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We’ve noticed from comments on our blogs and on social media that environmentally-conscious Americans have a slightly different attitude to using trees as a renewable resource – whether for firewood or for timber – than that prevalent in the UK. Read more

When it comes to nature in September, this month is a melancholy time of year for anyone who loves swallows. Through the summer I enjoy seeing them and the local house martins, swooping and diving around my house and garden, drinking from the pond or sitting on our electricity wires, twittering and preening. Read more

I am privileged to be a director of the wonderful Ecological Land Co-op, and we are currently advertising for an operations manager. Read more

As a professional planner (of the town and country planning variety) and fan of Low-impact Living I always expect to see demands or requests being made of the planning system to assist in attempts by individuals or groups to experiment or set examples where impact on the environment would be minimised. Read more

If UK campaigners don’t set the terms of our trading relationships, insisting they protect public services and standards, it will be left to Theresa May’s expensive army of corporate lawyers. Read more

I haven’t opened my old university economics textbook (Economics, by David Begg, Stanley Fischer and Rudiger Dornbusch) since the 1980s, so I was curious to see how I would respond to what I was taught 30 years ago. Read more

This is a beautiful and interesting way of dyeing cloth by imprinting plant material. Getting a precise imprint on cloth or paper is not new – take for instance the Turin Shroud. Read more

I’d like to bring to people’s attention a community event I’m championing in my neck of the woods called a Jumble Trail. I’m in Wandsworth, London, but Jumble Trails are happening all over the country, and you can join in. Read more

We often hear it said that modern farming is efficient and results in low cost food on our table but how true is that? I would contend that there is an awful lot wrong with our food production and distribution systems in the west and the much vaunted efficiency is far from being the true… Continue reading Progress? Is modern food production efficient (using poultry as an example)? Read more

My partner’s mother lives in Hounslow, under the Heathrow flight path and next to a dual carriageway. But she has filled her front and back garden with flowers, trees, bushes and vegetables. When she visits, she often brings pears, plums, spinach, tomatoes or flowers from her garden. Read more

This is a radical new book – not because the ideas within it are going to change the world, but because it contains funky little DIY projects that could make a lot of people think ‘hey, I’ve always wanted one of those, but was put off by the cost – but actually, I could do… Continue reading The power of doing things ourselves using recycled materials: the Permaculture Book of DIY Read more

The Government and many of the rest of us interested in green issues know that we have to meet certain obligations when it comes to reducing the country’s carbon footprint. While those in the solar and wind industry might be complaining about loss of subsidies, Read more

There was a story on Radio 4 this morning about NHS doctors who work in private healthcare ‘on the side’ now having to declare their income from private work under plans from NHS England to ensure that they’re not short-changing taxpayers. Read more

I attended the launch of two books at Daunt Bookshop in Chelsea on Wednesday evening. David Fleming died in 2010, and now his friend Shaun Chamberlin has edited his magnum opus, Lean Logic, and Chelsea Green have published it. Read more

Here’s a living example of a ‘lean’ economy (outlined by David Fleming in our last blog post), and how you can help to preserve it. The ‘unlean’ economy is encroaching onto the territory of the Kichwa and Sapara communities in the Ecuadorean Amazon, in the form of large oil corporations, and will destroy their communities, as… Continue reading Reimagining progress: what we can learn about ‘lean thinking’ from indigenous communities Read more

October is really the last of the hectic months on the vegetable plot. There’s little to sow and plant but still a fair amount to harvest and store away to eat through winter. This is the month when the first frosts usually arrive so killing off all but the hardy plants. Read more

October is the month for clearing and tidying. Your cucumbers and courgettes are likely to be finished and many other plants are getting exhausted and diseased, but hopefully you have a batch of new salad crops ready to plant out now. Read more

This time of year is usually holiday time for me, so, when it comes to nature in October, my trips away from Shropshire and my garden have to involve a large element of looking at wildlife and hopefully walking in beautiful countryside. Read more

This is an interview with Tony Wrench of ‘That Roundhouse’ fame. He built a super-eco roundhouse in Pembrokeshire over 20 years ago, and is still living in it, after having many battles with planners and regulatory bodies. Read more

Here are two sources of information about CETA (Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) – and both of them are completely biased. They are biased against the interests of the corporate sector and in favour of the interests of ordinary people and communities. That’s the kind of bias we like. Read more

