My aim with this project is to live a more healthy, ecological, low consumption lifestyle. I bought the property in July 2012 and am slowly renovating the house using ecological materials and methods where possible and have started to grow food. Ideas for the future include planting a forest garden and creating an association to encourage a low impact lifestyle.
Jean Michel and Arnaud, two forest fire fighters from Quebec stayed here for a week. They are on an extensive tour of Europe - with a limited budget they are doing a lot of hitchiking, couchsurfing and wwoofing. They were keen to learn about living off the land, permaculture and self-sufficiency and brought great skills and enthusiasm to the project.
Some images from their stay:
Creating a nettle barrier so that the round garden is not invaded.
Experts at using a chainsaw .... cutting logs for the winter.
A spot of chainsaw maintenance.
Arnaud cut some trees on the land ....
... and split the logs which we then stacked for use next winter ...
Jean Michel helped me to apply a lime render to the wall in the kitchen ....
Mixing the lime render .....
It's a messy job!!
Raking up leaves in the garden ...
We put a layer of the leaves over three layers of cardboard and manure and here Jean Michel puts down a layer of hay from the barn .... a new sheet mulch area ready for planting in the Spring ........
Jean Michel cracking walnuts harvested from the land ...
Arnaud made a fabulous cheese and walnut tart .....
Jean Michel researched a recipe to use the excessive amounts of apples harvested ..... apple doughnuts.
Nasturtium leaves and flowers picked from the garden to be transformed into pesto.
Ariana stayed for a couple of weeks in November this year. She is an 18 year old from North Carolina who is deeply involved in the climate justice movement. She brought her sharp intelligence and enthusiasm for learning and threw herself into every activity on offer.
She will be attending the climate negotiations with the Sierra Student Coalition at the end of November in Paris. She has done activism trainings with the Sierra Club as well as with her Quaker high school (the Carolina Friends School). She will be studying at Clark University, Massachussets next year to do Environmental Studies.
Some images from her stay:
Eco-construction
We are working on the kitchen at the moment - putting a lime render on the earth wall before building units .....
Ariana started by helping me to apply a NHL2 lime render (1 volume of lime to 3 of sand). This is the best type of lime to put over an earth wall.
She got the hang of it pretty quickly - not easy!!
On the Land
She helped me to harvest the runaway pumpkins and courgettes in the round garden ... I haven't watered all year. The sheet mulch seems to have done a good job in retaining the rainwater .... a bumper crop!!
Harvesting potatoes ....
... and a very large round marrow - produced from ancient variety seeds from the organic company Biaugerme ............
We visited the Palmer family who have a permaculture inspired project not far from us ... we exchanged some of our seeds and vegetables for a few of their raspberry canes ....
.... and planted garlic amongst the canes .... good companions.
We exchanged home made jam and vegetables from the land for some organic manure from a local horse riding centre and put this around the raspberry canes ..........
Helping with the cardboard run ... we have free access to a cabin filled with large sheets of cardboard which we use for sheet mulcing in the garden ....................
Ariana put down layers of cardboard onto brushcut vegetation and then wheelbarrowed the compost into place on top of it.
She harvested herbs from the garden, strung them up and hung them for drying in the house. We will use them to make dried herbs for cooking and teas ...............
Harvesting marigold seeds for next year's crop .....
Picking wild sloe berries near Mont Saint Michel ... we used them to make jam with apples from the garden.
In the Kitchen
..... Chopping and weighing apples to make jam, apple butter, cider vinegar cakes, pies and stewed apple ....
Ariana researched a recipe for apple butter - an American delicacy and then launched into action ...
She cracked open lots of walnuts harvested from the land ........
.... and made a delicious apple walnut and gorgonzola tart ...
... and a spaghetti squash, chocolate and walnut cake ......
.... after weeding the garden, she used chickweed to make vegetable burgers .......
Weed patties!!!
Making sourdough bread ....
... and vegan crepes ...
Impeccable table manners ...
At Leisure
A spot of weight training with logs for the fire ......
Cuddling grey cat ....
Playing the guitar beneath the herbs that she strung up .....
Casting her eyes over one of my books 'A handbook for changing the world' .... being a political activist she was interested in this book about grassroot action for sustainable development.
Thank you Ariana for all your help, your company, your enthusiasm, the debates about climate change, the music and all the rest.
One of the many reasons for my decision to come to France to create this eco-site is my concern about the issue of climate change and the associated question of how we can 'tread lightly on the earth'. I have been aware of the debates for some years but feel motivated to write a little about this here after talking extensively with a young wwoofer who is staying here at the moment. Ariana is a climate activist from the United States who will be attending the climate negotiations in Paris taking place at the end of November this year.
The Earth's climate has changed throughout history.
Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance
and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 7,000 years ago
marking the beginning of the modern climate era — and of human civilization.
Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in
Earth’s orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives.
Scientific evidence for
warming of the climate system is unequivocal.
The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it
is very likely human-induced and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented in
the past 1,300 years.1
Earth-orbiting satellites and other technological advances have enabled
scientists to see the big picture, collecting many different types of
information about our planet and its climate on a global scale. This body of
data, collected over many years, reveals the signals of a changing climate.
The heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases was demonstrated
in the mid-19th century. Their ability to affect the transfer of infrared
energy through the atmosphere is the scientific basis of many instruments flown
by NASA. There is no question that increased levels of greenhouse gases must
cause the Earth to warm in response.
Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers
show that the Earth’s climate responds to changes in greenhouse gas levels.
They also show that in the past, large changes in climate have happened very
quickly, geologically-speaking: in tens of years, not in millions or even
thousands.
The evidence for rapid climate change is compelling:
1) Sea level rise
Global sea level rose about 17 centimeters (6.7
inches) in the last century. The rate in the last decade, however, is nearly
double that of the last century.
2) Global temperature rise
All three major global surface temperature
reconstructions show that Earth has warmed since 1880. Most of this warming has occurred since the
1970s, with the 20 warmest years having occurred since 1981 and with all 10 of
the warmest years occurring in the past 12 years. Even though the 2000s witnessed a solar output
decline resulting in an unusually deep solar minimum in 2007-2009, surface
temperatures continue to increase.
3) Warming oceans
The oceans have absorbed much of this increased heat,
with the top 700 meters (about 2,300 feet) of ocean showing warming of 0.302
degrees Fahrenheit since 1969.
4) Shrinking ice sheets
The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased
in mass. Data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show
Greenland lost 150 to 250 cubic kilometers (36 to 60 cubic miles) of ice per
year between 2002 and 2006, while Antarctica lost about 152 cubic kilometers
(36 cubic miles) of ice between 2002 and 2005.
5) Declining Arctic sea ice
Both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice has
declined rapidly over the last several decades.
6) Glacial retreat
Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the
world — including in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska and Africa.
7)Extreme events
The number of record high temperature events in the
United States has been increasing, while the number of record low temperature
events has been decreasing, since 1950. The U.S. has also witnessed increasing
numbers of intense rainfall events.
8) Ocean acidification
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the
acidity of surface ocean waters has increased by about 30 percent. This increase is the result of humans emitting
more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and hence more being absorbed into the
oceans. The amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the upper layer of the oceans
is increasing by about 2 billion tons per year.
9) Decreased snow cover
Satellite observations reveal that the amount of
spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has decreased over the past five
decades and that the snow is melting earlier.
