Cultivating Community

tl;dr: We're forming a local conservancy with the goals of preserving our neighbourhood's natural and historic environment, and, hopefully, as a tool to help us build a community with some resilience against climate change and post-carbon energy descent. Yay (maybe).

Self-sufficiency is not a loner's game. It would be impossible for a single family to live completely self-sufficiently; at the very least self-sufficient living is a village-scale affair, and, even then, many niceties of modern life will elude even the most dedicated and hard working bunch of souls. Stuff like MRI scanners, space telescopes, quality reference libraries and large-scale semiconductor integrated circuits. Meanwhile, we can approach a reasonable level of self-sufficiency only if we work together with like-minded neighbours. (Reality dictates, though, that many of my neighbours are unlikely to be all that like minded, especially in a neighbourhood like ours. Anybody who chooses to live outside the fringes of urban life is, by definition, likely to be a bit iconoclastic; strong-minded and opinionated. And get the hell off my pasture.)

Over the past few years we've seen a number of changes in the regulatory climate that surrounds us. Mostly we don't like those changes. Some of us fear them in some degree, and generally it just rubs us the wrong way that the authorities won't just leave us alone to get on with our slightly hermit-like lives. From being outside of any municipal boundaries, and thus "deprived" of all services like piped (but fluoridated and metered) water, garbage collection and libraries, but free of property taxes, we have, against our will, been incorporated into the local municipal boundaries. So now we get to pay rates and use the library gratis. We still don't get garbage collection, and we (thankfully!) still don't have to buy municipal water or sewerage connections.

Another big change has been the promulgation of the Garden Route National Park as an enclosing super-entity managing many of the pre-existing National Parks in the region. I believe it is considered a world-first, since the super-park encompasses towns, industrial areas, shopping districts and commercial farms agri-factories, along with traditional nature-reserves. I think that nobody is sure how this is going to work, but it's a noble experiment. The close-to-home effect was to see the management of the indigenous forest transferred to SANParks – the national nature-reserve authority. All this means that both the national provincial governments, as well as local Municipal government want to "manage" us and design Structure Plans around us in mysterious, undefined and largely unwelcome ways.

For a long time we were able to stick our heads in the sand, pretending that life carries on as it did before, but the bitter truth is that the wider world has chosen to take some notice of us. Time to respond, to organise in a common cause.

We have decided to form a local conservancy: the Bibbey's Hoek Historical and Nature Conservancy (or some such name, if and when we ever get around to agreeing on it).

Several weeks ago we organised a community meeting to gauge the appetite for forming a conservancy. We held it on a Sunday evening so that the maximum number of people would be able to attend without excuses like work obligations. The weather played foul, and we ended up with a fairly small turnout – only about eight properties represented out of the thirty in the neighbourhood. Consensus was that we lacked a broad enough representation to take any decision likely to impact the entire neighbourhood, so we decided to try again.

Now, things move at Bibbey's Hoek speed here... next year is just as good as next week. Newcomers to the area are frequently frustrated at the relaxed¹ attitude we have to time and calendar, accusing us of allowing our brains to become infested with Outeniqua Rust. Consequently our plans for another meeting were a little bit overtaken when SANParks management requested a community meeting (held a couple of weeks ago). Our neighbourhood and its rich history is inextricably entangled in a relationship with the forest. Indeed, our properties were carved out of the very forest itself back in the mid-1800's; some older maps even show the forest boundary as enclosing our smallholdings. It seems reasonable that SANParks management and scientists regard the area as an important buffer zone between the natural forest they manage² and the adjoining larger farms and urban areas.

All this culminated in (yet another!) meeting last evening where we were given an interesting talk by a chap from Cape Nature ‒ the provincial environmental department ‒ on conservancies. Rather than arrange yet another meeting, we went ahead and formed a Steering Committee, tasked with drawing up a constitution for the conservancy and generally getting the ball rolling. Actually, there's not a whole lot for us to do: I had already drawn up a draft constitution, so all we really need to do now is give everybody a chance to discuss and change it to suit some consensus view, and then we can go ahead and appoint an Executive Committee and register the conservancy with Cape Nature (which gives it the status of a legal entity). Then we can get on with trying to implement whatever nature and historical conservation projects we choose. Clearing alien vegetation from water-courses and dealing with some very aggressive and destructive Baboons seem to be the highest priorities.