Imagine a man whose response to youths repeatedly vandalising his property is to invite them onto his land to learn about it. Pretty right on, maybe, though not that unlikely given what we now know about nature’s importance as a healer and educator, but this was 1902. Read more

I harvested some honey from my hive recently, on an extremely hot day – a great day to visit the hive, as the bees were mostly out foraging so there are fewer of them in the hive. Read more

This is an interview with Mariann and Gabor, a Hungarian couple with 2 young children, who left their jobs to go WWOOFing. We wanted to show that WWOOFing is a route out of the ‘rat race’ Read more

I’ve found that learning about how to change to open source software can be difficult for non-techies. Yes, you can easily find the websites that contain the information you need, but it’s almost never written in a style that non-techies can understand. Read more

It’s time for all those interested in how society will achieve a sustainable level of impact on the environment to brush up their own thoughts and opinions on the pros and cons of fracking in the UK. Read more

The various pressures and threats to UK woodland are ever-increasing. These can include development, climate change or globalisation contributing to the spread of disease, insect and mammalian pests. Read more

A way to reduce our impact on the environment is to increase the number of journeys made on public transport relative to the number made by car. So we’re doing this to encourage you to take the train rather than drive. Read more

There’s a weekend conference coming up that you might be interested in. It’s called ‘Land for What?’ and it’s taking place over the weekend of November 12 and 13. Read more

Every year there is a better understanding of the risks of toxic chemicals and more and more people are benefitting from a switch to natural cleaning.  Read more

Adam Curtis has a new movie out – Hypernormalisation, about how, due to ‘perception management’, what we see as ‘normal’ is anything but – and you can see it for free on BBC iPlayer. Read more

November is the month when the hard frosts and heavy rain usually arrive so it’s important to grab whatever time you can on the plot in case you don’t get another chance. Read more

We usually don’t think about our tunnel or greenhouse in November. There is very little need for it especially if you have planted the winter salads and overwintering garlic cloves and onion sets in October. There is much less need for watering and also the weeds have slowed down. Read more

I’m beginning to realise just how much the garden birds occupy my thoughts when it comes to nature in November, as there is little else around in my wildlife garden just now. Apart for a single Bank Vole, a few Grey Squirrels and the occasional Brown Rat from the farm next door, Read more

Here at the Lammas Ecovillage we have recently celebrated our 7th birthday. The 9 households have collectively built around 15 different buildings, planted many thousands of trees, created hundreds of new habitats, and hosted thousands of volunteers and visitors. Read more

You don’t want to show someone you love them by damaging the environment, do you? It sounds unromantic, but it’s really difficult to buy flowers in the UK that aren’t sprayed with huge amounts of pesticides, doused with chemical preservatives and flown half way across the world. Read more

Passive solar design takes advantage of solar orientation and other climate conditions to minimize (and in some conditions, eliminate) heating and cooling requirements for a building. Read more

As Adam Curtis recently explained, governments are no longer for deciding how we live, or for building a better society – they have slowly morphed into institutions for managing the affairs of the finance sector. Read more

An cohousing eco-hamlet around a chateau in the Dordogne region of France is being formed. You can rent a plot to see if the project is for you, before deciding whether to become a co-owner. Read more

That’s a basking shark’s fin, by the way – they grow up to 26ft long, but eat plankton rather than humans. The Marine Conservation Society (MCS), the UK’s leading marine charity, is behind a fantastic opportunity to see one of the most spectacular parts of the UK’s coastline from a kayak Read more

Here’s a conversation between Dave of Lowimpact.org and Nigel Berman of ‘School of the Wild’. Nigel teaches appreciation of nature and wilderness, and he’s provided us with information for our topic introduction on ‘firecraft’. Read more

Double BAFTA-Cymru winner, Mike Harrison, has made a stunning short film, capturing the moments that the blades are lifted onto one of our turbines at dawn. Read more

I’ve been saying for a long time that GM crops do not increase yields and they don’t reduce pesticide use – because that’s not what they’re designed for. This report in the New York Times shows that I was right. Read more

It’s been a very confusing time for TTIP and other pro-corporate trade deals. There has been huge public opposition to them, often based around the fact that they would allow corporations to sue elected governments if they introduce policies that threaten their profits Read more

Remember the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) that’s a part of TTIP and that would have allowed corporations to sue governments that introduced legislation that threatened their profits? Well now it’s part of CETA, a deal between the EU and Canada Read more

