things I haven’t thought about will arise as I investigate this further. The reason I do it is not because I think my way is right and that using money is some sort of evil. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is that this is a very difficult society to live in without it, and seemingly difficult even when you earn quite a bit. I also realise that without a family to rear I am in a very privileged position to try it. All I want to do, however, is to at least make people think about the whole issue and to question the role money plays in their own life. Like ‘why do I buy my shoes from china from the supermarket when the woman down the road can make them, and why do I use a lighter when I can make a fire with a bow and hazel drill?’. This is to be a social experiment, a potentially exhausting one at that, but one I feel is worth it. I also realise that I am setting myself up for a lot of criticism again, especially if it fails, but that’s to be expected when you do something publicly. That dilemma arises again - I could do it privately, but at this crucial point in history would that be responsible? Maybe yes, maybe no. I have one dilemma though which I am hoping you all can advice me on. I am planning on still doing my ‘Transition Experiment’ (i.e. organically and locally grown or foraged vegan non-plasticated food experiment) at the same time. However I do want to highlight the issue of waste and so would also like to include elements of freeganism, like eating waste food regardless what country of origin is on its label. However if I do that I will also come in for criticism, given that sixty million people can’t live off dumped food. And I want this experiment to be a solution that everyone can undertake if they choose to, that’s essential I think. So any advice is much welcomed, feel free to leave a comment below! Just on that, we’ve been bust organising a compaign here in the UK called ‘Eat the Change’ (still work in progress!) where a load of people around the country sign up, for one week, for the experiment I’ve been undertaking for the last six months. If you fancy trying it for a week (it really is a lot of fun and very educational and you can’t die in a week!), then sign the pledge! One of the people organising it with me, Fergus 'the Forager' Drennan, is coming over to Bristol to launch it with a wild food forage around Bristol as part of the next set of ‘Freeskilling’ evenings the Bristol Freeconomy Community has organised here. Fergus is planning to re-start his ‘year eating only foraged food’ next March, and so we are seeing if there is a way we can team up and support each other, both morally and in terms of documenting it. Both experiments have almost identical philosophical foundations and the timing so similar that it is almost uncanny. Let me know your thoughts on all this. I do realise some of you will be sceptical, some really supportive and some of you think I have no respect for those who live on the streets through no fault of their own. Either way let me know, all opinions valid and accepted. But to be honest what I am trying to do, whether you agree or disagree, is change a way of life that puts those people on the streets in the first place, and more importantly one that makes it socially acceptable to walk past them at 12pm at night in the freezing cold. Much respect and love to you all.

The credit crunch, fancy suits and being computerless…

Tue, 29 July 2008 11:48:59 GMT

I can really feel the tide turning as regards all things freeconomic. Every week now we get inquiries from the mainstream media, and last week we won one of the UK Catalyst Awards, which are awards for social technology that helps communities given out by No.10 Downing St. If the PM Gordon Brown signs up to become a member, our work here will be done! Just on that, I had no idea the awards ceremony was going to be the affair that it was. To say I looked like a duck out of water would be a bit of an understatement! It was a very dressed up affair, and I’m not sure they fully appreciated my ‘casual’ look. Waitresses and waiters approached you every two minutes with food that, to many, was very grand, and I can only imagine the amount of money that was spent on the whole thing. It did however bring up a lot of issues for me. On a superficial level, the whole event looked superb as many commentators on the day observed. But I couldn’t help but think of something Mahatma Gandhi once said when he was trying to inspire a country to stop importing clothing from England. When I look at something nowadays, I don’t see its beauty from how it looks on a visual basis. I take its beauty from what it represents and symbolises to me. So when I looked at all these fancy dresses and suits, I didn’t think, “isn’t this just marvellous”. Instead, I could see the amount of chemicals, dyes and pesticides that went into the making of the material, and the cheap, industrialised labour (sometimes sweatshop) that produced them. Is there any beauty in the finest cloth that causes pain, suffering and environmental destruction? When I looked at the food I didn’t see some very well presented platter of tasty treats. None of it was organic and no one knew if any of the meat or dairy was even free range (which means it most likely wasn’t). So instead all I could see were plates of factory farmed and pesticide-ridden food, coated in additives and most likely microwaved to death. Can there be any flavour in the finest looking food that rapes our planet, tortures our fellow animals and is bad for our health? And to top it all of, I was expected the shake the hand of Gordon Brown. A hand that was in a senior position when we decided to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians on top of thousands of British, American and Iraqi soldiers. A hand that encourages GlaxoSmithKline amongst others to do what they do every day, and a hand that pens the deals which make it unbelievably easy for big business and almost impossible for small farmers. Needless to say that on this occasion I politely declined the offer. I really don’t think he is a ‘bad’ person – I don’t believe anyone is or in even the concept of ‘bad’ – but I am certainly not going to commend him for it. On the plus side I met a lot of people doing really positive things that day. The founders of Liftshare, The Nag and LifeWorkLife (amongst many others) were all there, the latter being so enthused by Freeconomy that she offered free membership to all members of this community! More on that in the next blog… On acceptance of the award last Thursday, I was asked why I thought the freeconomy community had grown so quickly and what would be its biggest opportunity in the future. It was interesting question as a few minutes earlier Ali Clabburn of Liftshare had just been saying that the rise in price in oil had lead to a huge increase in membership in his car-sharing project. Similarly, the ‘credit crunch’ will eventually have the same effect for freeconomy, as just as oil prices are forcing people to share their journeys, a lack of cash will force people to share their skills and tools. I would be lying if I said I thought this reason for joining was definitely a good thing though. One part of me thinks that if people in the future only join this because they are forced to for financial reasons, it will not be a long-term improvement, as ‘IF’ the economy improves again (which is a genuinely big ‘IF’), then they will return back to their old ways. Thankfully the optimist in me thinks it is great, lots of people who historically wouldn’t have got involved will, and over time folk will realise that it is just a much better and nicer way of doing things, regardless of whether you are feeling flush or skint. Apart from everything still being really hectic around here, the main reason I haven’t been blogging recently is that my computer blew up a couple of weeks ago, which unfortunately has made life a bit more difficult. The weird thing is that the previous day I had taken the decision to move to the outskirts of Bristol and work voluntary on a permaculture project, living in a great new caravan I amazingly got for free off Freecycle! The wyrd bit about it is that I had decided to go completely off-grid and local except for my laptop and mobile, as I ‘need’ them (or do I?) to interact with the world. Twenty four hours later, there was just the phone left, and I’m thinking it may also be on the way out. So is my laptop blowing up the next day a message from the universe to do what I believe in 100%, or just simply just some built-in obsolescence in modern day computers? My heart says the former, though I am still unsure of what to do. If I don’t get a new one, I will be living as I believe but less able to respond to matters regarding my Freeconomy and my local food work. If I do get one it means I can interact really easily with the rest of the world and get the various messages out there, though going against everything I believe in. I would love to know what you guys think I should do. Regardless to say that if I do get one it will be second hand. I am really excited about moving out to help on this project - called Radford Mill Farm - partially because it is going to allow me the chance to live as self-sustainably (and I’m hoping money free eventually) as I want to. I’ll cook on a woodburner that’s made from an old gas bottle and bicycle parts that I got my hands on, make my own candles from local (and what I slightly controversially call vegan) beeswax, defecate in a hole next to the caravan and pee on the compost. And learn how to make a cob oven amongst lots of others skills which I see as vital to a truly sustainable future. Plus it is a really beautiful bit of countryside! Just to end with – our local Freeskilling evenings are a real hit, with 50 people coming out for last weeks forage with the Self-Sufficientish guys Dave and Andy! Next week we are going to be learning how to make our own wine, cider and beer! Thank you by the way to all who voted by the way, I’ll keep you updated regarding what comes off it!

