The Power of Community: DVD Review
You would have to be living under a large, large rock to not have heard about the concept of Peak Oil. It's scary stuff – much debated by many, scoffed by some, acknowledged as a player on the field by all. Something's going on with the oil. Who can access it depends on who is friends with who this week, and it is something that all the major car companies are trying to prepare for (a sure sign that someone high up in their respective corporate structures is mighty tetchy about it). Down here at the 'little ol' me' level, the implications of this sort of change is… unsettling, to say the least.
I must admit I went through a little bit of a stage last year where I was feeling quite overwhelmed by the implications of energy descent, as it is sometimes called. We flapped about, trying to figure out what, if anything, we could do. Should we be trying to live in the city or the country? Was living in a densely populated suburb a potential asset or a disadvantage in the event of a sharp change, or even a slow change, in energy descent?
This documentary was one of the first examples I saw last year of how an urban population with a relatively high standard of living dealt with a sharp drop-off in energy (in this case oil) supply… and it was inspiring stuff. Enter the republic of Cuba, during the Special Period (that's the official term) in 1991…
I am often coming across plants and trees that I don’t know the names of. Which isn’t very unusual, i know, but once you start wanting to figure out how your surrounding environment works, being able to identify what plant is growing where leads to why that plant is growing there, which quickly leads to the beginnings of an integrated understanding of one’s surroundings. Hopefully.
Out in the rural areas of NSW (and probably in other states of Australia as well) this book has been causing a minor furore. Country town bookstores were selling out of all their copies in a day, everyone was talking about it, everyone wanted to read it, everyone was ordering in a copy for their father/wife/husband/themselves because the word on the street was that it contained mighty important information about how to drought-proof your land.
Just a note that we are rip-roaring ready to go on our 'Introduction to Permaculture' courses, which will be held in Sydney, Mudgee and Kiama before Christmas 2007. 
Self seeded fruit trees in culverts, old orchards on abandoned sites, food trees hanging over the fence into the back laneway. It’s all what is known as ‘feral fruit’ and it’s one of the best, if unheralded, community resources an area has, whether you be in an inner-city suburb or out in the middle of nowhere.