Forcing Rhubarb – the early shoots of Spring

Forcing rhubarb is simple and is a great way to add fresh homegrown organic produce to the table during early Spring.

 

forcing rhubarb under a humble plastic pot

There is a little food in my garden at this time of year. The coldframes are full of salads – self-seeders and other leaves that have survived the winter snow in their protected environment. There's a few carrots left, spring onions and some cavollo nero and beetroot. We are still eating jams and preserves from last year and there is fruit frozen in the deep freeze, but there is nothing quite like the first rhubarb crop.

We celebrated it at Sunday supper when all the family meet and sit down and share food together.
Forcing rhubarb couldn't be easier. If your budget allows you can buy a lovely terracotta forcer hand made by a bespoke potter (in my dreams) but mine never has so I use a humble plastic pot. Just add manure that is still hot around the rhubarb crown when it is just starting to shoot above the ground. Place a pot that covers the small shoots (or two as I have above) and stick a brick on top to secure the (plastic) pot. Leave until you have enough of a crop to cook.

To read Maddy's rhubarb & mixed fruit crumble recipe please go to www.permaculture.co.uk

It's a New Dawn

This week we have been publishing for 21 years. As the song goes, we survived. We have grown and the permaculture message has spread around the world.

From a whirling Amstrad, someone else's pc and glue and paper in a spare bedroom, we have travelled to an amazing online world of downloads, eBooks, YouTube, e-commerce, Twitter, Facebook, Drupal and more. We can message and connect with people all over the Earth and we can tell your stories.

And we are still of a publishing paper magazine and printed books because people like reading them.

Today we launch Permaculture magazine online, a project we dreamed for years. So for us, this really is a new dawn and I, for one, am feeling good.

If you enjoy this blog and want to carry on reading my editorials and articles please bookmark this link.

This new site is yours and every week we will post more practical readers' solutions, articles, video clips, editorial, inspiration... Enjoy. Please tell other about it. It's free.

P.S. The photograph of the heron (above) was literally taken at dawn from my bedroom window. One of those wonderful days.

Foraging For Oyster Mushrooms

There is a treasure in the woods near me: a semi-rotten beech tree that hosts oyster mushroom mycellium. Every year, after a very cold snap (usually in January) the mycellium runs and its fruiting bodies appear. Behold! Sumptuous oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus).

Last weekend on our regular walk Tim and I went and checked the tree and saw that there was activity and so we made a note to come back weekly with a sharp knife and a bag for spoil. Today I took a Cutco knife called a 'Bullwhip'. It is American and was kindly given to me by my brother Nick who knows I have a penchant for good knives. Good man! He bought it in an auction years ago but never used it. It holds a fiercesome edge and is ideal for foraging. (Vegans cover your ears – it is also great for breasting pigeons – the pigeons who have eaten all of my annual and perennial winter brassicas.)

The tree is just at the beginning of its fruiting cycle so I only took enough for two people. I am going to make wild mushroom gnocci with chilli and sage as suggested by my lovely foodie daughter on her delectable blog (full of very tasty recipes gleaned from her wild imagination and her European travels in a 2CV).

Oyster mushrooms are easy to identify. They grow on beech and have a beautiful fluted shape. They are a usually white on top but they can go a shiny grey colour when exposed to frost. They have white gills. These gills run all the way down the stem. There are other oyster genus and they are not poisonous either. They just don't taste so good. Apparently, there is a poisonous look-alike found in Australia and Japan, called Omphalotus nidiformis. For a great identification guide, have a look here.

I also have a few identification guide books for my foraging trips. They are also marvellous inspiration. My two loves are Richard Mabey's Food For Free and Wild Food by Roger Phillips. The latter I couldn't live without as it has great pictures and delicious recipes. I also have a useful Easy Edible Mushroom Guide that can slip into a coat pocket. Finally, if you really want to get into mushroom foraging and not make any fatal mistakes I highly recommend Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall's DVD Mushroom Magic. I find seeing edible fungi in its rightful location on film very helpful.

