Items by Rob

• Spending Time with a Bevvy of Social Entrepreneurs: a Trip to Austria

  —Transition Culture

  I spent the earlier part of this week in Austria at a meeting of European Ashoka Fellows and a fascinating couple of days it proved to be.  I travelled there by train, with an overnight sleeper from Paris to Munich on the way out, and a stop-over in Cologne on [...]
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  Posted: November 25, 2009, 2:05pm EST
  by Rob

• My TED Talk, now online

  —Transition Culture

  Here, finally, is the TED talk I gave in Oxford earlier this year. Probably the most nervousness-enducing talk I have ever given. I hope you find it useful. [...]
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  Posted: November 25, 2009, 11:48am EST
  by Rob

• Transition Town Tooting’s ‘Foodival’

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 1
  Transition Town Tooting recently held their fantastic ‘Foodival‘ event. Rather than me write reams about it, check out the film below which offers a great record of the day. [...]
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  Posted: November 23, 2009, 1:38am EST
  by Rob

• The Mayor of Lambeth Goes on a Brixton Pound Spending Spree

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 2
  [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 10:54am EST
  by Rob

• A Local Currency Pilgrimage to Wörgl

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 9
  Well not quite, but en route to a gathering of Ashoka Fellows in Austria where I’ll be for the next couple of days, I by chance found myself in the Austrian town of Wörgl, famed for its alternative currency experiment in the 1930s.  In order to mark the deep influence [...]
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  Posted: November 22, 2009, 9:48am EST
  by Rob

• An Event in Totnes for Transition Oral History Buffs

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 2
  How We Used To Live – Food, energy, skills, and elbow-grease: memories of a pre-oil Totnes. How did Totnes feed, heat and transport itself before the age of globalisation and cheap energy? What did a local food system look like to those who depended on it? Two generations have passed [...]
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  Posted: November 20, 2009, 11:31am EST
  by Rob

• ‘Transition Norwich: a Fine City in Transition’ – 2009 Survey Findings

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 5
  Hot on the heels of her excellent 2009 Transition Network survey, Gill Seyfang of UEA is back, this time with a similarly excellent and comprehensive survey of Transition Norwich.  You can download the pdf. of her survey here.  The findings Gill notes are very interesting, such as how a third [...]
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  Posted: November 19, 2009, 2:16am EST
  by Rob

• Announcing the Italian edition of ‘The Transition Handbook’

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 10
  I was delighted to hear today that the Italian edition of The Transition Handbook, “Il Manuale Practico della Transizione”, has arrived and is now in print.  Regular readers will know that I spent a few years living in Italy earlier in my life, and have a continued affection for the [...]
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  Posted: November 18, 2009, 2:16am EST
  by Rob

• Interview on the Agroinnovations Podcast: Part Two

  —Transition Culture

  Here is Part Two of my interview on the Agroinnovations Podcast. [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 9:54am EST
  by Rob

• ‘Transition in the East’: a brilliant look at what’s rising in the East of England

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 3
  Last Saturday, in spite of the atrocious weather, 55 people from 19 Transition initiatives across the east of England gathered in Diss in Norfolk for the second meeting of Transition East.  Transition East is made up of Transition groups in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex.  In honour of the [...]
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  Posted: November 17, 2009, 2:08am EST
  by Rob

• The Future of Food conference, Conway Hall, London. 12th November 2009

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 15
  Oh these mad Devon-to-London-and-back-in-a-day trips, I really must learn not to do them. I’m writing this on the train home after the train was stuck for half an hour at Pewsey due to a failed signal, which the driver waited for and then, it would appear, noted that it wasn’t [...]
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  Posted: November 13, 2009, 4:25am EST
  by Rob

• From TED: Edward Burtynsky photographs the landscape of oil:

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 4
  Here’s an excellent short talk from TED, exploring in a very visual way the impact that oil production has had on the world. It was also great that I wasn’t the only speaker who talked about peak oil! [...]
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  Posted: November 12, 2009, 1:27am EST
  by Rob

• ‘Local Food’ Reviewed in Permaculture Magazine

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 2
  LOCAL FOOD: How To Make It Happen In Your Community. Tamzin Pinkerton & Rob Hopkins. Green Books, 2009. 220 x 220mm, 216pp. £12.95 As the twin issues of Peak Oil and Climate Change become more widely discussed, more people become interested in prom-oting local food as one of the steps towards [...]
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  Posted: November 12, 2009, 1:01am EST
  by Rob

• Why the last thing London needs is more Clouds

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 15
  Gah.  I feel a rant coming on.  Here’s a crap idea for you.  The BBC announced today the idea of ‘The Cloud’, a new hideous construction to grace the city’s skyline in time for the 2012 Olympics.  It would take the form of a “giant cloud” that would “float” above [...]
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  Posted: November 11, 2009, 10:50am EST
  by Rob

