Being green is hard!

We all want to save the planet. We may not be signed up to Green peace or Extinction Rebellion, but very few of us are blind to the problems that face Planet Earth and the part that humans have had in the crisis.

So we should do something about it, right?

I love to read books about being green. My latest two are:

However, I find that a lot of people who write or blog about being green seem to live in their very own little utopia (I'd love to be corrected on this, so please feel free to comment). It's just that, while actions are suggested with optimism and energy, there's very little acknowledgement of how hard these changes are for people in the real world. We all want to make the changes, but it's not as simple as waving a magic wand.

So we should all shop local and seasonal, buy at farmers' markets or make use of those brilliant zero waste shops? We should leave the car at home and cycle everywhere?

Fantastic idea!

However:

• We don't all live in a metropolis where we use public transport to get to work and wander past little rows of shops with a grocer.
• We don't all have a lifestyle that allows us to get into town when the market is on.
• Most of us have to drop the kids off to school on the way to work, then rush to pick them up and get them to their next activity.
• We live lives where we balance work, family life, voluntary work, pet care, home care and maybe even a little self-care or sleep - there really isn't much extra time in there!
• Most of us live in places where public transport is shoddy at best and costs a fortune.
• For most of us, going to town (where the grocers and the Farmers' Market and the Zero Waste shop can be found) involves driving and paying for parking.

We all know that supermarkets over-transport and over-package their goods, but sadly they have developed to offer convenience and efficiency for those of us who live busy, rushed lives.  It's hard to walk away from that, even though we know it needs to be done.

Use less plastic and eat less meat?

I agree with both of these.

These are definitely changes we need to make to help our planet. However, again, we don't all live a life where that's easy to do.

Most of us live in families.

It's hard enough to change our own habits, let alone to change other people.

If you're making packed lunches for four, switching from pre-packaged (in plastic) snacks and products to home-made goodness is appealing, but takes time and planning. Equally, eating less meat requires you to learn new recipes, meals and ways of cooking, which need to be delicious enough to convince certain members of the family that get confused if a meal has no meat in it.

So of course we want to be greener, but let's just acknowledge that part of the reason we are in the predicament we are in, is because we are in a crazy spiral where lifestyles rely on convenience and convenience relies on lifestyle. Some of the changes we need to make will require big changes to our priorities and our lives.

Let's just acknowledge that this is not an easy thing for people to do.

Let's also get rid of the idea that the only way to make a difference is to go the whole hog and become a green, vegan, tree-hugging super-hero. I mean, hats-off to those green super-heroes, but let's remember that every little helps (oh no! I see what I did there!). If we all look at the problem and think that it's too big to solve, that there's no point because we can't do it all, then the problem won't get any smaller at all.

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" Lao Tzu

 If we all do one small thing to make a difference, what a great big difference that will make. Once one change in your life has been successfully made, you can start to make another.

We're going to do this. We have to do this. But we can do it one step at a time.

A wildlife friendly garden - making a pond

 You might think that making a wildlife pond in your garden is a major undertaking, both in terms of financial outlay and time and energy taken.

I can assure you that it doesn't have to be a big job.

This pond went from a delivery in a cardboard box to complete in under an hour and a half, and the whole thing cost around £40.

First, the pond liner from Amazon:

I also got some oxygenating pond plants:

1. Decide on your spot.  You want somewhere that gets some sunlight, but not all-day direct sunlight otherwise it will get pretty warm and evaporate quite quickly, as well as going green.  Of course, you can dig a hole and sink your pond into the ground if you want.  I've done this in the front garden with exactly the same type of liner.  However, you don't HAVE to do this, and it's absolutely possible to put a simple pond on a patio.  Mine is in a gravelled corner next to a wall and near an olive tree.

2. Build up some support underneath.  I was considering buying some 2x4 timber and building a support for my pond, but decided that with the curvy edges that didn't fit with the "easy project" I was looking for.  However, you need to bear in mind that water is heavy, so you will need something underneath your liner to give it some support around the edges.  I put some bricks underneath the shelved areas and built up with some rubble that we've had stacked against the wall for a couple of years.   

