The event is selling out fast, so click now to ensure entry!
Sustainable Living Symposium
Monday, March 23, 2009
2009 Sustainable Living Symposium
I will be giving a presentation on Designed Landscapes for Food, Fibre & Energy at the Sustainable Living Symposium at 10:30 am at Loyalist College in Belleville, Ontario. Click the banner below for more information.
The event is selling out fast, so click now to ensure entry!
Sustainable Living Symposium
The event is selling out fast, so click now to ensure entry!
Sustainable Living Symposium
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Remembering a great man: Masanobu Fukuoka
Sadly, natural farming innovator Masanobu Fukuoka passed away yesterday, Saturday, August 16, 2008, at his home in Iyo, Ehime Prefecture, Japan of old age. He was 95.Fukuoka authored a number of books including One Straw Revolution: The Natural Way of Farming and The Natural Way of farming: The Theory and Practice of Green Philosophy, both of which are available in English. Fukuoka taught us to observe nature and work with it rather than trying to impose our desires on the land. He also popularized the use of seed balls, which has been used in agriculture and in re-greening projects.
The father of the permaculture movement, Bill Mollison, spoke very highly of Mr. Fukuoka and said that, before hearing of Fukuoka's work, he could not see a way to produce grains sustainably, and had not thought they could be incorporated into permaculture.
Around the world, Fukuoka's work resonated with people and it continues to be adopted and applied to different conditions around the world. His work and his teachings remain a great inspiration to us and we will miss him.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Killing me softly with his investments
On Thursday, June 12, 2008, CBC's The Current did a report called Buying Farmland about the trend of financial investment firms to buy up farms worldwide (after they devastated all the other markets available to them). One of the guests was Gary Blumenthal, president and CEO of World Perspectives, an agricultural investment consulting firm. Among other things, Blumenthal claimed that large farms are more productive (any agricultural census will demonstrate that this is false) and that peasant subsistence farming was not conductive to maximising human potential (not that this is the business that World Perspectives engages in, mind you). The following is my response sent to The Current:
Listening to your report on investors buying farmland, I was deeply impressed by Gary Blumenthal's willingness to demonstrate his ignorance of both agriculture and the economy.
He tells us that "half of all production in the U.S. comes from just 34,000 farms." This says nothing about the relative efficiency of farms with respect to size, it only tells us the status quo, as though mere existence is an indicator of efficiency.
Looking at the data from the USDA census, we find that the most productive farms are small farms with production rapidly falling off as acreage increases. And any positive production on large farms is based on fudging the numbers. If you consider that on these farms it takes an average nine calories of energy to produce one calorie of food crop, you quickly realise that the energy intensive, poorly yielding large farm does not have a future.
Furthermore, traditional peasant systems, elements of which I use in the systems I design, normally require little input in terms of time and energy. Assuming there is a tradition of sustainable agriculture in the region, peasant agriculture is not arduous. What is genuinely disastrous is the repeat of England's Enclosure which is currently being played out across the Third World. It does not "maximise human potential" to force people off the land and into shanty towns to become $4-a-day sweatshop workers.
Considering that people like Gary Blumenthal are going to have increasing say over farm administration, my advice to listeners as a designer of sustainable agriculture systems is to start to forgo your flowerbeds and grow as much of your own food as possible.
Douglas Barnes
President
EcoEdge Design Ltd.
Listening to your report on investors buying farmland, I was deeply impressed by Gary Blumenthal's willingness to demonstrate his ignorance of both agriculture and the economy.
He tells us that "half of all production in the U.S. comes from just 34,000 farms." This says nothing about the relative efficiency of farms with respect to size, it only tells us the status quo, as though mere existence is an indicator of efficiency.
Looking at the data from the USDA census, we find that the most productive farms are small farms with production rapidly falling off as acreage increases. And any positive production on large farms is based on fudging the numbers. If you consider that on these farms it takes an average nine calories of energy to produce one calorie of food crop, you quickly realise that the energy intensive, poorly yielding large farm does not have a future.
Furthermore, traditional peasant systems, elements of which I use in the systems I design, normally require little input in terms of time and energy. Assuming there is a tradition of sustainable agriculture in the region, peasant agriculture is not arduous. What is genuinely disastrous is the repeat of England's Enclosure which is currently being played out across the Third World. It does not "maximise human potential" to force people off the land and into shanty towns to become $4-a-day sweatshop workers.Considering that people like Gary Blumenthal are going to have increasing say over farm administration, my advice to listeners as a designer of sustainable agriculture systems is to start to forgo your flowerbeds and grow as much of your own food as possible.
