Robert Paterson's Weblog

Foreshadowing our Future?

" ... Rome is hollow at the heart and one day she will come crashing down. A hundred years ago, it must have seemed that all this was forever; a hundred years hence - only the gods will know ... If I can make this one province strong - strong enough to stand alone when Rome goes down, then something may have been saved from the darkness. If not, the Dubris light and Limanis light and Rutupiae light will go out. The lights will go out everywhere. "

Dubris (Dover) Roman Lighthouse

From The Silver Branch by Rosemary Sutcliff - foreshadowing the fall of Rome and the transition that will occur in Britain.

I acknowledge that some of my readers feel that I am being unfriendly to America when I talk like this. I am not. I just have this feeling that we are terrible SYSTEMIC trouble. Some have asked - "What can we do?"

I think the answer is found in Sutcliff's later books in the series that root the Arthur legend in a realistic view what what life might have been like in post Roman Britain.

What she portrays are a group of people who work hard to keep the light alive in their area - the essence of Arthur.

There is no help from Rome. There will no longer be subsidies from Ottawa or Washington. The global transportation system collapsed. Our future will be determined by how self sufficient we can become.

We have to be able to grow our own food and to make our own energy - both are linked.

All our talk about farming misses this critical part. If we lose the knowledge and then lose our access to the global food system - what then?

If we don't work to become self sufficient in energy and we lose access to oil - what then?

How exciting might it be instead to make this our context and to join together as Lantern Bearers to become self sufficient

Biofuels for PEI - Rob's Vision

Today the government agreed to move on a biofuels strategy. What could it be like? Here is a press release that I imagined before the last election. It is more than Biofuels - it is about Energy Independence. Do you think we can do this?

Globe and Mail Online - APRIL 1 2019 - JANE NBOKO
PEI FARM INCOME BREAKS ALL RECORDS

The revolution is here. In the midst of a global melt down in farming all over the world, PEI gross farm income broke through the $1.0 billion mark for 2017.  Not only is PEI’ s farm sector booming but PEI is now 100% self-sufficient in electrical power and is 40% self-sufficient in fuel. With oil prices after the Iran war at $200 a barrel, energy self-sufficient PEI has become one of the most attractive places to live and work in North America.

Last year the population reached 212,000. Most of the new immigrants are young.

This shift in demography has eased the aging crisis that is confronting most of the developed world. At the centre of all of this is the “New Farm” a product of the Independence PEI Plan.

Governments and farmers all over North America and the world now routinely visit PEI to find out how they too can do this. Today we are making the same pilgrimage ourselves.

The Webster operation in Kinkora is a typical “New Farm”. We visited the patriarch, George Webster who still lives on the property of the farm that is now run by his sons and nephews. We met him down the road from the home farm in Maple Plains where we can see in microcosm the secret of the PEI revolution.

“As you can see on this part of the property we have 2 V90 turbines that are part of the Kinkora Energy Corporation’s (KEC) 12 V90’s. The Webster Farm has a direct income stream guaranteed for 20 years of $40,000 from these two turbines and, as an owner of the KEC, we receive a dividend each year from the larger system.

The KEC also put the old Scales Pond hydro plant back into action. Our local wind farm and Scales Pond supplies the wider Kinkora area with all its electrical power. With our wind and hydro, Kinkora was the first community on PEI to have 100% locally owned electric power. We are well on our way to be independent in biodiesel and in local heat as well.

This year we are growing a new high yield canola. We sell the canola to the KEC crushing plant in Kinkora on the site of the old Esso where it is made into biodiesel. We buy all our biodiesel from KEC - so in effect we buy from ourselves

Each Watershed on PEI has a small scale oil plant so our logistics costs are very low. KEC is in turn part of the PEI Independence Energy Alliance (PIEA) fuel network. All our Watersheds and our local watershed based businesses are connected in an Island wide energy network. Across the Island there are straw and methane operations as well.

You will see that all PEI school buses are painted green. This is how we started our biodiesel business. We used the demand to supply our school buses and to heat the schools to kick start our local fuel system.

Adjoining the school, and sharing its heating system, is the Kinkora Food Corporation (KFC) that is part of the PEI Independence Food Alliance (PIFA). Here we locally process food from farmers in our watershed for sale to the school system and to our local market. This was all part of our plan to give our kids a healthier start in life and to create a local processed food capability. Our children get access to a real breakfast and a real mid day meal. Parents and local resident can order meals online that are delivered
by the bus on the way home. All Kinkora residents own the KFC so we feed ourselves with real food grown locally.

When we started the menu was very modest. We stuck to the kind of food that my granny used to cook. By doing this we could use 90% local ingredients and we could use the skill of the typical person in our community. But as we learned more, we have expanded beyond a simple and narrow range to the kind of menu that everyone here can enjoy. Chef Michael Smith has been huge help as has the Culinary in town that has outreach courses for our staff.

