Transition Culture has moved
I no longer blog on this site. You can now find me, my general blogs, and the work I am doing researching my forthcoming book on imagination, on my new blog.
Come find me at robhopkins.net
Showing results 106 - 110 of 118 for the category: Great Reskilling.
I was in the beautiful city of Bath on Saturday, and saw a guy busking with a sort of 19th century American karaoke machine. In a mastery of technology akin to putting a man on the moon, I actually managed to film it with my phone and put it on YouTube for your viewing delight. I had never seen one of these before, it is quite brilliant….
On Sunday, Martin Crawford of the Agroforestry Research Trust, and star of the recent ‘A Farm for the Future’ programme, came round to my house to perform radical surgery on a tree of mine. The tree in question (see below left), a dessert apple, had been suffering from an odd ailment which meant that no sooner had it come into leaf, than all the leaves fell off, which in turn meant it was unable to make any fruit. Martin’s diagnosis had been that the tree had some kind of fungal virus, but was essentially healthy, and that given that none of the other apple trees suffered from the same thing, it was an ailment specific to that variety. The answer was to transform the tree into a ‘family tree’.
How to Grow More Vegetables: and Fruits, Nuts, Berries, and Other Crops Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine. John Jeavons. 10 Speed Press.
This is not a new book, but given that it is the time of year when your thoughts may well be turning to gardening, I thought it might be useful for me to wax lyrical about what might lay claim to being one of the greatest gardening books of all time. ‘How to Grow More Vegetables’ wears its heart firmly on its sleeve, and sets out to teach you to do exactly what the title suggests. It has been my gardening bible for the last 10 years, and as you can see (left), my copy is well loved, covered in muddy thumbprints, having regularly accompanied me into the garden.
The discussions that followed the publication here of the Transition Declaration of Independence, the story emerged of the list of 200 skills needed in Victorian times that appeared in the last 2 pages of appendices from “Victorian Oamaru : A vision For The Future” by Michael O’Brien, which was printed by hand and not available electronically. Thanks to Corinne for typing this up and to Ted for finding it. I’ve got my name down for pie-maker. Insurance salesmen take note. It is interesting to read this in the context of Richard Morrison’s comment in his column in today’s Times: “I think we may be on the cusp of the most surprising social change in our lifetimes: a rediscovery of the pleasures to be had in thrift, in simplicity and in parochialism…I wouldn’t wish the return of Spam on anyone. But the rest? A New Age of Austerity might be quite refreshing.”
For many years I have taught permaculture courses, and like many who do so, I start my courses with the Tale of Two Chickens. This is a very useful way of looking at inputs, outputs, and the science of maximising beneficial relationships, and it concludes with describing one of permaculture’s Holy Grails, The Chicken/Greenhouse. However, now, as I stand on the verge of actually trying to make a chicken greenhouse, I am finding it very difficult to find actual working examples of chicken/greenhouses. Might I have spent years unwittingly promoting a permaculture urban myth?
