Patrick Whitefield: Meeting With a Remarkable Man

Patrick Whitefield came to visit us a few days ago. He has been writing books about permaculture since 1992 and we have been publishing them. His first, Permaculture In A Nutshell, is now translated into seven languages. The Earth Care Manual, his magnum opus, is read all over the world and the latest, The Living Landscape is all about how to reconnect with our landscape and how to ‘read’ and understand it. This is not only a vital skill for permaculture, landscape design consultants and professional conservationists but also for the rest of us who simply love the land and wish to live more sustainably.

Seeing Patrick is always fun. I like to cook him a good meal – he’s a big, tall man who lives simply but appreciates a well cooked feast – and he always has a walk around our forest garden, noting the changes, which experiments have been successful, and any new plantings. 

This year we gave up on trying to grow almonds and replanted the spaces with an assortment of new trees described in an earlier blog. Patrick was interested in my own root stock peach tree (i.e. it is not grafted) that I grew from a collection of stones gleaned from ZEGG, an ecovillage in East Germany. Their continental climate means winter temperatures plummet and summers get very hot. Their peaches are all own root and are small, hardy, sweet and resist peach leaf curl. I have managed to grow on six trees, one is planted freestanding in the garden, the others will be dotted in our hedgerows and allowed to grow to standards. I will also give one or two away – Ben Law already has one reserved for a clearing in his woodland.

 

Patrick admired our crop of leeks which has survived the snow and the new rainwater harvesting system on the greenhouse. It’s very Heath Robinson but nonetheless effective. I had puzzled about how to attach guttering to an aluminium greenhouse that does not sit on the level and has nothing to fix to. In the end, Tim and I drilled bolt holes and fashioned some aluminium from strips we bought at B&Q to hold the gutters. We used aluminium, not the most eco of materials, because it is easy to bend. ‘Transitional’ ethics, I guess. 

After that I gave Patrick a tour of the Sustainability Centre, showing him all the finished and upcoming projects that I wrote about in my last blog, and bought him lunch in our new café. Patrick used to teach permaculture design here and has seen this place struggle since the mid 1990s. It felt good to show him just how hard everyone involved has worked and what we have achieved. I introduced him to the people who live and work here that we met on our walk and I teased him about it being like showing round a ‘top brass’ or a dignitary. He is rather a Grand Old Man of the permaculture movement now.

We also talked about the impending climate change crisis being rarely mentioned. When it is, it is usually played down and ‘qualified’ by the BBC and other broadcasters. It seems policy to balance any statement about how desperate things are with a sceptical viewpoint. Patrick thinks runaway climate change is pretty much inevitable now because of the positive feedback systems. Have a look at Mark Lynas’ Six Degrees if you want to know more.

We agreed that human beings are generally in profound denial about the severity of climate change and there is a large, vociferous and powerful lobby of sceptics out there ready to fight for business as usual. It’s a kind of ‘group think’ that defies reason. I see evidence of this in online newspaper comments, public statements made by vested interests and in Congress. Even my Facebook link to a recent blog on climate change was registered as abusive and blocked. We are muzzled by these powerful forces. Thank God for Indie media.

Patrick and I also talked about living in a world where football and celebrity culture gets so much passion, attention and financial clout whilst the whole ecosystem on which we depend for our lives is unravelling. Life is incredibly surreal. I asked him if this depresses him. He said sometimes, especially when he tries to work locally and realises that most people (99.5%) don’t actually care about climate change, permaculture, Transition or any other positive initiative. 

I am always very interested in what inspires and motivates people, especially people like Patrick who have dedicated their lives to a pioneering task. What makes him tick and what puts the spring in his step each day? He told me that when he teaches permaculture he meets people who are deeply enthused by the subject who will use the course information to literally change their lives. He says, "I am inspired and uplifted by the people who come on our courses." It is these few, not the 99.5%, that positively motivate him.

This resonated deeply with me – as I am sure it will with you – because it is the doing that inspires me; planting trees, sowing seeds, making water harvesting systems, publishing books and magazines that enable and support others… But all the doing in the world is no good unless I can connect with others and share in the vision. We are an interdependent species on an interdependent planet. I want to steep my consciousness in that glorious web of interdependence.