We use the green buses not only to deliver our kids but to deliver everything and everyone locally. It’s funny how blind you can be. We had this local transport system sitting in full view! The school buses now work 7 days a week & 12 months of the year moving people and goods around locally. We also have an Island wide shuttle service. Kinkora is linked into the rest of the Island by a fleet of biodiesel and hydrogen buses. The hydrogen comes from the larger wind farms on the North Shore. It’s like having the trains back! We have cut the use of private cars down by 40%.

Kinkora is busy again. My granddaughters, and nearly all my young nieces and nephews, work now locally. Kinkora had become a dormitory and we had been losing our young to the west. As so many local businesses related to energy and food have sprung up, we can now employ most of our residents in good jobs here back in Kinkora. It is becoming a real community again.

We farm quite differently now. Our fields are much smaller than they were 10 years ago. They look more like they did when my father farmed. If you look over there into the lower ground, you will see trees and a water meadow. This is not wasted land. This is part of the local water buffer system that the Webster Farm also gets paid for. The Webster farm is a member of the PEI Water Alliance (PWA). PWA is responsible for all water on PEI and it has an attractive incentive plan that pays me and other farmers to improve water quality. We got this idea from upstate New York that has been paying its farmers for years now rather than having to pay for a water filtration system. Being a good land steward has become a good business.

Oh I nearly forgot - the potatoes! We still sell some of our crop to the processor. But now even he has had to radically change his business. Since McDonalds responded to pressure about how the Burbank was affecting the environment, the Green Fry, made from earlier maturing varieties, has become the new standard. We harvest now in late July and have a cover crop sown in time for winter. My fry business is about 25% of my gross and only 15% of my net. McCains also process my table stock for the Food Trust
that sells high end fresh pack to the supermarkets. With so much food now grown locally, there is not much of a market for bulk potatoes anymore.

My potato costs have dropped by 50%. Because we don’t grow the Russet now, we use smaller & less expensive equipment. We only store for very short periods now. My input needs are way down as both the pest and disease pressure has dropped. The PEI Independence Investment Fund (PIIF) helped finance the conversion on much of my potato storage into a pellet factory and a natural fuel storage facility.

We are running a series of tests on coppicing and on fast growing species that we can convert to pellets.  I have high hopes for this new line of business as we will have to reduce our traditional wood burning. Pellets are a lot easier to use and to store and the incentives for all Islanders to move to pellet is building the market. Over 50% of Island homes heat at least partially with pellets now.

We are doing so well because most of our market is internal to PEI. While the outside world is reeling, we  are making a good living by providing each other with what we all need the most.

What a change for a man my age. It all began back in 2008...........”

Trust and Room to Govern

The polls show the PEI government to be very popular. But there are signs that it does not have a clear sense of the way. In 2008 reality will set in. What is the energy plan? What are we going to do about farming? What are the finances etc.

All the issues that face the government are tough ones that would tax any government.

But if at the same time it becomes clear that this government cannot be trusted, then the challenge becomes all but impossible.

Trust has been lost, for no good reason, in the whole area of children. In an attempt to regain trust, we wrote a week ago to the department asking for them to disclose the facts that should have been the basis of their work on the Childcare facilities act. What is the situation in detail about places etc

We gave them a week - Today is the deadline.

So this is the test - to regain trust a timely and full disclosure is required. Please do the right thing.

Kindergarten Changes on PEI

Here is a review of our local media on the reaction to the "Instant" changes to eligibility for Kindergarten on PEI.

I am still bemused. The department of education changed the rules on Thursday last week here for eligibility for kindergarten effective today.

So - in the midst of a school year -  with a weekend for notice - the rules for whether your child can go to kindergarten are new. You as a parent have no time and no information to make a call and the operators of daycares and kindergarten lose or gain kids with no notice.

Now assume that you are one of my readers from away - what does that tell you about the people who make these decisions?

By the way, the department is back-pedaling like mad now they have heard from the staff who have to implement this. The change was trumpeted as being driven by demand. Now in the face of reality, they are saying that parents should not rush to put their kids in early

PEI - Poor Education Results - Is it the schools???

Between 30 and 58% of Grade III kids on PEI are below where they should be. Think about this for a minute. We have a system that has a "failure rate" of between 30 and 58% and there is no crisis merely a disappointment.

But is this a school problem? The point of this post is to say "Only Partly" - The real problem is somewhere else. Our greatest risk is that we are not looking at the root of the problem and so may never be able to fix this.

The real root of the problem occurs before our children arrive in school.

Sorry about the chart but I cannot show what I want to show in any other way. On PEI we have recently had the results of a province wide test of Children in Grade III released. It is not a pretty picture. The column on the far right is the percentage of children who are not up to grade.

For more than 2 years, it has been clear on PEI that our kids and hence our future of our society are at risk. For what society can make it through what is coming - global warming, the energy crisis, the end of our current model for farming and fishing - unless it has a vibrant and capable population? The "system" are of course embarrassed and are committed to trying harder.

