CAUTION!! Heavy post ahead!

Sometimes I've been known to flex the grey matter, to ponder on the deeper things in life, to even get a little philosophical..... OK, no snickering at the back there!!

On the Freeconmy blog a commenter accused us all of being like religious zealot's following a new Messiah.
Well at first I was aghast!!

Damn it he called me religious!!

But then I calmed down and thought about it....and yeah, he is kind of right.

WHAT IS RELIGION (She writes on the blackboard) *full stop*
Well, what IS religion, other than a series of beliefs and faith in a teacher.
So if someone comes up with a set of ideas that show a "path" to inner peace (be it a well tended garden or the secrets of a video game or Nirvana) its got to be a sort of religion right?

I don't consider myself religious. I have no Christian faith, no belief in a higher being, a heaven, a hell. I don't run my life in accordance to any book or teacher.
I am not Atheist though, to be a true Atheist is to have no faith.
I have plenty of faith, but not in some white bearded dude in a dress.

I only really have time for the old religions. The faiths that were forged on the coming and going of the seasons, the religions that celebrated birth and death and everything in between.
If I am drawn to any it is the Wiccan faiths.
I have a deep respect for a faith that celebrates Ostara with fornicating hares and eggs and doesn't try to hide the meanings behind the more benin bunny and chick and *somethingsomething* about some resserection of *somethingsomething* and Oooooh is that a CHOCOLATE EGG!!??     

The Sabbats observed by the Wiccan/Pagen people are more in tune with the seasons and of real life. They show the quickening of spring, the bounty of harvests, the sleeping of the land and the need for mid winter celebrations to lift everyone's spirits a little.
There is never any threatening.
No one is told they MUST observe this rite or forfeit the the Kingdom of Heaven/whatever.
If the Christian God  and Allah are the disproving stern fathers who are gonna tan your hide if you don't obey, then Wiccan gods are your peers, they don't rely on you to keep the faith as you don't rely on them to provide huge miracles in their name.
They are one of the few religions that treat men and women as equals. No shunning of the women folk during their monthlies here!
Every God has his Goddess, every Lord his Lady.
Perfect balance in everything.

The role of the Goddess is one of the strong woman, from the innocent Maiden to the wise Crone, she is a valued and valuable member of society, not just a means for breeding more men.

Its the balance of nature, the equality and the flexibility that appeals.
I read into it for a couple of years and even tried it out, but the rituals felt false and stilted, like playing dress up.
But I don't feel any less Wiccan-ish.
I dig my hands in the dirt and connect to the earth. I tend my animals and connect to nature. I walk in the wind and rain and connect to the elements. I love my children and connect to that age old, almost lost art of family, of belonging.

Ok... off to rest the old noggin.

Blessed Be? ;)    

Musings, reflections and life altering decisions.

Power Off Weekend mark II over.

Diary written, photos posted, backs slapped all round.

These weekends to me seem to be the perfect chance to reflect on things.
Not just the family stuff. Spending distraction free time with your family and loved ones is always a fantastic thing to do, but on some more practical elements to our lifestyle.

Malcolm Handoll has already suggested having four POW's a year, at each solstice and equinox and the suggestion set my mind racing as to how I can make my home, my life, even more electric free friendly.

As though the gods of coincidence were listening (and laughing no doubt) my fridge freezer went on the blink.

Well in all fairness its been a bit dodgy for a while.
There is a permanent puddle in the bottom of the fridge, even though the drain bit is clear, the freezer used to over freeze at the best of time but now the seal is broken.

What to do then?

Well, a quick look inside the beast told me all I needed to know.
The fridge contained......

1 UHT carton of rice milk
1 UHT carton of orange juice

1/2 cucumber

1 carrot
4 tubs of vitalite
1/2 can of chick peas
small ball of left over pastry.

....and all spread over 4 shelves...bit echo-ie in there..

Best of all was the contents of the freezer....I kid you not...

2 ice cube trays
4 peas.

Hmmm...and I'm running this 24 hrs a day why?

