Ducks and Dogs

We had a couple of duck chicks earlier this year, both fully grown now. The ducks are really good fun to have around, waddling about and eating anything they can lay their beaks on, including slugs which seem to be a duck delicacy. I'd recommend ducks rather than hens for any eco project with a bit of space. They lay lots of eggs and it's great farm entertainment watching them do their duck stuff. Then just when you're starting to take yourself a bit seriously their's a hoot of duck derision from the distance...

Duck chicks at a few weeks old

Since Ruth put out a water bath for them the ducks come down onto our patch much more. That's the duck love machine, Barry White, in the background.

Nellie and Silver, the two farm dogs. We have been teaching Nellie to grin but Silver manages to look crazy all on her own.

Woody Adventures

A lot of my work here on the farm revolves around woody stuff, whether it's looking after trees or making things and fixing things...

One of two king size trestles, already very useful, it receives several alien radio stations too ha ha

A typical farm job for me, fixing the floor in the grain store...

...ready for the excellent crop of barley...

...and there it is, safely stored away to help feed the pigs and other animals

It's been fascinating to watch the whole ploughing, sowing, harvesting etc process here for the barley. It was a good crop but then the field's been either fallow or just had pigs on it for several years and ploughing breaks down the natural structures in the soil that keep it healthy, so it's unlikely that the yield would be so good if we did that again next year. To me this is the kind of farming that we need move away from, into something less energy intensive. But what exactly? I'm hoping we find the time to explore perennial cereals and other perennial crops, maybe in strips with different seedings through the year...

Fruity Times

So much fruit everywhere on the farm at the moment...

Apples galore

The weight of apples snapped one of the branches off this tree yielding half a barrow of fruit...

We've had maybe eight barrow loads of windfall apples from the orchard so far which have helped to feed the pigs, who love them

We're developing these large pig feeding beds with two apple trees each so the pigs can feed themselves at least some of the time

The beds will be mini forest gardens, here we're starting ground cover of mustard and facelia which worked really well in the pig field

Damsons everywhere too - love that velvety, dusty finish on them - sadly three-quarters of them are out of reach...

...still plenty to make wine with though - I hear that damson wine is one of the best too, sort of like a really good port

Therapy and Ecology - Bringing it All Together

Therapy and ecology aren't often grouped together but there's so much the two worlds can learn from each other. Therapists generally focus on treating their patients, they might include their patients' relationships with other people in sessions, but how can healing not include a patient's relationship with the environment, the Earth and all life? And permaculture, sustainable living and other eco-projects most often seem to fail because of personality clashes, where people don't understand the dynamics of their behaviour and interactions with other people in their patterns and roles, where some deep therapy could really help. So that's what this blog is all about, bringing the worlds of therapy and ecology together.
I've been exploring what people are doing on eco projects in the UK and Portugal for some years, writing about it all on Ian's Eco Blog. I was developing a separate site for my therapy and healing work then realised I was keeping the two worlds apart myself... So here's everything in one place. Ruth's got me interested in Biodynamics which you could say is about working with the energy of plants and their relationship with ourselves and the cosmos, a good example of bringing it all together. 

Acting as one...

I loved this, now let's do it with our environment: "a train north of Tokyo was pushed to the side by a crowd of people after a woman fell under it. What the sources don´t mention is that for such things to happen, people have to notice the situation and react to it. When people react to the situation they make others aware of it, and inspire them to do the same."
www.exposingthetruth.co/be-the-change
Japanese train source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2373656/Japanese-commuters-join-forces-push-32-TON-train-away-platform-free-trapped-woman.html

The Way of the Woods

The forest is truly sustainable, it runs on sunlight and water, there's no waste, everything is endlessly recycled into more and more complex systems, it's resilient, drought, pest, disease and flood resistant, everything supports and benefits from everything else, there's communication through an underground network and it's anarchic... Why shouldn’t it be a model for any sustainable system and what if we think of ourselves and our settlements as part of a forest?
There's similarities in natural therapies like CranioSacral Therapy, low-impact building and growing food in a sustainable way, you can see it all in the forest, the way of the woods.

Introducing my energy healing work

ABOUT MY WORK

I’ve been working as a therapist for many years, treating people in clinics with hands-on, gentle techniques such as CranioSacral Therapy and energy work like Chi Kung. For the past seven years or so I’ve also been travelling and working on ecological projects as I had come to feel very strongly that I must explore every way of living a truly sustainable life (see Ian's Eco Blog). An unexpected, wonderful by-product of travelling about so much has been that I’ve been drawn into treating patients and friends from a distance with energy work. It’s been a fascinating journey and I’ve found that this kind of work, though different, can be just as effective as treating people hands-on. So I've now decided to focus my attention on developing this side of my healing work, I hope to de-mystify energy healing work and help to bring it more and more into everyday life for people everywhere.

FOCUSED TREATMENT

There's lots more about this work on the separate pages of this site but the most important feature for me is that the techniques of gentle treatments like CranioSacral Therapy can be focused precisely and given energetically from a distance. To me, this opens up a whole new world of possibilities.

HEALING ENERGY

Whether I'm giving treatment from a distance or hands-on, I find a healing energy usually flows for the patient. I'd suggest we can't understand just exactly what this is any more than we can understand why there is life in the universe, it certainly seems to help though.
I don't call or think of myself as a healer, I say I do healing work and assist people in their own healing process. It's you that's doing the healing.

ONE-TO-ONE AND GROUP SESSIONS

As well as one-to-one sessions which I charge for, I host regular free group energy healing work sessions every Thursday. These sessions are open to all, so far there seems to be no limit to the number of people who can join in and receive help. There's more to read about both one-to-one and group sessions on the site so you can feel which is appropriate for you.