Cutting Out Tara's Beating Heart

We got back from our holiday on 27th July.

On 29th July it began to rain. It rained, poured, mizzled, piddled and deluged for the next twenty-one days. The Shannon River, which rises three miles from us, burst its banks on 16th August.

The Shannon has never been this high in Dowra for thirty years. On the night of the 16th a life long resident told me she listened ‘to the roaring’ and felt very frightened. “The floods used to be bad so we thought.”

This is the worst summer on record. After May where there was a month of no rain we have had high winds and plenty of rain in June; our apple trees keeled over to a 150-degree slant as the south-westerly winds battered them. It rained on into July. We had a week’s respite in Westmeath. There was a flurry of activity while we were away and we could see our neighbour had had the hay cut in the field just beside us. Up until midnight on the 27th/28th I could hear the tractor cutting in the field.

Then the rains came. What had not been bundled in silage cover already began to rot in the field.

Leitrim is said to have the highest rate of suicide per capita in the Republic of Ireland. With the hay uncut and the relentless rain you could practically hear the shotguns getting cocked all over the county.

All those climate change deniers, the policy makers who live in hermetically sealed and ‘climate controlled’ office environments really should be out here for a week. Everyone seems to have a form of SAD, Seasonally Affected Disorder. And it’s not even winter yet. The light is on the wane but it is so overcast that I am typing this mid afternoon with the electric light switched on. Both Tony and I are in the grip of the second bout of bronchitis this summer. We are coughing, spluttering, sneezing and fevered like you would expect in the winter.

Some of those aforementioned policy makers decided to run a motorway through the heart of the Hill of Tara earlier this year. I doubt that they would see or believe there is any connection between the raging winds, the floods, the hay failing, the blight on the potatoes (warm, wet weather makes for good blight conditions). A friend said to me, “What can we expect when we don’t respect the land?” Or rather the Land that is told of in the myths of this island.

It is said that when the Little People, who took that form after the Tuatha de Danaan were vanquished at the Second Battle of Moytura at Lough Arrow, that they headed north. One legend says that they settled here near us, in the hills and hollows surrounding Lough Allen.

Natural gas has been discovered in a seam that runs under the lough and onwards through west Cavan right up into County Fermanagh. With oil prices skyrocketing there may come a time when the policy makers decide it is ‘economic’ to open up that gas field.

God help us if they do! We are seeing what happens when we make a goddess angry, but I really don’t want to know what a whole tribe of fairy folk would throw at us if they got summarily evicted!

Eco Holy Days

We are off to Earthsong tomorrow. There will be no more posts this month as Tony and I are off for our eco-break in Ireland.

Pray for dry weather because we will be camping in Westmeath! This is in the Irish Midlands but the more easterly side of the country that tends to be a bit dryer.

Camping and staying in your own country is probably the best bet for a low impact break. There are more and more camping holidays with an eye to cherishing the environment becoming available. And here where I live, in Ireland’s Green Box (or premier eco-tourism destination) there are self-catering houses that have really made a great effort to be carbon neutral.

Earthsong gathers together around 200 people – couples, singles, teens and kids – on a campsite for eight days. During that time there is a real effort to create community and mitheal, the Irish word for neighbourly co-operation, is central to the event. While there are plenty of workshops to keep kids, teens and adults occupied if it rains there is the structure for sharing out chores equitably.

Cooking is done over open campfires and ‘cluster groups’ naturally gravitate around the campfires. The ideal is that there are enough campers in each cluster so that the adults only need to cook one meal over the eight days. This ensures the necessary break from domestic concerns that is part of a good holiday.

The word holiday comes from holy day and is used in the British Isles as opposed to the American styled vacation. The Holy Days in the ecclesiastical calendar were the only real breaks medieval working people would have enjoyed. There was always a spiritual component although there would probably be fairs and such fun, too!

I like the concept of using the time for holiness – or towards wholeness – rather than just vacating my usual routine and life for eight days.

Earthsong practices a low impact philosophy, which to my mind performs a more secularlised spiritual component. There will be Taize chanting, drum sessions, bellydancing and much more to do. These activities pledge no allegiance to any particular denomination or religious philosophical tradition. They do fulfil the recreational component of what an individual’s internal and spiritual ecosystem require to relax and renew.

We’re in the home stretch now. Tony’s sister, our niece and great-niece are the vanguard and start pitching tents today. We showed the polytunnel and kitty sitter around the place yesterday evening. Today I need to weed and pack the car. Our neighbour Tony Weyman will pick the dogs up to take to his kennels at 10am tomorrow. Then it will be time to give Zelda and Minnie a last scritch on the head and to head off for a week towards wholeness and holiness. And fun.