Douglas Barnes
President
EcoEdge Design Ltd.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Home Design in Cold Climates
Home Design in Cold Climates
by Douglas Barnes
I am currently in the process of designing a home for myself and my wife. Living in Canada, the number one priority is warmth. To solve that problem, we must focus on energy capture and energy storage.
To capture energy, the house will be oriented with the long side facing the sun. This side will be fenestrated to allow the entry of solar energy from the sun (which, strikes the Earth with over 950 Watts per hour per square metre before any loses come into play). The energy needs to be stored once it has entered the home or the house will heat up nicely in the daytime but become quite cold in the evening. In this case, the main storage will be a monolithic concrete slab floor.[1] In addition to this storage, there will be a masonry fireplace, whose massive brick structure will hold energy, and earthen or lime rendering of the walls will also help.
Windows are good. Too many windows are bad. So, fenestration will be reasonable. We will match percentage of window area with our latitude. We’ll be building in Southern Ontario at about 45o north latitude, so we’ll have around 45% window area on the southern wall.[2] Too many passive solar homes in Ontario have nervously designed what amount to glass walls on the south side thinking that if a little is good, a lot is better. The result is over-heated homes. While there are some who might not mind 30oC temperatures inside in January, they certainly don’t like the over-heating that will occur at other times of the year.
The Canadian Housing and Mortgage Corporation recommends making thermal mass (the dense material that serves as heat storage – concrete, brick, and mud in this case) be around ten times greater in area than the area of sun-side fenestration.
General layout of the rooms recognizes at what times the rooms are used during the day. The first place people go in the morning is the kitchen. It therefore makes sense to place the kitchen on the southeast side of the building (northeast if you are in the southern hemisphere). In this way, light and solar heat is available first thing in the morning. From there, other rooms follow the sun according to the usage of the room. The exception is the dining room which is placed next to the kitchen for practical reasons.
With this information, it is possible to design a building that performs brilliantly from an energy perspective. However, there is no guarantee that the house will be even remotely livable inside.[3] To make the home a place that I actually want to live in and keep for the rest of my life, I am using Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language to design the home.
Another advantage to the passive solar layout is that it creates a nice pattern in the home. A long, thin home has a series of rooms one after another. This helps create privacy in the home and avoids giving the house an overcrowded feeling.
by Douglas Barnes
I am currently in the process of designing a home for myself and my wife. Living in Canada, the number one priority is warmth. To solve that problem, we must focus on energy capture and energy storage.
To capture energy, the house will be oriented with the long side facing the sun. This side will be fenestrated to allow the entry of solar energy from the sun (which, strikes the Earth with over 950 Watts per hour per square metre before any loses come into play). The energy needs to be stored once it has entered the home or the house will heat up nicely in the daytime but become quite cold in the evening. In this case, the main storage will be a monolithic concrete slab floor.[1] In addition to this storage, there will be a masonry fireplace, whose massive brick structure will hold energy, and earthen or lime rendering of the walls will also help.
Windows are good. Too many windows are bad. So, fenestration will be reasonable. We will match percentage of window area with our latitude. We’ll be building in Southern Ontario at about 45o north latitude, so we’ll have around 45% window area on the southern wall.[2] Too many passive solar homes in Ontario have nervously designed what amount to glass walls on the south side thinking that if a little is good, a lot is better. The result is over-heated homes. While there are some who might not mind 30oC temperatures inside in January, they certainly don’t like the over-heating that will occur at other times of the year.
The Canadian Housing and Mortgage Corporation recommends making thermal mass (the dense material that serves as heat storage – concrete, brick, and mud in this case) be around ten times greater in area than the area of sun-side fenestration.
General layout of the rooms recognizes at what times the rooms are used during the day. The first place people go in the morning is the kitchen. It therefore makes sense to place the kitchen on the southeast side of the building (northeast if you are in the southern hemisphere). In this way, light and solar heat is available first thing in the morning. From there, other rooms follow the sun according to the usage of the room. The exception is the dining room which is placed next to the kitchen for practical reasons.
With this information, it is possible to design a building that performs brilliantly from an energy perspective. However, there is no guarantee that the house will be even remotely livable inside.[3] To make the home a place that I actually want to live in and keep for the rest of my life, I am using Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language to design the home.