• Vandana Shiva on how Transition initiatives in the North can best help the South

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 13
  While Vandana Shiva was in Berlin recently promoting her book ‘Soil Not Oil’, Andreas Teuchert and Thomas Finger of Transition Berlin, who were filming the event, spontaneously asked her for her thoughts on what the Transition Towns movement could do that is of real use for people in the southern [...]
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  Posted: November 11, 2009, 2:13am EST
  by Rob

• Transition Taunton Town and their local Council produce a Transition Vision for 2026

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 8
  Just realised I hadn’t blogged about this yet. It is an extraordinary story, one which we might regard as an example of best practice in terms of how Transition initiatives engage their local authorities.  In effect, Transition Taunton Town got over 350 staff from the local Council to create a [...]
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  Posted: November 11, 2009, 2:02am EST
  by Rob

• Interview on the Agroinnovations Podcast: Part One

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 1
  I did an interview yesterday with the Agroinnovations podcast, which went on for over an hour. It has been divided into two parts; part one has already been posted, and here it is. Part two will be up in a week or so. [...]
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  Posted: November 10, 2009, 1:55am EST
  by Rob

• Reunions with Trees that I Have Known (and Planted)

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 3
  While in West Cork last week, as well as renewing acquaintances with many old friends, I also renewed the acquaintances of some trees I planted or worked with in some way, and it was fascinating to see how they have grown.  If you ever want a clear and powerful indicator [...]
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  Posted: November 09, 2009, 6:48am EST
  by Rob

• The Transition North Conference, with audio files….

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 5
  I travelled up last Friday to Slaithwaite in Yorkshire for first Transition North conference, which was supported by the Co-operative and attended by people from the Transition and Co-operative movements across the North of England. It was a wonderful day. Dynamic, positive, creative and very well attended. Hosted at the Civic [...]
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  Posted: November 07, 2009, 5:48pm EST
  by Rob

• Sweden in Transition

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 15
  (Naresh Giangrande recently returned from a Transition Training tour of Sweden, here is a short report about his trip). I spent a intensely satisfying afternoon with the students of a Folks school in Gotenberg exploring how to tell positive stories of the future especially around climate change. We explored topics [...]
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  Posted: November 05, 2009, 1:47am EST
  by Rob

• ‘Transitioning Widbey’: a film about, erm, Transitioning Widbey

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 12
  Here is a rather good film from the good people at Transition Whidbey in the US, letting the world know what they’ve been up to.  Fantastic to see places making films like this, do film what you’re doing in this way, document your Transition work for ‘In Transition 2.0′.  Thanks [...]
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  Posted: November 04, 2009, 2:02am EST
  by Rob

• Responding to Alex Steffen’s Critique of Transition at WorldChanging

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 15
  I have been following with interest the discussions surrounding Alex Steffen’s piece at WorldChanging in which he critiques Transition.  I am honoured that someone so widely respected as a writer on sustainability issues saw fit to engage in discussions around Transition , but, as a critique of Transition, it leaves [...]
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  Posted: November 03, 2009, 2:03am EST
  by Rob

• Llandeilo Becomes the First Transition Initiative to Recieve a Royal Visit

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 3
  (Here is a press release from Transition Town Llandeilo in Wales…). The Transition Town Llandeilo project was very pleased to receive a visit from HRH The Prince of Wales at the Civic Hall on October 23rd. The Prince was introduced to members of Cymdeithas y Dalar, the allotments project on [...]
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  Posted: November 02, 2009, 5:49pm EST
  by Rob

• Back to the Old House: a few days at The Hollies

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 8
  Spent the half term weekend in West Cork in Ireland, revisiting people and places that made up my life between 1996 and 2005.  It was like visiting a parallel world, a ‘Sliding Doors’-like glimpse at what could have been, offering reflections on where I am now and where I have [...]
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  Posted: November 02, 2009, 2:56am EST
  by Rob

• Itay Talgam on Leadership and Inspiration: utterly wonderful

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 12
  The amazing thing about TED is the speaker you have never heard of who just blows you away. Itay Talgam did that for me. This is one of the greatest talks I have ever seen, and now the film is available. Should be compulsory viewing on Transition Training! Settle down [...]
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  Posted: October 21, 2009, 5:59pm EDT
  by Rob

• Resilience Thinking: an article for the latest ‘Resurgence’

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 15
  The latest edition of Resurgence is timed to coincide with the Copenhagen talks, and looks at resilience as a key aspect of the climate change debates.  Here is the article I wrote for it. Resilience Thinking. Why ‘resilience thinking’ is a crucial missing piece of the climate-change jigsaw and why resilience [...]
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  Posted: October 21, 2009, 6:27am EDT
  by Rob

