Posts by — veg-head

Its fun in Conwy

Looking for free solar power and live in North Wales?

Farms and rural businesses without mains electricity in Conwy, a costal community at the tip of Snowdonia National Park North Wales, are being invited to take apply for free solar power installation in a trial funded by the local government.  (more…)

Food box schemes - every town should have one

London, Ontario……For two hours every Thursday afternoon,  Julie Richards-Bramhill  is a conduit connecting a lone vegetable farmer with  hundreds of families looking for organic food.

Her garage is a drop-off and pickup point for  Triple Cord Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), one of several in the London area.  CSAs are a fast-growing solution to an old issue: how to connect food producers with customers. The customers are essentially buying a share of the season’s crops: if there’s a bumper crop of yams, for example, they all eat lots of yams. If the cucumber crop turns sour, none get to take home cukes. (more…)

One man’s fantasy of what the so-called smart grid could mean for all our futures:

The further encroachment of government and bureaucracy on our private lives and personal liberties has taken it’s next big step. The so-called “Smart Grid” system for efficient management of our electrical usage has taken the next step with the installation of “Smart Meters” in the Burlington area, with the intention of installation proceeding state-wide over the next few years.

For those who don’t already know, “Smart Meters” are replacements for the standard mechanical dial-type electrical meters we already have on our homes and power poles. (more…)

Fred: Greens make him see Red

Canadian Country singer  Fred Eaglesmith is our kind of environmentalist.

“I’m not part of the trend. I’m not part of the Green Revolution,” he tells the Globe and Mail. “I don’t like the green revolution. Fashion is always a bad thing. It is very fashionable to be green right now. That means it will go away.”

He’s pushing a new album at the moment – needs to be a bit controversial, but we’re liking it.  Nick Rosen wrote an article a couple of years back – Brown is the new Green, and Eaglesmith is echoing that philosophy when he says ”Corporations love it. Now they are marketing green. It’s just horrible. Green will go the way of the wide-legged pant. (more…)

Whether you live off the grid, or connected to the grid, there are a variety of solutions to help you deal with rising energy costs and reduce your bills including solar hot water, solar power and LED lighting .

Choosing a solar power system for your home or community group is a big decision.  You first need to conduct a full audit of all electricity use and work out how to shift your usage around so that you can both reduce your overall usage, and  level it out so that any peaks are easy to handle.

Hot water represents about 37% of household energy costs so it is amongst the highest individual constituents of your energy bill.. (more…)

Timeless Cornwall town is prepper central

Surprisingly, for many Preppers, part of the idea is to live cheaply and well in the event of a breakdown in normal society. But computer repair man Larry Peters, 42, has told his local paper in the UK about his plan for dealing with Solar flares, and its anything but cheap.

Stockpiling food and water and teaching his kids, including nine-year-old daughter Lily, to HUNT and GUT animals is one thing but, Larry has also kitted out his family’s three-bed terrace in Penryn, Cornwall, to cope with every eventuality.

They have splashed out £10,000 on a 4×4 in case they need to flee, spent £1,200 on guns and ammo and filled giant tanks with water to build up a 700-gallon reserve. (more…)

BOSTON, March 19 (Reuters) – As a teenager in Wisconsin, Perry Vieth spent his summers baling hay in a neighbor’s field. Four decades later, Vieth is farming again. This time, however, the former fixed-income trader owns the land.

“At the end of 2006, I took a look at the markets, didn’t like what was on the horizon and decided to move into hard assets,” Vieth says.

He isn’t the only one betting on the farm these days.

During the last several years, investors have taken notice of the swelling prices and hearty returns that come with productive farms. Individuals and funds are increasingly seeing farmland as an ideal hard asset class.

Farmland generates not only regular income but also capital appreciation and can be used as a hedge against inflation. Another benefit: farmland returns tend to be immune to stock or bond fluctuations, making it a good diversification tool.

“A lot of people like to say ‘It’s gold with a coupon,’” says Chris Erickson, managing director at HighQuest Partners, an agribusiness consulting firm. (more…)

Go East for good quality land

Europeans looking for their off-grid bug-out location could consider Hungary and Romania – farmland prices there are still very low.

In neigbouring Austria a growing army of farmers are buying land in the two relatively poor former members of the Eastern bloc.  At the moment they have the market pretty well to themselves. (more…)

Green Valley Properties, a rural property specialist in Ireland, is selling a fully equipped off-grid property in Co Clare for just €99,000. GVP is a great company – it sells land from just a few thousand Euros up to half a million.
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