Inspiration to get you through any situation…

Thu, 03 July 2008 23:31:38 GMT

Life has been a bit hectic over the last few weeks, hence my lack of blog writing on here lately. All for the best of reasons though (I hope). I got a call from the BBC at the start of the week as they were looking to do a programme on The Freeconomy Community for an ethics programme called Sunday Life. So they came down for a couple of days to do some filming, some of which was done at the first and amazingly successful Freeskilling evening that the local Bristol Freeconomy Community hosted. A local freeconomist came and gave the most passionate display of bread making you’re ever likely to see, and 40 people left, not only knowing how to make a wide array of delicious breads, but as newly found friends. I really recommend it to any member who is looking to get their own local freeconomy group together. Anyway as regards the filming, I was really in two minds about whether to do it or not. I personally parted company with the TV many moons ago, mainly due to fact that I believe it’s complicit in both the breakdown of our sense of community and the attempted murder, through its endless advertising of consumerism, of the planet that is Mother to us all. So it’s fair to say I’m not an advocate. So given that stance, I should have said NO. But when I was told it would go out to 2 million people who would otherwise probably have no idea this community exists, I couldn’t refuse. Which I must admit doesn’t sit pretty with me. As with every choice I make in life, I asked “What would Gandhi do?”, and I feel pretty certain he would have done the opposite to what I did. But it’s a hard choice to make as I want this way of life to be as accessible to people from all walks of life. I’m hardly being the change I want to see in the world though. Can the end ever justify the means? I know the answer to that yet I still do the opposite. I don’t know… Anyway, if anyone wants to learn more about the philosophy of this community and what is happening through it as an example here in Bristol, UK, then it is worth a look. For those of you in the UK and parts of Ireland you can watch it on normal TV on Sunday, 6th July at 10am. For those in the rest of the world, you can watch it through the BBC’s iplayer, as can those in the UK who don’t have a TV. For those with no TV or computer, go and enjoy a walk in the woods and listen to the birds sing, I can guarantee you that you’ll learn a lot more from them than from anything that will ever come out of my mouth. Before I start, I should add that from this point on I will only be using this blog to communicate to you guys any ideas, inspirations and issues relating to ‘Freeconomy’ and its by-products that I stumble upon. For those of you who are interested in my ‘Transition Experiment’ - my new way of life that involves eating only organic, vegan, locally grown food that uses no plastic packaging and no bin (and living without oil in general) - you will soon be able to follow my progress through a magazine called Resurgence. As a last remark on it in this blog though, I have never felt healthier and it has reaffirmed my belief that even in the field of food and diet, your heart understands things much better than our ever changing scientific opinion ever will. I feel this segregation is important as I want this blog to become a resource for the community, not a running commentary of my life. I am also happy to open this blog up to the community, so if anyone wants to contribute to a wide audience of both members and non-members, feel free to email me. anytime with a proposal for a piece. In the midst of the chaos of the last few weeks though I tried to draw upon those things that give me the inspiration I need to keep going, and so I thought what better than to share some of it with you! So I decided to give you my ‘Top 3’ of everything I can think off, in the hope that some of it will give you the strength you need in whatever challenging situation you find yourself in - Top 3 Poems: 1. Woody Harrelson – an elegantly put together collection of powerful visual thoughts. 2. Jim Willis and one poem in particular called"We are their heroes" 3. The legendary but somewhat unknown Wendell Berry Top 3 Musicians / Groups: 1. Seize the Day – feel your back stiffen as you listen to a mix of some of the most thought provoking lyrics you’ll ever find coupled with some amazing folk music. 2. Michael Franti – Again it’s that rare mix of powerful lyrics with music that completely engulfs your body. 3. Martha Tilston – Beautiful voice meets a beautiful mind…but alas the good ones are always taken. Darn. Top 3 Transition-based Blogs: (I know, its four, who cares) 1. Rob Hopkins and the phenomenal Transition Towns movement. 2. Fergus the Forager and his beautifully insane attempt to live off foraged food for an entire year. I have the privilege of going for a forage with him this weekend, so I will be sure to share with you whatever I learn. 3. Brighton’s brightest radicals Jo Nean and Beth Tilston 4. John Webster and his Year without Oil Top 3 Books (OK Top 5 as I can’t decide again!) 1. The Prophet – Kahlil Gibran. Read it. Read it again. And keep reading one line every day ad infinitum. 2. Moved by Love – a collection of Vinoba Bhavé’s thoughts and works. 3. Walden – Henry David Thoreau. The greatest argument ever for the simple life. Stunning. 4. The Buddha and the Terrorist – Satish Kumar’s version. Great man, great tale. 5. Siddharta – A Hermann Hesse classic. Life changes after this one. Top 3 Films 1. Earthlings – Stunningly beautiful and totally horrific at every other moment. 2. The 11th Hour – I think it is important to congratulate those blessed with a voice when they use it for positive means. Well done Leonardo. 3. Gandhi – see the potential that Satyagraha has of changing the world forever. SO - Any moment you’re a feeling a bit weary, take your pick from any of the above and feel your back stiffen and your doubts fade away. What has inspired you to go out and make as much of a positive difference as you can? Please feel free to let us know by clicking on comment below.

Guide to getting a local Freeconomy Community group started…

Sun, 22 June 2008 14:39:42 GMT

One of the most common emails I get is from members around the world who want to kick off their own local Freeconomy Community gatherings, but who aren’t sure of how to go about it. Which always gives me a lot of hope for the future - it’s great to hear that so many people from all walks of life want to actively bring this community forward and enable more people to both give and receive. When I started this community near the end of last year, everyone around me told me that our main problem would be that people would abuse the system. Well, it has actually been the opposite – in a couple of countries the main problem has been that people are actually too shy to ask for help 'without offering something in return!'. One of the best ways to combat this is to get people physically together – psychologically, once we know somebody we are more likely to be comfortable asking them for help. Which is all very strange n a sense, given how good we all feel when we are allowed to help someone else! If we don’t ask for it then we deprive someone else of that good feeling! From all the feedback I have received from people around the globe regarding what works and what doesn’t, and from my own experiences from what’s been happening where I live in Bristol, UK, I have put together a list of things which anyone anywhere in the world can do in order to not only get more people in their area involved, but to also get those who are already involved together face-to-face. Here are my top tips – 1. Organise a local Skillshare evening: Here in Bristol we have just finished organising the first eight weeks of our new Skillshare evening called ‘Freeskilling’. Through this event, one member of the community, each week, comes along to a local venue and shows an audience of people how to do a particular skill. Evenings so far range from learning how to make REAL bread and pizza to making your own candles to sign language – even how to forage your own food. Not only does this teach lots of people a load of skills we are going to need in the future, it also gets people together in their local communities under the spirit of sharing, which at the end of the day has got to be the ultimate goal. If you would like to do something similar, you are more than welcome to use and adapt the Poster (B&W version) and / or the Flyer (BW version also) (click any to see the first two months line-up) that the Bristol group has drafted to promote its events into something for your own evening – there’s no point in reinventing the wheel! 2. Arrange a gathering in a local café / pub / community centre: In some areas, certainly those with smaller amounts of members, the best place to start seems to be in organising an informal get together of folk in some public place, to just have a chat and get to know each other. From that you can then get everyone’s opinion on how best to move forward, and even get a group started up to organise whatever it is you decide is that best route. Feedback so far has been that it’s not just a great way of getting things going in your local area, but that many friendships have been formed between group members! However, the success on getting people to actually come along often depends on the quality of email writing from the original sender, unfortunately. Here are my ‘Tips for sending out emails to everyone within a 10-mile radius’: • Send out the email between 10am – 4.30pm on either a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday – this ensures your email has the best chance of actually getting read! • Follow this email up with a reminder the day before the event in the same time slot. Sunday mornings are also a good time to remind. • Keep emails relatively short – no one wants to read an essay these days. Don’t go into too much detail about why you want to do it – that often comes across better when you talk about it face-to-face! And don’t voice strong opinions – again, it can put people off before you get a chance to even chat about it! • If you organise an event, arrange it for a day that there is traditionally not much on in your area – Tuesdays are often best. • Arrange the initial meeting place to be somewhere public at a time that suits most people i.e. 7pm in a local café. • Keep it positive and upbeat – no ones really wants to go to a dreary negative meeting! 3. Launch a one-day event: This is probably the most labour intensive option but a great method on a number of levels. Events can range from a day of skillsharing workshops to one of talk / debates etc. A handful of local members in Bristol are organising a clothes themed day, with everything from a clothes swapping ‘swaparama’, to workshops on how to fix the clothes you love and want to keep! It really can be anything – the main thing is that people come together and share their time, their ideas or the things they no longer have any use for. 4. Offer help to anyone who asks: This is the simplest thing you can do. Sometimes this can be just helping somebody in the garden, helping them with their own website or helping them with their engine. Which can probably sometimes seem ‘menial’ as many members here are dedicated to projects whose raison d’etre is to make the world a more positive place. However, I believe that just the simple act of helping and sharing with another human being, just for the love of it, is one of the most profound things you can do. Peace will not descent upon us in one fell swoop – it comes from the billions of interactions we humans have everyday. If every one of us helped and supported each other when we were in need, peace would be attained in no time. Helping and supporting people raises their spirits, breaks down fear of people around them, and, most importantly, makes people feel good about the place where they live. This, in time, then nurtures a spirit of wanting to ‘give back’ in those who have received. JUST REMEMBER – if there isn’t something happening in your area, don’t wait around for someone else to start it – that’s what everyone else is doing! Go and initiate something yourself, and trust me, in no time you will have a whole team of people helping out and taking part! BE A PIONEER! If you need any further help or have any questions, please just email on saoirse@justfortheloveofit.org or phone me on 0044 (0) 775 886 1783. If anyone has any other ideas on how best to get more people involved or get existing members together, please leave a COMMENT BELOW suggesting how. Have a fantastic day.