The latest buzz about bees

There is a new book about that yokes the concern over global warming with horticultural apocalypse.

The premise of the book is a quote from Albert Einstein (although this has not been fully documented where or when he said or wrote) that when the bees die the human race only has four years to last.

There is current concern over sudden colony collapse in the honeybee world. This may be due to the varroa virus, which has weakened the bee’s immune system. The other contributing factor is that conventional farming tends towards ‘monoculture.’ This means that they just have one crop on their farm – almonds or oranges or tomatoes. For instance, in the States bees are transported thousands of miles to these farms and only get one type of dinner for weeks on end. Then they go more hundreds of miles and only get one type of dinner.

Like humans most other species need a varied diet. We need our protein, carbs and ‘five a day’. Bees seem to need a variety of plant nector to thrive and remain healthy.

Organic gardeners can help support bees by planting a number of plants that will give the bees a varied diet. In my garden I have wallflowers near the apple trees. The bees like the wallflowers and then go on to pollinate my apple trees (which are going really well this year.)

I recently was asked to respond to a question on an organic gardening forum. It reminded me how I deliberately planted a lot of bee friendly plants that also work well in a companion plant sort of way like the wall flowers do with the apple trees. We had been given a hive; I'd done a beekeeping course. What I didn't want to do was starve the swarm. So I have been building up the garden with bee friendly species over the last two years. So far my area is varroa virus free so I may take the plunge and get the hive going next year.

If you want to help our stressed out bee populations plant lemon balm, cat mint, poached egg flowers, lavender and use plenty of green manure clover.

Remember there is more at stake here than just missing some honey on your morning toast.

A Hiatus

It's been a month since I have been able to post due to a combination of a horrid case of summer flu and our computer seemingly living at the repair person's shop for the last month. But mostly the flu left me very low both physically and in spirit.

With the computer problems I also increased my scepticism that we will be able to tackle the global environmental for a technical fix point of view. Or a purely technical fix point of view. We just need to consume less and make less waste. Or at least that seemed to occur to me when I was popping my antibiotics for the mother of all sinus infections (that still lingers.)

The other irony that I got to savour while bedridden is that with rocketing fuel costs I am trying to get my full driver's license. I have had a provisional license and learned a manual over the last two years. At nearly 52 years of age this has not been a easy ride. I resisted learning for so many year but the move to a rural area makes it completely impractical. There is very little public transport and if you need to take your dog to the vets then you need to have generous friends to get you there.

The real pressure now is financial. The insurance rules in Ireland have no changed so that a learner driver MUST have a driver with a full license ride shotgun at all times. More and more jobs are putting in as essential criteria a full driving licence. Given that I am on the dole and Tony has one day's work per week it has become critical that I get that licence. And of course, the practice needed to pass costs petrol, which currently is €1.44 per litre.

It seems as if we are all completely ensnared. I'd really like not to get on that hamster wheel but if we are ever to save enough to get solar panels on our roof and make other necessary eco-improvements, then we need a job. A job in the country tends to mean a car to get to it. And now you need that all important full driving license to actually meet the criteria.

So I am feeling a bit despondent.

It has to be about consuming less

Tony and I are at virtually the half way mark through the Low Impact No Impact Year. I've been reviewing what we have been doing and what more we could be doing given our limited budget.

That's the thing. It takes money, or if you are lucky to live in the UK, grants to put in solar panels, pellet boilers and water harvesting systems. But what I have had to grasp is that you can can only change your behaviour over items over which you have control. Cash income is not always in one's control. Especially now that the world seems to be sliding into global recession.

But where you lose on the the cash front you gain on time; inspiration is often at it's most ingenious with the cash strapped.

Although we have moved to a mostly vegetarian diet I still fall back on convenience foods, especially in this past month when it has been uncomfortably hot for me. (I am currently sporting a sunburn from gardening this past weekend. The sweat washed off the sunscreen.) The quorn and veggie burgers come in glossy printed boxes that are not suitable for composting. We can burn them in our cast iron stove although that does add to CO2 emissions. But given that there is little landfill in Ireland I am a bit loathe to risk them getting dumped off shore where the plastics will affect marine life.

When you aren't worried about the melting ice cap there is always the dolphins!

So for my next resolution/affirmation I am going to start doing more batch cooking and freezing. I know I resolved that earlier this year but I got very busy in the garden and being fifty-ish my energy levels didn't have the reserve levels for an extra shift in the kitchen in the evening.