Anyone ever see fight club?? Edward Norton's lament about the contents of his blown up fridge "A fridge full of condiments and no food. How embarrassing."

You said it buddy.

A quick look online threw up a lot of people asking the same question. Some had ditched the fridge and never looked back, some were dithering and others where plain aghast at the idea.

Funny to think that a white appliance that really only became common place in the 70's has become the ONE thing people can't imagine living without.

Seriously, you find blogs about people who compost their poo and weave their own clothes out of dandelions but ask whether they would give up their fridge and they shrink away in horror!!

Understandably, modern homes (post 1960's) are not designed for the fridge-less. 

Up till then, all houses possessed a pantry/larder/cupboard in a cool part of the house and that's where "fridge" food went.

An argument against going fridge-less is that our grandmothers would shop almost daily for fresh food so little would need to be kept.
This is true, and its also very true that many families are too busy to shop like that now BUT it has to be said that back then you didn't have the wealth of preserved food that you have now.

For example our soya/rice/oat milks are all UHT and do not need refrigeration before opening and only need to be kept moderately cool after.
Eggs and cheese do better at a slightly higher temperature than a fridge will provide.
Many MANY items found in a fridge now don't even need to be in there.
Condiments, pickles, jams, peanut butter (yeah!! People do that!!) fruit, most vegetables.... none of these need to be kept at 5oC and yet we stuff our fridges with them!

So once we take all that stuff out what are we left with??
Spreads? Yogurt? Leftovers?
Not really enough to run a wardrobe sized appliance for is it?

So we run an appliance that we stuff full of things we don't really need in there. We go nuts buying 2 for 1 deals to shove in the freezer and always ALWAYS its half crammed full of things like soup (from 3 years ago), some frozen veg you brought but didn't like (WHY havent you thrown it out??) the 2nd packet of the 2 for 1 deal (it was 2 for 1 because it taste like cack) and, of course, a couple of mystery meal tubs of leftovers stuffed in the back, covered with permafrost.

Anyway. After chatting to Kim about it we've decided to give it a go.
No pressure.
The plan is to wind down the VAST contents of our fridge freezer and then decommission it (I have plans for it though, don't worry!) and then see how it goes.

If it all goes horribly wrong we can still buy a fridge, although a much smaller one without a freezer, maybe just a small ice box.
If the summer is stupid hot we might buy one of those little mini fridges you can get 6 cans in so things like the spread will be ok.

There are a lot of if's.

Some of it depends on how other things to do with the house pan out.
Some of it doesnt matter.

Do I sound cryptic??
Sorry, nothing sinister meant by it, just too much STUFF to explain here!

So there you have it.
I'm open to any suggestions re: keeping food good and hopefully I can let you all know how it goes!

.
    
    

Why I love Power Off!!

The fire pit!!

Let me tell you a story, a story that started 8 years ago. 

When we up'd sticks from Somerset to Scotland we did the most important thing of our lives. Not the move that is.

We left the TV behind.

I was concerned about Ollie, then 2, about the amount of TV he watched and also the amount I was watching.

It would be fine, I thought. Easy peasy!!

Reader. 

If I had been coming off Smack I think it would have been easier.

I went cold turkey and suffered greatly.

You see, I had grown up in the time where TV started to take a hold of the nation. A time where you had 4 (!!! Count 'em!! 4!!!!) Channels and the box was switched on in the morning and turned off at bedtime.

I had no idea what a huge force it was until it wasn't there anymore.

Suddenly there was no reassuring voices in the room when I was on my own. No distraction, no reason to sit glazed eyed on the sofa in the middle of the afternoon.

I heard noises in the house that had been masked by the constant prattle from the TV, and I was afraid.

Do I do without visual stimuli all together?

Nope. I love a good movie and have a stupid amount of DVD's. But there is a difference.

A movie is (mostly) 1 and 1/2 hrs of concentration time, no adverts, no rubbish. If you have jobs to do a movie will wait or in the case of kids homework/bedtime/whatever can be turned off and watched again the next day.

