Local food fair

This was a great little event... and perhaps a sign of things to come. Local food fayre, selling local produce directly to well local people. With food and oil prices rocketing one is left wondering how well we will be able to afford supermarket produce in the future.. all those food miles and processing has to be paid for somehow so finding ways to sell directly locally is going to be an important part of the mix of responses and solutions. This was in Machynlleth, a small community that has always be pro-active kick starting these kind of things, hopefully this is a sign of many more to come. This is also the kind of thing I want to see happening at Workhouse project, which I see as becoming a key focal point for local community and economy building, part of making our sustainability transition. Oh yes and for you all you sharp eyed people this is not a picture of local food but of a local band entertaining us while we bought our local food - all part of the mix. Bringing creativity and enterprise together.. better than listening to piped music the co-op! anyway this lot call themselves Sweet Loving Rain and two of them are ex chickenshackers! so I thought I would celebrate that fact with a picture

Elderflowers!

This post is for Ute, last month's volunteer, who is doing an amazing year long trip around the UK Wwoofing at communities and permaculture plots the whole way. She is going to have such a story to tell, her idea,, rather than write a book or diary, was to write in the form of a recipe book, a recipe from each place she visited. I loved the idea of telling a story through food - i really hope she does it. Anyway the recipe I was going to submit was a simple one, elder flowers in cider vinegar - may not sound nice to you.. and it isn't particularly - its more a medicine really. As a chronic hay fever sufferer I have tried just about everything over the years, but one natural recipe that does seem to really help is a spoonful of elderflower vinegar a day. Simply remove the flowers from the stalks and soak them in the vinegar for a few days, the sieve them off and keep in the fridge.

The elder trees weren't quite ready when Ute was here, but Kistina and Lena helped me make this and I have just had my daily dose..

Volunteers

Here's pic of our lovely German volunteers Kristina and Lena working hard at the Shack. (well relaxing on Aberdyfi beach) but a big thanks to both of them for all their hard work in the garden a and making elderflower champagne.

We have had a real spell of volunteers here, its been great, 4 since May, with 4 more coming this month! - we usually just have people for a week or slightly less, but we are always open to hear from people who are genuinely interested in helping out and want to learn a bit about permaculture .. and well just explore a bit of this lovely countryside here where we live. Thanks to everyone who has helped out, we really appreciate it.

Wood delivery

Well its exciting for me if noone else.. but here's what 15.8 tonnes of wood looks like and what will be keeping us warm this winter. With fuel prices rocketing it is feeling like a better and better idea that we decided to invest in our wood fueled heating system a few years back. Its a lot of work to stay on top of the wood supply, processing it and storing it, but it is a very effective and affordable way to go, and well of course more importantly sustainable. Check out the heating section on the Chickenshack website if you want to know more, but wood burning technology is actually quite complex if you want to do in a environmentally responsible way - as we discovered. The heating engineer who installed the system the very efficient heating company pointed out that burning wood on an open fire or old style burner is like burning old car tyres in terms of environmental impact- with all the smoke and particulates it produces and really inefficient.

Anyway, by logging this here I am keeping a record so we can review this in future to see how well we do, but this £600 load - I am hoping, should keep us going for a whole year.

Wood delivery

Well its exciting for me if noone else.. but here's what 15.8 tonnes of wood looks like and what will be keeping us warm this winter. With fuel prices rocketing it is feeling like a better and better idea that we decided to invest in our wood fuelled heating system a few years back. Its a lot of work to stay on top of the wood supply, processing it and storing it, but it is a very effective and affordable way to go, and well of course more importantly sustainable. Check out the heating section on the Chickenshack website if you want to know more, but wood burning technology is actually quite complex if you want to do in a environmentally responsible way - as we discovered.

Anyway, by logging this here I am keeping a record so we can review this in future to see how well we do, but this £600 load - I am hoping, should keep us going for a whole year.

Me and Leonardo..

Thanks to Dee who spotted my face on http://www.channel4.com/lifestyle/green/home.html
sharing the same page (if not the same lifestyle) as Leonardo de Caprio .. ha ha! but anyway its a chance to remind me to plug my Channel 4 blog... I would really appreciate some comments on there. .. check it out, as they say..

Tree measuring with Germans

I love Wwoofers! we have had some lovely one's over the past few years, it really brings a positive energy in the place. So thanks to Ute and Ian for all your lovely energy and enthusiasm this month, you both really helped, i can't say how much. So thanks again, the course went well and the place is pretty much put back together again and gardens are looking fab! So much mulching has been done..