I have been pushing for us to also include climate-change and energy-descent adaptation as an explicit goal for the conservancy, and, so far, there seems to be reasonably broad acceptance that this would be a good thing ‒ including vigorous nods from the SANParks and Cape Nature people. Quite a large proportion of Bibbey's Hoek's residents are permaculturally minded, and quite conscious of these issues, so it hasn't really been a hard sell.

So: an interesting (and long overdue) step along the path of self-sufficiency. Having to deal with otherwise-minded neighbours and government authorities... not so much fun. But necessary.

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[1] No, "comatose" is probably closer to the truth.

[2] I have some uncertainties over the notion of "managing" wild areas and just what that might mean, but that's a discussion for another day...

Wine; and Destroying the Cape Fynbos

We love wine, particularly the very fine reds that the Southwestern Cape produces.  Unfortunately, where we live the climate is totally unsuitable for vine growing, so I guess we'll never be self-sufficient in wine.

Lately we have discovered a store that makes a speciality out of obtaining end-of-run export wines -- wines originally destined for the foreign (mostly European) markets and up-market stores, but which doesn't make it there for one reason or another.  They sell these off really cheaply, so we've been buying some really great red wines for under R20/bottle (around EUR2!) Tonight's little surprise -- Mountain Shadows 2005 Pinotage is a bit of a disappointment, but, at the price, who's complaining?

The label on the back of the bottle:

"Nestled in the shadows of the majestic mountains of the Cape, flourish some of the last and rarest of the botanical species Mimetes.  Endemic to this region, the last bastions of this most beautiful and endangered species weather the timeless onslaught  of nature and man.  In the shadows of these same mountains, grow the vineyards,..."

The fucking gall of these people!  The vineyards are the precise bloody reason the fynbos is being wiped out!  The Aghulas Plain -- last remaining bastion of all five types of Fynbos -- is rapidly being covered in vineyards, completely wiping out the richest and smallest floral kingdom in the world.  Table Mountain, despite its being in the very heart of a major city, is home to more plant species than the entire island of Great Britain!

It's one thing if a wine-maker is shamelessly unapologetic about wiping out incredible areas of land, many of them the home to beautiful plants found nowhere else -- not even elsewhere in the Cape!  -- well, there's an honesty to that, though of a pretty disagreeable sort.  But to lament the loss of these plants, whilst simultaneously extolling the virtues of their vineyards...  Words fail me!

I bought the bottle in ignorance.  Please don't repeat my mistake. Its pretty crap wine anyway.

The Hundred Year Lie; The Ten Day Fix

Dave Pollard raises a very interesting issue in his How to Save the World blog – the nutritional value (or lack of it) in our food. I urge you to read his review of the book "The Hundred Year Lie" before continuing, since the rest of this post won't make much sense otherwise. Dave goes on from reviewing the book to contemplating the use of probiotic supplements to combat the problem.

I would say there is a simpler way: Food Gardening.

Growing your own food – need I say "using organic methods"? – means you can very simply eliminate the whole Industrial Food Complex, and feed yourself and your family whole, wholesome, fresh, untainted vegetables. You can choose varieties that taste good, rather than those that transport and store well. You can be sure of avoiding frankenfoods by growing open-pollinated varieties, and enjoy marvelous flavours that you will never find in any supermarket by growing heirloom varieties.

It is a truism that we only preserve the things that we use. Heirloom varieties are usually ignored by the Industrial Food Complex, because they may be a little more trouble to grow, and that translates to added cost of production, and thence to reduced profits. Or they may not have the super-long shelf-life that the supermarkets require. Or they may not look as appealing – where "appealing" has been defined by some market research group, and only applies to the visual appeal. Or they may not be as hardy to mechanical harvesting and packing. These factors that Industrial Agriculturists, Food Processing companies and Food Retailers seek in vegetables usually result in veggies that

• Grow fast
• Respond "well" to intensive artificial fertilisers and pesticides
  
  
• Look good on the shelf
• for a long (sometimes unnaturally long!) time
• cope well (i.e. don't rot or discolour) when chilled or frozen
• have thick skins to withstand the rigours of mechanical harvesting and long distance transportation
  
  

You may notice that nowhere in this list do we find mention of flavour or nutrition.