Another advantage to the passive solar layout is that it creates a nice pattern in the home. A long, thin home has a series of rooms one after another. This helps create privacy in the home and avoids giving the house an overcrowded feeling.
In too many modern homes these days, visitors immediately have full view of the private areas of the home as soon as they enter, and sometimes as they approach the main entrance. There needs to be a gradient of intimacy from public to private areas of the house.
The interior space must have a natural flow that takes into account the uses of the space inside. Hallways and corridors have been avoided as much as possible. Rather, movement flows through rooms making some areas very social and inviting to people moving through the building.
The common area of the home is at the heart of the building that intersects with all the major traffic flows throughout the home.
There is a sequence of seating spaces in the home that offer different levels of intimacy. The living room has a main seating area that is very social. It’s on the main path through the home, in a sunny place, and centrally located. Just off this main space are two other seating options ranging from semi-private to private. There is also a sunny nook off the kitchen. An additional seating space will be available on the second floor (which is currently being revised).
While this does not include every pattern I used in the design, it highlights the main ones that had the most influence in guiding the layout of the interior spaces.
1. The optimal thickness for thermal mass storage is 4 inches thick. Any thicker and diminishing returns start. If it is too thin, it will heat up and cool down too readily rendering the mass less effective. (For example, tile on subflooring heats up and cools down so fast as to have no appreciable effect in storing energy.)
2. This is Bill Mollison’s rule of thumb, and I have checked it out with a local architect and friend, Steve Hilditch (hilditch-architect.com), who has designed passive solar homes. Steve agrees that Mollison’s ratio is appropriate for this area.
3. I have a number of friends that have built many homes for themselves in the same area. After each one is build, they find that the house was not what they really wanted, so they sell and build a new place, hoping that it will be the right one. The error is that the layout of the home was not approached with a recognition of what problems one faces in designing a space. For example, when designing the entrance, it needs to be readily apparent what the entrance is; there needs to be a transition from the inside to the outside; and there needs to be some sort of an entrance room that creates a public space for visitors that is separate from the private areas of the home. This is just one example of many problems in design that must be addressed in the layout of the house.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Permaculture Books
Permaculture Books
I get asked frequently enough to recommend books that it warrants a look at some of my most favourite books. Originally, I had thought to just go through my entire library and write a brief synopsis of each book. The list, however, would likely be longer than any reader would care to parse through and certainly longer than I would care to write. Instead, I will just go through the top ten books that I use the most.
Without further ado:
Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual by Bill Mollison. Simply put, this book is a must if you are a designer. And it is sort of like a martial artist’s black belt: the experienced designer’s book starts getting frayed over the years. Even weighing in at a hefty 1,520 grams, it always goes out with me whenever I am designing a site.
The book introduces the permaculture concept, covers how to go about designing and methods of design, patterns in nature, climate, trees and their impacts on environments, water in systems, soil and soil health, earthworks, designing in the humid tropics, designing in drylands, designing in cool and cold temperate regions, aquaculture, and strategies for designing on a society-wide scale.
Introduction to Permaculture by Bill Mollison with Reny Mia Slay. Introduction to Permaculture is basically a condensed version of the Designer’s Manual. Most of the topics of the Manual are in Introduction, though with a few variations on some of the techniques illustrated.
Edible Forest Gardens Volume 2: Ecological Design and practice for Temperate Climate Permaculture by Dave Jacke with Eric Toensmeier. It is not a mistake putting Volume 2 first. The appendices of this book have excellent quick-reference information on plants that is invaluable. Most permaculturists have these tables of plants floating around in notebooks or on hard drives; but this book puts a huge collection of temperate plants together in one format. It is an expensive book, but the 149 pages of appendices alone make it worth every penny. The rest of the book has practical information on designing and establishing forest gardens.
Edible Forest Gardens Volume One: Ecological Vision and Theory for Temperate Climate Permaculture by Dave Jacke with Eric Toensmeier. A handy but hefty text on forest gardening for people who are intimate with sub-zero winters. Volume One introduces the theory behind the integrated approach to edible forest gardens and has a handy “Top 100” plant list in the appendix.
Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Save the World By Paul Stamets. I agree with the author that this is his most important book. In writing this book, he was terrified that he would have a heart attack or a car accident and never get it finished. Thankfully he did. Reader’s will want to look elsewhere for a basic understanding of mushrooms, but with a brief introductory background, this book will change the way you look at the world. There is no clearer illustration of the importance of the interconnection of organisms in ecosystems than this book. After reading it, it might even have you wincing with each step the next time you walk through a forest. But the book is not only theory. It has tested and proven techniques for rehabilitating devastated landscapes and strengthening currently existing systems. It also opens up a huge new avenue in energy cycling. Our standard waste-to-compost cycles can be expanded into waste-to-mushroom-production (and secondary and tertiary mushroom production) to compost to soil. Or better still, waste to mushroom production to animal feed production, the waste from which can then go to mushroom production or compost or biogas to compost. The combinations are exciting to say the least.
Cornucopia II: A Source Book of Edible Plants by Stephen Facciola. I call it the phone book of plants. It is the closest thing to an exhaustive list of the world’s edible plants. I have used it to suggest plants for overseas systems and used it to cross-reference many plants in many different situations. Here’s an example of a random listing:
Eleusine coracana – Ragi, Finger millet {S}. Grains are boiled and eaten as a cereal or porridge, popped, malted, ground into flour for use in cakes, breads, and puddings, or made into a beer-like alcoholic beverage called marwa. Other fermented foods made from the grain include ambali, kaffir beer, busaa, merissa, chang, and munkoyo. In India, the flour is boiled in diluted buttermilk and kept overnight for use the next morning. Ragi malt is mixed with milk to form a refreshing beverage. The leaves are also edible. Tropical Asia, cultivated.
A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein with Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King, Shlomo Angel. The book just hints at the subject of passive solar design, so it cannot help much on that front. But when it comes to designing a livable home or a complex of buildings put together in a functional pattern, the book is invaluable. After reading this book, I can understand why so many people buy a home then want to move out after just a few years. Most buildings do not recognise the aspects of design that makes them places where people want to spend their time. If you are designing a home, keep the general design in tune with your climate, but use this book to show you how to make it a functional home.
Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms By Paul Stamets. This thick text covers growing dozens of mushrooms on different substrates indoors and out, and it even has recipes. If you get hooked after reading Mycelium Running, you are going to want to get this book. At 575 pages, it packs in a lot of really useful information.
The Organic Gardener’s Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control: A Complete Problem-Solving Guide to Keeping Your Garden and Yard Healthy without Chemicals, edited by Barbara W. Ellis and Fern Bradley. This Rodale book does not cover every single method of pest control you will need, but it is a handy reference for identifying friends and foes and suggests methods to balance your system and reduce foes.
The Permaculture Book of Ferment and Human Nutrition by Bill Mollison. This unique book covers preserving, storing and cooking, fungi, grains, legumes, roots and bulbs, fruits, nuts, flowers and oil, edible plant stems and leaves, aquatic food sources both fresh and salt water, meats, dairy, fermented beverages (hooray!), spices and sauces, composts, silages and liquid manures, and an excellent section on nutrition and environmental health. Sometimes cross-referencing brings me to this book. But most of the time, I just open it up because it is fascinating.
There are many, many other useful books I did not include in this list, but they often are very specific like seed saving, growing organic apples, constructed wetlands, etc. They are incredible books, but to keep a general list that would be useful to the largest group, I whittled down about 100 books to just these 10. It is not necessary for someone to have all ten books on their shelves and not all these books are suitable for all climates. These are the ones that I have used the most so far and are broad enough to interest a wide audience of readers.
I get asked frequently enough to recommend books that it warrants a look at some of my most favourite books. Originally, I had thought to just go through my entire library and write a brief synopsis of each book. The list, however, would likely be longer than any reader would care to parse through and certainly longer than I would care to write. Instead, I will just go through the top ten books that I use the most.
Without further ado:
Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual by Bill Mollison. Simply put, this book is a must if you are a designer. And it is sort of like a martial artist’s black belt: the experienced designer’s book starts getting frayed over the years. Even weighing in at a hefty 1,520 grams, it always goes out with me whenever I am designing a site.The book introduces the permaculture concept, covers how to go about designing and methods of design, patterns in nature, climate, trees and their impacts on environments, water in systems, soil and soil health, earthworks, designing in the humid tropics, designing in drylands, designing in cool and cold temperate regions, aquaculture, and strategies for designing on a society-wide scale.