I have to say more about Ute, she is on a fantastic mission, Wwoofing around Britain for a whole year, visiting communities and permaculture projects the ehole way. She is going to get such an amazing snapshot of the whole lot of us.. I am sure its going to be an amazing experience. I told her she should be writing a book, but the suggesetion was she'd rather write a recipe book, - i loved that idea... a story told in recipes... She's going out the Hebrides, Shetland even I think, she was on the Welsh leg, and Chickenshack was number 10 on her stop. (which reminds me of an old Mach panto joke, Ah Bond, back from your latest mission, how was it... well the welsh leg was a bit hairy...) never mind,, anyway.. Tree measuring... I love little stories, vignettes I believe they call them..

Anyway, Itook a pic a couple of years ago, driving north past Dolgellau, in Coed y Brennin of a really striking Wellingtonia pine I happened to notice and posted on a website. Only to be contacted by a tree measurer 2 years later who is researching into such trees, looking for particularly fine specimens and asked could I find it again and measure it and photograph it for him. So off I went with Wwoofer Ute to find this tree again so we could measure it for posterity. It was a fun little mission. anyway, for the record, 1.5m above ground level it is 9.5m in diameter and absolutely enourmous. Thanks again Ute! I want to hear stories from you on your journey and take some good wishes from Chickenshack with you.

design workshop

a key part of the course is to channel al the ideas and enthusiasm generated into a real project design exercise. Here us a view of a model of the healing courtyard at the workhouse, with a central earth-worked structure; an inner refuge, surrounded by a landscaped muli funtional space.

making magic

Shanti holding a handful of plantains. Mandy showed us the magic of common garden plants.... sometimes the humblest and commonest of grassland herbs can turn turn out to be the best for healing and medicine making. We made a healing salve from common ribwort plantain leaves harvested from the meadow.

bath room of champions

Stuey putting the finishing touches to the chickenshack field bath room deluxe. Shower bath facilities with hot and cold water! .. it was a genuine triumph of ingenuity.

Couple more images from the course.... the chickenshack veggie garden is looking good, with the green manures harvested and dug in, and the poly veg beds planted up. Here's a lovely shot of the delightful Sammi with one of her daughters.. on our site visit day to the workhouse.

more course snapshots

Busily planting a veggie bed. Permaculture encourages us to think of plants as guilds and family groups.. they don't necessarily do well as individuals. So in the this bed we are planting maize, pumpkins and beans. One of the commonest plant guilds planted around the world. The beans fix nitrogen for the maize and pumpkin, which in turn acts as a ground cover, shading out weeds and competitors, while the bens are free to climb up the maize stalks.

The second pic is Mark from the Workhouse, hard at work on the design exercise. There were three groups, who each produced a design on an area of the Workhouse. The standard for all three was very high... I really hope it can be a useful tool for the project itself. The areas examined were the 'Healing courtyard'. One of 4 internal courtyards in the building. A community garden area and the festival site itself.

course shots

Couple of images from the design course this year... Mikey boy the Scythe king, once started there's no stopping him. And the a special shout for Chris Dixon who did a fantastic session on patterning, as well as on regeneration and succession. After 18 years battling with the national parks over permission to build a low impact dwelling on his land, common sense has finally prevailed and he and Lyn are currently hard at work converting thier barn into a home.

click here to see a full size image



It was taken by Mike on Ian's camera - a really great group photo if ever I saw one.

PDC - Class of 2008

Here is the course group of 2008 on the first day.. we are playing a name game and have arranged ourselves in alphabetical order, whilst balancing on a couple of scaffold planks.

Weather forcast and Simons boat

Here's the forecast for a main section of the design course. Sounds like a bit of everything as per usual, but hopefully nowhere near as bad as previous years - which have been terrible, surely its our turn for a good one this year.

UK Outlook for Friday 9 May 2008 to Sunday 18 May 2008:

High pressure to the north of the United Kingdom dominates at first, with lower pressure away to the south and west. Through the period the high slowly drifts further away towards Greenland, allowing low pressure to move into southern areas, and the easterly flow to eventually turn northeasterly. Although dry weather dominates, with some decent spells of sunshine, there is always the risk of thundery showers developing. There will be some over the weekend, especially across southern areas, and this threat of thundery rain or showers may extend a little northeastwards into central areas during the week. The other change will be in temperatures, generally warm or very warm at first across southern and western Britain, but expected to slowly return towards nearer normal values later.

And here... ladies and gentlemen is a pic of Simon's boat... we have waited a very long time to be able to say this ha ha... anyway she looks like a beauty..

Simon sails away

Well he's finally done and gone and bought himself a Folkboat, which is mored down in Essex. Chickenshack will not be the same without Simon's involvement. He was there are the very beginning when it all started ad has lived here fo something like 8 years. Anyway life goes on and we are really looking forward to having Bill and Kath here when they complete their planned move.

Meanwhile its all go go here getting ready for the permaculture course... looking forward to seeing everyone in a week's time

Permaculture design course updates

I have updated the courses section on the Chickenshack website
and will add more over the next few days. We have had quite a lot of inquiries over the last few days, so people who have not confirmed need to get back in touch. I will email everyone who has contacted me in a few days with details anyway.