Maddy Harland is the editor of Permaculture Magazine – inspiration for sustainable living. To read a sample copy click here. To support this independent publications please subscribe digitally for just £10 (approx $13.40) or to the paper edition (which will save you at least 20% of the cover price).

For more information on Patrick please visit his website.

Roundwood Timber Frame Eco-Building, Training and Happy Children

Things are really picking up a pace at the Sustainability Centre in Hampshire. We are preparing for just about the most exciting build possible in April with Ben Law. Exciting because it combines a highly low impact, ecological design with on site training for apprentices in a new vernacular of building. It is to be a roundwood timber frame using timber from our woods (Douglas fir and leylandii) with a western red cedar shingle roof. The building looks like a Celtic long house and it will nestle in our woods. The south side of the building is open with indoor/outdoor space and the north side has a huge cob fireplace. South, east and west sides will have decking (and you will be able to pull down some canvas screens to keep the elements out.)

The building itself is to be tailor-made as an outdoor classroom and will be built by Ben’s Roundwood Timber Frame Company, his apprentices and a selection of people who have applied to learn new eco-building skills. So the many children who visit us to learn about sustainability, conservation, permaculture and the environment will have a first-hand experience of what a low impact and beautiful building is like instead of being housed in a converted Naval hospital (where I am sitting now).

The building will also be used for celebrations, permaculture design courses and by our dedicated team at South Downs Natural Burials. You see, we bury people here from all over our region with no brass handles, embalming or composite wood and glue coffins. It’s all willow, bamboo and even simple shrouds. Families can chose how they wish to be buried and the wide variety of ceremonies from religious to completely personal is amazing. One quality that underpins them all is the care with which they are done. This is a very popular service on the site. 

Ben’s build seems to be a tipping point for us. At last we are about to get some bike sheds – and you can imagine that there’s lots of jokes about what’s going to happen behind them! We are also just about to erect an oak frame lych gate so as you enter the centre you do indeed wal through a design that was made on site dates back as far as the 13^th century. We have our history here, being on the South Downs Way, an ancient trackway that is dotted with tumuli. The landscape up here is exquisite. 

On the cards is another smaller timber frame building, again from local wood, to house our electrics at our campsite. Not so romantic perhaps but nicer than the crumbling concrete structure we inherited. And we are just about to acquire a biodiesel minibus to ferry our guests from the station in our nearest town, helping reduce traffic to the site (no bus services to our door exists yet). 

And besides all the new exciting developments, our strawbale, lime rendered shower block is now powered up by the sun – the solar panels are installed and running well – and our lovely cob oven shelter is getting a new coat of limewash for the camping season. Even the compost loo is looking like its ready for business! And the crew at the eco-Lodge that hosts up to 30 people – often walkers off the South Downs Way, school groups or course attendants – have been painting and fixing all winter. Even the chickens have gone ‘high rise’ to evade Mr & Mrs Fox and the Green Beans toddler group are making vegetable gardens – and most of them are only two years old!

In 1998 when Tim and I and a few of the early PM team moved on to the site there was no one else here and it was a stark, abandoned Naval Base. Now the place is buzzing with enthusiasm, completed projects and new ideas. At last, the Sustainability Centre is beginning to seriously demonstrate its early visionary promise.

Maddy Harland is editor of Permaculture Magazine - inspiration for sustainable living. To read free copies of of the magazine click here.

 

Homeopathy & the Medicinal Monoculture

Years ago when I was sixteen I was struck down by glandular fever. At the time I was a tough little hockey player, playing for my school and the county. Ill heath came as a big surprise. I missed a few months at school and was below par for a couple of years. Though I bounced back and went off to university to read English and continue a strange hybrid lifestyle of conventional sportswomanship and unconventional adventuring, I was never quite the same. By my early twenties, I was running my own wholefood shop and living healthily, but I still had the sore throats and energy lows associated with glandular fever.

I got myself a homoeopath. Nothing in my upbringing had sent me in this direction but the experimental adventurer was still at large. The homeopath treated my sore throat and then my deeper constitution and I sloughed off the shadow of my teenage illness and more.