Introduction to Permaculture by Bill Mollison with Reny Mia Slay. Introduction to Permaculture is basically a condensed version of the Designer’s Manual. Most of the topics of the Manual are in Introduction, though with a few variations on some of the techniques illustrated.Edible Forest Gardens Volume 2: Ecological Design and practice for Temperate Climate Permaculture by Dave Jacke with Eric Toensmeier. It is not a mistake putting Volume 2 first. The appendices of this book have excellent quick-reference information on plants that is invaluable. Most permaculturists have these tables of plants floating around in notebooks or on hard drives; but this book puts a huge collection of temperate plants together in one format. It is an expensive book, but the 149 pages of appendices alone make it worth every penny. The rest of the book has practical information on designing and establishing forest gardens.
Edible Forest Gardens Volume One: Ecological Vision and Theory for Temperate Climate Permaculture by Dave Jacke with Eric Toensmeier. A handy but hefty text on forest gardening for people who are intimate with sub-zero winters. Volume One introduces the theory behind the integrated approach to edible forest gardens and has a handy “Top 100” plant list in the appendix.
Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Save the World By Paul Stamets. I agree with the author that this is his most important book. In writing this book, he was terrified that he would have a heart attack or a car accident and never get it finished. Thankfully he did. Reader’s will want to look elsewhere for a basic understanding of mushrooms, but with a brief introductory background, this book will change the way you look at the world. There is no clearer illustration of the importance of the interconnection of organisms in ecosystems than this book. After reading it, it might even have you wincing with each step the next time you walk through a forest. But the book is not only theory. It has tested and proven techniques for rehabilitating devastated landscapes and strengthening currently existing systems. It also opens up a huge new avenue in energy cycling. Our standard waste-to-compost cycles can be expanded into waste-to-mushroom-production (and secondary and tertiary mushroom production) to compost to soil. Or better still, waste to mushroom production to animal feed production, the waste from which can then go to mushroom production or compost or biogas to compost. The combinations are exciting to say the least.
Cornucopia II: A Source Book of Edible Plants by Stephen Facciola. I call it the phone book of plants. It is the closest thing to an exhaustive list of the world’s edible plants. I have used it to suggest plants for overseas systems and used it to cross-reference many plants in many different situations. Here’s an example of a random listing:Eleusine coracana – Ragi, Finger millet {S}. Grains are boiled and eaten as a cereal or porridge, popped, malted, ground into flour for use in cakes, breads, and puddings, or made into a beer-like alcoholic beverage called marwa. Other fermented foods made from the grain include ambali, kaffir beer, busaa, merissa, chang, and munkoyo. In India, the flour is boiled in diluted buttermilk and kept overnight for use the next morning. Ragi malt is mixed with milk to form a refreshing beverage. The leaves are also edible. Tropical Asia, cultivated.
A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein with Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King, Shlomo Angel. The book just hints at the subject of passive solar design, so it cannot help much on that front. But when it comes to designing a livable home or a complex of buildings put together in a functional pattern, the book is invaluable. After reading this book, I can understand why so many people buy a home then want to move out after just a few years. Most buildings do not recognise the aspects of design that makes them places where people want to spend their time. If you are designing a home, keep the general design in tune with your climate, but use this book to show you how to make it a functional home.Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms By Paul Stamets. This thick text covers growing dozens of mushrooms on different substrates indoors and out, and it even has recipes. If you get hooked after reading Mycelium Running, you are going to want to get this book. At 575 pages, it packs in a lot of really useful information.
The Organic Gardener’s Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control: A Complete Problem-Solving Guide to Keeping Your Garden and Yard Healthy without Chemicals, edited by Barbara W. Ellis and Fern Bradley. This Rodale book does not cover every single method of pest control you will need, but it is a handy reference for identifying friends and foes and suggests methods to balance your system and reduce foes.
The Permaculture Book of Ferment and Human Nutrition by Bill Mollison. This unique book covers preserving, storing and cooking, fungi, grains, legumes, roots and bulbs, fruits, nuts, flowers and oil, edible plant stems and leaves, aquatic food sources both fresh and salt water, meats, dairy, fermented beverages (hooray!), spices and sauces, composts, silages and liquid manures, and an excellent section on nutrition and environmental health. Sometimes cross-referencing brings me to this book. But most of the time, I just open it up because it is fascinating.There are many, many other useful books I did not include in this list, but they often are very specific like seed saving, growing organic apples, constructed wetlands, etc. They are incredible books, but to keep a general list that would be useful to the largest group, I whittled down about 100 books to just these 10. It is not necessary for someone to have all ten books on their shelves and not all these books are suitable for all climates. These are the ones that I have used the most so far and are broad enough to interest a wide audience of readers.
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