You may wonder what the yellow hose in this picture is... it's the overflow from our water-butt. It's gravity fed over to this corner to keep it away from the timber of the garage. I've just bent it around and left it some space.  To be honest, the water butt doesn't have much in it at the moment, as I've now put most of the water into the pond!

3. Next, put some pot plants around your pond.  This not only disguises the black plastic of the pond liner and the mess of the rubble, but it also gives a stepped access for your wildlife to get to the pond.

4. Naturalise a bit.  As you can see, we've not only planted up some of those pots with a range of plants and planted some bulbs and seeds, but we've also added some branches from the holly tree I severely pruned last year to create a wildlife ramp and to disguise that black plastic a bit more.

5. Put some wildlife shelter inside the pond.  If you want bugs and amphibians to take up residence in your pond, you need to give them some appealing real-estate.  They aren't going to be taken with an expanse of shelter-less black plastic.  In my pond I installed a terracotta plant pot, a couple of broken pieces of slate, some gravel and some pebbles of various sizes.  This gives lots of nooks and crannies to allow the wildlife to get in and out and to provide them with some cosy places to live.

6. I'm pretty pleased with how this is looking.  Time to start adding some water.  Here's some oxygenating plants to put in too.  At some point I'm going to add some more pond plants - I'm looking at flag irises as they are very attractive to things like dragonflies - the adult clings on to the plant as she deposits her eggs in the water, and the larva will later climb up the iris to emerge as an adult.

It's important to use rainwater rather than tap water, as tap water has chemicals added in to make it clean for us to drink, but not so welcoming for the wildlife! I filled several watering cans from my water butt.

And here is the finished pond looking very happy in its corner.  With wildflower seeds sown in the planters, and plenty of nooks and crannies for wildlife both in, under and around the pond, I can't wait for the wildlife to move in!  I've already seen a blackbird and a pigeon having a good drink (and a Cocker Spaniel, but she doesn't count), and a blackbird helping herself to the wildflower seeds I'd planted.

Please note - this post does contain some affiliate links.  That means that if you follow my links to buy the products on Amazon, I get a small commission.  It doesn't affect the price you pay at all.

An ethical life - do meat and fish have a place?

I'm writing a series of posts on living more ethically.  Having tackled ethical shopping for fruit and vegetables here.  It's time to have a look at meat and fish.

In the UK some 860 million animals are reared every year for the food industry.  It's our favourite source of protein.  The average meat-eater will consume 760 chickens, 20 pigs, 29 sheep, 5 cows and half a trawler net full of fish in their lifetime.  

image from theguardian.com

What are the ethics involved in meat-eating?

There are a couple of ethical issues to consider.  Meat production has become more intensive, which means that on the plus side, meat has come down in price, but on the negative side, means that animals are often suffering as a result, either through over-crowding, lack of proper attention to health and well being and lengthy transportation of live animals.  In addition, in order to farm intensively, animals are often kept in unnatural environments, given hormones to reproduce more than they would naturally, given antibiotics to prevent illness rather than treat it.  Intensive meat farming where far more animals are stocked in a smaller area can also lead to agricultural pollution as waste runs off the farm and into water courses.  Reliance on commercial feed rather than grass to feed this large number of animals also leads to environmental and social problems elsewhere, with land used to grow food for animals, consuming both land and water that could have been used to grow food for humans - it takes 900 litres of water to grow 1kg of wheat, but 100,000 litres of water to raise 1kg of beef.  A real strain on resources in a world where resources are far too scarce and too many people are dying through lack of food and water.  The end product is often over packaged and is routinely injected with water (to increase the weight and price) and preservatives.

As an extra issue, meat is also high in saturated fat, so too much of it could be placing a strain on our bodies and therefore on our health services.

And fish?