Hints and tips on living more freeconomically...

Wed, 11 June 2008 21:36:12 GMT

As you all know, the Freeconomy Community is all about making the transition from a life focused on money to one where sharing, generosity, kindness and community rise to the fore. Whilst in the area of sharing skills, time and tools our philosophy is unique, thankfully we are not doing it alone, as there are many other organisations in other fields that are founded on the same ‘pay-it-forward’ foundations that this community is built on. Living without money isn’t easy, especially at the beginning. At the same time, working fifty hours a week just to be able to barely pay the bills isn’t easy either! So today I want to make it as easy as possible for anyone who wants to move towards a trust based, as opposed to a money based, society as possible. And I hope that through it you not only get to save more money in a increasingly difficult economic climate, but that you’ll also catch the ‘sharing bug’ and inevitably meet lots of great people around the world, and more importantly, in your own neighbourhood. Here are my recommendations of organisations to join if you want to live freeconomy style! 1. Material Goods: There are a number of websites out there which enable members to swap the things they own but don’t want for stuff they don’t own but do want. The best I have come across is Swap Shop which enables you to swap most things, while projects such as ’Read it Swap it’are great for books. However, out there by far on its own, is Freecycle, and is our definite recommendation. Not only is it a run away success with over 4 million members worldwide now, but it also kept 2 million tonnes of crap out of landfill last year, and stopped a lot of completely unnecessary production. 2. Traveling and accommodation: Given that most people still live pretty busy lifestyles, it’s not surprising that many want to escape from it all and have a brief glimpse of the good life. However, it is getting increasingly more difficult to find true adventure, and to meet open, friendly, generous people. As regards getting to your destination, there are a number of options. If you have taken the decision not to own a car for whatever reason, then the most fun, and cheapest, way of getting around has got to be hitching. Personally, I love it, and have done it since I was a kid. I’ve met so many wonderful people through it, many of whom help you get off the beaten as they usually have lots of local knowledge to boot. If you do have a car but want to cut down on your fuel consumption, then there are a number of great websites also, Liftshare, My lifts and Freewheelers being the best I have found. Not only do does it allow you to get in a vehicle that is already going to a certain place anyway, but it also allows you the chance to do the same for everyone else and hence reduce your carbon footprint. Of course if you want to reduce it completely, why not try a walking or cycling holiday. Fresh air and exercise at a beautifully slow pace of travel, just grab your tent and panniers and take to the road! For me, this is the ideal. If a tent isn’t your thing though, there is a plethora of free accommodation projects out there. The most famous of these is probably couch-surfing, an organisation which functions on the same ‘pay-it-forward’ basis that the freeconomy community does. If you don’t like the look of that one, there are many others - Global Freeloaders, Hospitality Club, Stay for Free, Travelhoo, Servas and the Esperanto speaking Tejo project, all of which cater towards different types of people looking for different types of experiences. 3. Skills Obviously the best in this area is the Freeconomy Community, but we would say that! Whatever it is, it is certainly unique, given that all other ‘alternative economy’ systems involve some sort of barter or exchange. With freeconomy, you help because you can, no other reason needed. And so not only does everyone get the help the need of someone, but they don’t have to then go and do lots of admin work to work out who owes what in credits. For me, that is just another form of money, even if it is a lot more local and fair. If you feel like you are not quite ready for ‘unconditional giving’ yet though, there are a number of barter systems out there, LETS and Time Banks being the two most known. However given that the freeconomy community is growing at a much greater rate that these, I believe that humanity is really starting to shift from a ‘what about me?’ mindset to a ‘what about us?’ mentality. 4. Food For me this is the most critical one. For the vast majority of people, the ability to grow your own food has been taken away, or at least limited. This was an ingenious move by the powers that be. Because we need food to live but can’t grow it, we need to do something else from which we can receive an income and then trade for our basic needs like food and shelter. However, fear not, even if you do not own land, there are still a number of ways to get your food for free without having to take part in a system that I feel takes a packet of slavery, chucks it in a pot with a cupful of marketing and a pinch of fear, and mixes it into the most nausea-inducing soup I have ever tasted! The first thing to remember is that even though we have covered our countries in concrete, there is still lots of food that can be foraged for free, especially coming into this time of year. If that is not your thing, then you could do a lot worse than asking your local Freegan community for their advice on where you can best do some urban foraging, better known as skip-diving or dumpster diving. Probably the best way to get your food for free though is to grow it yourself. I say ‘the best’ because its more about feeding yourself – the reconnection you get with nature and the heightened understanding of life is almost as important. If you are in the countryside, see if you can find someone who would love to have an extra pair of hands working the land with them and share the harvest in the process with them. If you are in a city, go and get yourself an allotment, or just use any garden space you have to grow food instead of just grass and flowers! 5. Clothing I’ve estimated that if every clothes factory in the world shut down tomorrow, and we all learned how to repair our clothing, there would still be enough clothes in the world to last about 20 years. You might say that why on earth would we want to wear the same clothes for 20 years! That’s where things have changed. Nowadays you can swap the clothes you don’t like for other clothes you do like. Some organisations have free clothes shops on their premises, where people leave clothes and take others. There are also club nights such as Swap-a-rama at Favela in London. To be honest, there are still few places doing such things, but anyone out there who feels like doing something along these lines should look no further than Wendy Tremayne for inspiration. If there is not one in your area, don’t bemoan it, go do something about it! ***** I hope all the above helps you to live a more money-free lifestyle and in the process help you reconnect with some great people in your local community. And if it happens to save you lots of money you no longer need so much, go and put it to good use, like buying a bunch of locally cut flowers and giving them out freely to strangers on the street! If any of you know of any other projects that enable people to live the freeconomy lifestyle more easily, then please leave a comment with a link to the website of the project if possible. Have a fantastic day

How a small decision can symbolise a really big one…

Tue, 03 June 2008 22:30:16 GMT

Before I start the following debate, I should make it clear that what I write below is not an argument for veganism; it is merely an argument for ‘thoughtism’. I have no ambition to ‘make’ the world think as I do, even if I could. My only wish has ever been that people think about the chain of events intrinsically connected to what they eat, down to the rubber top on the gear stick of the tractor that was used to help grow that potato they had last week. I’d expect many more people to disagree than agree with what I write below, given that under one per cent of the population actively live it out. But what I would like people to focus on is the importance of thinking about what you eat, and then acting on whatever it is you decide. And besides, regardless of whether it is a minority of one or a majority of billions, your truth is your truth. So below is merely an exercise in thought, and in that sense, and that sense alone, is it important to the freeconomy community. Before I started my veganic locavore diet, I’d long since been vegan. It seems to follow a logical sequence – first you go veggie, then vegan, then veganic, then…well, it usually stops there I think. My current diet, I believe, is veganism in a purer form. For quite a while I have been living my life on the basis that if it is not organic then it’s not vegan. How on earth could pesticides and synthetic fertilisers that are initially tested on animals and then kill wildlife and more importantly, our planet, be considered vegan? I had just been to the Bristol Vegan Fayre at the weekend, the largest in the world, and it shocked me how much stuff was masquerading as vegan. I don’t mean that as a criticism as it is an amazingly positive event – it’s just the lack of connection that gets me sometimes. But to take that trail of thought even further, I wouldn’t classify petroleum products as vegan either – anyone who has ever witnessed an oil spillage will vouch for that, and oil spillages are accepted as an inevitable part of what I call the ‘rig-to-roundup’ process. So the more petroleum in your food and its packaging, the less vegan it ‘really’ is. So it has been on the basis of this that myself and my best mate, a very thoughtful omnivore, have had a long-standing debate. He asked me once that if I was starving and I only had a choice between a banana from Ecuador or some cheese from a local organic farmer, which would I eat? The idealist in me would say neither, that’d I’d hold out. And though I never verbally answered it, I did in a way, given the fact I never starved or ate cheese, yet necked tonnes of bananas. However, my recent ‘transition experiment’ has highlighted many weaknesses in the UK's food security. One of the biggest flaws I’ve found so far has got to be the fact the we do not grow any oil-free sugar in the UK – so if the faeces hit the proverbial fan tomorrow and trade barriers went up, we’d struggle to even preserve jams and chutneys for the 'hungry gap' we annually go through. Plenty of the non-organic stuff by the way, but none that is not reliant on mainly US owned pesticide and biotech companies for a successful yield. All of which got me thinking about sugar replacements, which automatically triggered off another old internal debate of mine – to eat honey or to not eat honey?! My problem with honey in the past has been that all commercial honey makers take the honey that the bees work hard for all summer, and then replace it with refined sugar from places such as the Dominican Republic. Even most of the small producers do it. Honey is more expensive by the kilo than sugar, and as the bees work freeconomy style (without their consent unfortunately though), profit can be made. However I did always ask myself that if I found a producer that only took the excess honey that the bees inevitably produce, and therefore have no need to replace it with sugar, would I still be ethically opposed to it? This internal debate was put to the test a few weeks ago as I was approached by a woman who does just that – keeps bees and just takes the excess. Feeling a little drained from the low levels of sugar and protein in my current dietary regime, I thought harder about it than ever! And for the first time in 4 years, I decided that I would now eat honey! I still haven’t done it yet, but I have decided that this particular honey is something I would be very grateful to eat, on the promise that it is always an excess and that I say grace for the bees before each mouthful. But that highlights how important it is to know your farmer directly – could you possibly trust a company to do that, would the company even care? My bee-keeper also only supplies it to places she can cycle too! What a woman! Does that make me a vegan anymore? Who cares? I’ve never had much time for labels, though I do agree they are often a handy way of summarising what it is you do and what you stand for. They can often have the same effect that religion can have on the unquestioning soul – a set of rules you can adhere to without having to think too much about afterwards. I’m not saying that is what religion actually is – just how it is used by ‘thoughtless’ humans, which we are all sometimes. Good news by the way for all you budding ’locavores’ out there – I have also found protein packed Green Split Peas that are grown in the UK – you can buy them from an organic food co-op called Suma. Twenty two per cent of which is lovely, lovely, lovely protein. Still working hard on sourcing an organic, petroleum-free UK oil, have been in contact with the Soil Association regarding it and will let you know what I find. With that I look forward to all your thoughts, and will leave you with a very apt quote about Freeconomy by Ralph Waldo Emerson – "No matter how you seem to fatten on a crime, there can never be good for the bee which is bad for the hive."