So successful was this experience that I studied acute prescribing in homoeopathy and eventually co-authored a book about it some years later. I also brought up my children with homoeopathy and acupuncture and we still benefit from both today.

For those that dismiss acupuncture, I could tell you some great stories about before and after recoveries that are medically documented and I like to ask skeptics how acupuncturists control pain during labour, birth and surgery. Having had a baby, I don’t think it's down to the placebo effect!

Homeopathy too defies conventional science but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. Remember that conventional science deems that bumblebees aren’t meant to fly either. I watched the UK Parliament's Science and Technology committee at work. They were lame at best and hardly intellectually vigorous.

In response to their, MP David Tredinnick (Conservative) has sponsored an Early Day Motion (EDM), ‘expressing concern’ at the report. It says:

That this House expresses concern at the conclusions of the Science and Technology Committee's Report, Evidence Check on Homeopathy; notes that the Committee took only oral evidence from a limited number of witnesses, including known critics of homeopathy Tracy Brown, the Managing Director of Sense About Science, and journalist Dr Ben Goldacre, who have no expertise in the subject; believes that evidence should have been heard from primary care trusts that commission homeopathy, doctors who use it in a primary care setting, and other relevant organisations, such as the Society of Homeopaths, to provide balance; observes that the Committee did not consider evidence from abroad from countries such as France and Germany, where provision of homeopathy is far more widespread than in the UK, or from India, where it is part of the health service; regrets that the Committee ignored the 74 randomised controlled trials comparing homeopathy with placebo, of which 63 showed homeopathic treatments were effective, and that the Committee recommends no further research; further notes that 206 hon. Members signed Early Day Motion No. 1240 in support of NHS homeopathic hospitals in Session 2006-07; and calls on the Government to maintain its policy of allowing decision-making on individual clinical interventions, including homeopathy, to remain in the hands of local NHS service providers and practitioners who are best placed to know their community's needs.

45 MPs have signed this motion across parties but it requires more. You can write to your MP to encourage them to add their name.

I took my eldest daughter to our family homeopath today, a private consultation not funded by my local doctor’s practice. She reported that she has had far more enquiries from the public than before the committee met. What worries me though is that this recent crusade under the auspices of parliamentary scientific investigation is part of a cost cutting exercise to close our historic homeopathic hospitals and further limit the range of non-invasive treatments available on the NHS. Once again, it comes down to money and the increasingly pharmaceutically based medical system we are being offered that is controlled by large commercial interests.

(Shame about the glaciers fellas...)

With Macdonalds and Coca Cola sponsoring the London Olympics, an event that was the great symbol of cultural freedom and physical excellence, it is no wonder that we are being subsumed in the cunning and deceptively bland web of global corporate interests. Our homeopathic tradition within the NHS is so much more than a wacky left-over from our Victorian past when we didn't 'understand' medicine scientifically. It represents the spirit of choice, of a gentler more holistic approach to illness and an openness to new ideas. It does take a stretch of the imagination to appreciate how it works but all the anecdotal evidence and the years of case studies and successful treatments indicate that its efficacy lies in it being so much more than the placebo effect. I can't help feeling that this conflict of interest is very much akin to small scale, non-chemical, sustainable agricultural systems and the global giants of industrialised NPK, GM-based agriculture. Money and power are at the root of it.

Maddy Harland is editor of Permaculture Magazine - inspiration for sustainable living. To read free copies of of the magazine click here.

The Man, Woman & Dog Who Plant Trees

Tim and I have been forest gardening since the early 1990s when we planted 60 fruit and nut trees of varying size in our garden. They were mainly early, mids and late apples, pears, plums, gages, damson, and cob nuts with a few experiments like fig, medlar, apricot, nectarine and almonds. The apricot and nectarine didn’t thrive and we took them out after a few years, but the medlar and the Brown Turkey fig, though freestanding, have been a great success. The fig gives us large purple fruits as big as my fist that are sensuously juicy. It also sends suckers up from its base which we propagate every year. These children are spread far and wide.

Over the years we have added to the collection: a Desert King fig given to us by a PM reader who is fig enthusiast like us; black mulberry (Illinois Everbearing); truffle inoculated hazel; Siberian pea tree (a nitrogen fixer); own root peach from eastern Germany; and various other trees that will be allowed to grow to standards above the hedgerow like the marvelous Prunus Marabel that gives us small, purply fruits, though they can also be orange, that makes fine jam.