Fish stocks are in serious trouble.  We are taking too many fish out and not leaving enough for them to be able to reproduce quickly enough to replenish their stocks.  When we fish on a large scale, we also employ techniques which regularly decimate entire ecosystems, or inadvertently kill other species.  To counter the over-fishing problem fishing quotas have been in place for years, which means that to feed the desire for fish (and for our own health we are being told that we should be eating more fish, aiming for at least two portions per week), we are increasingly turning to fish farms.  Fish farms have their own ethical problems, as they routinely treat the fish with antibiotics, anti-parasite chemicals etc.  Prawns are usually farmed in developing countries which often employ child or very cheap labour, coupled with dangerous working conditions using a range of toxic chemicals which are then routinely dumped in the sea.

image from the Vegetarian Society of Ireland

What would the ethical choices be?

The most obvious ethical choice would be becoming vegetarian, or better still vegan, avoiding propping up the meat industry entirely.  Alternative sources of protein include quorn (a synthetic fungal protein) and soya or tofu (which has its own ethical issues such as deforestation to grow soya, and the use of genetically modified soya).

If giving up meat entirely is a step too far, then you could consider reserving meat for the weekends and special occasions.  This would make it easier too to make other ethical choices (which may cost more) about the meat that we do consume:

• when buying any meat, opt for organic and free-range as it means that the animal will have been treated better, with lower stocking densities, access to feed outdoors etc.  Look for the organic and RSPCA Freedom Food logos.
• buy meat from a local butcher who should be able to tell you the source and provenance of their product.  It's also unlikely to be injected or tampered with (especially if you can see the butchery with your own eyes!) and over-packaged;
• buy lamb in the Summer.  Lambs are born in the spring, so should be big enough to eat by early Summer.  In order to have "Spring lamb" in the supermarkets in February the poor ewe is being given hormone treatments and often forced to give birth as many as three times during the year, or live lambs are being transported across the continent in dreadful conditions between where they were farmed and where they will be slaughtered, so they can be delivered to supermarkets as fresh as possible.
• Opt for line-caught or organic fish;
• choose pollock, or plentiful haddock, instead of cod.  Check the Good Fish Guide, from the Marine Conservation Society, for a list of sustainable fish.
• Choose smaller cold-water Atlantic prawns rather than larger Tiger or King prawns (the ones farmed in developing countries).

And the Ink Spots household?

I'll be honest here.  I like eating meat.  I was a vegetarian for a while, as I didn't think I'd be able to kill an animal, and if I couldn't kill one myself, then it wasn't right to eat them.  My husband (before he was my husband) defeated me with the logical argument: "well you can't do your own colonoscopy either, but if you needed one doing you'd get somebody else to do it for you."  I started eating meat again with only a little guilt.  I'm a sucker for a lovely bit of roast and a bacon sandwich.

However, for all the reasons above, I am trying to cut down on the meat a bit.  I don't think that we'll be able to reserve it for the weekends, "you forgot to put any meat on my plate!", but I have been able to swap a meaty mid-week meal or few to things like jacket potato with cheese and beans or tuna, omelette, or pasta with a vegetable sauce.  I'll keep gradually making these swaps until it becomes more of a habit for all of us.  
I only buy free-range chicken, but need to make more of an effort to buy organic and free-range meat all the time, and use local butchers... which becomes easier and more affordable the less meat we eat.

I only buy pole and line caught tuna,  but I do need to be more selective about the prawns I buy (I just love those juicy big ones - now I'm not so sure!) and make sure that I buy a range of fish from the sustainable list.

I guess the answer here is that while with fruit and veg I was doing okay but still had more to do, with meat and fish I am a long way from making the kind of ethically sound choices that I would wish for.  Still, as I mentioned in my first post about ethical living, the choices we make towards an ethical life have to be made one at a time, small steps towards better habits.  We're taking those steps, and knowing that we need to is a good start.  I'll review how we're getting on as time goes by.

What about you?  Do you buy sustainable fish?  Organic meat?  Have meat-free Mondays?  Are you a vegetarian or vegan and wonder how I could touch a bacon sandwich?  Are you trying to cut meat down in the diet of a carnivorous family member?

An Ethical Life - choosing what fruit and veg to buy

As part of my series on living more ethically, I'm going to start by thinking about fruit and veg.

