News From the Hill

Archive for September, 2009

Some brightness as the days get shorter and the leaves are beginning to fall…

Our entire apple harvest made one yummy crumble

Our first water lilly flower getting ready to bloom

Fully blooming, how lovely

Are you interested in seeing the International Space Station as it flies overhead?
I have been lucky enough to see it twice recently.

Just last week I was camping at a beach on the west coast of Ireland and happened, by chance, to see the space station pass overhead. I was really amazed at how fast it was as it moved steadily over my tent.

For a moment I thought that it might be a aeroplane however I realised that it was moving far too fast and was also too bright to be an aeroplane.

Anyhow, now that I am wandering through twitter-land I found a great site that will tell my twitter account when the space station is flying over.

I have yet to find out how accurate it is however I will let you all know how it turns out…

I am playing with twitter to see whether or not it is fun…

This is where you can find me if you like to twit too -

Yes, I do get the irony, I have just posted on simplifying life and here I go adding complications! Well, sure it might not last, I may get fed up and stop or I may not.

Let’s see what happens…

I copied these question from another blog so long ago that I cannot remember where I got them – apologies to the blogger who should be getting the credit for them. Thanks to the blogger who gave me the bones for this post.

I imagine that it must have a simple living blog of some sort and I am sure that it was a very good blog if I was reading it

QUESTIONS:
1.Why are you simplifying?
Keep it simple is a piece of good advice that I heard many years ago, you can choose to apply that advice to any aspect of living, I try to apply it to most. Complicated living becomes stressssssfull living – who needs to bring added stress into their lives? I certainly don’t, so I try to keep life as simple as possible, it’s not always easy but it is worth it.
I have never thought of what I am doing as “simplifying”, I am just attempting to keep it simple.

2.What convinced you that you should change how you live?
I am not aware of any sudden change in attitude, I have always had high regard for the environment and was brought up with great respect for nature. My parents both grew up in a time where things were reused whenever possible, recycling had not been invented, it didn’t need to be, people were not well off and made the utmost use of everything, nothing was thrown away. They passed this on to my siblings and myself.

3.What was the first thing major thing you changed?
Moving to a green field site in the countryside gave us the opportunity to live off-grid and learn to build a wind turbine and our own house (on-going project)

4.How do you see yourself changing in the future?
We want to become much more self-sufficient with regard to food and transport. Transport will probably be our biggest challenge living where we do. It is the one major disadvantage to living in an isolated place in Ireland, public transport is very poor still in most parts of rural Ireland.
As we become more independent with regard to food then that will already mean less journeys to town for basic shopping so increasing our food independence may help reduce our reliance on private transport.
I also want to learn more about making use of the woodlands and hedgerows around here and perhaps learn to make rudimentary furniture for our garden.
I would love to have a horse in the future however that would require more land than we have at present so it is not likely to happen anytime soon.
As to more personal changes – I guess that is another post…

An excerpt from  Sustainable Energy – without the hot air – David J.C. MacKay
UIT Cambridge, 2008. ISBN 978-0-9544529-3-3. Available free online
from www.withouthotair.com.

“One of the main sinks of energy in the “developed” world is the creation of stuff. In its natural life cycle, stuff passes through three stages. First, a new-born stuff is displayed in shiny packaging on a shelf in a shop. At this stage, stuff is called “goods.” As soon as the stuff is taken home and sheds its packaging, it undergoes a transformation from “goods” to its second form, “clutter.” The clutter lives with its owner for a period of months or years.
During this period, the clutter is largely ignored by its owner, who is off at the shops buying more goods. Eventually, by a miracle of modern alchemy, the clutter is transformed into its final form, rubbish. To the untrained eye, it can be difficult to distinguish this “rubbish” from the highly desirable “good” that it used to be. Nonetheless, at this stage the discerning owner pays the dustman to transport the stuff away. ”

He didn’t  mention that many people, in the in between stage, often buy more stuff in which to store the stuff which they don’t use but are not ready to discard yet. That sure is a handy earner, selling stuff to people to keep their stuff in so as to make room for yet more stuff.

It’s a funny  old world…