Yes we can...

Tue, 27 May 2008 22:03:14 GMT

There’s always a thin line between reporting on issues you know that you should relay to the rest of the world, and making everything seem all doom and gloom. On one hand, you have a responsibility to raise awareness. The problem exists when the issue is perceived as being pretty depressing. I say ‘perceived’ as in most cases it’s meant to be the opposite! On the other hand, if you don’t tell people about it, they have less time to act. Well this week the problems of the world can go take a backseat. Yes there are many, but there are as many amazing people out there giving their life to turning it all around. Having had a bit of a tough couple of weeks myself, I was looking for that oxygen for the soul we call inspiration. What I found either put a huge smile on my face, made me cry tears of joy, or propelled me into revitalised action. So today I want to relay to you my ‘Top 10 Inspiration stories’ – not world leaders, not billionaire philanthropists, just ordinary people who have said ‘enough is enough’ or ‘yes I can’, all in their own very different ways - Here we go, starting backwards: 10. We tell our kids how to behave, then we do the exact opposite ourselves. Well Severn Suzuki, of the Environmental Children's Organization (ECO) went to the UN and silenced our adult world leaders… 9. In most respects, this isn’t a true story; in others it is. While the individuals are actors, it symbolises what we all know happens when one brave soul takes on a struggle that at first seems impossible. So are you going to stand there, or are you going to do something about it? 8. This kid, J-Mac, didn’t change the world. But the spirit both he and his coach showed in what was effectively just a basketball game is enough to make the least of us realise that we can do whatever we put our minds to. Hopefully that will be on a positive thing! 7. I had to add this in, as this is one (extra)ordinary individual who had been a huge inspiration for me early in my life. Her name is Julia Butterfly Hill, and if you want to find out more, check out her project, Circle of Life. What is your tree? 6. OK, before you check this out, forget the silly retail element about it, forget the corporate edge to it, and just think of Johnny the bagger. I love it because it fits in with Kahlil Gibran’s quote that “work is love made visible”, and because it shows us that you can bring love to whatever job you do, no matter how mundane it seems. It all shows why kindness is important even on a business level. So all you executives out there…! 5. The ‘Man who planted trees’ was originally meant to be a fictional tale about a man called Elzeard Bouffier, until one reporter, like most others, took it to be a true story. You know what, it is, because it happens every day, it’s just a different seed being planted. 4. I love this one because the ethos behind it is pure freeconomy - an organisation called Seva Cafe that gives out dinners on a ‘pay-it-forward’, gift economy basis. Very inspiring. 3. You just got to love Maisie. Whilst I accept that driving around collecting cans is slightly flawed logic, I would like to focus on the intention, belief and kindness of this amazing woman. 2. This Mann is an example of how the answers to the world’s problems are very simple, though we often try to convince ourselves otherwise. Armed with just a piece of cardboard saying ’Free Hugs’, he entered a society full of fear and, literally, embraced it. Juan realises that peace will not descend upon humanity in one fell swoop, but will only be realised when we start to love and respect each other at every given moment and interaction. Now his revolution is spreading across the world… 1. This is in at No. 1 mainly because it was the ultimate in self-sacrifice. May Marian Fisher be an example to us all, as well as the Amish community, who, hours after a man shot 10 of the kids in their little community and himself, offered food and supplies for the killer’s wife and children. If they can forgive that, how can we hold grudges over our petty perceived insults? CAN YOU DO ME ONE FAVOUR? Tell everyone else here, by leaving a comment, about one person who you love and who has inspired you – it may be your wife, your son, Aung San Sun Kyi, Martin Luther King Jr – whoever! And then go and dedicate one ‘Random Act of Kindness’ in their honour. Oh, and don’t forget to tell that person to if you can, we all forget to sometimes.

How I feel about it all so far...