Where I have been more successful is weeding out cleaning products that tend to have lots of packaging. I have worked out a recipe of 500 grams washing soda to 100 grams of soap shavings to make laundry detergent and household cleaner for washing floors and surfaces. I am using baking soda (bicarbonate of soda) with essential oil as a fabric softener and to make the clothes smell nice. The baking soda also works well with a bit of water and lemon rind to clean the stove top and kitchen counters. There are two small plastic bags as opposed to large plastic containers that will probably be shipped to India for recycling.

With the drought this past month and with the fact that we are water metered we are looking at cost canny ways to save rainwater this winter. We are on the scout for containers that can be recycled as rain barrels just as we collect and redistribute old windows for a second life with those who are making cold frames and green houses,

Swings, roundabouts and best guestimates about what will do the least possible damage. More and more I come to the conclusion that the only real solution is to consume less. Perhaps the global recession is the universe's natural corrective to over-consumption.

Oh, and we need to plant more trees.

Wise Women Don't Waste

I'm getting ready for a Ireland's Wise Woman Weekend on 7th June when I will be at Speaker's Corner at 5:30pm to share the tips from the Low Impact Living trail. Please check out www.wisewomanireland.com to see if there are still places for this wonderful, woman enpowered weekend.

In preparing I am realising that although we have not got the money yet for the solar panels and triple glazed windows cutting down on waste does save money. If you don't get prepared meals, cook and freeze your home made veggie burgers for instance, you do save on the waste going to landfill AND you are saving money on not paying some corporate body to cook your own meal.

Of course, we do have convenience foods sometimes. When I entertain my friend's kids I tend to stick to tried,tested and favoured veggie burgers that they like. But they also like tuna and pasta. The tuna tin gets washed and put in a box that will go to the Manorhamilton recycling centre. Even the box the veggie burgers gets burned rather than send it to landfill. But that is just short term. Really we need to cut them out entirely. When I burn the box of shiny cardboard there are chemically smells emanating from our chimney. I don't need a chemistry degree to realise that if it smells bad and catches my breath (I am mildly asthmatic) then it should not be going into the atmosphere.

So I will work out some spicy bean burgers that Isa's kids LOVE and put them in the freezer for when they come over for afterschool.

With the metanoia regarding sodium lauryl sulphate I am cutting out a lot of plastic bottles of the eco-brand for home made cleaning products. I have even sourced a book The Naturally Clean House on www.lehmans.com for those who don't feel happy about having a chemistry experiment when they mop the kitchen floor.

So I am watching the waste baskets and bins in my house. I didn't even bother to empty them this Wednesday as they aren't full yet. That has to mean that we are improving.

Clean up around the House in more than one way

Since having my consciousness raised about sodium lauryl sulphate and noting how many household-cleaning agents, even of the ‘ecological’ brand name leaders, I have been mulling over alternatives. The fact that I have run out of cream cleanser and my cooker hob and kitchen sink were looking decidedly house shameful (as opposed to house proud), I needed to mull faster.

I certainly was not going to travel sixteen miles to the nearest wholefood store to get the eco-friendly brand I have previously used. There is also the issue of packaging. All the toilet cleaner, washing up liquid, laundry liquid and cream cleanser comes in plastic bottles. I do recycle them but it do I really need to be contributing to the recycle stockpile?

A few years back I came across some articles that mentioned that you could make up your own household cleaners for the equivalent of tuppence. It all seemed to boil down to having a quantity of white vinegar, bicarbonate of soda, washing soda (sodiumcarbonate decahydrate more than 30%) and lemons.

I sprinkled some baking soda onto the stovetop and scoured it with the heel of a lemon. The acid from the juice made a little fizz and got up some of the more stubborn bits. Then I wiped it down with a wet cloth. It worked very well.

The stainless steel sink required more elbow grease. The lemon/baking soda scouring got up some of the worst of the grime and grease but there were a lot of tea stains left behind. I put the sink plug in and dissolved a half-cup (2oz) of washing soda in very hot water; then I added cold water to a hand hot temperature to fill the sink. Ten minutes later rubbing with a cloth was taking up some of the stain but not all of it. Using a wood and bristle pot scourer that comes from Germany did lift the last of the stains though.

You can make your own laundry soap with soap shavings and washing soda. I have done this before and it worked okay so long as you use a higher washing temperature, say 60°. At my preferred and more energy efficient 40° washes the soap did not always dissolve. But perhaps I need to tinker with the ratio of soap to washing soda to perfect the recipe.

Either way, making my own household cleaners will reduce packaging for recycle or landfill, save me money, save on trips for the eco-friendly brands not stocked locally, save petrol for those shopping trips and transport miles.

While I don’t have sensitive skin problems and didn’t use gloves when using the washing soda, it is recommended that you use them. That’s a personal preference as far as I can see.