It seems an odd thing to worry about, when so many people in the world don't have enough to eat at all, or are suffering the ill effects of malnutrition.  So many people live without the luxury to be able to choose what kind of fruit and vegetables to eat, they are just glad to get anything to eat.  But actually that's just the point.  Those of us who do have that luxury, should take advantage of it to make good and wise choices about the provenance of our food that will, in the long run, benefit those elsewhere in the world or our communities who do not have that luxury.

Every time we look at our plates we should ask ourselves where the food came from, how it was produced and what it cost - not just in terms of money, but in terms of the environment and social justice.

So what about fruit and vegetables?
We are advised by health professionals that for good health we should be eating five portions of fruit and vegetables per day.  Actually, the food gurus suggest this should be closer to nine portions per day, but with average consumption at only three portions, a push to five seems slightly more realistic.  However, eating more fruit and vegetables, while beneficial to health, isn't about ethics.  What is about ethics is how we eat and buy those fruits and veggies.  We are living in a time when you can walk into a supermarket at any time of day or night, any month of the year, and expect to buy a pineapple or some strawberries - despite the fact that these products do not grow locally, or are in completely the wrong season...is this right? 

Every time we pick up an apple or pineapple we need to consider:

• pesticides
• food miles
• grower and picker rights
• season

Pesticides

To entice us to buy fruits and vegetables, supermarkets lay out stacks of perfectly formed specimens.  Unfortunately, this means that 20-40% of farm produce is wasted, because it isn't perfect enough for our shelves, even though it tastes absolutely fine.  It also means that to reduce the risk of blemished produce, the farmer relies more and more on a range of pesticides and fertilisers (the fertilisers also keep the food available out of season, which we'll come back to later).  The fertilisers also cause massive problems in the environment, as soil biodiversity and water courses are polluted by the run off from farmers' fields.  The very creatures on whom we rely to pollinate our crops (bees and other pollinating insects) are damaged by the chemicals we put on the crops to help them grow better.  In developing countries, without such stringent safety controls, farm workers handling these chemical pesticides are often also put at risk to their health.

from food.ndtv.com 

As a consumer, we can change things for the better by:

• accepting (or even seeking out) fruit and veg that doesn't necessarily look perfect.  Jamie Oliver is on a mission to sort this out and has convinced ASDA to try a "wonky veg bargain box" which seems to have gone down very well. 
• Buying organic produce.  Yes, it costs a little more, but organic farms do not pollute the environment.  Plus, because they use natural methods to keep their farms healthy, such as crop rotation, they tend to be more biodiverse environments rather than the big swathes of monoculture operated by industrial pesticide farms.
• Growing your own.  If you've got even a small space and can grow a few of your own fruits and veggies in season, then you know you've got something on your plate that hasn't contributed any pesticides to the environment (as long as you grow organically of course!!)

Food Miles

Is it crazy that for every 100 items of fruit and veg eaten in the UK, only five are grown here?  In 2003 the Guardian bought a basket of fresh food containing twenty items.  It included pears, tomatoes and lettuce.  The total food miles of the produce in the basket was more than 100,000 miles!  Peas are being air-freighted from South Africa, lettuce is being flown in from Spain, tomatoes from Saudi Arabia.  Supermarkets want to give us what we want, and we want a wide variety of cheap fruit and vegetable available year-round.  So they provide it, shopping around globally for the best deal.  The problem is that this is not the best deal for the planet.  Food miles, and in particular air-freight food miles, contribute 20% of the UKs greenhouse gas emissions.

What can we do about it?

• buy local (not just "British grown" from the supermarket, as despite the fact that your apple may have been grown in the orchard next door to the supermarket, it will still have been taken to a centralised sorting/storage point, then perhaps somewhere else to be packaged, then somewhere else to be distributed, then back to the supermarket to be sold.)  Buy from local green grocers, farmers markets, box schemes or farm shops, where the food is actually locally sourced.
• Grow your own, then the food miles are food steps - close to zero pollution.
• If you really want to buy fresh fruit and veg that isn't in season (more on seasonality later) or doesn't grow locally - and who doesn't love a banana or pineapple - then try to get food that has been trucked in from mainland Europe rather than air-freighted.  If you're still hankering for that fresh pineapple that you really can't source locally, then think carefully about the country that it came from, and try to make decisions not to buy things from countries who make poor ethical decisions.