The number of plastic carrier bags found on UK beaches in surveys carried out by the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) has dropped by almost half between 2015 and 2016. This is the lowest number reported in over a decade, and fantastic news for marine wildlife. Read more

Having grown up in the industrial West Riding of Yorkshire, I was 22 when I first saw the Milky Way. It wasn’t my fault; there was too much light pollution. In places such as this, you may think that on a moonless and cloudless night you can see the stars Read more

December always naturally makes me think of Christmas, and Christmas makes me think of robins, and this colourful little bird seems to feature on almost every Christmas card I receive and no wonder – it is a bird we very much notice, and associate with, nature in December. Read more

Predicting winter weather is as hard as predicting summer weather in Britain, which makes it difficult to advise on jobs. We’re pretty sure of seeing some hard frosts but those dreaming of a white Christmas are actually more likely to see a white Easter. Read more

It’s a good time to take a break from your tunnel or greenhouse. All you need to do is harvest your salads and ventilate as much as possible. If you have spare time you can prepare the beds for the following year. Read more

Donald Trump says that when men get together in locker-rooms (or on buses), they ‘talk like that’ with each other. But they don’t – I have male friends, and if one of them talked to me ‘like that’, it would be the end of our friendship. Read more

It’s late autumn and I’m sitting alone, feeling empty, in a comfortable house in High Wycombe. It’s 5.30 and I’ve just returned from work; I’m a single moderately successful professional doing the 9-5 in a very ordinary existence. Read more

We’re building a reciprocal roundhouse in April 2017 for an amazing social/environmental charity, Farms for City Children, and we’re calling for assistance. This 3-week ‘Full Build’ gives you the chance to learn by experiencing the whole building process Read more

I believe that you were a great man – whatever you did, you did because of passion and integrity, not because of a thirst for money or power. But you had the wrong plan. Read more

I tend to look out for new books on extinction – I think species extinction is the clearest indicator of what’s happening to ecology, and the thing that will precipitate its collapse unless we stop it. Read more

Shiitake mushrooms require cellulose-rich material and will grow on a variety of woody substrates. My preference is for oak (or other hardwood) sawdust. In fact, Shiitake will grow on softwood sawdust Read more

Body Shop, Green & Blacks, Ben & Jerry’s and Innocent Drinks represented a Brave New World when it came to doing business – Fair Trade, sustainable, (slightly) less hierarchical, informal, friendly. Read more

Monopoly is obviously based on capitalism, but the biggest difference between Monopoly and real-life capitalism is that Monopoly is just a game. Whatever happens in the game, it doesn’t mean that in real life Read more

We’ve wanted a living willow ‘fedge’ for a while. We have a firepit and a couple of compost ‘daleks’ at the end of the garden, and we wanted to cordon this area off, and hide the compost bins. A fedge is a cross between a fence and a hedge, and it’s alive. Read more

Let’s get one thing straight right away…When I say “small”, I don’t mean living in a shoe box.   What I mean by “small” is living in a space that is designed…well designed…for your needs…and no more.  A small space doesn’t mean cramped. Read more

January is generally a very cold month with hard frosts freezing the ground although there are no guarantees with British weather. Looking through my diaries, snow isn’t that likely for a prolonged period, but you never know. Read more

January can be the beginning of your creative gardening year in your greenhouse or polytunnel. It’s the first awakening of the year. You can start off new seedlings on your propagator and sow and plant the first vegetables into the ground. Read more

Anyone who feeds the birds in their garden is likely to have a Sparrowhawk passing through from time to time.  I am no different from anyone else – feeling that moment of flinching fear as the small grey male or his larger female mate come swooping past my window with outstretched talons. Read more

Johannes Kepler was one of the major figures in the 17th century Scientific Revolution. In his day, people were grappling with the question of whether the earth was the centre of the universe, as the Church said it was, or whether it was just another planet, revolving around the Sun Read more

In 1983, Richard Stallman launched the GNU free software project, on which many people could collaborate, and in 1985 he founded the Free Software Foundation, to promote and assist the development of free software. Here is a page from his website Read more

You may remember that we blogged an interview last summer with Guy Dorrell, who set up a ‘fishbox’, or ‘community-supported fish’ project, called ‘Faircatch‘. After interviewing him, my partner and I signed up to his scheme to try it out. I’m now reporting on how the idea worked for us Read more

Why do people who consider themselves ‘left-wing’ seem to embrace a raft of policies that appear unrelated? For example, if you’re of the left, and you believe in (say) progressive taxation, why should that also mean that you believe in gun control, or Read more

