Helen Butt

Nancy Reading wrote:
4) if 3) is successful, consider going off grid. It seems crazy, but most of our electricity charge at the moment is standing charge for our connection, we pay slightly more than most in the UK due to our highlands location. If we have sufficient internal redundancy, then this final stage is the only one that would actually give us a quick payback financially.

Gosh yes, Nancy!

I've now got solar panels, so in summer the standing charge is double the amount I pay in electricity from the grid.

At 53.8 degrees North, with 6 1.5 kW solar panels, between May and September I used 1kW hour each day from the grid and exported 6 to the grid.

The last three months, as you know, have been spectacularly free of sunshine, so with the short days as well I've been importing 3kW/day and exporting one.

NB I've got gas central heating, hence these figures. I'd like to get a device fitted to the panels to transfer excess power to the hot water tank to reduce the gas consumption (further).

I haven't made a resolution to do more art, as I use my spinning wheel most days anyway. I do need to warp my loom, though, and finish a rather large project I started two years ago!

Jenny Wright wrote:

Ashley Cottonwood wrote:I'm currently trying to crochet one bunting square per day in hopes of making it around my whole yard to decorate our fence line!

That will be pretty!

Have you seen where people actually knit the fence itself with string... 🤯

Wow!!!

I was going to vote for the never take option as I spin my own. However, I did recently pick up a couple of cones of manmade fibre to use as warp thread. As the thread would potentially have gone to landfill if not used, it seemed a good idea to take what I needed for a specific project with a ramie weft.

Jennifer Pearson wrote:I originally voted "everything", but then I watched your video and remembered how much I dislike working with thick & thin yarns. (This is a little bit inconvenient for me, since as a beginning handspinner I haven't yet achieved the consistency I want.) I noticed that you have a vintage sewing machine and cabinet. Are you planning to make any videos about the care and feeding of your machine in the future?

Good luck with your consistency. Not sure I'm there yet but 1) it depends on the fibre and 2) 3 ply is more consistent.

With your damp conditions, chop and drop might work. My concern with this system is that during decomposition, the soil beneath might be depleted of nitrogen.

That said, I leave autumn leaves in situ, for example, and the spring flowers still come up every year. However, yes, kitchen waste is best processed and a wormery sounds an excellent idea. You'll also get liquid feed, so can use that on crops whilst waiting for the worms to make the compost.

Yes, I believe finished compost works very well because it has nitrogen and carbon - and as it's stopped decomposing, it doesn't take nitrogen from the soil.

Re plants and microbes, I guess permaculture favours perennials for this reason (in part). Obviously, if you want annual crops, though, you need some kind  of inputs, and if compost works for you, that's great.

I imagine over time you will have more homemade compost over time as well?

Nancy Reading wrote:

S Rogers wrote:I'm curious how your soil is doing now.  

I'm hoping that this year the area I have prepared will be much more conducive to growing. I'm hoping to do some quantitative soil tests to show how much the soil has improved - pH, organic matter, soil life. But the proof to me will be in achieving a harvest. For that there is also more involved than soil - timing of sowing seeds, predators and pests, what the weather does, and timing of harvest. I'm hopeful that this year I will be able to save some seeds and grow some new crops to maturity. Still an awful lot to learn
I'm not happy I've been able to incorporate enough organic material within the soil. However, having improved the drainage and relieved the compaction, hopefully the plant roots will continue the good work - along with more seaweed and whatever other organic materials I can source locally.

I was going to ask about your soil a year on, too.

Soil building takes time, in my experience. My soil is neutral and sandy loam but like yours: shallow. It was pretty devoid of organic matter, so water and nutrient retention was poor.

I'm not so bothered about growing food anymore, so am resting the soil through rewilding but I continue to mulch (compost, sheep's fleece and cardboard/newspaper currently).

During one of the lockdowns I looked into the soil carbon cycle and I believe that if you encourage carbon into your soil, nature will do the rest. (Ie the microbes which do so much good, feed off the C, so more C means more microbes.)

Thekla McDaniels wrote:I wonder what exactly is being burned, and resulting air quality.

That is a good question. At the Recycling and Energy Recovery Facility near me, the gases are cleaned, neutalised and filtered for fine particles.

Anita Martin wrote:

Jeremy VanGelder wrote:One of my forestry professors told a story of how people in Europe made manufacturers reduce their packaging. Maybe those of you who are in Europe could confirm?

Land in Europe is a bit more scarce than in America. So landfills are more rare and the cost to dump garbage in a landfill is quite a bit higher. Consumers looked at the things they bought, such as medications, and decided that there was just too much packaging that they had to pay to throw away. So they started a little protest. They would buy their items, and then strip off all the extra packaging and leave it in a little pile by the door of the store. They would take the bottle of aspirin out of the box, and then leave the box, the little information leaflet and the little cotton swab at the door. And that was just for a little bottle of aspirin. The retailers didn't like paying to dump that stuff, either. But since it was now their problem, they took it to the manufacturers. And the manufacturers took it to the regulators who were requiring them to have all that extra packaging and leaflet. And eventually the situation changed, and when you buy things in Europe it comes in far less packaging than when you buy it in America.

Well, let me start by saying that Europe is a continent not a country and thus shows a variety of reguations and lifestyles.
To specify for Germany:
* You are legally allowed to strip your purchased goods of all packaging and dispose of it in the supermarket. The manufacturers have to take it back (I seldom do this as I try to buy low to zero waste products anyway and for cheese etc. it would be a hassle).
* Fast food producers and other caterers/restaurants have the obligation (since 2023) to offer multiple-use containers for their food.
* All beverages that are not already sold in multiple-use bottles have an added deposit charge (which you get back when returning the bottles to the machine at the supermarket)
* In Germany there are no normal landfills anymore. Everything that can't be recycled goes to thermal power unit (where it gets incinerated)
* You will not find disposable cutlery or plates in any restaurant or home, they were more frequent maybe 40 years ago. There is a EU ban on plastic cutlery or plates since 2021. You will not find plastic drinking cups or red solo cups anywhere, we only see them in US movies
* There are organizations for consumer protection that look for the most unnecessary packaging and draws public attention to the product and manufacturer

All this is good, changes are doable if consumers and legislation work together.
Is it enough? Not even close. Germany is on the top of packaging goods for sale, but people are getting more and more aware and ask for change, like using produce nets, making scandals permies, supporting zero waste shops etc.

In Britain, landfill sites are still used but due to lack of space, being a densely inhabited country, it is becoming increasingly expensive to use this method of disposal. And people are increasingly concerned about landfill as a concept anyway.

So, yes, one protest has been to give shops back packaging, such as plastic wrap round vegetables. The result of this is that far more produce is now sold loose.

Where I live we have an incinerator, which recovers energy for district heating. Anything that has been thrown in the landfill bin is searched for recyclable materials, which are removed, and the remainder is burned to produce this heat.