The point is a DVD does not demand your time and fidelity in the same way as TV.

You are never afraid that you might be missing something.     

You never find yourself working your life around a favourite soap or quiz show.

You never EVER have to have your movie split into two so the news can come on for 1/2 an hour.

You control the medium rather than the medium controlling you.

So.

Power Off Weekend mark II?

Fantastic!

Again!!

Food.

  

Mmmm..Veggie sausages!!

Owen and Alfie "cooking". 

Alfie cooked his bread :)

Power Off soup! This soup was potato and cauliflower and was "blended" using a potato ricer.

Home made Mango chutney. A pack of frozen mango pieces meant a "Arrrgghh!! What do I do with these!?" moment. Hence mango chutney!

Power Off Bread, made in the dutch oven on top of the log burner.

By using baking paper it was possible to flip the bread over in the dutch oven and therefore brown both sides.

Entertainment.

This time we were better prepared!

Junior monopoly. A cut throat power game in the hands of my children.

Picnic up the top of the hill over the road to us. Beautiful sunny day.

Run my doggies! Run!

Merle and Jenny mushing on!

Some beautiful trees up the hill.

Life as usual.

Washing still has to be done when there are five of you in the house!

Even boiled up some skanky rags, or was that dinner?? Hmmm....

The more expensive candles I brought this time (rather than the cheap Tesco ones!) Threw out enough light to read more than comfortably in.

The log burner. It really is the heart of the home and worked like a trooper for all out heat, hot water and cooking needs.

So will we do it again?

Is a bear in the woods Catholic??

The next Power Off Weekend is in June, so this time we will need to have a long think about refrigeration. We *just* got away with it this time, but any warmer and we would have struggled. So I will need to prepare more for that.

Any of you guys do Power Off this time?

Let me know how you got on and share your ups and downs.

Also, if anyone has any ideas how to keep fod cool in summer let me know!

Time to Power down for Power Off Weekend II

In five hours and 10 mins I will be turning off the electric for 48 hrs!!

Candles...Check.
Solar light....Check.
Baking like the wind....Check, check, check...

In actual fact I don't feel like I've made any great effort this time. Perhaps because I know what to expect this time. For a start its not snowy or dark by 3pm so this time it feels like it will be easy peasy! (Please don't point out I said that if something goes horribly wrong!!)

I've tided the house and garden, but that's more because I have friends coming for a Power Off lunch tomorrow.
I dug a fire pit to ***hopefully!!*** cook out for lunch.

The fact that it will still be daylight at 6 or 7pm makes the whole thing a lot more relaxed.

So anyway..signing out! Will be keeping a diary and taking pictures so look out for a new post some time on Monday 23rd!

Happy weekend folks! xx

The psychology of green-ness or "We're all class-less now, right?"

Although I have not always been as green as this (and its never enough is it!) I do remember always having it at the back of my mind.

Yes, even though I was a child of the decedent, wasteful 80's, in a household that, for a while at least, treated eating out and having takeaways as the norm rather than the exception, and credit cards took regular hammerings, even then I had an inkling that all was not as it should be.

(I should just point out here that my parents are now some of the greenest people I know!! love you mum!!xx)

Call it common sense maybe, but I began to despise waste, even when money was no real issue in my very early married years, I still saved leftovers and went to charity shops.

But then I began to realise that many people were not only apathetic to this mind set but openly hostile.

For example. About six months after my eldest son was born a neighbour announced she was pregnant. Naturally I went over to congratulate her and took a bag of baby clothes that Ollie had out grown. These where, for the most part, brand new clothes that had been worn once or twice. Anyone with babies know that clothes in the 0-6 months range only get a chance to be worn very briefly.
Well when I offered her the bag you would have thought I'd offered her the severed head of her husband.
She literally recoiled, mumbled that she wanted new clothes for her baby and that was pretty much the last I saw of her.

I had considered this an isolated incident but it happened more and more. People would give me a wide berth if I mentioned a love of charity shops, as though maybe wearing second hand clothes I was carrying some sort of poor disease they could catch.