• Transition Town Llandeilo, by Appointment

  —Transition Culture

  Transition Town Llandeilo in Wales is to become the first Transition initiative to have a formal visit from royalty.  On Friday, Prince Charles will visit the Welsh town to find out more about what a Transition initiative actually does.  He is of course a keen champion of green issues (referred [...]
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  Posted: October 19, 2009, 12:04pm EDT
  by Rob

• Essential Listening: The Runaway Train

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 5
  Popped the radio on on Sunday afternoon, and heard an amazing 15 minute programme called ‘The Runaway Train’.  It tells the storyof an event in northern Canada in 1987, when railwayman Wesley MacDonald loaded up a train of 50 cars of iron ore, but the brakes failed and before he [...]
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  Posted: October 19, 2009, 2:05am EDT
  by Rob

• The Launch of ‘Local Food’ Proves to be Very Tasty Indeed

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 10
  The first of the forthcoming Transition Books series, ‘Local Food: how to make it happen in your community’ was launched in a wonderful event on Tuesday night at the Hub in King’s Cross in London. The evening was more than just a celebration of the book, it was a celebration [...]
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  Posted: October 15, 2009, 5:00am EDT
  by Rob

• Totnes Nut Trees Begin to Bear Fruit

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 15
  The other day I had a short tour of some of the Totnes nut tree plantings with Wendy Stayte who runs the Totnes nut tree planting scheme, initiated by Transition Town Totnes 3 years ago.  Over 100 trees have now been planted, most of them having a ‘guardian’, whose job [...]
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  Posted: October 14, 2009, 1:19pm EDT
  by Rob

• Whither Resilience and Transition? Why ‘Peak Oil’ Has Yet to Outlive its Usefulness

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 15
  It’s been a fascinating few days.  Early in the week, Nate Hagens and Sharon Astyk were suggesting the perhaps the term ‘peak oil’ has outlived its usefulness, given that we have almost certainly peaked, and that the peak oil movement needs to shift its focus.  It echoed something I wrote [...]
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  Posted: October 09, 2009, 8:40am EDT
  by Rob

• James Samuel’s 6 Steps of Community Engagement

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 3
  Regular readers will be familiar with James Samuel by now, a founder of Transition in New Zealand, and publisher of the blog Yesterday’s Future.  If you have seen ‘In Transition’, James is the guy discussing Oooby with the outrageous shirt.  He was recently asked to give a talk to a [...]
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  Posted: October 08, 2009, 4:04am EDT
  by Rob

• Carolyn Steel on How Food Shapes Our Cities

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 4
  Here is one of the best talks I saw at TED 2009 in Oxford, Carolyn Steel, author of the excellent ‘Hungry City’. [...]
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  Posted: October 07, 2009, 2:41am EDT
  by Rob

• Book Review: ‘Mannahatta’ by Eric Sanderson

  —Transition Culture

  Book Review: Sanderson, E.W. (2009) Mannahatta: a Natural History of New York. Abrams, New York. 352pp This is a truly remarkable book. The films of Woody Allen were sometimes referred to as being as much love poems to New York as they were love stories themselves. ‘Mannahatta’ and the project from [...]
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  Posted: October 06, 2009, 1:50am EDT
  by Rob

• The First Review of ‘Local Food’

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 6
  A Review of ‘Local Food: how to make it happen in your community’ by Tamzin Pinkerton and Rob Hopkins.  Green Books 2009.  By James Howard. There are some people that aren’t that fussed about food. To them it is merely functional, a fuel that keeps them going that appears in [...]
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  Posted: October 05, 2009, 2:02am EDT
  by Rob

• The Potential of Freshwater Aquaculture

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 8
  For today’s post, I am handing over to Jimmie Hepburn, who farms organic carp quite near to me here in Devon.  During the Middle Ages, carp farming was commonplace, but once we were able to harness the power of ancient sunlight to plunder the sea, it mostly died out.  Jimmie’s [...]
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  Posted: October 02, 2009, 2:28am EDT
  by Rob

• Mark Thurstain-Goodwin Responds to Colin Tudge on ‘Can Totnes and District Feed Itself?’

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 4
  Food security and the need for GIS models As expected, the recent paper ‘Can Totnes and district feed itself?’ has started stirring things up. An intriguing response comes from Colin Tudge, a director of LandShare CIC (co-funders of the research) and leader of the Campaign for Real Farming. Colin’s thesis [...]
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  Posted: October 01, 2009, 2:04am EDT
  by Rob

• Transition Together: a fantastic new resource for Transition Initiatives

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 4
  The Transition Together project forms small, social groups of friends, neighbours and colleagues and then supports them in taking a number of effective, practical, money-saving and carbon-reducing steps. A workbook helps each person to build their own Practical Action Plan that improves household energy efficiency, minimises water use, reduces waste [...]
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  Posted: September 30, 2009, 2:47am EDT
  by Rob