Added to all this is the understorey of soft fruit bushes and climbers plus groundcover. I will tell you about them another time. 

Last autumn we decide to give up with our sad looking almonds that struggled with peach leaf curl and were very bitter. Our philosophy is that we don’t spray with anything except  liquid seaweed occasionally, so if a tree doesn’t thrive we take it out. We also took out an ordinary Quince tree that never liked our well-drained chalk. Pretty blossom but no resulting fruit despite deep annual mulch.

With just a few precious spaces left for trees what did we plant? A visit to Martin Crawford at the Agroforestry Trust inspired us to diversify our ground cover and venture into more interesting tree species. We chose a Persimmon (Diospyros kaki) Mazelli which produces orange-red, round, very large, fruits and does require cross pollination. To replace the Quince we selected a Chinese quince (Pseudocydonia sinensis). This is a small tree growing to 6m (20ft) high and bears huge aromatic fruits, 12-17cm (5-7in) long, which are edible, eaten raw or cooked in the same way as other quinces. It likes a well drained soil and sun.

I fell in love with Martin's Chinese dogwood (Cornus kousa chinensis) which makes a large shrub or small tree. It has beautiful richly-coloured foliage in the autumn. The fruits, about 20mm in diameter, are edible with sweet, juicy, delicious pulp; the young leaves are also edible.

After planting these three I had a little room left for a Yellowhorn (Xanthoceras sorbifolium). This is a large upright shrub or small tree with large white and carmine flowers in May which are followed by walnut-like capsules with small chestnut-like seeds. Also edible, it seemed like a fun thing to try.

My final exotic was Nepal pepper (Zanthoxylum alatum), a large shrub from the Himalayas growing to 4m (13ft) high. We tasted the aromatic leaves – yummy – and the seeds are peppery and can be used as a spice and pepper substitute. It needs a sunny site.

All these trees are hardy to about -20°C. Significant after last winter.

A word of advice, if you want trees from Martin, order early in the year and you will get good quality saplings in November with your own personal label.

I have a plum tree but it fruits, like my three gages, in July, so I wanted a late fruiting variety that produces in September. I chose Marjorie’s Seedling on Pixy rootstock  (see diagram below) from Blackmoor Nurseries in Hampshire. They sent me a beautifully healthy specimen. I also have a hardy olive tree that I will plant soon by my shed in a sheltered corner. It will remind me of peaceful groves in Umbria, Italy, where I found porcupine quills and ancient fossils.

The trees went in at the end of February. Late. We had meant to plant in November and they had been heeled in to a raised bed full of loamy compost. Busy weekends at work and frozen ground had foiled our plans but we seized the opportunity, getting up early on a Saturday, to get them in.

Here are a few basic tips for tree planting:

1)    Dig a generous hole and fill it with compost. Add well rotted chicken manure (or organic chicken pellets) to feed the tree and mix it in.

2)    If the tree is bare-rooted be careful never to expose the roots to wind and weather. Keep them protected in a bag whilst exposed and plant carefully with the graft above the ground.

3)    Add the spoil from the hole and heel in firmly.

4)    Water.

5)    Then mulch with spoilt straw. Cardboard tends to blow away on its own.

Our tree collection is sadly at its limits on our plot so now we need to branch out (sorry!). My friends will benefit from many more fig seedlings, own root peach stones of successful trees planted at a German ecovillage and the Szechuan pepper I will hopefully germinate. (They are currently chilling in my fridge and I hope this will break their dormancy after a few weeks.) I also can’t help digging up native seedlings that the birds sow on my mulched veggie patch paths. I am sure The Sustainability Centre will appreciate them all in time.

I love the Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono, a novel about a French shepherd who sets out with his dog to plant a forest and transform a barren landscape. Tim, myself and dog have done this on a small scale and now we plan to carry on further afield until our bones are too stiff to dig.

Maddy Harland is editor of Permaculture Magazine - inspiration for sustainable living. To read free copies of of the magazine click here.

The Agroforestry Research Trust

Blackmoor Nursery