Grower and Picker Rights

While it's great to get fresh fruit and veg for a bargain price, we need to think about how realistic those prices are.  If we are paying next to nothing for fruits and veg, then it's highly likely that whoever grew it is getting even less - I mean, even with economies of scale, the Supermarket is focused on profit isn't it?  Because supermarkets buy in such large quantities they can force the farmer to accept a lower price than they would normally.  This means that either the farm becomes unprofitable, or the workers on the farm are paid less, or put in more dangerous or awful working conditions to cut costs.  In addition, because our farmers receive subsidies from the government and the EU, it makes sense for them to produce more than we need, thus making it much harder for farmers in the developing world to make any money.

To shop ethically with regards to grower and picker rights:

• seek out the Fair Trade logo, which ensures that farmers, usually in the developing world, have been paid a fair price for their produce;
• grow your own - you are the grower and picker;
• buy from local farm shops, farmers markets or pick your own, where you can see or ask questions about conditions and prices;
• ask questions - are the strawberries you are buying picked by migrant workers, and if so are they treated fairly and paid a decent wage?  I live just up the road from a massive S&A soft fruit farm, and I often wonder how the workers there are treated.

Season

Science is a wonderful thing, and advances in agricultural and food storage science have meant that we are able to grow or preserve fruit and veg to such an extent that from somewhere in the globe, we are usually able to get pretty much any fruit and veg that we want, year round.  By doing this we are a) increasing our food miles, b) losing biodiversity, because we tend to only cultivate the fruits that will have the longest storage, or the longest harvest time, c) losing out on taste and nutrients because fruit and veg loses out during storage and transport, d) blighting our countryside with the polytunnels that we need to grow this fruit and veg over such an extended period and e) losing touch with the cycle of the seasons.  

from eatseasonably.co.uk

• grow your own
• buy from farmers markets, farm shops and pick-your-own etc. 
• in the supermarket, seek out British grown produce that is in season now (this is not easy.  I live in Herefordshire, one of the biggest apple producers in the UK, and yet even as the apple harvest was in full swing all around me, and there were free windfall apples on offer at nearly every farm gate, the choice in the supermarket was still pretty much limited to imported Granny Smiths and Golden Delicious!).

How do we shop for fruit and veg ethically in the Ink-Spots household?

Not nearly as well as I'd like, which is what this series of posts on the blog is all about really.  Working full-time, I still rely on the convenience of the supermarket for much of my shopping.  

I've made enquiries about a fortnightly delivery from a local fruit and veg box scheme, and have now prioritised it to get on and join the scheme as soon as I'm back from holidays (www.growinglocal.org.uk if you're interested).  I did get a veg box delivery when we lived in Scotland, but found the choice in the bag limited in the winter, and in the Summer grew most of what we wanted anyway so didn't bother in the end.  

Here I have a rented garden with very limited growing space, so while I grow my own herbs, and plan to grow lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, chard and a few potatoes again this year, my growing-your-own options are pretty limited until we've got a long-term home and garden again.  

I do opt for Fair Trade wherever there is a choice.  

I love our local pick-your-own, and the children love to go there with a shopping list for fruit, which I also found remarkably inexpensive, and will continue to visit there as often as I can.  

Organic produce is still all too often a little too pricey in the supermarket, but I think I should go for it a bit more often.

I'm not too good at seasonality - partly because we always want a nice salad, tomatoes and so on.  The strawberries I've bought recently have been noticeably tasteless, so I'll give them a miss now until they are actually in season.  I think using the fruit and veg box scheme should help me to keep a bit closer to the seasons.

The same applies to air miles.  I love a banana, a pineapple, and chillies and lemongrass and so on, even though I know that they are air-freighted across the world.  Hopefully having a bag of local fruit and veg that needs using up will encourage me to be a bit more inventive with local foods, and have the air-freighted foods a bit less frequently.

court farm leisure, my local pick-your-own and farm shop, Tillington, Herefordshire

An Ethical Life - What is ethical living?

