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Smallholding with heart: advice about getting and running a smallholding from Janet Jenkins of Cuckoo Farm
Embarking on a new life in the countryside, away from the trappings of urban existence, is a dream increasingly common to many. This week we interviewed Janet Jenkins about her and her family’s smallholding journey, putting the heart back into the land at Cuckoo Farm.
Two things you can do to help stop the encroachment of GM crops into the UK
Glyphosate is the key ingredient in Monsanto’s ‘Roundup’, the product that farmers have to buy to apply to the genetically-modified crops that they’ve bought from Monsanto. Half of Monsanto’s profits come from Roundup sales.
New Ecological Land Co-op share offer launched: here’s a chance to help bring about change in land ownership in the UK, and receive 3% interest for your trouble!
Please share this as widely as you can. I’m on the board of the Ecological Land Co-op, and so I know how much hard work has gone into this – it’s an opportunity for people to shift their money to help change the nature of land ownership in the UK, and receive 3% interest for …
Very worthwhile and interesting job available with the Open Food Network
Are you interested in helping create food sovereignty in the UK? Would you like to help create food systems in which everyone has access to affordable, nutritious, culturally-appropriate food?
University meets WWOOF: An interview with student and WWOOFer Iona Desouza
Hours spent in the library? Check. Essay and assignment deadlines flooding in? Check. Tractor driving, wool spinning and weeding at weekends? Check!
Would you like to be a chef on an organic farm / cafe, with a small cottage available too?
Sinking into a bit of a depression about both the British and American situation this winter a wise friend kindly reminded me that these issues are merely a distraction from more important things in our everyday lives.
Will we reach ‘peak car’, after which we can begin to reduce the number of cars on the roads?
As a baby-boomer I have lived through a 50 year period where life has become dominated by and dependent on the use of the private car. I wonder whether other people are sharing my expectation that there will be a very much shorter period, equivalent to a revolution, where the car moves into the background?
Is democracy obsolete, and can we ever achieve it as long as we have to keep feeding ‘the beast’?
In the West, there’s a word that usually accompanies ‘democracy’, and that word is ‘liberal’. Liberal democracies – that’s what we have in the West. That’s liberal, as in liberty / freedom; and that’s certainly what classical liberalism stood for in its infancy.
Career change? Interview with Amanda James about becoming a dry stone waller
In a society increasingly out of touch with the joy of crafting and building by hand, making a transition to gain new skills and work within a traditional rural craft can seem at once appealing and daunting.
How the corporate goldrush for incineration, gasification and pyrolysis of waste generates more consumption, more waste and more pollution
‘When waste to energy companies propose to build incineration/gasification plants they stipulate that contracts be in place which lock-in local authorities to providing them with a fixed tonnage of waste over the lifetime of the plant (often about 25 years).
Why self-reliance is so important as part of a secure, low-impact life
I am Andy Reynolds, a long-term practitioner of low-impact living, smallholder, author, forester, teacher, carpenter, builder. I’ve been working with Lowimpact.org since the early noughties, and I’d like to share my philosophy on self-reliance with you.
Come and join us on our organic, off-grid smallholding in 2017
We are James and Sukamala, tenants at Wild Geese Acres, Greenham Reach, which is an off-grid, low-impact farming project established in north Devon by the Ecological Land Coop (ELC) – see website. http://ecologicalland.coop.
Interested in setting up a local food co-op? Mobile shop for sale, with free training thrown in
We are a real food co-op in Dorset, and we have been delivering food via our trusty mobile shop, ‘the Charmouth Dragon’. We’re now taking the shop online with the good folks of Open Food Network UK
Want to join a new Midlands co-op with plans for self-build homes for its members?
A growing Northamptonshire based business is looking for individuals who wish to become part of an ethically based worker’s collective. The current business owners, Paul Battye and Melanie Cutler, are looking to turn their business into the new collective to share with like minded individuals
How to misrepresent Adam Smith: review of P. J. O’Rourke’s ‘On the Wealth of Nations’
I don’t know if you’re familiar with P. J., but he’s an excellent writer, and he’s extremely, acerbically funny. With this book, as with his Give War a Chance, several times he made me spit my tea out and have to stop to wipe tea off the page.
Career change? How about making your living from making and selling baskets?
This is an interview with Fran Blockley of Old Chapel Farm about the potential for making your living from making and selling baskets.
Is modern life a mistake?
I was back recently in my old stomping ground of Bicester in Oxfordshire – it was not a happy visit.
Why we’d be better off living like the Saxons (with a few mod cons)
If you spend your life trying to promote low-impact living, you sometimes get asked the most ridiculous questions. More than once I’ve been asked something along the lines of: ‘you want to take us back to the Middle Ages, don’t you?’
Is a Permaculture world achievable, and if so, why are we moving in the opposite direction?
Every species has to live in harmony with nature, and humans are no exception. The alternative is gruesome and very short-term. Our ultimate and most valuable treasures are the soil and the sea. They provide all our food
Part-time work available in the Lowimpact.org team
We’re looking for a somebody to work with us – from home, part-time, to market our activities and our publications to more people.