Typical charity shop fayre ;)


When Kim happend to mention to his ex-boss about something he had brought in a charity shop (it may have been a jacket that was being admired at the time) She sneered and said "You'll never catch me in a charity shop!"

A woman was quoted in the newspaper, in a feature about vintage clothing (and charity shops) that she "...wouldn't shop in charity shops and would leave that to people who were too poor to buy new clothes."

And THAT dearies, nails it on the head!

Never mind that by buying goods at a charity shop you are... a) grabbing a bargain b)Donating money to charity, and c) keeping said good OUT of a landfill.

No no no, never mind all those reasons, the BIG one is that people don't want OTHER people to think they are POOR. That they can't affored to buy new.

The terror of appearing less than affluent surely stems from this idea that we're now all "middle class", that mother need never slave over a boiling pot of terry nappies while father cycles to his job down t'pit.
Now, of course, EVERYONE is entitled to a 50" TV and a 2 year old car and 2 weeks in the sun a year. A brand new mobile, 3 wardrobes of clothes they didn't need and don't wear.
We own this time kids! Lets throw some money at it and be happy!

It doesn't stop at an aversion to charity shops though. It means people would rather drive 2 miles to work than ride a bike. That they would rather throw away a perfectly good jacket than get the zip fixed, that they would rather struggle to pay the heating bills than turn it down and put on another sweater and pull a blanket over their knees on the sofa.

Its this stupid keeping up with the Joneses that is eroding not only the planet but any common sense we may have had in past generations.

I'll make a pledge if you make it too!

I solemnly swear, that should I win the lottery, I will STIIL cycle and buy charity shop stuff and use Freecycle/Freegle.

What about you?

The great heat Myth...

I have an old house.
I love my house but it is old, and while this means we have a lot of history and have come across some great surprises as we continue to renovate, it also means that we suffer in other ways.
Maybe its a karma thing ;)

When we moved in eight years ago we had single glazed windows and the first thing they tell you to do when you do a place up is to get double glazing in. So we did and for a while it was great, "No more condensation running down the windows!" We shouted, but what we failed to realise is that condensation is a tricksy beast.
Now the windows were too warm for it to cling too it sought out all the other cold spots in the house and clung to them.
So now, instead of wet windows we have things like wet walls.....not nice.
Our bathroom gets mouldy, the kids bedroom has to be wiped with a towel every day.

This winter has been a real problem as its been stupid oC for months and of course we've had the fire going all the time. So yes..condensation has become he bane of our lives  ....

BUT..... (and this is why I love the Internet!)

Last week I stumbled across the No Impact Man blog by Colin Beavan, and while perusing through his posts I came across a guest post by a family living in Japan.
Sean Sakamoto was worried about his first winter in Japan. His wife, Japanese born, couldn't believe that in America the whole house is heated! The whole post goes onto describe how they live happily without the fuel/electric guzzling whole house heat and what he learned about himself through that winter.
Go read ithe whole thing HERE its fantastic!!

Anyway, that night, before bed, I gave the kids and extra cover each and opened all the vents in the house and some of the windows a crack so they would still be locked, and guess what?
In the morning, little to no condensation!

The whole thing gave me pause for thought.
WHY do we feel the need to have our interior spaces hot enough to wear light clothing in?
Outside temperature has no bearing on your internal temperature. The trouble is, we've all heard about old people getting hypothermia in their homes and dying, but what we fail to realise is that the few who do die don't die from exposure, but from the inability to regulate cour body temperature. So if your very old and a little wooly thinking and you don't eat well enough you will get hypothermia and die.

Think about some of the coldest places in the world.
Do they have central heating in the mountains of Afghanistan? Is the wall of a Mongolian Yurt double insulated and fitted with radiators? Did the Native Americans abandon their TeePees in winter for an oil heated new build?
I saw a program about scientists at a base in Antarctica and they lived in glorified TENTS!! You could see light though the walls! In the height of summer its still -6-10 oC!!

