Our plans....

Firstly I guess my plans for this blog - this blog is about poweringdown and lifeboat building.

Poweringdown refers to using less power, less energy - most commonly applied to a whole region, or town or even a household I guess. Making all the changes necessary to cut back on energy use... and that doesn't just apply to electricity. It has to do with pretty much everything in our lives; food production, transportation and mobility, infrastructure, planning, land use, food supply networks, goods and services, education, health, communication, land stewardship, finances, economics, employment... everything. And it's all these things that form the framework for our lifeboat building...

Lifeboat has to do with an individual building their own lifeboat - their rescue package, their life saver. Preparing your home - looking at water, energy, waste management, what you buy, what you bring into your home. And I must say I still want comfort, quality and a good life! It's not about living in a cave, in the dark and eating raw meat.

Lifeboat building is also about preparing your garden - food production, permaculture, creating a food forest in your backyard, learning new skills, relearning old skills, sharing, knowing who your neighbours are, be part of your community, building resilience in your community. Knowing what to do and who to contact when you need them.

So, in a very small nutshell, that's powerdown and life boat building.

This blog will focus mainly on my home, my family, my garden and my community and the actions I'm taking to prepare for a future in which we not only survive, but thrive.

So our current situation is;
we have a small timber home on 2.25 acres in the hinterland of Queensland's Sunshine Coast. We have a composting toilet, we only use rainwater, my husband works part-time and I'm developing my own part-time work from home job.

We grow a lot of our own food; we have vegie patches, food forests, coffee plantation (arabica variety), chooks, worm farms, compost systems, etc etc etc.

We try to have one car between us - bit hard and my husband's had to buy a motorbike to commute to work. We buy only organic food and products.

Our plans include;
building a second dwelling on the property - a studio - I hope it will be able to be strawbale because I just love them, but at least hopefully some adobe feature walls internally.
converting our organic garden (we bought it as an established organic garden) into a permaculture garden (making it much more user-friendly, practical and LESS WORK!)
we have a solar hot water service on order
we plan to have a solar PV system in place by the end of the year
growing more and more food each year for ourselves
learning about dehydrating and preserving food
learning a lot more skills that will improve the quality of our lives

So, that's where we are at and a few dot points of ideas we have for the future. There are so many people doing the same type of thing - it's great.