Recreating the Good Life - Energy


Steaming heap
A big old heap of manure

Like many UK tv programs, each Good Life series was short – 7 episodes. I’m rounding up my look at the first series by seeing how the Goods dealt with their energy needs. Fairly early on they bartered their unwanted electrical appliances for a wood-burning range that heated their water and cooked their food. They can sometimes be seen bringing home fallen wood to feed it.

But they’re not without electricity for long, as Tom builds ‘the beast in the cellar’ – an effluence digester that turns animal manure into methane that he uses to fuel a generator. I don’t think they ever mention that the other output from an effluence digester is fertilizer (essentially compost) for the garden.

During one of my Open University courses I learned that these biogas digesters are quite common in households and smallholdings in China (particularly those that keep pigs, with the resulting waste problem), but as far as I know they’re few and far between here in the UK. If you want to be self-sufficient in energy here you’re more likely to be interested in micro-generation: photovoltaic solar panels and wind turbines for electricity generation and passive solar panels for water and space heating. Even in our not-so-sunny climate, it’s possible to generate a fair amount of your own energy using the right technology for your home. You can even export your surplus energy to the national grid if you have a certified set-up: see the Good Energy website for more information.

Even if you’re not in a position to generate your own energy, you can switch to a 100% renewable energy supplier. If you sign up for Good Energy and quote the offer code 104669 then you’ll get £25 off your first bill*.

The show never touches on the more delicate subject of human waste (can you imagine the look on Margot’s face?), but these days if you want to be self-sufficient, off-grid or simply more environmentally friendly then it’s worth looking into composting toilets. The seminal work on the subject, The Humanure Handbook is available online for free (in various formats), and I covered the use of urine in the garden in episode 29 of the Alternative Kitchen Garden Show. It has proved to be one of the most popular episodes!

Season 1 of The Good Life ends in disaster. A change in the weather turns the garden into a quagmire are harvest time, and Tom hurts his back into the bargain. There’s no way Barbara can bring the harvest in before it rots on her own, but Margo and Jerry come to the rescue – although Jerry has his leg in plaster and Margo is… Margo! It brings home an interesting point – that being self-sufficient or self-reliant doesn’t mean that you have no dealings with the outside world, just that the nature of your interactions changes. No man is an island, indeed.

There was an interesting article on Treehugger recently asking whether volunteerism is the permaculture version of cheap oil, because many permaculture projects rely on volunteers to get them off the ground and keep them running. The Goods also rely on the 1970s version of the WWOOF project (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) in season 2, when they offer board and lodging to a student couple in return for help on their allotment. Smaller schemes are springing up all over the world, like GroFun in Bristol, which has a community allotment but also provides gangs of workers to get vegetable plots up and running in private gardens.

Articles in the ‘Recreating the Good Life series’:
Recreating the Good Life: Cash Crops
Recreating the Good Life: Energy
Recreating the Good Life: Food Waste and Chickens
Recreating the Good Life: Pigs and Barter
Recreating the Good Life: Press


Resources
You can buy all kinds of books on sustainable energy and appropriate technology from the Green Shopping Catalogue, as well as energy saving gadgets – cutting your energy use is the first step towards energy self-sufficiency. They also have a number of books on dealing with human waste, including the print version of the ‘Humanure Handbook’, ‘The Toilet Papers’ and the ever popular ‘How to Shit in the Woods’.

*If you use that code and save money then I make a little bit of money too, but we’ve been Good Energy customers for years and are more than happy with their service.

Posted 22 January 2010, 10:00.
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