In the winter we all tend to eat a little more. Its the bodies way of keeping you alive. So if your eating winter rations but living in summer heat (and many homes and offices are heated to 24oC and over all year!)you won't be burning off the extra calories will you?

Right now I would say its probably warmer outside than it is in my house! But I am sitting in the North end.
There is no heating, no fire, no nothing.
Windows are open, its not windy so why not?
I don't know how cold it is temperature wise but my breath is still steaming!
I'm dressed well and I'm not cold. Not even chilly. I put an extra sweater on, job done :)

So how can you cut the heat and still stay warm?
Here are some gleefully obvious tips!

1. Wear more clothes! Seriously, if there is snow outside you should not be wearing jeans and t-shirt inside. Layer up, wear a light fleece over the top of everything, always wear socks, two pairs if need be.

2. Eat well. Not an excuse to pig out but make sure you eat 3 hot meals a day. Skip the salad and go for vegetable soup instead. Have a bowl of porridge instead of cold cereal, eat warming carbohydrates for dinner.

3. Don't forget your drinks. You still need to stay hydrated and we all know about drinking your 6 -8 glasses of water a day but a cold glass of water is NOT what the doctor ordered! Try warm water with lemon or a herbal tea to get your water intake (normal tea and coffee don't count!) and for a treat a hot chocolate hits the spot every time!

4. Go outside! It's easy to sit inside all day if your heatings cranked up. Go outside for a few hours, get a walk, work in the garden. When you come inside you'll notice how warm your house really is, even without heating on!

5. Bedtime bliss! Make sure you have enough covers on your bed. A good trick is to have a second duvet UNDER your bed sheet as it helps to trap your body heat better than having the sheet directly on the mattress. Wear socks in bed, cold feet are responsible for most night time waking. Wear enough in bed..so jammies and a sweater in very cold weather!! And I don't have to point out the number one way of getting snuggy in bed do I?? Just remember to put the layers back on after ;)

6.Getting chilly watching TV or reading at night? Pull up a duvet or some blankets to snuggle under, much warmer than having the heating on!

Why not give it a go?
Your not only letting your house breath but yourself as well, condensed, stale air is no good for anyone!
Turning the heat down, leaving it off for part of the day, these are ways we can connect back with the seasons, and when the sun DOES shine it feels marvelous again.

PowerOff Weekend mark II !! Friday 19th March - Sun 21st March 2010.

I'm sure you all remember the fantastic PowerOff Weekend last December, if not you can read the diary I wrote for that HERE.

Well its time for round two! And this time I want you all to join in with us!!
No excuses now ;)

So what does it involve?
Simple, 48 hrs without electric, so no TV, internet, radio, computer games, electric cooker, electric hot water. electric heating, fridge, freezer, microwave.. You get the idea.

"Oh horrible! Terrible! Besides..." *shift eyes, wringing hands* "I can't do it...I have work/ friends visiting/ kids......(add extra get out clauses here!)"

I KNOW you guys and I KNOW you want to do it SO I want you all to know that I am here (along with Malcolm Handoll from Orkney) to hold your hand, to guide you through the problems. If you have a concern or question for gawd's sake ask me!! You could even plan to just do one day or only daylight hours? A little this time and maybe the whole 48 hrs next time.
Life isn't an all or nothing!

We learnt a lot from the last POW and I feel I can answer most questions sensibly.

Malcolm posted a FAQ spot on the last post about POW dec '09 HERE so you can have a little look there and maybe find your concern answered satisfactorily.
Unlike Malcolm I have kids and so can answer first hand your fear about how kids handle electricity deprivation, as well as basic safety concerns (ie, naked flames etc).

A nice touch is that this POW falls over the Wiccan celebration of Ostera (You know, the ones the Christian church stole and called Easter ;) so what better way to celebrate the re-birth of the land than doing something to protect it, even for one weekend.

You are brave passionate people, you can do this little thing!
So Comment!! Share your enthusiasm as well as your worries and reservations and we can support each other.

xx