Ann Owen

I’m not surprised that Permaculture hasn’t caught on with mainstream food growers.

This is very much what “doing Transition” means to me: it’s creating vibrant, positive change by the community for that community.

Under cover growing is definitely the way to go.

In a society where people tend to be defined by what work they do, the question: “So what do you do?” is one that I find difficult to answer. I’m a classic Jack of all trades, master at none, and naming all the skills that I’ve collected over more than four decades would require some time. I’m not saying this to brag, but more to illustrate that I’m simply one of those people who collects skills as someone else might collect stamps or coins.

Change doesn’t come easy to us humans. We like to know what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next year. Sudden change can be severely upsetting; a death, unemployment or illness has the ability to turn our lives upside down for weeks, months or even change it completely. Most of these unexpected and unplanned changes are therefore unwelcome and a lot of people would find it difficult to discover silver linings in these kinds of challenges.

Long gone are the days when the job you’d grow up to do would more or less be determined by the jobs your parents did. But going now is the concept of the “job for life”; something you’d study for in youth and then spend your life improving your skills at, earning more and more pay until you’d retire with a generous final salary pension.