Living for the future

[paikea]

So from another thread in this forum (veganism for the environment) came the dicussion what we can do to live life in a way that is sustainable and I wanted to allow the vagan discussion to return to veganism and take the living discussion to another thread so here I am .

I thought I tell a bit about how we live ( and maybe I can show you that what was mistaken for aggresion in the other thread is infact mad passion for this subject )
So we live in Wiltshire in an area that has a great number of organic or biodynamic farmer. public transport is acceptable. I do not have any paid employment my husband works fulltime in IT. We have 3 kids who are home educated. We bought a 2 up 2 down ex council 1920's semi detached house with a very large garden (10x5 meter at the front and 8x43 meter at the back) We have a small extension at the back with a flat roof. The front garden and 2/3 of the backgarden are for growing food. the backgarden also has a run with chickens. the extension roof has pots with crops too. I follow permaculture principles in a way that makes sense for the location we live at. This means that for 6 months of the year I don't buy any veg (including potatoes) and even in off season I get a large amount of food from the garden. I don't buy eggs ever and my only product with egg in it is mayonaise (I'm Dutch I can't live without the stuff ). All our meat (2 or 3 times a week) comes from a local farm (45 minute walk from our house) who use permaculture and bio dynamic principles. Any veg we buy comes from the market on wednesday or the monthly farmers market occasionally from the local supermarket.
I don't drive (don't even have a license) and we don't own a car. We compost all our foodwaste and are in the process of extending this to include human waste.
I bake mour bread and cook all meals from scratch. I mend all our clothing where neccesary and knit our socks/mittens hats and a wooly jumper for everyone, the wool from these comes from a friend who has a small flock of cotswold sheep. We tend to buy clothing from the charity shops and rarely buy new.


I am sure there are changes we made that I am forgetting now. I'd love to hear how you live life *green* and maybe we can debate/inspire each other?

[Kima]

Wow, paikea, well done! It does, however, sound like a full-time job.

I rent a room in someone's flat, which is another (cheap) way to have a very low carbon footprint. It doesn't allow me to accumulate too much stuff, either - except for books I'm afraid. Since I live in a city, I have access to a farmer's market where I like to buy organic/local produce, and I go to the butcher's for quality meat. I would love to buy half a veal from a trusted source but do not have the freezer space required for that. I also buy from a small organic supermarket, and sometimes other organic foods from a regular supermarket. However, I am often broke and do not necessarily have the time required to push things further, and I make many exceptions. I don't have a car so I use public transports or walk.

Is this a "green living" contest?

[paikea]

no contest

You know people say that it sounds time consuming but it isn't. I spend no more than an hour every day doing all 3 meals. half an hour or so for the big meal and 10-15 minutes making breakfast and lunch (and thats really generous) Because I leave the breaddough overnight it doesn't require the same amount of kneading as if I did it the "normal" way. I add the flour yeast salt and a bit of oil add more water than normal and mix it making almost a batter instead of a dough.Cover it and set it aside. The next day I add more flour knead for a few minutes shape it and put it aside to rise. Then when its time for lunch to go in the oven I put the bread in. One of the projects on the list is to build an outdoor oven but we are not yet decided on how. We are looking at the classic coboven but incorperating rocket stove into it somehow because they are far more efficient.

As for the garden I seed everything directly into the soil and spend no more than an hour a week to do the neccesary maintenance. most "weeds" are edible or useful in some other way. Because we are on heavy clay I allow them to grow and chop them down before setting seed so that the rootstructure adds organic matter to the clay. in the 4 years that we've been here it has gone from a solid clay to a much more workable garden. I don't do any digging except for getting roots up (oca's carrots dandelion etc)

I still spend the vast majority of my time playing with the boys painting going for walks etc .

Have you seen farm for the future? http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/farm-for-the-future/
Its free to watch on the above link. It is well worth watching. They show a permaculture forrest garden that supports a family and then some and I can't remember how long exactly they said they invest on maintaining the gardens but I remember it was a lot less than you would think.

[NovaStar]

I'm green with envy, paikea.

My partner and I bought a typical 1920s mid terrace in a south London suburb in Summer 2010 and have been oft-quoted that we seem to be living 'the Good Life' stereotype. I have a background in Zoology, Sustainable agriculture and farming.

The house has 3 bedrooms and a large open-plan living/dining/kitchen downstairs. It needed much renovation so we've not made as much progress on the 'eco' aspects as we'd like, but we're getting there slowly... At some point we want to build on a front porch and conservatory for insulation purposes, and put solar panels on the roof. The large garage needs tearing down and rebuilding, and we hope to put a turf roof onto the new one this year. It will become OH's workshop and our general storage for 'toys', including all of our bushcraft camping gear.

We are 'runabouts' for our 4 'wonky' hens (we had all the imperfect ones from a local supplier) - we'd love to have ex-batts, but egg production is a key aspect for us as we were worried that batties wouldn't give us what we need, so we have one-eyed Gabrielle, fox-scarred Boo, odd-tailed Jaffa and tufty-headed Token who despite it being winter are laying us about 20 eggs a week. They live in a converted brick-built bomb shelter with a run extension which we built ourselves, and are allowed into the garden when we are at home (to protect them from the urban foxes and the attentions of our two 'Battersea Boy' ginger cats, Simba and Gizmo.

Having just moved in, last year's vegetables were mostly grown in large pots on the patio and in my new greenhouse - we had an abundance of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, strawberries, raspberries, blackcurrants, rainbow chard, squash and assorted herbs, which we didn't consider bad - I made a LOAD of tomato chutneys, cucumber pickles and jam!
This year we've plans to re-design the garden with a large raised bed and to plant some more fruit trees (we already have a great Victoria plum and a cobnut). I've been overwintering kale in the greenhouse but I generally buy the 'cheaper' organic and seasonal veggies in - potatoes, onions etc

We are both meat-eaters but all meat is local (as far as it can be, given location) and/or organic. Supermarket shops are done via Ocado/Waitrose as I believe they have the best ethics and support the better farming practices, and delivery means we are not out on the road.

We are transitioning to eco-cleaning (bicarb, white vinegar etc), I use minimal chemicals on face and body (made my own mousturiser yesterday - go me!) and we are in the process of setting up our own business blogging, web designing and selling eco/environmentally friendly products (link to blog (still in development, with 'green' web hosting) and shop (up and working) if anyone's interested). Working towards the day when neither of us have to commute into town to work...