• Further Musings from Ted Trainer

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 15
  As a response to the recent discussions about Ted Trainer’s critique of Transition, Ted recently sent me the following. “Unfortunately Rob’s reply to my article A Friendly Criticism of the Transition Towns Movement, didn’t reach me. Here is a response to his comments of 8th Sept.  My discussion began by [...]
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  Posted: September 29, 2009, 10:58am EDT
  by Rob

• A Letter from a Friend in Africa

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 11
  Marc Wegerif is an old school friend of mine from when I grew up in Bristol.  After school he moved to South Africa and was very involved in activism there, and he now lives in Tanzania and works for Oxfam.  He recently got back in touch and I sent him [...]
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  Posted: September 29, 2009, 2:32am EDT
  by Rob

• Me, in Brixton, Discussing ‘Local Food’

  —Transition Culture

  Not much more to say about it really. Thanks to Positive TV and the Ecologist for making this available. [...]
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  Posted: September 28, 2009, 8:30am EDT
  by Rob

• Attack of the Killer Mutant Leek Moths

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 10
  Last year I grew fantastic leeks that stood tall and proud in the garden through the winter months and underpinned many a meal.  This year I got them in good and early, and they were looking wonderful. This week though, something has gone horribly wrong. From being proud columns of [...]
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  Posted: September 28, 2009, 6:08am EDT
  by Rob

• Miliband to Unveil the ‘Low Carbon Communities Challenge’

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 6
  Transition Culture can reveal this morning that Ed Miliband will announce today, at the Labour Party conference, the ‘Low Carbon Communities Challenge’, a programme which may well be of considerable interest to some Transition initiatives out there.  You can download the introductory letter here, and the full information pack, including [...]
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  Posted: September 28, 2009, 5:03am EDT
  by Rob

• A Detailed Analysis of Somerset County Council’s Transition Resolution

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 2
  Somerset County Council was the first UK local authority to pass a resolution in support of Transition Initiatives across Somerset in July last year.  The motion was pushed through by what was largely a LibDem council, since when, a few months ago, following a local election, the Council has gone [...]
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  Posted: September 25, 2009, 2:25am EDT
  by Rob

• A Film About Transition Town Deventer, for all Dutch speakers out there

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 6
  Here is a really well made film from Holland about Transition Town Deventer.  I can’t understand a word of it, but it looks great!  If you speak Dutch, I do hope you enjoy it…. [...]
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  Posted: September 24, 2009, 2:06am EDT
  by Rob

• Transition Network Announced as a Finalist in the Curry Stone Design Prize

  —Transition Culture

  I am delighted to be able to announce that Transition Network has been chosen as one of three finalists for the Curry Stone Design Prize.  The Prize is, according to the organisers, “an annual award to exceptional emerging design innovations that contribute positively to living circumstances for broad sections of [...]
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  Posted: September 23, 2009, 2:18am EDT
  by Rob

• Filming with Michael Portillo in Totnes

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 7
  Michael Portillo passed through Totnes yesterday, filming part of his upcoming series of ‘Great British Rail Journeys’, which follows in the footsteps of George Bradshaw, the Victorian travel writer, who visited the town in the late 1800s.  Portillo’s trip, which began in Swindon, took him to Dartmouth, then up the [...]
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  Posted: September 22, 2009, 9:02am EDT
  by Rob

• Reflections on When a Transition Initiative Stalls…

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 15
  We often say that failures in Transition are just as important as our successes, that Transition is an iterative process where what matters is that we learn from honest assessments of what we have tried.  In that spirit, today’s post offers a fascinating and illuminating case study of a Transition [...]
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  Posted: September 21, 2009, 7:02pm EDT
  by Rob

• Positive TV Capture the Spirit of the Brixton Pound launch

  —Transition Culture

  OK, OK, I promise tomorrow I’ll start blogging about things other than the Brixton Pound, but today, here is a great film made by Positive TV about the launch, featuring some of the Brixton Pound crew and really giving a powerful sense of the event. [...]
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  Posted: September 21, 2009, 2:24am EDT
  by Rob

• David Boyle’s speech at the launch of the Brixton Pound

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 9
  “One of my first experiences of currencies along the lines of the Brixton pound was in Ithaca in upstate New York, where they have had an amazing printed currency for the last 15 years. You can get loans in it. The biggest loan was for $36,000. Not bad for a [...]
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  Posted: September 18, 2009, 7:37am EDT
  by Rob

• Brixton Pound Launch a Fantastic Success

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 6
  There really was nowhere else to be last night.  Given the amazing amount of press coverage and the fact that this was the first urban complementary currency specific to an urban neighbourhood, Lambeth Town Hall was the place to be for the launch of the Brixton Pound.  I arrived after [...]
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  Posted: September 17, 2009, 9:12pm EDT
  by Rob