This article holds some clues to the faults in timber most commonly found in Oak and Sweet Chestnut, but I have also encountered it in Southern Yellow Pine. For the novice, timber shake may sound a bit nautical or piratical, but it is a fault in growing trees Read more

The vast majority of the world’s population subscribe to a religion. According to Pew Research, although the number of people unaffiliated with a particular faith will increase by 2050, as a percentage, this group will fall from 16% now to 13% in 2050 Read more

We’ve been contacted several times by people who ask why we’re promoting the building of timber homes and the burning of wood in wood stoves or biomass boilers. Their argument was that timber building and the production of firewood require the felling of trees Read more

A while ago I blogged about the various open source programmes I’m using. I’m absolutely non-techie when it comes to IT. I have no interest in the technical underpinning of what I want to do with my computer, and this makes it difficult for technical people to explain things to me. Read more

Hi, my name is Cassie. My daughter is called Bea, she’s the bigger girls in the picture there. She absolutely loves horses! I also have a son called David, who is going to be an actor; my husband is called Nigel, and our eldest son is called Ted. Read more

Your wedding day is obviously one of the biggest days of your life — but it can also be huge for your carbon footprint. In the UK, the average cost of a wedding is over £20,000. Not only is this a huge amount of money to spend on a single day Read more

We’re looking for a somebody to work with us – from home, part-time, to market our activities and our publications to more people. Read more

February, being the last of the winter months , often has a sting and ends up being the coldest month. So, more than any other month, this one you need to play according to local conditions. It’s best to hold off than try to sow in waterlogged, near frozen ground that will most likely rot… Continue reading Fruit & vegetable growing guide for February Read more

In your greenhouse or tunnel you may now be fooled that spring has arrived. Your tunnel or greenhouse can easily warm up to 20˚C during sunny spells. You also notice that the days are getting longer and your gardening itch is starting up again. Read more

Already there are birds around the garden preparing for nesting. Blue Tits in particular have been checking out a couple of nest boxes that I can see from the house, one of which is right outside a bedroom window. Read more

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 Read more

I’ve had six years of self-employed catering with Proved Wood-fired Pizza, alongside working full-time in the housing and homeless sector. I originally wanted to sell the van/business to help fund going back to university as a full-time student. Read more

The planning system doesn’t currently differentiate between different types of agriculture, and maybe it should. The type of agriculture we prefer could be labelled ‘agroecology’ – but the problem is how to define it and how to get the planning system to recognise it, let alone promote it. Read more

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?’ Read more

This is an interview with Fran Blockley of Old Chapel Farm about the potential for making your living from making and selling baskets. Read more

I was back recently in my old stomping ground of Bicester in Oxfordshire – it was not a happy visit. Read more

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. Read more

Remember the previous two blog articles about switching to open source / free software? The first was about switching to free / open source programmes whilst still using Windows, and the second was about downloading the Linux operating system onto a datastick so that you can play with it and familiarise yourself with it, but… Continue reading Low-impact & the city 9: learning to use Linux Read more

Making beautiful natural buildings affordable for charities, community groups, trusts and pubic organisations who put other people and the environment first. Read more

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 Read more

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 Read more

The beginning of March is always a really exciting time in my garden as there are changes almost daily especially in the day length. One thing I look forward to with great anticipation is a warmish night as I know that it will bring all the male Frogs out of their hiding places Read more

This is the latest in a series of articles intended to help you become Windows- and corporate-software-free. Read more

Barbara Jones of Straw Works / School of Natural Building is the country’s top straw-bale builder. She is the author of Building with Straw Bales, and is the star of our straw-bale building online course. Read more

March is the month when things really start to move in the growing season. In fact the start of the year used to be Lady Day, the Feast of the Annunciation, 25th March until 1752 in Britain when we adopted the Gregorian calendar and started our year on the 1st January. Read more

You will really feel the warmth in your greenhouse or polytunnel now and so do your plants. They start to grow quite rapidly now but be aware that the nights are still quite cold and there is still a high risk of frost. Read more

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. Read more

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. Read more

This is the last in a series of articles to help you to jettison Windows and corporate software generally. Read more

‘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). Read more

The video below shows various stages of the production and finish of a 1-metre tall puppet by Jan Zalud. Jan makes all sorts of things – crafted by hand from wood. Read more

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. Read more

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. Read more

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? Read more