I am a self taught forager and cautious. I would not wish to imitate the behaviour of two women who spotted 'mushrooms' at Vennor Botanical Gardens on the Isle of Wight, picked them and took them home to eat. One died. They had mistakenly harvested Death Caps (Amanita phalloides). Apparently, they were rather tasty. Talk about a Last Supper.

The other precaution you can take is to be intimate with your foraging patches and observe them all year round. Then you get to know when certain trees will fruit and how the forage grows year on year. This is  working with the cycles of nature in true permaculture style. I also never decimate a crop. I want to come back next year and pick again and I also want to share my treasure with the local wildlife.

Foraging is akin to finding your joy and beats shopping. Once the weather gets warmer, I am going to try the stinging nettle pesto recipe that is going to be in the next Permaculture mag out in two weeks. Sounds delicious and it costs virtually nothing to make.

To learn more about permaculture go to the hub at permaculture.co.uk or contact Permanent Publications, The Sustainability Centre, East Meon, Hampshire GU32 1HR. info@permaculture.co.uk or speak to us: +44 (0) 1730 823311

The Call To Adventure

Happy New Year to you all who kindly read this blog or who have just stumbled upon it. Welcome.

The New Year is an opportunity to pause and reflect: What do I want to focus on this year? What do I want to change and how can I better find my joy and be a more effective human being? I don't usually set myself a long, self-critical and impossible list of stuff I have to give up but I do take the opportunity of a few days away from work to think about how I can make the coming year better and also focus on what new things I want to be bring into my life.

When I need insights into how to control and master my destiny rather than be swept along in the tides of life, I think people who inspire me. The transworld sailor is someone who comes to mind. I have an enduring image of Ellen MacArthur before she was famous for sailing around the world single-handed. Penniless and unknown, she lived on a small boat in a freezing boatyard on the Hamble, near where I live in Hampshire. Long days and nights were spent working on the boat alone, eating cheap food and sleeping in the prow. Her dream, however, was more powerful than any hardship that life could throw at her.

I am fascinated by this steely grace that all adventurers share.

Born in landlocked Derbyshire, she learnt to sail on her aunt’s tiny boat, in the holidays, and saved every spare penny to buy a boat of her own. At eighteen, she sailed around the coast of Britain alone, an extraordinary achievement for someone who had so little experience at sea. In 2004, she went on to be the first woman to circumnavigate the world in record time. Her new book, Full Circle, takes up the story and tells of further record-breaking attempts, plus the unfolding story of her family and her personal relationships. But, to me, what is fascinating about this book is her description of her decision to give up competitive sailing and focus on sustainability. Her passion now is to communicate nothing less than the restoration of the planet and engage government, corporates and the public in positive behaviour change. This is her new call to adventure, an even greater challenge than circumnavigating the globe.

The Hero's Journey

This wonderful evolution from a passion for the sea to a passion for the planet and its well-being makes my heart sing. Many of us hear the call to adventure but how many are prepared to give up everything and devote themselves to its fulfilment? This is truly the hero’s journey and Dame Ellen MacArthur is a quintessential hero of the twenty-first century. We need more of her like.

So what characterises this journey? Can it be mapped? Is it something we could all dare to do? This is work of Dr Chris Johnstone, who sets out to discover the answers to these questions. As a young man, he singlehandedly took on the NHS and fought a legal battle to reduce the hours of junior doctors working in hospitals and won, against huge odds.

He went on to be an addiction specialist, helping many people to free themselves from their substance abuse.

His work led him to Rob Hopkins and the Transition Movement where he has helped develop an understanding of our society’s ‘addiction’ to oil and how we can become empowered to create a more ecological society. He also works closely with the deep ecologist, Joanna Macy.

Chris has helped me to unravel the structure of my journey of positive change – the call to adventure, how the journey unfolds, how to respond creatively and with my potential – and how to overcome the many pitfalls that may occur along the way. In his book, Find Your Power, he has created a map to help us navigate our own voyages, whether they are to overcome an addiction, learn new skills or nothing less than to become an effective activist for positive social change, a planetary server.

Here are two role models: Ellen MacArthur is one of the world’s greatest adventurers, both brave and vulnerable, and a steely, uncompromising gambler who has a vision and is compelled to follow it to completion. She inspires me and gives me courage. Chris Johnstone, on the other hand, holds a light that helps illuminate the path. He helps me find my way and overcome my lack of faith in my magnitude (and we all have the potential for unbounded magnitude). Chris is able to unpick the delicate complexities of how we can find our inner power that enables us to live our dreams.