• ‘Local Food’, now shipping: and Book Launch details

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 6
  So, ‘Local Food: how to make it happen in your community’ has arrived, and copies are flying out of the door!  As you can see, at Transition Culture central we have been parcelling up orders and winging them to the 4 corners of the globe. They have been rapturously received [...]
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  Posted: September 17, 2009, 2:09am EDT
  by Rob

• Enabling Inward Community Investment: insights from the DTA conference

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 3
  Was in London yesterday for the conference of the Development Trust Association (conference programme here), a fantastic event. I was speaking in the first plenary session, but due to overall time overrun, I had to give a 20 minute talk in 10 minutes! A bit hectic but seemed to go [...]
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  Posted: September 16, 2009, 2:16am EDT
  by Rob

• Two Reviews of ‘Can Totnes and District Feed Itself?’

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 10
  A couple of months ago we published the paper we’d been working on for a while, ‘Can Totnes and District Feed Itself?’ We had hoped to stimulate a lot of discussion on its contents, but most of the comments ended up talking about human sewage and it potential use in [...]
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  Posted: September 15, 2009, 2:23am EDT
  by Rob

• Two Short Films About the Brixton Pound

  —Transition Culture

  First, here is a piece from a recent edition of ‘The Politics Show’ about the Brixton Pound…. …and secondly, a short film made by the Brixton Pound folks as a way of promoting the currency and getting people to understand how it works…. [...]
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  Posted: September 14, 2009, 7:42pm EDT
  by Rob

• The Stroud Pound Hits the Tills

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 7
  This weekend saw the launch of the Stroud Pound.  Four denominations have been published, and over at Josef Coates-Davis’s blog, he tells the story of the design of the notes. “The notes, designed by local artist Ronan Schoemaker and produced by local currency collector Steve Charlwood, are like miniature histories of [...]
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  Posted: September 14, 2009, 2:26am EDT
  by Rob

• Why We Need Formal Agreements for National Transition Hubs

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 15
  Here is the response to the previous post.  These are offered in the hope that they inspire some kind of a discussion/debate around this.  Please feel free to contribute and share your thoughts.  In case you missed it in yesterday’s post, you can read the MoU document that is the [...]
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  Posted: September 11, 2009, 5:10am EDT
  by Rob

• Why We Don’t Need Formal Agreements for National Transition Hubs

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 3
  The Transition Network recently produced a Memorandum of Understanding for emerging national Transition organisations, which now are up and running in Ireland, New Zealand, the US, Sweden and Italy.  The idea is to enable and support the transfer of the jobs Transition Network does (in particular assessing applications for ‘formal’ [...]
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  Posted: September 11, 2009, 5:08am EDT
  by Rob

• ‘In Transition’ Premieres Around the World

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 4
  On Wednesday night, ‘In Transition: from oil dependency to local resilience’ was shown for the first time in communities around the world.  I was at the screening at the almost-full Barn Cinema in Dartington, where I introduced the film along with producer Emma Goude.  We asked the audience to wave [...]
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  Posted: September 11, 2009, 2:30am EDT
  by Rob

• Needed: Volunteer Transcriber(s) for ‘In Transition’

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 3
  As already mentioned here, in December, after a couple of months of just public screenings, the DVD version of ‘In Transition’ will be released.  We have had many requests from around the world for the DVD version to have subtitles in a number of languages, and many people have already [...]
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  Posted: September 10, 2009, 2:47am EDT
  by Rob

• The Unleashing of Transition Langport

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 1
  Here is a great short film from the Unleashing of Transition Town Langport on April 4th 2009. As many of you will know, an Unleashing is a big public event which launches the Transition initiatives in question. Langport chose a different route to the big-public-event-with-speakers model that most places have [...]
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  Posted: September 10, 2009, 2:39am EDT
  by Rob

• James Balog on Time Lapse Proof of Extreme Ice Loss. Stunning

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 6
  As more of this year’s Oxford TED talks go up online, I will be sharing with you the ones that made the strongest impression on me. James Balog’s talk was in an extra evening session, which I expected to be lighter than the rest of it, but James’s presentation was [...]
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  Posted: September 09, 2009, 4:32am EDT
  by Rob

• Kreativ Blogger Award

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 4
  Sally Lever just nominated Transition Culture for the Kreativ Blogger award. I am honoured to accept.  This is a kind of ‘chain letter’ award, where people who are nominated then nominate 7 other blogs they admire. Having received it, I am now obliged to do 4 very specific things: 1. List [...]
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  Posted: September 09, 2009, 4:17am EDT
  by Rob

• Coming Soon: The Brixton Pound!