If you grow even just a little bit of your own fruit and veggies, you create a huge supplement to your diet.

But That's Not All

There are the other beneficial aspects of Food Gardening. It gets you out in the open air, doing mild, low-impact physical exercise. Pretty much what our bodies evolved to do! You sweat. Exercise and sweat are one of the best ways to reduce stress and the by-products of stress in our bodies.

Gardening is a meditation. It gently occupies the mind with not-very-taxing tasks, and allows the dross of modern life to drain away.

Gardening brings you in direct, literal contact with the Earth. You quickly stop feeling "disconnected" when your hands get grubby with Earth. And gardening by organic methods means that you are actively engaged in fostering all life forms – particularly the soil biota – rather than running amok in a Death Rampage trying to kill things.

It has long struck me as a bewildering paradox that faces Industrial Agriculturists (I refuse to call them "Farmers"; they long since stopped deserving that title). Industrial Agriculturists on one hand try to grow food – and remember that only living things can grow – food that is supposed to, in its turn, sustain life – and yet they run around killing everything they can. Remember that the "cide" part of the words pesticide, herbicide, insecticide, bactericide, fungicide, means "death". How does fostering death support life? It's completely insane, and this insanity is built deep into the modern food chain. Is it any wonder that things seem out of kilter?

I do foresee one argument: "I don't have space for a food garden". Nonsense. Even in a high-rise apartment you can create some small space – a window box, a few containers on a balcony. If you have the will you can find space. Depending where in the world you are there may community gardens, allotments, public land that the local council is happy for you to use, roof-space that can support containers. Get creative! Find someone who has garden space, and swap use of a little piece of their garden for a portion of your produce.

A Warning

If you start gardening, you may find it addictive. You may start wondering about thequality of the water you use in your garden. Where does it come from? If you turn to using rainwater, you may begin to ask questions about the air-quality, since the rain falls through that air and picks up contaminants on its journey from the clouds. You may begin to wonder about the seeds you plant, and who is trying to control that seed-supply.

In short, gardening may turn you into an environmental activist.

Real Surfers Get It

A UK-based organisation of environmentalist surfers (the real kind, not the web kind) - Surfers Against Sewage - have come out in support of the Wave Hub, a project for generating electricity from ocean wave energy.  In their report they're clear that, even the worst-case effect on surfable waves would still see them supporting the project, because

"The occasional larger reduction in wave height at some locations of up to 13% (i.e. worst case scenario), would still be viewed by us as being within acceptable limits, considering the nature of the proposed project."

I guess it only shows that surfers have never lost touch with the Earth.  When you spend hour upon hour in intimate contact with the oceans; when you have more contact in a month with wild creatures like dolphins, seals and sharks than most people have in their entire lives; when the rhythm of your days and weeks is deeply influenced by the wind, weather and tides; then there is little chance you you losing the Big Picture, not much room for small-minded partisanship like you would find with most special interest groups.

Air Traffic Control

Over recent months we have seen a large increase in light-aircraft traffic overhead, using local farm-fields for take-offs and landing.  So here is a letter I have just sent-off to the Civil Aviation Authority - lets see how they respond...  I'll refrain from ranting about the abysmal design of their website :-)

I am writing to express my deep concern with a recent marked increase in air-traffic (light aircraft) in our area - the Rheenendal area north of Knysna.

Over the past few months I have noticed a very marked increase in air traffic in the area, evidently taking-off and landing using local farm fields, as I am unaware of any licensed airfield in the area.

I particularly strongly object to such traffic due to:
  1.  Noise nuisance
  2.  Invasion of privacy, as these aircraft frequently take-off directly overhead my dwelling, and
  3.  Hazard to a source of my income: I am an organic vegetable grower, and the pollution caused from hydrocarbon emissions from aircraft has, in several cases around the world, resulted in organic growers losing their organic certification.

Please advise me

  1.  Whether any airfield has been licensed to operate in the area,
  2.  Who is responsible for authorising the use of farm-fields for
      light-aircraft traffic, and
  3.  What can be done to stop such overflight.