WEBVTT 00:00:04.224 --> 00:00:07.692 Permaculture is really a way of farming for the long term. 00:00:07.724 --> 00:00:12.176 You're always building on soil fertility and bio-diversity, 00:00:12.207 --> 00:00:15.517 so that the land will always provide for you in the future, 00:00:15.596 --> 00:00:19.868 be that a garden, a window box, a farm or a whole town. 00:00:19.912 --> 00:00:24.878 With modern or conventional farming, everything is just focused on short return. 00:00:25.043 --> 00:00:29.499 It's robbing the soil of its life and richness for the future 00:00:29.562 --> 00:00:31.469 and that's what makes it unsustainable. 00:00:31.603 --> 00:00:36.230 We're trying to meet as many of our needs as possible, 00:00:36.293 --> 00:00:37.536 from the land that we've got here. 00:00:37.614 --> 00:00:41.838 In the summer we supply pretty much all of our vegetable needs. 00:00:41.924 --> 00:00:44.134 For example, eggs... 00:00:44.159 --> 00:00:45.378 we never have to buy eggs. 00:00:45.402 --> 00:00:48.740 Those are two simple things that most people could do. 00:00:48.794 --> 00:00:52.716 But I don't think anyone should really aim to be completely self sufficient. 00:00:52.818 --> 00:00:57.402 It's much easier working as a group of people to meet more of your needs. 00:00:57.457 --> 00:01:01.013 Somebody might keep goats and somebody else might keep bees, 00:01:01.074 --> 00:01:04.193 so you would exchange honey for milk perhaps. 00:01:04.307 --> 00:01:07.956 The most important thing is not to try to do without money, 00:01:08.019 --> 00:01:11.225 it's to try to keep your money within your local economy. 00:01:11.504 --> 00:01:16.653 If there comes a time when we can't import or export anymore, 00:01:16.771 --> 00:01:20.392 then you've got to be able to rely on your local economy to meet your needs. 00:01:20.497 --> 00:01:24.537 Unfortunately, the days of importing are going to have to come to an end. 00:01:24.616 --> 00:01:30.858 It's going to become so expensive to ship or fly things over to this country. 00:01:30.965 --> 00:01:34.595 Dependency on oil is bad because it's going to run out. 00:01:34.720 --> 00:01:38.166 We're fast approaching peak oil and once we hit that, 00:01:38.292 --> 00:01:41.221 oil is just going to get more and more expensive, 00:01:41.390 --> 00:01:45.139 and that makes pretty much all of life really expensive. 00:01:45.206 --> 00:01:48.818 We farm here without the use of any machinery, 00:01:48.841 --> 00:01:51.845 that cuts out nearly all of our needs for any oil. 00:01:51.866 --> 00:01:55.194 When you start looking into it, it's hard to live without oil 00:01:55.240 --> 00:01:57.220 because everything's made of plastic. 00:01:57.587 --> 00:02:02.669 Meat farming is unfortunately - and I do eat meat - 00:02:02.714 --> 00:02:06.794 one of the most unsustainable things we do in this country. 00:02:06.867 --> 00:02:11.070 Meat farming, as it is now, makes most of our farmland 00:02:11.096 --> 00:02:14.024 either arable crops or grassland. 00:02:14.071 --> 00:02:15.945 Particularly the arable side of things, 00:02:16.071 --> 00:02:19.334 farmers are taking out hedgerows, taking out trees. 00:02:19.429 --> 00:02:22.510 There's nowhere for the birds to live. There's nowhere for anything to live! 00:02:22.664 --> 00:02:25.582 I'm not saying that we should stop eating meat, 00:02:25.674 --> 00:02:29.902 but, my personal goal for this year is to mostly eat game. 00:02:30.027 --> 00:02:37.083 It's a cheap, affordable meat and it's wild, so it requires no energy input. 00:02:37.192 --> 00:02:41.910 In one shop, I picked up a pack of organic pork sausages 00:02:41.981 --> 00:02:44.434 and looked at the ingredients list, 00:02:44.481 --> 00:02:47.600 as many people don't do and you really should. 00:02:47.693 --> 00:02:50.586 The pork was from five different European countries. 00:02:50.592 --> 00:02:52.054 Why is that necessary? 00:02:52.101 --> 00:02:54.985 We've got perfectly good pork in this country. 00:02:55.231 --> 00:02:59.111 With vegetables, if you go and look at where everything's come from, 00:02:59.172 --> 00:03:01.880 it does tell you in tiny little writing, 00:03:01.919 --> 00:03:03.934 the British stuff will be cheaper, 00:03:03.977 --> 00:03:07.134 because it doesn't have the added cost of flying it in. 00:03:07.239 --> 00:03:11.848 In the past that hasn't been the case, because British food was more fashionable 00:03:11.893 --> 00:03:15.221 so they put a higher mark up on it, but now, 00:03:15.257 --> 00:03:18.057 of course, with oil getting more expensive, 00:03:18.141 --> 00:03:21.450 local food will become more affordable. 00:03:21.488 --> 00:03:23.161 At the moment it is all about money. 00:03:23.207 --> 00:03:27.139 Modern farming is the way it is because, in my opinion, 00:03:27.249 --> 00:03:30.388 it's easy, in that it can all be done by machine. 00:03:30.457 --> 00:03:34.130 At the moment, it is cheaper, but not by a lot. 00:03:34.180 --> 00:03:38.740 It is becoming cheaper to farm organically, but you don't need a lot of money 00:03:38.795 --> 00:03:40.817 to start a project like this at all. 00:03:40.931 --> 00:03:44.361 We've set up this project and run it for two and a half years 00:03:44.415 --> 00:03:46.814 with absolutely no funding whatsoever. 00:03:46.850 --> 00:03:51.686 Living off the land as I do, I know, isn't for everybody, 00:03:51.735 --> 00:03:57.699 but everybody can achieve some portion of what I'm doing, in a window box even. 00:03:57.837 --> 00:04:01.343 I think we can make the future a lot better for ourselves by preparing.