What is "ethical living"?  How do you know when you are living ethically?

According to Wikipedia, "Ethical living is the philosophy of making decisions for daily life which take into account ethics and moral values, particularly with regard to consumerism, sustainability,environmentalism, wildlife and animal welfare. At present it is largely a personal choice, and not an organized social movement.

Ethical living is an offshoot of sustainable living, in which the individual initially takes a series of small lifestyle changes in order to limit their effect on the environment. Making the decision to start to live ethically, can be as easy as beginning to recycle, switching off electric lights when leaving a room, buying local organic or fairtrade produce."

Everyday life is full of small decisions and big decisions.  From whether to pop into McDonalds for tea, to whether to buy a new vehicle and which one.  What kind of house to buy, which bank to use, whether to put that in the compost or just chuck it in the bin.  To pick up a take-away or rustle something up with the left-overs in the fridge that need using up.  What kind of nappy to put on the baby and whether to let your children watch TV.

Every one of these decisions has an impact on the world around us.  Each determines how much energy and resource we consume, how much waste we produce, and how we impact on our local and global communities.  Yet each decision has also to be balanced with the impact it has on our lifestyle and our purse.  We have grown up in a generation of consumers, in a world of consumers, and bucking the trend takes effort and willpower, changes of habit and mind-set.  

The decision to live life more ethically is usually done one decision and one step at a time.  There are times when life gets in the way and you slip easily back into easier old habits, but as long as you have the intention to make a smaller and more positive footprint on the world we live in, you'll take more of the small steps in the right direction, and some of the big ones too.  

I like to believe that I think carefully about the impact of what I do and how I live my life with my family.  I know I don't always get it right, but I do try to think about how what we do affects the planet.  Over the years on this blog I've posted a few times about how we try to do things, and I'll be revisiting ethical living in different areas of life in future posts too.

An article from The Independent in February 2008 suggested the following ten tips to start living more ethically.  They suggested:  

1. use energy efficient appliance such as washing machines and dishwashers to save energy and money.
2. Stick to the speed limit and save fuel.
3. Make sure you buy fish carrying the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) logo which is sustainably fished. http://www.goodfishguide.org/
4. Put on a jumper rather than put up the heating.
5. Don't send flowers.  They are flown in from around the world.  Instead give a house-plant.
6. Missing for some reason!
7. Have a shower rather than a bath.
8. Use a "hippo" water saver in the toilet cistern to restrict the amount of water used with each flush.
9. Buy ethically sourced jewellery - respecting the communities where the gemstones and precious metals come from.
10. Drink tea sourced as part of the Ethical Tea Partnership, where certain minimum working and environmental standards are met.

Nuclear energy vs wind turbines

What do you think about global sources of energy?  Do you believe that the burning of fossil fuels creates Global Warming, a world environmental and ecological catastrophe in the making?  Do you believe that we are running out of fossil fuels, and if so, what should we be using instead?

There's a general consensus that electricity is a good thing.  We all like to have the lights on, put the kettle on and be able to see where we're going.  In addition, as many people are shunning gas guzzling cars and turning to the new generation of electric vehicles, we'll need to be plugging them in somewhere every night.

image from plugincars.com

There's also a general, though not unanimous, consensus that burning fossil fuels is pretty bad for the planet, and that we ought not to do so much of it, and that we might be running out of oil and coal.  Estimates vary widely, with the possibility that there might be as yet undiscovered stores of fossil fuels under Canada and Siberia, but it's possible that coal might run out in just twenty-five years and oil in as little as fifty years.

There is no consensus at all on what we should do instead.  Even in our current UK parliament there is no agreement: The Conservatives have pushed through a deal to build twelve new nuclear reactors across five sites, Labour think that Nuclear is an important part of the power generation mix, and the Liberal Democrats are staunch supporters of wind technology.  

Hydroelectric power is probably the most efficient renewable power, but building huge dams, creating enormous lakes and blocking rivers from their natural flow relies on having the necessary geographical terrain, and can cause massive ecological problems too.

Solar energy relies on having sun, and is very inefficient.  Even in a sunny state like Texas, a solar array the size of Texas would be required to provide the power used by... Texas!