Everyone is looking at the schools. I think that we have to look somewhere else as well.

Please look at the first column. This is percentage of kids who are in family situations where the parents/parent is really struggling to cope with being a competent parent.

Do you see what I see?

More than 30% of our new born babies on PEI are born into an environment where it is likely that they will not get the attention and the relationships that they need to set them off on a social and a learning trajectory that will help them not only do well in school but in life.

How a child experiences the world in the first few years of life wires them for life. A 150 word difference in comprehension aged 2 sets the initial conditions that determine whether a child will do well in school or not. By grade 9, the 300 word kids are at a second year of university level and the 150 word kids are stuck at grade 5. Over a lifetime, the gap widens.

By grade III, the time of the PEI testing, it is too late. The gap can never be closed. The percentages of kids who cannot make the grade will now only get worse and by the end of their time at high school only about 30% of the kids will be able to make it as citizens in the world that we now live in. A 70% wastage of our most precious resource.

Obviously there is work to do in our schools. But any "system" that has over 30% of those who set the Initial Conditions in such rough shape as ours cannot be healthy and cannot develop to its potential. The key to success in grade 13 is what happens before the kids arrive in grade I.

100 years ago, we decided as a society that we had to offer all our children an education. At the time, families were still functioning and starting at 6 worked. It worked because most of the kids arrived at school having grown up in an environment that worked. Not all but Most. Now many parents really struggle and have no support from either a spouse or form an extended family. They themselves have often had a tough time as a kid.

If we are to have any hope as a society, we are going to have to recognize that the first 6 years of a child's life are when their destiny is set.

By 6, we are hardwired to be the person that we will be. Not only how we learn, but how we behave, how we eat, how we feel about ourselves. The person we will be - from the hard working, sensitive, aware, competent and reliable to the acting out, addictive, systemically unhealthy, prone to crime and dysfunction - has largely been set by 6.

As those 100 years ago decided to act collectively to support kids after the age of 6, we will have to act to do something about kids from before birth to 6.

Nothing of what I say is new or news. What may be different now is that the data now tells us that all our fears are valid and that merely trying harder is not enough.

So here is the challenge. Do we all sit quietly and hope for the best? Or do we start to think about what is really going on? Can we get together to consider what we can do to ensure that most of our kids arrive in school not only ready to learn but ready to be fully competent citizens?

Here is the challenge for government. What is your plan? You had better have one. Trying harder or is not a plan. A plan that has any chance of success has to face the facts of the leverage of the Early Years.

PS - the follow on will show you the effects of not dealing with this

 

Your Cottage Vacation on PEI - Hopetoun

Here is a short video that I hope will show you what our "Barn" is like. It's a great place to get away from it all. We are in the middle of the country but only 8 minutes from Charlottetown and 25 minutes from the best beaches on the Island. Golf is just around the corner.

But what is most special is getting away from the hurly burly of modern life.

Gore's Nobel Message - For PEI?

From Gore's Nobel Speech - a call to us all!

"The great Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, wrote, "One of these days, the younger generation will come knocking at my door."

The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: "What were you thinking; why didn't you act?"

Or they will ask instead: "How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?"

We have everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will, but political will is a renewable resource.

So let us renew it, and say together: "We have a purpose. We are many. For this purpose we will rise, and we will act."

So is our government going to act? Where does our future rank in their list of priorities? For I agree with Mr Gore - collective action is critical.

Mahatma Gandhi awakened the largest democracy on earth and forged a shared resolve with what he called "Satyagraha" -- or "truth force."

In every land, the truth -- once known -- has the power to set us free.

Truth also has the power to unite us and bridge the distance between "me" and "we," creating the basis for common effort and shared responsibility.

There is an African proverb that says, "If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." We need to go far, quickly.

We must abandon the conceit that individual, isolated, private actions are the answer. They can and do help. But they will not take us far enough without collective action. At the same time, we must ensure that in mobilizing globally, we do not invite the establishment of ideological conformity and a new lock-step "ism."

That means adopting principles, values, laws, and treaties that release creativity and initiative at every level of society in multifold responses originating concurrently and spontaneously.

We surely live in a time when we will indeed have a legacy. What will our children think of us?

Instant Plumber - Rick Long of AquaTech

Robin was on the phone today with Rick our fave plumber. She was asking his advice about water filters. The dogs started to bark and his truck drove up to our front door!

Now that's service - he also did not try and sell us anything but showed Robin how to make the most informed decision - that's trust!

Moving to PEI - Your Home Away from Home

If you or someone you know is moving to PEI or working on a project, how about living in our apartment that is alongside our house? Here is the link to the blog with all the details.

We are only 7 minutes from the centre of town but completely in the country.

Paradise - PEI

We have just had dinner on our deck - this is looking up our drive facing south. Doesn't get much better than this. I cooked and Robin is now doing the washing up - that's our deal.