if you’ve been fortunate enough to spend an evening in my company over the past few months, you may have been treated to the site of me getting out a piece of paper and a pencil and drawing david holmgren’s ‘energy futures’ scenario graph:

hopefully you’ll find this as fascinating as i do! you can now read the inspiration for this way of visualising our future as david’s permactulrure magazine article “the end of suburbia: or the beginning of widespread permaculture?” is now available for free online.

haven’t mentioned anything about the land at coolcaha for ages… things are gradually moving along. the plans are with the planners (although still not on this site as i got all superstitious and didn’t want to be too confident until we got some news back).

a couple of weeks ago we got a bit of extra track put in and last week a mobile home was delivered. ok - they’re horrible things - but on a cost / utility basis it can’t be beaten. i also got hold of a load of big batteries (thanks graham) which should keep the mobile home in light and music for a few days at a time.

we’ve also been doing fluffy things like making pretty walkways (thanks mum and fiona), removing barbed wire, planting bulbs and generally getting excited. in the next few weeks 2,000 birch and alder trees are arriving. so this winter we’ll be busy planting these (as well as some willow, oak and anything else that comes our way).

we’ll hopefully hear about the planning some time in the new year.