So, with a few small and mostly insignificant exceptions, that leaves us with Nuclear Power or Wind Power.  They both have their drawbacks, and when they are planned, they both create uproar with local people protesting that they don't want them.  Here's a quick breakdown of the pros and cons of each.

Nuclear Power

image from Sellafield sites.com

+ We already have the technology
+ With increased investment, technology will be improved to develop ever more efficient and safer technologies with less waste.
+ Nuclear waste is solid and can be transported and stored well away from human populations.
+ there aren't any greenhouse gas emissions.
+ while there are huge costs involved with building and running nuclear power, it's actually a cheaper way to produce electricity than any other.

- Poor reputation for safety
- Technology for nuclear power and nuclear weaponry is the same - do we really want more potential for nuclear weapons in our fragile planet?
- Historically, there has been a lot of secrecy around nuclear development and power.
- Nuclear waste is dangerous.  It remains dangerous for thousands of years.  It needs to be stored somewhere away from water, populations and tectonic activity.
- Building and decommissioning reactors is extremely expensive.
- The fuel for running nuclear power is also finite.  Turning exclusively to nuclear will shift power to the countries where it can be found, and it too will eventually run out.

Wind Power

image from cambrian-mountains.co.uk

+ safe
+ green - no pollution
+ enormous potential
+ completely renewable, will never run out.
+ efficiency and technology are improving
+ operational costs are low

- fluctuates according to the wind, so to meet base demand would need to be stored by pumped hydro or batteries.
- space inefficient - you'd need to build 30,000 new wind turbines, over an area of 1200 sq km, to produce the same amount of electricity as one nuclear power plant taking up only 1.7 sq km.
- unsightly
- damaging to scenery, and unknown wildlife impact at this time.

Ancient Tree Hunt

If, like me, you love trees, then you'll understand the joy of finding an ancient, gnarled old specimen.  Put your palm against the bark and feel the heartbeat, put your ear to it and listen as it tells you stories of the history that it's witnessed.

Trouble is, unlike historic buildings, until recently nobody has been keeping a record of our spectacular ancient trees, so apart from the odd few they had little protection or recognition.

 

 Now the Woodland Trust is changing things.  A massive project, the Ancient Tree Hunt, has used volunteers and partner organisations such as The National Trust to "register, classify, celebrate and protect" the UKs most special trees, many of which are host to an enormous range of life too.

If you visit ancient-tree-hunt.org.uk you can access maps, satellite imagery and the inventory to find the ancient trees registered so far in your locality, and also details on which ones are accessible to the public, so that you can go and visit some of these mighty veterans.

I've photographed us climbing amongst a couple of ancient oaks at Croft Castle (National Trust near Leominster) - 

What's your favourite ancient tree?  

Forest Trails - outdoor activities

One of our favourite things to do as a family is to go for a walk in the woods.  In winter the woods offer shelter from the elements, in the heat of summer they offer shade. 

A walk in the woods offers:

• trees to climb
• places to play hide and seek
• wildlife to identify
• trees and plants to spot and identify
• dens to build
• a constantly changing scene through the seasons
• food to forage
• treasure to find (acorns, chestnuts, twigs and pine cones)
• ancient tree hunting
• wild art
• balancing
• and much much more.

While many woodlands are privately owned you can access woodland in the UK on National Trust, English Heritage, Forestry Commission, RSPB and Woodland Trust properties, as well as countless local wildlife and nature parks and National Parks.  Some of our best loved woodlands can be found at the Delamere Forest, the Wyre Forest, Sherwood Forest, the New Forest and the Forest of Dean, many of which were ancient Royal Hunting Grounds.  At these larger forests you'll usually find a Visitor Centre with good parking facilities, cafes, well way-marked trails and paths and adventure playgrounds.

Don't forget, many woodlands are also the  base for hair-raising mountain biking trails and high-ropes courses, or more sedate sculpture trails.

The Woodland Trust also have a great area on their website full of suggested activities to do with children and families.

What are you waiting for?  Get out and explore the woods near you!

What do you like to do in the woods?