Pesky in the background, Feisty in the foreground. Confined to the far end of the chook run outside the kitchen, they were sceptical about the workmanship (who was this guy with power tools for chooks’ sake?), and the design for our new house?

Pesky and Feisty got a new chookhouse today.

The Chippendale Hilton.

Mick, the Chippendale handyman, worked wonders and everything was recycled except for a few screws (these weren’t the chooks’ jailors, but things that fasten things to other things).

Mick with the roof going on

Roof half on, frame mostly done

The old chookhouse had housed the chooks for over 7 years.  It was time for a new one that kept them warmer and drier.

All finished, with stingless bee hive on roof. Cluck

A new chookhouse requires close, suspicious inspection

As night fell, and the ancient dangers of the night crept near, and despite their caution of the building, Pesky and Feisty  slowly, ever so slowly, bit by clawly bit, crept in to this probably safer place.

First, the good news:

“Good News- Solar Storage Plant Gemasolar Sets 36-Day Record 24/7 Output, by Emma Fitzpatrick, Reneweconomy, Oct. 8, 2013: The Gemasolar, a Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) facility, is the world’s first large scale power plant that uses molten salt to capture heat during the day so it can produce energy at night. The plant can operate up to 15 hours without any solar feed. For 36 days straight the plant continuously provided power to 27,000 homes near Seville, Spain while avoiding emissions of 30,000 tones of CO2.”

This quote is from the US magazine, Counterpunch, and its article on 26 December 2013, headlined:

Looming Danger of Abrupt Climate Change

I like the style and content of this magazine, particularly its practice of giving citations to support assertions, in similar style to George Monbiot’s columns in The Guardian.

The article reviews a report from The National Research Council of the National Academies (NRCNA),  “Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change, Anticipating Surprises.”

As the article reports, “The goal of the report is to prepare society to anticipate the ‘otherwise unanticipated’ before it occurs, including abrupt changes to the ocean, atmosphere, ecosystems and high latitude regions. The NRCNA timescale for “abrupt climate change” is defined as years-to-decades.”.

The NRCNA report mentions three primary areas of risks of abrupt climate change this century, as follows:

• Arctic Sea Ice- Abrupt Climate Change Already Underway
• Marine and Terrestrial Life  - of this one the article says:

“The National Research Council of the National Academies’ report also foresees eventual mass extinction of several species, sans further climate change, due to habitat destruction, fragmentation, and over-exploitation. This, they claim, would be equivalent in magnitude to the wipe out of the dinosaurs, but it would probably be centuries away.”

 And the third area of risk is:

• Destabilization of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet

Of this third risk, the report is quoted as saying:

“The NRCNA report further states: “… a large part of the West Antarctica Ice Sheet (WAIS), representing 3-4 m [10-13 feet] of potential sea-level rise, is capable of flowing rapidly into the deep ocean basins. Because the full suite of physical processes occurring where ice meets ocean is not included in comprehensive ice-sheet models, it remains possible that future rates of sea-level rise from the WAIS are underestimated, perhaps substantially.”

There follows a readable and interesting description of this icy part of Earth with some very useful and not heartening recent research there.

This is the time for banquets, isn’t it?

Well worth a read – for me there were lots of things I found interesting about ice on Earth.

Which brings me to one of the conclusions I’ve reached during this marvellous quiet time of the year when I look at where I’ve been this year and where I’d like to go next year.  This is how I’m seeing others and how I’m  setting my priorities:

I’ve decided the real climate deniers are greenies.

What?

Yes.

For this reason; they faff on about green buildings, codes, projects, electric cars and bikes which, they say, will cut future pollution.

But they say almost nothing, and most say nothing ever, about existing pollution and their projects or solutions for it.

It seems when choosing where to direct their creativity and projects that most alarmists, greenies, policy-makers and pundits ignore, and seem to deny, the existing pollution.

Existing pollution has broken the climate with the one degree of additional temperature its given our Earth.  It’s still got another one degree of heating up to do.  Until we get it out of Earth’s atmosphere we’re bound to get that second degree.

In 1998 the UN’s 2000 scientists said unless we get rid of existing pollution by 2015 we’re going to get more than two degrees.

That’s next year.

This recent month I’ve taken a ‘helicopter view’ of media articles, twitter, facebook and internet magazines.

Over this month all but one of the articles speak of reducing future pollution.  There are interesting articles which count trends of decline in car numbers, trends of increase in public transport, growing number of solar panels, reducing costs of renewable energy sources . . .  Not one mention of existing pollution, of existing climate decline.

I just don’t get this bias.  Is it head in the sand stuff?  Or just loose thinking, of the type we find in people who march in step with the majority?

Helen, Jeni, Amanda’s mum and Amanda at some of the road garden

Yesterday, Sunday 4 August, I went to look at a verge garden that Amanda Townsend and her family have built at Maroubra.  Beautiful and inspiring.

Then Amanda took us out the back of the house and I saw the funniest, most tender thing; a beautiful, so smart, black kelpie herding some chooks.  Both dog and chooks are on good terms.