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 3
  Not long to go now before the launch of the Brixton Pound.  This is the first time, to the best of my knowledge, that an urban district has launched its own currency.  It is a bold experiment, and like all the best bold experiments, it starts with a party; September [...]
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  Posted: September 09, 2009, 2:19am EDT
  by Rob

• Responding to Ted Trainer’s Friendly Criticism of Transition

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 15
  Ted Trainer (right, author of, among other things, the utterly indispensible ‘Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain a Consumer Society’ just published a long and detailed piece which offers his thoughts on the Transition movement.  He sent me an earlier draft which I, in return, sent him some detailed thoughts on.  Given [...]
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  Posted: September 08, 2009, 2:11am EDT
  by Rob

• An Open Letter to the Queen

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 12
  I was honoured to be one of the signatories of a letter which was sent to the Queen last month, a response to the British Academy’s letter to her which sought to address her question as to why no-one had seen the economic meltdown coming.   Here is the text of [...]
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  Posted: September 07, 2009, 2:19am EDT
  by Rob

• A Short Film for your viewing pleasure: “Somerset in Transition”

  —Transition Culture

  On May 30th 2009, Transition Glastonbury hosted an event called ‘Somerset in Transition’, which brought together people involved in Transition initiatives from across the county.  Speakers included Jeremy Leggett, Shaun Chamberlin and Jacqi Hodgson.  A young budding film maker, Jack Thompson-Roylance, from Glastonbury, brought along his camera and made a [...]
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  Posted: September 04, 2009, 4:34pm EDT
  by Rob

• My Introduction to ‘Local Food: how to make it happen in your community’

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 15
  September 17th sees the release of the first in a series of ‘how to’ books published under the imprint of ‘Transition Books’ (due soon, guides to money, working with local government and cities).  Entitled ‘Local Food: how to make it happen in your community’ it is the work mainly of [...]
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  Posted: September 04, 2009, 2:18am EDT
  by Rob

• Emmanuel Jal, War Child

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 1
  As I mentioned in my write up of the TED Talks, the two most extraordinary presentations I saw there were Itay Talgam (whose talk is not yet posted) and Emmanuel Jal. Emmanuel’s talk was extraordinary, uplifting, sobering and inspirational. By the end there was not a dry eye in the [...]
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  Posted: September 03, 2009, 11:35am EDT
  by Rob

• Celebrating the 1000th Post on Transition Culture!

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 7
  Today is a bit of a Transition Culture landmark.  Extraordinarily, this is the 1000th post I have put up here.  Since the dim and distant early days of this site in November 2005, I have been leaping out of bed bright and early every morning to bring colour and vim [...]
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  Posted: September 03, 2009, 2:24am EDT
  by Rob

• 2012 and the Return of the Alarmingly Gullible

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 15
  I spent a few days last week at the Sunrise Off the Grid Festival near Shepton Mallet.  I had been invited to go and give a talk, and went along with the Hopkins family en masse.  It was a small and intimate affair, with some great things; the Transition area [...]
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  Posted: September 02, 2009, 3:02am EDT
  by Rob

• The ‘Eco Worriers’ Explore the Art of Gentle Persuasion

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 2
  Here’s a great 10 minute programme, the first in the ‘Eco Worriers’ series, which looks at powerdown issues from a very particular, and very entertaining, perspective. Definitely worth a watch. Eco-Worriers: Episode 1 from Daf Palfrey on Vimeo. [...]
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  Posted: September 01, 2009, 6:12am EDT
  by Rob

• My Collection of Transition ‘Toilet Books’

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 2
  Good to see you again. Had a good break ’staycationing’ (as it seems to be known, and as about 10% more Brits did this year than last year apparently), in Cornwall, Devon, the Forest of Dean, as well as taking my house to bits and painting it all (not yet [...]
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  Posted: September 01, 2009, 2:52am EDT
  by Rob

• Transition Movie – “In Transition 1.0″ – release schedule and prices

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 15
  NOTE: This post has been drafted up by me, Ben Brangwyn (benbrangwyn@transitionnetwork.org), while Rob’s on holiday. Actually, I’m trying to be on holiday too, but had the misfortune of going somewhere that has a reliable broadband connection. For those people who have seen this movie in one of its previews, you’ll [...]
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  Posted: August 11, 2009, 8:30am EDT
  by Rob

• Transition Network Seeks a Part-Time Fundraiser

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 3
  ** Note: the salary for this post has now increased from £22,000 pro rata to £28,500 pro rata. ** Transition Network is looking for a part time fundraiser to join its team.  The function of the post is “to help fulfil Transition Network’s objective of supporting community-led responses to peak oil [...]
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  Posted: August 07, 2009, 11:43am EDT
  by Rob

• Paul Romer on Charter Cities… can you spot the flaws?

