Frontenac ResilienceSustainable community and more

Due to a change in my (Andrew MacDonald’s) circumstances and not being sure where I’d be located, I put the Country Knowhow column (which appeared here as well as in the Frontenac News) on hold. I halted implementation of the Abundance Plot Community Garden concept as well. We’ll see what the future brings (also known as what we bring to it)!

I decided to disallow comments on the site. I’m getting a lot of spam coming to them. It’s time-consuming to take care of and I don’t know a good workaround for this.

If you do have something you’d like to say on the site, or want to put a “guest posting” up, drop me a line at andrewcartermacdonald / at / gmail / dot / com.

For the last twelve months a small group has met the second Sunday of each month to imagine the local future and how we might meet uncertain or hard times and do better than we might all on our own.

We meet with a format of sorts from 7:30 to 9:30 approximately . . . and they stick around till midnight talking. So far I’ve been the host and “space holder” for the evening’s first part. Long experience in groups have created or confirmed in me a strong desire to hold some form so that everyone can be heard and we stay focused on our subject. My experience has been that when we sit and chat with no focused question before us and no one driving, that the meeting wanders, people’s needs don’t get met and don’t come back.

Persistent themes come up, fade, come back again! Among them, the desire to have more young people round here and to support them, toot cellars (an in joke), a local trading circle (we do some of this informally and plans for a bulletin board are likely to tip over into happening shortly), helping with projects, marketing the area as a go-to place for sustainabilistas escaping Ottawa, Montreal, T.O.

The Country Know-how column came out of the Conversations as did friendships, a wild-rice expedition, threads of social cohesion, fun nights.

There will be much more. Now that we’re a year old there’s a sense that action will be more possible and wanted. We’ve grown a bit closer, learned a bit more about each other.

Consider coming along some time and checking us out. Contact me if you like by writing to countryknowhow at frontenac dot net.

David Shackleton will be bringing an exploration of the practicalities of wood gas to Frontenac November 21 in Sharbot Lake. Don’t let the fact you don’t know about wood gas make you think it’s not a very real thing. Back during WW11 over a million European vehicles ran on wood gas because access to fossil fuel was very limited; whole towns ran on it and the “old lamplighter” from the old song was probably burning it . With prices only going one way here, wood gas is going to have a place in the future mix. It’s a sustainable, renewable, carbon neutral, on demand energy source that can run your vehicle or be a source of electricity.

But where’s it come from? The same place the heat from your stove does. The flames you see in your regular stove are gas burning. But if you burn the wood in an oxygen-deprived atmosphere and collect the gas instead of burning it, you can use it for anything you can use oil for. What you’ve collected is wood (or producer) gas.

Wood gas is cheaper than fossil fuels and can only get cheaper. As an energy source it has a huge advantage over solar and wind. It’s available on demand since the energy is stored in the wood and accessible when wanted, completely under your control. Those who have solar or wind systems can use wood gas to keep home batteries topped up when the sun’s not shining or the wind’s not blowing.

Wood gas does anything fossil fuels do but up till now the cheapness of fossil fuel and lack of familiarity on this side of the Atlantic has kept demand down. If you think fuel prices are going way up, wood gas quickly looks attractive. Entry cost is low. To build a basic “gasifier,” as the wood-stove-like producer is called, about $200 worth of steel and 20 hours of basic welding. What you get will run your generator or can be run into an internal combustion engine and used directly.

Mini-workshop leader David Shackleton will bring dimensional drawings and the route he’s taking and discuss with you your possibilities for using wood gas.

David Shackleton is an ex-Nortel engineer from near Arnprior. He lives in a highly energy-efficient homestead with producer gas production in the works.

David’s Country Know-how mini-workshop will be Saturday, November 21 from 2-4:30 at Oso Hall in Sharbot Lake. It’s free though purely voluntary donations are welcomed for hall rental and presenter gas. To register, call Andrew at 613.279.1966 or email countryknowhow at frontenac.net. Same contact info for Country Know-how suggestions or comments.

Upcoming: Country Know-how mini-workshop on “Caring for your stringed thing” with Oskar Graf, Saturday November 14th at 9:30, Sharbot Lake. Register by calling Oskar at 613.279.2610.