It’s hard to photograph a black kelpie so the photos aren’t too good and they don’t show the kelpie’s tenderness, alertness and strategy for herding the chooks from A to B.

The funniest bit was when a couple of chooks got up on the trampoline and the kelpie followed them there to get them down.

Enjoy.

Chooks in Sarah’s garden

When we grow plants or nurture bees and wildlife something grows in ourselves.

I thought of this when I received this lovely email from Sarah Townsend, who came with her partner and did an Urban Farm Working Tour here:

“Hi Michael,

One reason I give the Saturday tours is the opportunity it gives me to learn more, meet people with energy and passion and to share their stories.

Thanks, Sarah.

M

“I just picked up my meat from Feather and Bone, a Marrickville butchery who buy their meat from local farmers, provenance immaculate and I asked about chickens. Sadly they have none as 320 died last Tuesday on the property of their Bellingen supplier, despite shade trees and water. Their deaths were caused by lack of breeze…… apparently chooks  have difficulty regulating body heat. The producer is going to set up some kind of fan and spray/moisture system for future days like that – sounds tricky given the flock will have to be rounded up and housed to benefit. Great that they have this plan in progress!”

While in Fremantle recently –  a very beautiful place to walk around – I met Tim Lawrence, whose business, MulchNet, provides free mulch across Australia.

No catch here, just someone using imagination and wit.

It works like this:  most landscaping and other mulch-making businesses have to pay to take the mulch to the tip if they can’t find a way to make it useful.  MulchNet allows anyone in any Australian state to register to get that mulch delivered free to where they want it.  This works as a business for Tim because it’s cheaper for the truck driver to drop the mulch at someone’s place nearby where the mulch has been made than it is to take it to the tip.  Tim’s income is a small fee the truck driver pays for each tipping fee saved by giving away the mulch.

You have to take the whole truckload and be clear about the type of mulch you do and do not want.

Such a simple idea.

Free spring

Ahhh, my chookies are laying again; lovely tasty fresh eggs – and happy chookies to not be so cold anymore.

And there are green shoots on my fig tree, and deep green shoots on the fruit trees in our road gardens, all pruned and ready to go as Spring embraces us across this part of our lovely Earth.

Spring is free – imagine that.

Free positives

And to end on another positive, and free note – enjoy this:

“Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.”
? Mahatma Gandhi

It’s not just a plan for this suburb; it can be used to make any suburb sustainable – it’s free and you’re welcome to put it to work where you are.

Now the Plan can be read on mobiles, kindles and is very easy to search, use and tweet.  Get it here:

theplan.sustainablehouse.com…

Enjoy.

You can see some of the folks who support the Plan.

Please sign the petition to have the Plan exhibited for public comment.  We want the Plan and there’s strong community support for it from here and other people across Sydney, Australia and overseas.

If we can get the Plan made here anyone may use it as an example to persuade other councils and governments to make a Plan to sustain the suburb where they live – if you’re reading this in Melbourne or Texas, USA – sign the petition for the Plan and you’ll be able to use a Plan like this where you live and work, too.

Michael

L to R - Bob, Bert

I live with two zen masters, both of them chooks.

They dwell constantly in the here and now.  Watching them doing anything is a gift; they teach me to be myself, to come into the now of the moment.

If I were to say they teach me spiritual lessons and you laughed, I would, too, but it’s true.

They peck joyfully.  You want to see a simple peck for what it is, just that, then my Bob and Bertadina are your girls. They peck, totally in the moment.

And walk with style?  These zen masters have perfected it.  Walk like a funny clown?  Same.  Walk like all there is, is now?

Well, on the walking side of things, if you wish to walk well in your day you can do no better than call to mind your chook’s walk.

Funny thing just came to mind here.

I watched a movie with a friend last week, High Noon, where at the end, having defended a town whose citizens had refused to help him defend them, Gary Cooper, turns away from them, throws his badge down and leaves.

My friend wrote me later saying, “I think Gary Cooper has it; there’s a point where you just throw your badge in the dust & walk away…”.  And now, recalling how he moved in that scene, I reckon Gary must have watched a chook or two in his time, he moves so well in it.  (It’s a terrific movie; the photography is a constant delight – and it’s in black and white.)

Your chook novice (me) will say, that Bob, well, she’s a mindless creature.  And it’s true, but in the full meaning of the way those seeking zen (me – a novice there, too) wish for themselves.

When seeking my attention outside the kitchen window Bob will do a flurried fly-by, a cacophony of hurried wings briefly at window height ’til gravity brings her below the sill out of my sight.  Yes, Bob seeks tucker from me and sometimes is frustrated by my inattention at that moment, but, having released her surplus energy she regathers her feathers and gets back to pecking, to that very moment.

Bob and Bert, my zen masters, do not have minds that keep the past alive unnecessarily, nor the future.  I watch them and learn.  (I hope.)

May your zen masters be with you, Michael

Bert in the moment

Bob in the moment with worms and dirt