Finding Your Power

I know that I have a steely determination and a vision. 21 years ago my partner, Tim, and I decided to found a publishing company to provide ‘information which encourages people to live more healthy, self-reliant and ecologically sound ways of life.’ We started with practical books about permaculture and launched Permaculture magazine in 1992 with just 600 readers. It was not easy. Today, it is read in 78 countries by over 100,000 people. We are now developing the idea of transformational media, connecting together inspiring, information-based, empowering material in every sphere – still producing books and magazines, but also websites, downloads, films, YouTubes, blogs, using social media to network, share information and inspire people globally. And of course we meet and talk with people too.

We are passionate about sustainability. We want to share these messages as widely as possible. There are practical ways in which we can live together on this beautiful planet in peace and in ecological balance and permaculture design is a practical, tested strategy for restoring habitat and creating ecologically sound communities. We know that time is running out for the Earth’s many species and habitats and that climate change is a very real threat to humanity’s survival – let alone all the creatures with which we share this planet.

We are shamelessly in love with this world. We think it is miraculous. We do not want to see it driven to extremes – overheated, flooded, frozen, parched – by atmospheric changes caused by human actions and we want to help prevent as much suffering as possible. We also know that climate change and our collective response to it is the greatest call to adventure humanity has yet to face. It has become a matter of evolution for our species. We are being asked to entirely change the way we live on this planet and to evolve beyond selfishness, fear, greed and instinct into intuition, harmlessness, service, love and reverence for life. This is the call. This is our journey.

To learn more about permaculture go to the hub at permaculture.co.uk or contact Permanent Publications, The Sustainability Centre, East Meon, Hampshire GU32 1HR. info@permaculture.co.uk or speak to us: +44 (0) 1730 823311

Going To Market – Christmas Shopping Locally

Yesterday I went Christmas shopping in my local town, Petersfield. I know I am a bit late in the day but I recently have to switch from being an editor to an elf: our own Green Shopping has been busy this year and our customers always come first. I couldn’t face driving to our nearest city on a Saturday, sitting in queues and then paying an extortionate parking fee. There isn’t a huge amount of choice in town but the Harlands don’t do lavish consumerism. Anyway, we have made some nice homemade presents to give (like strawberry and golden gage jam by the ton from the summer glut) and we have sent away for a few gifts too but not many. Local is the key.

Getting to town was challenging. Five inches of snow had fallen in three hours but Seb (daughter Hayley’s man) is a seasoned Alpine driver so Tim and I bundled into his car and slid our way there. Petersfield was lovely in the snow. It’s a friendly market town with lots of independent shops and a few chains. I felt happy supporting my local traders, bought a few items at way beyond Amazon or eBay prices, but I know they need the business and I picked up a few bargains too.

I even bought a big hardback specialist book in the local bookshop. I don't do that very often. Consequently, I worry about the demise of bookshops and independents. I love browsing in them and picking up titles I’d never consider reading normally. I also like the idiosyncratic nature of local shops. I realise the irony of what I am saying as an online retailer. But then we do have a little shop that lots of people visit and we talk to our customers on the phone. We are not the faceless profiteers either. Green Shopping helps fund all our publishing projects like Permaculture Magazine and our series of Permanent Publications (plus the DVDs and all the free work on websites, YouTube and so on). And God knows we really need the funds. It is not an easy life being a small independent green publisher.

Tim and I bumped into lots of friends in town, some we hadn’t seen for ages, so amid the shopping there was some good catching up to do. That for me is the best part of going to town beside the market – it’s all about meeting people and appreciating being part of the community. The snow fell, the streets were busy but not heaving, and the shopkeepers were all friendly. There was a general air of happiness and good cheer. 


I have struggled to tell my family what I want for Christmas because I don’t really want anything except good cheer. That’s what it’s all about for me: taking some time out, having some good feasts with family and friends and enjoying the goodwill. Simple.