Sat, 17 May 2008 06:02:37 GMT

One of the commentators on my last blog pointed out that I should report back to everyone the results, so far, of my dive down the rabbit hole of ecological living. Which made me realise I have an ingrained dislike of reporting! In my old job I was exactly the same – loved doing stuff but could never be bothered writing reports on it! Where should I start then? The local food diet is going great in some respects, but hard in some others. I can get all the food I need to survive from UK soil, though my diet is the same thing every day at the moment – oats for breakfast, tomatoes for brunch, rye bread and salad with cider vinegar for lunch and my dinner being a mix of about 10 rainbow-like veggies, with the base alternating between potatoes, rye grain, spelt grain and barley grain – barley being the best I’ve found. Rye grain tastes a bit like rubber bullets (shame I bought a 25kg sack of it!) unless you got 2hrs to cook it, which I haven’t at the moment. It actually feels like when I first went veggie. For about 3 weeks I felt really energy-less – when my body realised it wasn’t getting all the stuff it used to love anymore, it spat the dummy out! But then, as my body realised it was all for the best, I suddenly had more energy than ever before! That is the hardest part about it all though – there is enough food for me to eat, the only thing that is scarce is time! I was reading Fergus the Forager's blog during the week – the incredibly brave soul who is living completely off foraged food – and I was really feeling for the guy. If I think I have it hard, it is nothing compared to him. But he was saying exactly same thing – in order to help bring the slow life to as many people as possible, we got to work 18hrs a day. There is never enough time, though that is a very un-Gandhian thing for me to say. It’s one of the ironies of the life a lot of people have chosen though. Another tough part of it all is the fact it’s now much harder to eat communally – like going around to a mates for dinner unplanned, or to meet up with someone (often for the first time) in a café. Though everyone does make a huge effort, I realise I am not only causing them hassle but also unintentionally prompting them to justify what is on their plates, neither of which are desired. The point of all this is not to make people feel like they are a ‘bad person’ (as if such a thing exists anyway!) because they’ve just had a banana! It’s simply an experiment that has the added bonus of drawing the attention to local food. The one thing I am finding it difficult to get is oil. Each oil I found has some, er, oil in it (thankfully you may say, but I am talking petroleum here and not the omega-packed variety!). It’s either LEAF certified instead of organic, or organic and local but with a plastic top, or organic and plastic-free but from Bolivia! I think I may have lost a small bit of weight, which I’d rather not. Though now I think of it,that probably appeals to a lot of people out there. Maybe the ‘Locavore Diet’ could be the next big thing, and I could sell it to the world, make my first million and then blow it all on cars, casinos and cashew nut butter! As regards bins, the answer is simple. I don’t need one anymore. I actually can’t understand why I felt I couldn’t do without one beforehand. It was purely habit on my behalf, and a lack of self-discipline. So yeah it’s been 6 weeks without one thing in the bin. And so if it is possible for that length of time then it is possible forever – I really don’t see myself going back on that front, though I’ve got to say a carton of organic blood orange juice may always be a temptation! My allotment is going very slowly – I only started planting yesterday. There’s two problems at the moment – one, is that I inherited a complete mess, which is good in some respects. But secondly, there is more bindweed in it than soil, which isn’t good in any respect! The allotment is actually just a hundred metres away from Dave and Andy’s allotment, who are better known as the ’Self-sufficient’ish brothers’. They’ve actually got a great book just out, called ‘The Self-sufficient’ish Bible’ – I haven’t had a chance to read it yet but knowing those two it’s got to be an essential. I have managed to pot a lot of stuff whilst I dig the allotment though (not very Masanobu Fukuoka’ish really is it!) I was also given some Amaranth and Woad by a friend - the former is excellent for protein, which I will need more of come the summer, whilst the latter is great for dying your clothes and painting you face! Foraging has been the most fun part, as it usually involves long walks or camping – the harvest hasn’t been big yet, but it isn’t going to be in the modern tarmac-clad spring months. I have found a lot of places though that, given a couple of months, will save me at least 4hrs paid work a week. As regards the rest, I’m still peeing in the back garden whilst trying to hide from the neighbours, though I am thinking about bottling it for the compost heap at the allotment. I wash once a week now, without soap, and it really is enough. I used to shower twice a day and not only was my skin poor then, I also smelt worse, as all my natural body oils were being wiped out and my body was having to work really hard to replace them. What else – oh yeah, tooth-brushing. Still using the toothpaste until it runs out, then onto the methods I outlined in a previous blog. I thought it would be even less ecological to just chuck a full tube of toothpaste. The other stuff I have stated I haven’t started yet but plan to one-by-one over the summer – I blog them in order to help anyone out there, who is particularly interested in one of them, to put it into practice. A few of the other comments have also highlighted to me my on-going dilemma in life - my no-win situation. If I pack up everything and take off to the woods and completely ‘be the change I want to see in the world’, people complain that it is not possible for everyone to do that and so it is not valid and I am a very bad man. If I don’t do it and try to work within the system that most people have for various reasons been handcuffed to, in order to help figure out solutions for the vast majority of people, the other half say I am not fully ‘being the change’ and that I should life it completely! Answers on a postcard regarding that one please! I will leave you with a great quote from Vandana Shiva whilst she was giving a talk on the pesticide and biofuel industry – “We are now putting petrol in our food and food in our cars!” I think nothing symbolises the insanity of this society more than that! And remember, try to undertake even the most mundane task with the wondrous joy of a child for this whole thing is just the most amazing experience xxx By the way, the new ‘COMMENT’ system is now up and running!! Hope you find it much easier! If you aren’t signed in and want to comment, it will redirect you to sign-in page, and once you enter your username and password it will bring you automatically to the ‘COMMENTS’ BOX.

Going off-grid after a great week for the community…

Sun, 11 May 2008 21:49:53 GMT

Spring is such a magical time of year. Not only do I see green everywhere as life begins its wondrous cycle again, I feel a new lease of life myself. I think we forget sometimes that we are as much part of ‘nature’ as a tree, and just as it awakes after the long cold winter, so do we. I know I certainly do anyway. Given this new found energy, I decided the time was ripe to take my ‘Transition Experiment’ onto another platform. I feel like the next step for me is to start living off-grid. So I asked myself, what am I still doing that involves me being ‘on-grid’. Let’s see – I cook my food on an electric cooker, shower using an electric shower, use lights to see at night and most abhorrently of all, crap in my own water supply. Not very smart of me at all. So I’ve decided to start knocking them all on the head one-by-one over the summer. To begin with I am going to learn how to build a rocket stove. This can be done completely for free – go to your local independent delicatessen and you’ll get the olive tin you need, and take off to your local skip for the piping required – believe me, in this waste culture of ours, both will be found in abundance. Once you’ve made it, it can be quite easily fuelled for free also, using either waste wood from local businesses or deadwood if you live a bit more rurally. So not only do you get another step away from this ridiculous centralized energy system of ours – where, by the way, a incredible 70% of all energy is lost before it even makes it to one of our homes – you get to become more self-sustainable and save yourself another bill into the bargain! Once that is done I plan to convert our shed into an ‘alternative bathroom’! I’ll start with constructing a compost toilet, and then gutter the roof to pick up rain water in a re-used container, which I will then use to fill up a solar shower. This contraption, by the way, is pretty much just a black bag with a valve at the bottom. The black attracts and stores the suns rays and hence heats up the water inside. I’ve got two apprehensions about it all though – one is washing myself in rain-water that will probably have been lying for a few days (though I don’t think it should be a problem), the second being having to shower in the same room as a compost loo! I think a good airtight lid for it is essential, as vegan poo is definitely aromatic! My last tie to our nonsensical energy infrastructure of ours is lighting. Not so much a problem this time of year, but a bugger come October. So in the meantime, I plan on learning how to make my own candles. Again, not only is it one less utility bill, but you really cannot get a more romantic setting that looking out at the moon through your window whilst reading a book by candle light on a cosy winters evening. That’s excuse enough for me! If all this sounds a bit backward and grim, I really don’t intend it to be! I am really looking forward to learning all these skills. Not only is being more and more self-sufficient very liberating, it is also very empowering. And when sitting on a compost loo, you really do have a greater understanding of ecology and respect for the earth, and there is a deeper sense of connection and love for the soil that gives you life in doing so. On the freeconomy front, this week has probably been the best week for the community, on a number of levels, since the project was born eight months ago. Not only has there been tonnes of activity and new membership, especially in India, but the foundations of a model which is being designed to bring the whole concept to Stage 2 have started being built here in Bristol in the UK. The first bricks were laid when we called a meeting last week to see if anyone was interested in helping organise the first ‘Just-for-the-love-of-it Festival’, an event designed not only to give the entire community a free fun-and-education packed day out, but to also prove that such an event can be done without any finances, instead depending completely on members of the community sharing both their time and material possessions or free. The day itself will run from morning until night, with around 20 drop-in skill-sharing workshops, music, open spaces, a freecycle shop, talks, entertainers, a clothes swap and fashion show, games area, children’s area, and most importantly, a free food stall! The food will be skip-dived, foraged and donated from local independent businesses and allotments, and will be cooked by volunteers. We won’t even accept donations. Mother Earth gives it to us for free, so what gives us the right to start charging? Another great breakthrough happened this week when a wonderful local project called Café Midnimo offered us their space to run free skill-sharing evenings on every second Tuesday. Because I believe everything can be done without money if we believe in it enough, I’ve been holding out for the last month in the faith that something like this would pop-up. And it has! So now twice a month we will be running a free evening where one member from this community comes along and teaches everyone else how to do a certain skill. It’ll be a mix of skills that we are going to need post peak oil, fun stuff and some tools which can help us grow spiritually as well. I always wonder why spiritual skills don’t have any importance placed on them in the western world, given that they make up 50% of our entire being. By the way, if anyone is from the Bristol or surrounding areas and wants to help in the organisation of these events, please feel free to get in contact (ph. 0044 775 886 1783). If you are from another part of the world and would like to run something similar, please feel free to contact me also, I am only too happy to help you with it if I can. On the other two Tuesdays of every month Transition Easton, one of the Transition Neighbourhoods in the movements first city, will be holding a film night there, showing movies such as The Power of Community, a uplifting and empowering film which documents how Cuba dealt with their own oil crisis in 1990 after the collapse of the old Soviet Union. When I first set the freeconomy community up, my friends asked me how would I pay for the hosting fees in the long run. I had no idea but just said that if this project was meant to be then I believed somebody somewhere who felt strongly enough about what we were trying to do would step in and offer the hosting for free. Well this week that happened too! A lovely couple whom I met at one of our meetings said that they have loads of spare hosting capacity and would love to be able to help us out. So the transition is complete, and I can knock that off my income requirements for the year! Mix all that with the fact that we have also been offered more help in developing this online tool, and that there is some more positive publicity for the community in the pipeline, it has been a very good week indeed! Oh, I’ve just remembered I have forgotten one important thing in relation to my ‘Transition Experiment’ – this thing I am typing on right now! Does anyone know any way I can power this modern type-writing contraption off-grid? If not I have a dilemma which symbolizes the bigger dilemma in my life right now – to live life exactly the way I envision it, or to work with tools I don’t fully believe in to help others make the transition together? Anyway best get off this thing and get outdoors - hope this great weather continues! But remember, the sun is always shining, sometimes you just got to see beyond the clouds… Viva la commune de freeconomy! X [TO LEAVE A COMMENT, SIGN IN AS NORMAL IF YOU ARE A MEMBER (if not you can REGISTER HERE for free), CLICK ON ‘BLOG’ ON THE NAVIGATIONAL BAR AT THE TOP, THEN CLICK ON ‘READ THIS ENTRY IN FULL’ AND THEN ON ‘COMMENT’, WHICH IS JUST ABOVE THIS MESSAGE! I PROMISE WE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF MAKING IT EASIER!]