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 15
  Am home for a couple of days, and spotted that some of the TED talks have started going up. Here, as a sort of Transition Culture Summer Homework, is Paul Romer’s talk on ‘Charter Cities’ which I was so critical about in my write up. It offers a fascinating taste [...]
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  Posted: August 06, 2009, 4:53pm EDT
  by Rob

• Transition Culture takes a break for the ’summer’

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 5
  Ah, the English summer.  Rain, rain and more rain.  It is at this point that I take my leave of you for most of August, to spend some time building sandcastles with my kids on Cornish beaches, visit my newlyborn nephew, check in with family, and try not to think [...]
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  Posted: July 29, 2009, 8:31am EDT
  by Rob

• The Lewes Pound Expands, with the Most Beautiful Notes You’ve Ever Seen

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 6
  I’ve written about the Lewes Pound here before, but here is a piece by Adrienne Campbell about the recent launch of the new notes, which are absolutely gorgeous.  It is fascinating to see how this initiative continues to develop and to innovate.  Congratulations all. “The Lewes Pound was relaunched by Transition [...]
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  Posted: July 29, 2009, 3:15am EDT
  by Rob

• Transport in Transition. A Guest Piece by Peter Lipman.

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 7
  Transformation Moment: low carbon travel. How, and how far, will we travel if we make the changes we need to in order to thrive in a carbon constrained society? For a range of interlocking reasons, the conclusion of this paper is that we will be happier, healthier and more resilient if [...]
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  Posted: July 29, 2009, 3:09am EDT
  by Rob

• Book Your Screenings of ‘In Transition’ Now

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 8
  ‘In Transition’, the 50 minute film about Transition created, in part, using the stories that Transition initiatives themselves filmed, is now completed.  The final cut is all done, and rather good it is too.  It has been rearranged from that previewed online and that shown at the Transition Network conference, [...]
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  Posted: July 28, 2009, 2:29am EDT
  by Rob

• Ed Miliband Muses on his Experience as a ‘Keynote Listener’ at the Transition Network conference

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 10
  Following UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Miliband’s appearance at the Transition Network conference as a ‘Keynote Listener’, we invited him to write a few words to sum up this thoughts on the experience.  Unfortunately it came in just a day too late to make the [...]
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  Posted: July 27, 2009, 10:07am EDT
  by Rob

• Some Notes from the Final Day of TED Global in Oxford

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 1
  The first session of the last day was ‘Cities Past and Future’. First speaker was Eric Sanderson, who gave an absolutely mesmering presentation about his work on the Mannahatta Project. It is based around asking the question, what would the land on which New York now stands have  looked like [...]
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  Posted: July 27, 2009, 3:23am EDT
  by Rob

• A Full Day at the 2009 TED Global in Oxford

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 5
  TED speaker Taryn Simon showing a photo of the Braille version of Playboy magazine (seriously)… What an extraordinary day.  I missed days one and two of TED, which, if they were anywhere near as good as today, was a big loss.  A day of fascinating speakers, even the ones I disgreed [...]
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  Posted: July 24, 2009, 2:41am EDT
  by Rob

• Giving One of the 2009 TED Talks. Gulp.

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 15
  I don’t normally get nervous about giving talks, but I have one coming up this week that I am feeling very nervous about. I am going to Oxford to do one of the TED talks, and I have to say, I am feeling like it is somewhat stepping up a [...]
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  Posted: July 22, 2009, 2:12am EDT
  by Rob

• The 2009 Transition Movement Survey: essential reading

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 6
  Dr. Gill Seyfang from the University of East Anglia has just published a very important piece of research, entitled “Green Shoots of Sustainability: the 2009 Transition Movement Survey” which you can download here.  94 UK Transition initiatives were sent an online questionnaire, of which 74 responded (a great response rate, [...]
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  Posted: July 21, 2009, 3:53pm EDT
  by Rob

• The ATMOS Project: Transition in Action

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 6
  About 2 years ago, in Totnes, Dairy Crest, the major employer in the town, closed, with the loss of 160 jobs.  The site on which it was based, 8 acres adjoining the railway station and running down to the river, now stands derelict.  Although most of the buildings are unspectacular [...]
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  Posted: July 21, 2009, 2:06am EDT
  by Rob

• A Chicken Greenhouse Update: notes from the cutting edge of permaculture inventiveness/absurdity

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 15
  You may remember the piece I wrote a while ago about my plans to build a chicken greenhouse, and my realisation that, in spite of my having spent years teaching this design classic on permaculture courses, nobody I had spoken to had actually seen one.  The comments that followed were [...]
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  Posted: July 20, 2009, 9:13am EDT
  by Rob

• Dr. Brian Goodwin. 1931-2009.