We are busy planting trial beds for the poly-veg practical, and are generally getting the site ready. Having been away in London contending with the Ideal Home exhibition and finishing off the last of the school gardens I was building, I am finally home again for the duration and can concentrate fully on getting ready for the course. It starts in just three weeks! but I am sure we will be ready in time.

permaculture design course 2008

I have updated the course pages on the website, i hope they are more informative. The course is booking quite well, there are 16 places available in all and we have 10 firm bookings and there are another 6 people indicating a strong interest and several more possibles currently. So if you are thinking of booking please get in touch and let us know you are interested - if you have not paid a deposit then please make sure awe are expecting you. Its looking like we will have a small bursary fund available to subsidise course fees especially for local residents, so again please get in touch if you are interested but are worrying if you can afford the fee.

The key tutor this year is Chris Evans, a hugely experienced permaculture teacher, with 20 experience on rural permaculture projects in Nepal. Chirs last taught on a course here in 1997, so we are very excited having him back again. (He and partner Looby have recently had a baby so we are waiting confirm how many days they are available for). As well as Chris and Looby we will be working with Chris Dixon, a permaculture teacher based in North Wales

the wall...

here it is the foundation layer of Louis' wall...

Wall building with Louis

Well its exciting for me anyway, but getting small dry stone wall built in the veg garden is something I have wanted for ages. Not least as we have so many granite rocks lying around the place we should do something with them. I have been collecting them in a pile for at least two years, adn after the course last year a couple of volunteers who had stayed behind shifted a whole lot more for us. So finally Louis, from Undergrowth housing co-op has spent the last three days building it for us. It is a real skill and the smallish and angular rocks here make it especially difficult. Its not quite finished yet but I love what he has done

Permaculture course 2008

We have jsut received the first deposit for a the course this spring! which is always very exciting for us, makes it real.. so well done Alys, and we have provisional bookings from Abi, Ross, Mandy, Pete and Mikey from Brighton as well, so its looking good.

We hope to be working with Sarah Pugh from Bristol permaculture, Chris Evans who of course was involved with Permaculture in Nepal for so long, plus lots of our old favourites.

The big difference this year i that we are working closely with the Workhouse at Llanfyllin, which has to be the most exciting new project around. Its a big old building with surrounding land, set in stunning rural Powys scenery.. and has become the home for one the best small festivals of the summer. We are very much hoping to involve several of the folk fro teh project itself and also to use the project as a sort of blank canvas on which to develop our own design ideas. The intention is to use it as a real life example whilst injecting some ideas , enthusiasm and encouragement into the project.

Channel4.com/Green

I have been writing a series of posts for Channel4's Green website, use the link to check it out. feedback welcome! It is an extension for the work I did on the 'Dumped', landfill site survival TV prog in the summer. which was a fun and interesting diversion back in June. I wrote a piece for CAT's Clean Slate magazine about it.

Pines Calyx and volunteers

the venue for the living roofs conference i attended last week. Beautiful green building made from rammed chalk walls with this amazing timbral domed roof. I was away attending a conference there whilst our lovely volunteers, Miki and Gil were working away on the garden here. We have had a sudden spell of people getting incontact, interested in either volunteering or wanting to know more about co-ops in general. its been really great to meet some people that way, it always re-energises the co-op when we do it.

So I am looking forward to Renie and Gaz coming next month, December volunteers. - it is making us all feel more confident about taking on more here. Like doing an amazing eco refurb of our outbuilding, i have been wanting to do that for years now.

Chickenshack recording studio!

with MC now in residence here at the housing co-op, he has finally got his recording studio and equipment set up. it was always part of the original dream, to have the farm, the view, the location , community, grow stuff, keep a few animals or whatever, use it as a base to explore and promote sustainable lifestyles, permaculture, and develop our own little business ideas and music and creativiey was always at the heart of that. so mike's is to use his considerable musical talents in helping other people put together quality recordings, especially for emerging artists without the access of experience to do this for themselves. he works closely with bands, sharing knowledge and teaching, so recording with him is a big learning experience. so its exciting for me to see these dreams come to fruition, and even more exciting for the artists concerned.. anyway here is a link
to 4 tracks by really exciting young Liverpool rock outfit... you would never guess it was recorded in our boiler house http://www.chickenshack.co.uk/studio/index.html

Workhouse latest

Well its very exciting folks, but I hear that the Llanfyllin workhouse is going ahead. the peopel behind the festival have won the backing of the trustees of the building and the Ecology building society.. and are going to buy the building and land as part of a community orientated project.

I am already seriously thinking about running a permaculture design course there in the Spring, i think it wold be a great way to get some creative energy into the place, work on a design, and draw in some new involvement into it.