What would Gandhi do about it all…?

Tue, 06 May 2008 10:06:09 GMT

Despite the onslaught of work that ensued after a couple of really positive articles came out about ‘freeconomy’ at the weekend, I eventually decided that it was nothing that couldn’t wait 24hrs and took off to the forest in search of food, fun and friendship. And what a good decision it was – beautiful weather, great people and lots of foraging. On the way there we found comfrey, St. George's mushrooms, ramsons, nettles and ground ivy for tea and I even learned how to make coffee from the root of a dandelion. We had a camp-fire, a sing-song and arose the next morning to the sounds of the local birdlife, fully refreshed and ready to be of service. The slow life really is the good life! It was there that I also started doing something which I now call ‘My Morning Oats and Oaths’ – the latter being a list of things I should remember every day in order to live my life as best I can. Oats are great for the heart, Oaths great for the soul. One nourishes me physically, the other spiritually. One as important as the other. Skip back a few days though and my mind was firmly on the world food crisis. This time not from reading it about it in the news, but from looking through an invoice for an organic food coop I work with, a place that buys food in bulk so that more people can afford healthy, nutritious food that doesn’t cost the earth. It was there I noticed that the ripples of it all were starting to hit western shores, as all prices had gone up, most noticeably corn by almost 100%, which, coincidently is 2 weeks after the UK make it obligatory for all oil to contain 2% biofuels. So I started reading up on it to see what journalists, economists and politicians were saying. Some journalists like George Monbiot have a great understanding of the situation. However economists and politicians (is there a difference?) are coming up with the same old lines. Economists are telling governments not to interfere, because the market, that god of the modern era, will find it’s own equilibrium. Politicians are telling their voters that they will give aid – what they are not telling them is that it will come in the form of pesticides, chemical fertilisers and the GM seeds that go with them. Which is a bit like a drug dealer giving the homeless person his first crack hit for free – the dealer makes his money back in the end. The homeless person becomes, well, a crackhead. You may think I am being cynical, but it’s the truth – Vinoba Bhavé once said "there is no need for me to protest against the government's faults, it is against its good deeds that my protests are needed!" Economists unfortunately are not ecologists – I studied economics for 6 years and not once did I hear a mention of ‘soil’ – and they speak about both as if they are totally separate. They think that all you have to do is blast the soil with more chemicals, increase production, and the problem is solved. Anyone with any idea of ecology realises the ridiculousness of it all. But not since Gandhi has the world had an ecologist influential in government, and the evidence of that is becoming apparent by the day. So, unsure of what to do about it, I asked myself what would Gandhi do if he was still alive? It’s impossible to speak for a man after he is dead, so all I can use is what he stood for when alive and try to figure out how that would apply to the post-modern world. Gandhi, along with India’s modern day version, Vandana Shiva, believe in what they call Gram Swaraj, meaning village self-rule, a system where each village is self-reliant and sustainable using materials from that area. Bapu’s struggle was to convince Indians to get rid of foreign cloth and to instead buy only homespun cotton from their local villages. Then, and only then, would Indians be truly free. I went to see a couple oftalksabout it all by Vandana Shiva last year, and both times I came away with the exact same answers. Leave the so-called ‘developing’ nations alone, we are not doing them any favours by buying their produce. Land that they could use to grow food for themselves is now being covered in mono-crops destined for Europe and the US, and the cash they get for such crops will depend on the fickle hand of ‘the market’. Ten years ago she helped write a book about the first Indian farmer to commit suicide because of the pressures that globalization had put on his family farm – it was shocking at the time. Ten years later, 150,000 thousand farmers in India have committed suicide because of our love of their rice and Monsanto's love of their money. So what would Gandhi do? I say ‘do’, because he would do it first before asking anyone else to try. As I said before, I am reluctant to put words in his mouth. But what I believe in my heart is that he would tell us all to grow food, make our own clothes and shelter, and in doing so allow the people of Haiti, Indonesia, India and all the other countries at the mercy of the WTO, ‘supply and demand’ and western buying power to do the same. Let Indonesians grow food that THEY can eat, not mono-crops so that we can buy have a nice latté in one of the five Starbucks on our High St. So I challenge all of you to become Localvores, a new movement of people who eat nothing but food from their own country, and often from within a certain radius. It really is not as hard as it may sound, and though there are sacrifices, there are also joys, and you may find that you learn lots, so that when the inevitable eventually takes full effect, it won’t matter one tiny bit. Let’s all grow food and in the process help tackle the biggest issue modern day man has had to face – if you want inspiration, look no further than one of my favourite projects at the minute, G.R.O.F.U.N.. Peace and smiles to you all x

No camping and foraging for me then this weekend…!

Sun, 04 May 2008 10:56:49 GMT

It woke up this morning all ready to pack my bags to take off camping and foraging for the weekend in the woods with some friends, only to learn that ‘The Times on Sunday’ have written a great article (click link to read) centred around ‘Freeconomy’ and all the ways we can live without using money. Which is amazing, the word itself is only seven months old and already it is being used to describe a way of life that is becoming not only possible, but easier and almost more essential by the day. By next year it may even make the Collins Dictionary! What is not so great is that it doesn’t look like I am now going to get camping today, or even write the blog I was intending to write! We’ve just been inundated with new members, tonnes of enquiries and hence a mountain of work! It does mean, however, that the message behind this community is getting out there more and more, and that is my life’s goal, so camping is a small price to pay. But having a sing-song around a camp-fire under an old oak tree eating some of the food we foraged along the way was so agonisingly close for me! On the upside, ‘The Times’ have pretty much done my blog for me today, as the journalist who has written the article has really done her homework and I would really recommend a read of it - there are some great links for you all to check out. Hats off to her, and how refreshing (and revealing) to see such a large newspaper go with such a story. I think we are finally making some real progress, which gives me so much hope for the future. So the blog I intended to write this morning will have to wait until tomorrow, too much to do! But for today I will leave you with the words I saw on a poster of a small, ecological bookshop called Seven Generations that has just recently had to close down, due to the pressures of living in a world where people just don’t seem to support the little guy anymore. It is a take on Pastor Martin Niemoller’s famous poem 'First they came...'. This is something like how it read, and it was written in the tone of a person who no longer wants to stay silent: “First they came for our local greengrocer, But I did not speak out because I can park more easily at Tesco. Then they came for the children who work in factory farms in South-east Asia, But I did not speak out because my kids love the toys they make. Then they came for the farm animals, But I did not speak out because the chicken as ASDA Wal-Mart is only $1.50. Then they came for our lovely old bookshop But I did not speak out because the discounts are great at Amazon. Then they came for our natural environment, But I did not speak out as I love the cheap flights to Spain. Then they came for our food security, But I did not speak out as salad packs from China are much cheaper. Then they introduced SAT exams for 7 year old kids, But I did not speak out because my child isn’t seven years old anymore. Then they went to war with Iraq, But I did not speak out as I need cheap oil prices to drive to work everyday. Then they started to introduce compulsory ID cards, But I did not speak out as I like some of the benefits that the government are offering me. Then they came for me, And then I realised there was no one left to speak out for me.” (courtesy of Anton Saxton) Please speak out and act. And support ‘the little guy’, because we are all little guys. There is no ‘us’ and ‘them’, only ‘us’. Lots of love x [TO LEAVE A COMMENT, SIGN-IN AS NORMAL IF YOU ARE A MEMBER, CLICK ON ‘BLOG’ ON THE NAVIGATIONAL BAR ON THE TOP, THEN CLICK ON ‘READ THIS ENTRY IN FULL’, AND THEN CLICK ON ‘COMMENT’ BELOW. WOULD LOVE TO HEAR YOUR VOICE, PLUS ANY MORE LINKS REGARDING MONEY-FREE AND ECOLOGICAL LIVING.)

I can't write this morning...