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 7
  It is with great sadness that I report the passing, last week, of Dr Brian Goodwin, of Schumacher College and also Trustee of Transition Network.  Originally from Canada, he spent his career working in biology and mathematics, and was very involved in the Open University.  Upon his retirement in 1992 [...]
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  Posted: July 20, 2009, 2:54am EDT
  by Rob

• A Transition Take on the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 15
  After many months of Ed Milliband putting himself out there are a Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change that actually gets climate change, finally his big Plan, the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan was unveiled on Wednesday, in a speech in the House of Commons that namechecked Transition [...]
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  Posted: July 17, 2009, 2:36am EDT
  by Rob

• An Alarming Side Effect of Wind Energy That We Have All Overlooked

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 15
  Have spent the day writing a ‘Transition Take on the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan’, which I will post soon.  One of the things it commits the Government to is a five-fold expansion of wind power over the next 10 years.  We have reported on many of the more colourful [...]
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  Posted: July 16, 2009, 11:53am EDT
  by Rob

• What Willy Wonka Could Teach the Modern Corporation

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 2
  I went to my younger 2 kids’ school play last night. They did ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, a wonderful celebration of children singing, acting, forgetting their lines and generally making every parent in the house go ‘aah’ and all watery-eyed on regular occasions.  Wonderful.  I did think, as I [...]
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  Posted: July 15, 2009, 10:49am EDT
  by Rob

• Announcing the Release of ‘Can Totnes and District Feed Itself?’

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 15
  We are delighted, after many months of work, to finally announce the release of a major piece of groundbreaking research developed by Transition Town Totnes, Transition Network and Geofutures, with support from Landshare, entitled ‘Can Totnes and District Feed Itself: exploring the practicalities of food relocalisation’.  You can download the [...]
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  Posted: July 10, 2009, 11:52am EDT
  by Rob

• Potato Competition Winner Announced!

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 2
  I know you were all gripped by Monday’s potato competition, so I can now unveil the correct answer and the winner.  The correct answer was that Bob Dylan did NOT write ‘Blowing in the Wind’ as a ballad about the tragic loss of his Manhattan balcony-grown potatoes to potato blight, [...]
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  Posted: July 10, 2009, 9:05am EDT
  by Rob

• The Potential Hazards of the Deregulation of Local Pig Swill

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 7
  In the ‘Can Totnes and District Feed Itself’ paper due to be launched here in a few hours (get ready…), one of the recommendations is a relaxation of the laws surrounding the collection of local food waste and feeding it to pigs.  This will need to be a key element [...]
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  Posted: July 10, 2009, 6:20am EDT
  by Rob

• Insights on Resilience from the Recent History of Totnes. 4: Shopping

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 3
  Clearly the markets weren’t the only source of food. The High Street contained a far higher proportion of shops selling food than today. The way the shops were run was very different to today. ML describes a trip to the shops in the early 1950s; “I used to go to the [...]
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  Posted: July 10, 2009, 2:20am EDT
  by Rob

• Coming Soon: ‘Local Food’, a Transition guide, and an interview with the author

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 6
  September 17th 2009 sees the publication of the keenly awaited ‘Local Food: how to make it happen in your community’, the first in a series of Transition Guides exploring different aspects of Transition at a community level.  You can download the blad here (blad stands for ‘book layout and design’ [...]
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  Posted: July 08, 2009, 7:16pm EDT
  by Rob

• Insights on Resilience from the Recent History of Totnes. 3:Local Farmers and the Town’s Markets

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 2
  The farmers who surrounded Totnes were much more directly engaged with the town than they are now, as the town provided the key markets for their produce. DM farmed 250 acres (which had grown to 300 by the time of his retirement in 1989). When he started work on the [...]
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  Posted: July 08, 2009, 6:37pm EDT
  by Rob

• Insights on Resilience from the Recent History of Totnes. 2: The Market Gardens

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 1
  Totnes featured 3 commercial market gardens within the town itself, Heaths, Gills and Phillips/Victoria Nursery. The largest, at least initially, was Heath’s, started in 1920 by George Heath senior (see left), and then run by his son, also called George, until its closure in 1981. Much of the south-facing area [...]
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  Posted: July 08, 2009, 1:56am EDT
  by Rob

• Insights on Resilience from the Recent History of Totnes. 1: Back garden food production

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 6
  Over the next few days I will be sharing some of the output from the oral histories I have been doing in Totnes and its surroundings, as which will make up part of the introduction to the EDAP and also part of my research.  I did about 15 interviews, and [...]
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  Posted: July 07, 2009, 11:27am EDT
  by Rob

• 5 Amazing Things You Never Knew About Potatoes! *plus* Your Chance to Win a Potato!

  —Transition Culture

  Number of comments: 8
  Just been digging up my new potatoes with my kids, very enjoyable.  I didn’t grow that many, and it wasn’t the most prolific year’s harvest I ever grew… all I can say is thank heavens we aren’t relying on this year’s crop to last us through until this time next [...]
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  Posted: July 06, 2009, 2:48am EDT
  by Rob