No doubt there will be much discussion in the coming days, but if anyone is intereste d in being a part of a design course there, please get in touch.

another summer over

not to get down or anyting, but here we are entering september and it feels like another summer is slipping away. great party this year, our 12th, big thanks to everyone who helped make it so good. great atmosphere and people. it is a huge leap of faith for us, to open our gates and let in the hordes for the party each year, except we should know better by now, people were so great this year.. it was easy.... thanks to all for making a great weekend, especially the sailors, who did such a great job putting up the awnings and getting the place ship shape.. ahoy maties!!! ha ha..

seriously tho', its jsut great to be able to bring people together from the different corners of your life.. and see them all get on so well.. it was a big love in really, lots of mutual appreciation all round.

lots of old faces, well not so old, but you know what i mean, and actually quite a few new ones, esp. from the village up the road, which i really appreciated meeting people from close by, that i s what makes it all feel worthwhile, it can be difficult to meet your neighbours in a remote area like this, so its great when that happens.

another really great thing this weekend was when we had an unexpected visitor this afternoon. turns out to be the daughter of the family we bought the place off 12 years ago, .. place of all her childhood memories and all that... must have been an emotional experience to turn up like that, at a place you used to think of as home. it was great to meet her, she seemed really lovely, had traveled a lot and lived an interesting life, China and places like that.. but still dreaming of wales...

once again i am reminded how lucky we were to happen along here all those 12 years ago and find this place. i thin that is one of the reason why i want to do the party, the course and all that, is to share a little bit of that luck with other people, its a privilege to live in such a beautiful place and I do feel a kind of responsibility to share it around a bit.

Its all been so busy...

Since the design course finished in the beginning of June, i don't think my feet have touched the ground. I cant believe its that time in August when we thinking about our annual party and another year has slipped by. We are 12 years old this summer, as a co-op, community of friends and believers and still trying to make our way in this mad world of ours.

Me? well I have been working for the Ch4 TV show Dumped, which comes out in September, 3rd I think is the first episode. A chance for TV to take a serious look at what we as a society throw away, and the impact which that has. Since doing that I have been off sailing on Ed's boat. check out Mangosailing if you have not seen it yet, Ed's site, with some lovely pics of the boat.

I am pretty excited in that since doing the work fo Ch4 they have re employed me to write stuff for an up and coming Ch4/green website.. its early days so far so it might not work out .. but it should at least keep me in sweeties til the end of the year, so I am pretty pleased about that. Getting a chance to get paid for writing blogs ranting about the environment, pretty much what i do in my spare time for free... so if i go silent here, then you'll know where to look for me if you are missing me.. ha ha.

Sarah Pugh is fantastic

Big up for Sarah Pugh, from permaculture Bristol and Transition City Bristol and old mate of mine, who led the teaching on the course this year. It was the first time well certainly for me anyway, that I had worked on a full 2 week course without the priceless input of Mike Feingold. Mike's knowledge and experience is so vast that its easy to end thinking that its not really a proper course with out his particular brand of genius. But I think this year we have both begun to realise that we have actually a vast amount of experience ourselves, that we in turn need to value more.

Anyway suffice to say it was great, IMO SP is particularly good at the people side of it, valuing people, valuing their contributions and making everybody feel like they are part of the group. She is a particularly good group facilitator, which is such big part of the whole experience of being on a 2 week course. Anyway, blah blah, nice one Sarah.


We also had the pleasure of working with Mr Steve Pickup, the willow man who did a great presentation on working with willows and willows and permaculture, before running a series of practical workshops making basket work edging for some of our forest garden beds. This worked really well, and not only is the garden now looking great as a result, it was one of those workshops that at least a few people really engage with. There is something almost primeval about weaving, it must one of the old technologies of all. I am keen to more basketry next year and make a few more things, although we get a fantastic hazel and willow bean climber as well this year.

Harry's Yurt

So this was to be the teaching space for this year's permaculture course at Chickenshack. We were lucky enough to come across Harry, who had a lovely Yurt for hire, that he had actually started building at school, as a project, and had finished making it after with his Dad.

Its a lovely design for a temporary building and so it turned out a lovely space for teaching, or just thinking in. some thing magical about round spaces, and of course with a group you can all see each other equally, no one at the front or back. Further more as we were sat around the perimeter looking inwards, with no windows out, it is a very focussed thinking space. This one is a 18 foot diameter space, and can sit 16 people comfortably on chairs around the outside looking in

It made me think that perhaps we could with something more permanent like this for ourselves here. A good neutral and creative space for meetings and planning. Anyway, so the fist pic is of the wheel, which forms the hub of the roof of the structure, with ribs radiating outwards to form a sort domed roof. This is made from Ash poles mainly, which have been steam bent over a fire. The proposition is that we hold some yurt making workshops here in the autumn, then the coppice season is upon is again.