Mon, 28 April 2008 10:53:15 GMT

I was about to sit down to write this blog this morning and set about it in my usual manner. One part of my blogging process is to research the tonnes of stuff people send me every week, to see what I can add to my own thoughts. This week one such link I received in my mailbox was an online documentary called Earthlings (click on link to watch). So, as normal, I watched it to see whether or not it is was worth relaying to all you wonderful people. But this week that is where the blogging process ends. I am too overwhelmed and sad to write about all the things regarding ecological living that I had planned to. I know I should be positive and focus on solutions rather than problems but this is how I feel right now and I just can’t pretend otherwise, so sorry. It is not that this film is full of nauseating images or anything, it is quite refreshing in the sense that it doesn’t go for shock tactics at all. And even the tough stuff I have seen a million times through my work with animal welfare and rights organisations in the past (the peaceful sort by the way, of which 99.9% of it is anyway). Admittedly though I haven’t revisited it since I started up the Freeconomy Community last Spetember, as last year I wanted to change my focus off ‘symptoms’ and onto ‘root causes’, and I think that is part of the reason it has affected me so much. I cried through most of it. To be honest though I think it is more because of how beautifully it is documented, given the material it has to deal with, than anything else. It is aptly narrated by Joaquin Phoenix – I say aptly as it was his auntie that I stayed with in a community in New Zealand called Gentle World, the place you may recall that gave me the inspiration and motivation to set up the Freeconomy Community in the first place. Once you see something work with your own eyes no one can convince you that you are an idealist anymore. I also know from my years in the organic food industry that not all animals are treated this badly, though the slaughterhouse process is the same for factory farmed and organic alike. But I also know from all my years of researching factory farming that what is in ‘Earthlings’ is the industry norm and accounts for the vast majority of the meat we eat. Look I am not saying 'go veggie' or vegan or anything like that. That’s not my place, we all make our own decisions and none fall into the human constructed brackets of 'right' and 'wrong'. All I am asking is that you watch it and be aware of where most of the food you eat comes from. And then to think about it and make your own mind up, and if it makes you sad, just like it has me, then go and transform that feeling and do something positive about it. As the Noble laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer once wrote…“to animals all humans are Nazis, and every day is an eternal Treblinka”. Until we treat every single earthling on this planet with the respect that all life should have, we will never have peace. I’m off to do something about it. It may just be one or two little souls, but to that one or two you are everything. [!!! Let me know what you think not only about the film but also my decision to speak about such issues on this community's blog, which I should add isn’t linked to any such issues. To leave a comment, sign-in as normal if you are a member, click on ‘Blog’ on the navigational bar at the top, click on ‘read this entry in full’, and then click on the ‘comment’ link below. We are working on a better commenting system and hope it will be ready soon – in the meantime keep adding your voice to this community !!!]

Why did I take the red pill…?

Sun, 20 April 2008 14:07:30 GMT

Sometimes, just every now and then, I wish I had taken the blue pill. You know that scene in The Matrix, where Morpheus offers Neo a choice between two pills; if he takes the blue bill, he carries on existing habitually in a zombie like state, accepting everything he has been conditioned to believe since he was born into this world. However, if he takes the red pill, he has the opportunity to seek truth, but he must give up every one of the myths he had previously based his whole life on. One such blue-pill-wishing moment was yesterday afternoon, as I rather embarrassingly slipped in the mud whilst carrying a tonne of topsoil from the base of the allotment site to the top. But when I got up and looked at the view beneath me, I realised there was more truth in one squared centimetre of that soil than there was in a whole edition of the Daily Mirror. Just on that, I have felt like Alice all this week, looking down that rabbit hole, seeing how deep it actually goes, and it has taught me a lot about how I have been living my life up to now. I had always believed I was living an environmentally and animal friendly life, whatever that actually means. How wrong was I! The more I examine my life these days, the more I know I wasn’t (and am still not) living in harmony with the true Nature of this planet, instead swimming against its tide. The use of plastics is not something I ever thought of as a vegan issue before. But think about it – the plastics that have been used to package our food have all been animal tested, apparently, to make them save for human use. As if we are biologically the same as a beagle dog (!) – testing on humans would be the safest thing to do, but, you see, that would be cruel. On top of that, if food isn’t organic then it isn’t vegan, as not only are pesticides also animal tested, they kill lots of wildlife! Which leads be to think that the only way to be truly vegan is to eat local veganic food without plastic packaging – as if it wasn’t hard enough for all you veggies and vegans out there! By the way, I do understand that given that 1% of any western countries population is vegan, most of you won’t be, and that is totally cool, I am not arguing veganism here and it is certainly not a tenet of freeconomy for everyone. All I am trying to do is help everyone think of the repercussions of everything we buy and do as far down the chain as possible. And the deeper you look, the more unhealthy for Gaia the vast majority of purchases looks. It may sound grim, but it doesn’t have to be. Another way is possible. On another note, I was very glad not only to hear yesterday that there was such a thing called No Trash Week, but also that it started today. The goal of the game is to see if can you live for a week without putting one item in the non-recyclable bin, and if not to see how much you can limit it to. My own no-bin experiment has been going just over two weeks now, and to be honest is getting very easy, to the point that I can no longer understand why I had one in the first place. No other species has one, and a society that has one is not working with the cycles of nature, as simple as that. After breaking myself out of the habit of going to the loo whenever I need a pee, it occurred to me the next logical step would be to build a compost toilet. How glad was I the following day when I got an email from Dan, a guy who I met on my walk without money and the organiser of the amazing Sunrise Celebration Festival, asking me if I would come and work as part of their volunteer team building – wait for it – compost toilets for a few days! Stroke of luck or the universe assisting that which works with it? – I’d say the latter, but then again I would! Just on the peeing thing, I done some calculations on this and realised that if all the adults of the US, for example, stopped peeing in their water supply 1.83 trillion litres of flush water would be saved each year in the US alone, and that based on only a 5 pee-a-day routine! After writing last week about the fact I don’t use soap products when washing anymore, I realised that it wasn’t very helpful to those of you who still want to use them! Well nature comes to the rescue again with a great perennial plant called soapwort. This plant is rich in saponins which produce a lather in water, and crushing the roots and leaves and shaking them in warm water will create this effect nicely. It can also be used for shampoo if, unlike me, you have some hair to wash. It was widely used in the past and is often found near old Roman baths and wool mills, as it was used to wash both people and wool in the past. Often people ask me what is the best thing they can do to rebuild their local communities. To be honest, it depends on how broken down that community is, but one thing that never fails is to organise your own street party. Getting people together is the starting point for doing anything – people are far more likely to co-operate when they know each other. And how much fun! Obvious really! To that effect I am in the process of organising a launch event for the Bristol Freeconomy Community. It will be a day of workshops on skills we are going to need in the future, music, clothes swapping, freecycling, food-sharing, talks and debates. The whole event will be free for everyone and run by volunteers. By the way, if anyone from Bristol or the south-west is reading and wants to get involved, we are looking for all sorts of volunteers, workshop holders, musicians, speakers and cooks! Just email me on saoirse@justfortheloveofit.org or phone me on 0044 775 886 1783. For those outside of Bristol, all will be welcome and once it’s over we will be assessing it and using the results to provide a model for other towns and cities to use if they so wish. Today I’ll leave you with Kahlil Gibran’s take on what it is to work with nature, as hard as it sometimes pretends to be… "And what is it to work with love? It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth. It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house. It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit." Work is love made visible. Let us treat this planet then as if that person that you love most had to live on it. [PS: WE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF CHANGING THE ‘COMMENT’ SYTEM (below) HERE DUE TO SOME PEOPLE TAKING ON A NUMBER OF PSEUDONYMS AND SOME EVEN PRETENDING TO BE ME! WE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF IMPROVING IT BUT ARE ALL A BIT STRETCHED HERE AT THE MINUTE. AS IT STANDS, TO ‘COMMENT’ YOU MUST SIGN IN FIRST, THEN GO TO ‘BLOG’ ON THE NAVIGATIONAL BAR AT THE TOP, CLICK ‘READ THIS STORY IN FULL’ AND THEN CLICK COMMENT, USING YOUR USERNAME IN THE NAME FIELD]