To learn more about permaculture go to the hub at www.permaculture.co.uk or contact Permanent Publications, The Sustainability Centre, East Meon, Hampshire GU32 1HR. 01730 823311 and talk to an elf!

Has Alan Titchmarsh Really Discovered Permaculture?

Earlier this year Tim and I had a call from a BBC producer. Would we like to appear on another programme that wanted to feature permaculture? We are always interested in deepening understanding of the subject, but also wary. It is so easy to trivialise permaculture and wrap it up as an alternative form of organic gardening. We asked how long we would get and what was the angle?

The programme Tim and I are on (with guest appearances from other garden residents) is tonight's episode of ‘Alan’s Garden Secrets’, BBC2 at 8 pm Tuesday 30th November). It is on YouTube (a shorter link). The producer promised a full five minutes air time to present about permaculture and how we have applied it to our garden (and we hope a little more of the wider context). Her words were: “One day, we are all going to have to garden like you, with sustainability, self-sufficiency and biodiversity as its basis.” What Tim and I have developed is a semi-wild forest garden forage system that combines edible landscaping with nature conservation. Nearest the house is a more conventional organic raised bed system with annuals and perennial vegetables, salads and self-seeders. What characterises the garden is, however, the extraordinary level of biodiversity – reptiles, mammals and insects – and the pest/predator balance. We use no sprays at all or any form of insect traps. The bats, slow worms, common lizards, toads and beneficial insects do the work.

Filming a long shot of the garden from an upstairs bedroom

We were worried about being on TV this year. The cold winter, rainy spring and drought in summer had made the annual patch in particular look less abundant and the wildflowers had peaked by the end of July when the producer/director and cameraman came to film. We needn’t have worried. Nature turned out in force to help us. The insect kingdom like chalkhill blue, common blues and fritillary butterflies – plus an abundance of solitary bees and ladybirds – were breathtaking.
I hope they will be the stars of the show.

The show also features Sissinghurst, famous for its naturalistic planting. Alan discusses how it works with head gardener Alexis Data and shows how to create a wild flower meadow. “The Sissinghurst nuttery would become famous as one of the first wild gardens. This new philosophy would ultimately lead to today's perma culture gardens. Alan shows you how to create one in your own garden.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wfdw4




We hope we have done a good job in presenting permaculture to a new audience and more seriously that we were articulate enough on the day.
We wish we'd been invited on to the One Show or Alan's own chat show to elaborate on the subject beforehand the screening. At the moment the links between habitat preservation and restoration, food, permaculture and sustainability are not understood. We are doing all we can to change this.


Permaculture is not a garden fashion or a fad. It is part of the jigsaw of earth restoration – a design system for a post-carbon age. It forms the basis for much of the transition movement's thinking.
One day I hope we will be given the chance to climb out of our happy, biodiverse and abundant garden box and explain more of the wider picture. But for now, enjoy the garden.

Maddy Harland is the editor of Permaculture Magazine – inspiration for sustainable living. Issue 66 features articles about how to make a natural swimming pool, how to feed pets naturally, choosing a woodburning stove, winter recipes, news, reviews, & solutions plus money offer readers' offer. To support this independent publications please subscribe digitally for just £10 (approx $13.40) or subscribe to the printed edition  (which will save you at least 20% of the cover price and allow you to enjoy it in the wilds!). To read a sample copy click here.
  

Harmonising with Nature & the Sticky Question of Land

A dear friend of mine who spent much time in the beautiful Western Isles of Scotland once told me a story about the Queen. HMS Britannia was on its annual summer voyage with its royal passengers and stopped at a small bay one quiet afternoon. The Queen disembarked and waved away her bodyguards and other familiars and set off for a rare walk on her own. Her path took her to a small cottage where she saw its owner gardening. The Queen greeted the woman and they stopped to chat over the garden fence. Then she asked if she could come in and have a cup of tea. The two women went inside, brewed tea and sat down in simple surroundings by a small fire, drinking tea. They passed the time of day and then eventually the Queen asked her host what she did and how long she had lived on the island. The woman was a writer and she told the Queen that she visited the island in the summer months in search of seclusion, to appreciate the nature there and for literary inspiration. The Queen’s response was one of wistful understanding and the writer became acutely aware that her celebrated guest was rarely able to truly alone and meet strangers informally over a simple cup of tea.

