Tag Archives: sustainability

DVD Review – A Forest Garden Year

Forest gardening is not a traditional, or common way of growing food in this country, but it may offer a better way of meeting your own food needs, whilst reducing labour, and external inputs. I recently watched the DVD A Forest Garden Year, by Martin Crawford, again, and thought that I would review it for you here. The DVD was released last year, and there is a book due out later this year. The DVD would be of interest to anybody curious about Forest Garden’s.

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Can a Smallholding be truly Sustainable?

When I look at some of the searches that lead people to this blog, it’s obvious that there are some out there trying to decide if it’s possible to make a living from running a smallholding. I’m not the right person to answer that question, as I have never needed to produce a surplus. My aim is simply to meet our own needs, for food and fuel. The question, can a smallholding be sustainable, depends on your definition of sustainability.

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My Copper Spade is excellent

Hi Everybody

A couple of weeks ago, I posted pictures of my new copper spade. The recent cold spell has meant that I have had to wait to give it a good workout, but the waiting is over. If you want to see the pictures, just click on the link below.

Picture

Yesterday I deepened one side of the Swale which feeds into my new pond. I had already worked on the other side, but the Western end needed quite a bit more work. I worked for three hours, which would normally mean that I would have been a been a bit stiff today, especially as I haven’t done any digging for two weeks, and at my age, my back has seen better days, but nothing. Not a twinge.

The spade is much longer than those that we normally use in this country, which reduces the amount of bending. This seems to put more emphasis on arms and shoulders, and less on the back, which suits me well. The blade is much sharper than a steel shovel, which makes it much easier to slice into the soil, clay in my case. The clay also doesn’t stick to the blade as much. This was mentioned by the retailer, but I was a little dubious before using it. Not any more. I dug out about 30 foot of swale, deepening it by between 18, and 24 inches. Sadly I had to stop before I connected it all to the pond, as I ran out of time. That’s not a bad thing, as I may widen the swale where it connects to the pond, to give an area of shallow water, for growing marginal plants.

Some of the advantages of the shovel, could be achieved by buying a decent carbon steel version of the tool. You would still get the long handle, and Carbon steel sharpens better than stainless steel. The following link will take you to a site that sells them, along with other efficient digging tools. It would be interesting to compare one of these with the copper version, to see if the difference was noticeable.

Tools Link

I have never bought anything from this site, so cannot vouch for them, but they have an interesting range of work tools.

The benefits that are purely attributable to the copper(bronze) are the sharpness of the edge, and the dramatically reduced amount of muck sticking to the blade.

I am a convert, and will replace more of my tools with copper. They seem expensive, but only because we are so used to cheap, often inferior goods. The cost of my shovel was the equivalent of two days pay, at just above minimum wage. It should outlast me, make my work easier, and save me more than it cost. Those of you reading this that use hand tools a lot, will probably understand how important good tools are, and my willingness to spend the extra money.

If you are interested in looking at the range of copper tools available, click on the link below.

LINK

All of the best for 2010

Deano