The Transition experiment expands beyond just food…

Wed, 16 April 2008 21:32:59 GMT

I’ll be honest with you, I am not much of a movie man. I would like to say it is because the embodied energy of most modern day movies is the equivalent of roughly five thousand long haul flights. But the truth is that they rarely excite me. Having said that, in the last month I have watched two free online movies (both involving little pollution) after almost all my close friends recommended them to me. The first called The Story of Stuff and the other, Zeitgeist. The former consists of things I mostly knew already, though it did teach me a method in which to relay it to the masses, whilst the latter, which is about religion, 9/11 and money, is just a great piece of documentary. Some of the facts could be disputed, and it is quite controversial for many. What the first movie did though was really make me question my habits beyond just what I eat. I am really finding my feet now, by the way, regarding food – my bread has vastly improved, I’ve got a batch of homemade raw sauerkraut on the go, and I’ve managed to find a supplier of unpackaged UK purple sprouting broccoli and beans, an organic farmers co-operative called Somerset Organic Link. My foraging skills are on the up too – (its surprising how quick you learn when you have to!), and lasts nights expedition got us huge wild garlic, a load of Jews Ear mushrooms and some hawthorn. Tip - soak some rye grain overnight and boil with the all the above plus spinach steamed on top (leaving in the stems of the broccoli), with some sauerkraut lightly fried with the mushrooms and welsh onions (use the cooling down hob that was used to boil the rye to save energy), and you have got one of the tastiest meals you will ever have. If you can get organically harvested salt from your nearest ocean, even better. On the allotment front, I am making progress though it is slow due to the fact the soil is mainly clay and is full of bindweed. Good news on that front though – I’ve managed to get a tonne of topsoil for free on freecycle, which should improve things for next year, and some local freeconomists are going to help me work it in. I am planting potatoes to help break down the soil whilst getting a crop, and broad beans to put some nutrients back in it. Anyway, back to the point. I can’t just limit my experiment to food, so I decided to examine the rest of my life! Having long given up body soap products - and before you say ooohh, he must stink, all you need to wash is actually water, and vegan sweat doesn’t really smell, though my friends may disagree - the next thing I thought of was toothpaste. The question arose, when the shit hits the proverbial fan, what am I going to use. My investigations can be found in the above link, but it mainly consists of a combination of a course bit of material wrapped around your finger, the dried flower stalks of fennel and chewing various herbs for both their topical fluoride benefits and their breathe freshening effects. Spurred on by my success there, I decided to sort out my other washing activities. So I got my hands on some soapods. Not only can I now wash my clothes with something that grows on trees, but if you boil it you can also make your own washing-up liquid for dishes! Even my very sceptical friends agree that their clothes never smelt better, and no chemicals whatsoever are involved! Having said that, they are not local so I need to research even deeper. I’ve also decided that now is also the time to start hand-washing again – I can’t bear to watch that machine spinning around anymore! On top of that, I realised that peeing in my water supply was a bit silly, something only a human would dream up. From now on, it’s out the back in a pan - just on that, liquid gold isn’t good on the soil directly, it should be watered down. If my housemates are reading this, I apologise, but that’s just the way it is. Pissing in our water, pah! Now I’m off for a rare half glass of Stinger , one of my favourite drinks made using hand-picked nettles from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstalls farm in Devon (UK). And maybe a listen to one of my favourite musicians, a guy called Michael Franti. He is one of those rare musicians who can make the most amazing music accompany the most powerful and inspirational lyrics. I’ll leave you with a few words I read in a recent edition of Resurgence magazine by a legend called Ken Saro Wiwa - “Dance your anger and your joys, dance the military guns to silence, dance oppression and injustice to death, dance my people”. Ken, by the way, was executed by the Nigerian government for peacefully protesting against the oil company Shell’s efforts to rape the land of the indigenous Ogoni people in the Niger delta. Shell pressurised the government heavily for the execution. Keep that at the back of your mind the next time you enter one of their forecourts… Lots of unconditional love xxx [PS: WE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF CHANGING THE ‘COMMENT’ SYTEM (below) HERE DUE TO SOME PEOPLE TAKING ON A NUMBER OF PSEUDONYMS AND SOME EVEN PRETENDING TO BE ME! WE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF IMPROVING IT BUT ARE ALL A BIT STRETCHED HERE AT THE MINUTE. AS IT STANDS, TO ‘COMMENT’ YOU MUST SIGN IN FIRST, THEN GO TO ‘BLOG’ ON THE NAVIGATIONAL BAR AT THE TOP, CLICK ‘READ THIS STORY IN FULL’ AND THEN CLICK COMMENT, USING YOUR USERNAME IN THE NAME FIELD

Even I wasn’t expecting it this soon…

Sun, 13 April 2008 09:43:49 GMT

I don’t know how many of you have been reading the news this week – I don’t usually, I find that its focus on the negative tends to, surprisingly, have a depressing and paralysing effect on me. However one of the main stories this week really caught my eye – the food riots that are occurring all over the world, some of which have brought down the Haitian government. In the article of the above link, a UN official says “the food price rises are a result of record oil prices, US farmers switching out of cereals to grow biofuel crops, extreme weather and growing demand from countries such as India and China”. Three things arise here. Firstly, humanity has just experienced about 0.5% of the kickback from the oil crisis that is evolving as I type, and already one government has fallen. And it will be the poor countries, those billions of people on less than $2 a day, who will get hit first. But secondly, it again shows that biofuels are not the answer. Using less energy IS the only answer. Getting a bike instead of driving IS an answer. Not taking that cheap flight for that break you deserve IS an answer. Deciding that it may be better to spend quality time with your kids instead of buying them the latest gismo out of China IS an answer. I hope I don’t sound critical of anyone, I really don’t mean to be – I still use oil myself, even on a UK plastic-free diet – but there is no easy way to say some things. Unless we reduce our energy use, people will starve (including us eventually) and countries will be attacked for the last drops of oil. It really isn’t a negative thing to be fearful of though! If you see reducing energy as a fun challenge, it can be incredibly liberating, much easier on your pocket and you can learn so many different skills. Thirdly, India and China just want all the things we have. We cannot criticize their desire for huge growth until we sort out our own house first. We must show example, right now, that unlimited economic and material progress does not equal happiness. If it did, then why are suicide and depression rates skyrocketing all over the western world. So how is my UK bin-free diet going? On Monday evening I am off foraging in the woods with a great chef friend of mine. Afterwards, not only are we going to cook our harvest, Chris is going to show me how to make my own spelt pasta, sauerkraut from English cabbage, great sourdough bread (properly!) and leaf curd from nettles – still haven’t got around to that one, I’ve been waiting to get my hands on the cloth required for it! Whilst reading up on foraging though I came across this amazing guy called Fergus Drennan, who, damn him, is making me look like a complete wimp. He is writing an account of his year eating only wild foods in the UK for The Ecologist magazine, and like me is about 10 days in. However, he does eat meat and shows pictures of how to skin roadkill, so if you are vegan and get upset by such pictures, maybe give that article a miss. However, just remember that Fergus didn’t kill the badger, a car did, and it is probably better to be outraged at cars than at him. And that is the opinion of a vegan, though I obviously don’t like to see an animal skinned either. Back to the subject though, I bought 25kg of English rye grain yesterday from the wonderful people of Doves Farm, when I was about to ask a friend if he could pick it up in the van for me. Then I thought, if this is going to be truly oil free then how on earth can I do that!! So over the bar of the bike it went, and off I went thinking how I must get a trailer for my bike or it’ll get to be a real pain in the ass. Tomorrow I’m getting 25 kg of oats and the next day one of spelt flour. Not only is it half the price, there is no plastic packaging and a reduction in total materials used. And it means you don’t have to think about buying it again for 3 months! A win-win-win situation! My body is finally adapting to the UK, plastic-free and bin-free diet though – was feeling a little energyless on the allotment the other day and was getting worried. Had a roast dinner last night and it was full of so many delicious flavours – potatoes, celeriac, carrots, parsnips, beetroot, mushrooms, Jerusalem artichokes, cabbage, turnip and swede, all topped off with a little kale. When you are eating like that I can assure you it is not a sacrifice. Before I head off to the allotment to plant my seed potatoes, I would like to pay my respects to a pilgrim for peace who was murdered in Turkey a few days ago. She was hitching from Italy to the Middle east to prove her trust in humanity. I send my condolences to all who loved her and have the utmost respect for her - unlike me she went to the end. Let us all look into our own hearts and find what it is in there that has created a world in which such an open soul was not protected. Let us not focus on the fact she was killed though, but what she stood for. May the spirit of Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo live on. PS: WE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF CHANGING THE ‘COMMENT’ SYTEM (below) HERE DUE TO SOME PEOPLE TAKING ON A NUMBER OF PSEUDONYMS AND SOME EVEN PRETENDING TO BE ME! WE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF IMPROVING IT BUT ARE ALL A BIT STRETCHED HERE AT THE MINUTE. AS IT STANDS, TO ‘COMMENT’ YOU MUST SIGN IN FIRST, THEN GO TO ‘BLOG’ ON THE NAVIGATIONAL BAR AT THE TOP, CLICK ‘READ THIS STORY IN FULL’ AND THEN CLICK COMMENT, USING YOUR USERNAME IN THE NAME FIELD. Lots of love keep your comments coming, even if it is slightly more difficult to do at the minute x