I found this story a deeply poignant insight into our Royal Family. I believe that despite the glamour of vast wealth and global fame, the Queen’s role as sovereign is in part a sacrifice. It is obvious that she has a deep connection with the natural world. Prince Phillip was an early experimenter with solar water technology at Windsor and enjoys farming –­ he even has an experimental orchard of truffle inoculated oaks. The Princess Royal speaks with intelligence and obvious knowledge of biomass, coppicing and peak oil. They have all championed homoeopathy. I met then briefly a couple of years ago. It was obvious that they were not two dimensional people.

Prince Charles has come in for a lot of stick for talking to plants, being ‘mystical’, and inferring with architecture, imposing a pseudo neo-Georgian pastiche, only viable in affluent places like Dorset. Yet his passion for preserving heritage, his work with young people and his championing of organics and habitat conservation over decades have hit the mark. He has proved that he is well ahead of most of the rest of society. Far from being a heir in waiting, he is consolidating a powerful role as a social and environmental commentator. 

So it is with interest that I read the Introduction to his latest book, Harmony, written with Tony Juniper and Ian Skelly. In it Prince Charles openly admits that he has been challenging the accepted wisdom, the current orthodoxy and conventional way of thinking that has its origins in the 19^th Century when industrialisation took full sway and the Newtonian worldview began to fragment our vision. He has been accused of dilettantism – of leaping from one subject to another – from architecture to agriculture “as if I spent a morning saving the rainforests, then in the afternoon jumping to help young people start new businesses.” But the subtext to his interests and work has been an appreciation of holism, of inter-relationship. Organic agriculture, natural medicine, conservation, gainful fulfilling employment, especially for the young, human-scale design and architecture are inter-related. They are threads in the woven tapestry of a creative and more sustainable world.

Harmony examines our global crisis born from the relentless pursuit of economic growth technological progress. It travels back in time to explore how the ancients saw the world as a whole and in necessary balanced with Nature. It looks at how sustainability springs from seeing the world as an interconnected whole and speaks of “this timeless view… rooted in the human condition and in human experience” and suggest how we might do this.

Prince Charles visits volunteers at The Sustainability Centre © John Adams

The Prince of Wales no doubt puts his cards on the table with this book. He will be vilified and celebrated all at the same time. Carbon counters will inevitably scorn his private jets and billionaire lifestyle, asking him to walk his talk; republicans will call for democratic reform; and I might point out that the root of our economic problem lies with land ownership. It was when we enclosed the commons and cleared the Highlands that we forced people out of relative self-sufficiency into paying rents and the subsequent necessity of earning a wage. This was the turning point. Now 90% of us live on less than 10% of the land and even the plots we inhabit are shrinking. Just under one-third of Britain’s land is still owned by aristocrats and traditional landed gentry. If we are to harmonize our lives in accord with Nature, we will have to revisit this thorny question and create a more sustainable land-based life for all sectors of society. Inevitably, that necessitates deep social change.

As we steer away from being ‘Masters of Nature’ to the ‘sacred duty of stewardship’ it is inescapable that we will have to share natural resources more equitably. How we do this will require a clear vision of what an ecologically based society actually is. We cannot see-saw between political ideologies – this is not about communism, socialism or capitalism – but about how we are to create a society based on holistic, earth-based values and ethics. Prince Charles, a complex cocktail of spiritual intent and material privilege, brings this debate even more firmly into the public arena. It will be fascinating to see how it plays out.

Maddy Harland is the editor of Permaculture Magazine – inspiration for sustainable living. Issue 65 is just out and features lots of articles including Ben Law on Transition Trees, Perennial Vegetables, Small Scale Farming & Permaculture, profile of an ethical business, news, reviews, & solutions plus how to make a terracotta fridge and 10 money offer readers' offer. To support this independent publications please subscribe digitally for just £10 (approx $13.40) or subscribe to the printed edition  (which will save you at least 20% of the cover price and allow you to enjoy it in the wilds!). To read a sample copy click here.



You will also find lots of useful permaculture and gardening books at Green Shopping.