iEco is a personal journey to a more conscious lifestyle that i hope will inspire you to become more ecologically conscious too. It is a resource of eco friendly living tips and advice. i live completely offgrid. Even this website is designed using electricity that is generated and stored at home with a micro renewable energy system in West Clare, Éire.
iEco explores the micro environment as well as the macro environment. The micro environment is the most important to me as it is the one we have complete control over and can change by adapting our personal lifestyle.
The root of the word Eco comes from the Greek word Oikos which means Home. Ecology is ‘knowing the home’. Economy is ‘running the home’. Each week i will look at ways of living that are less polluting to the environment. I am not going to get bogged down on the whole climate change or global warming narrative. i believe humanity does have some small influence on this but what is of greater concern to me is how polluting humanity has become in recent decades and the slow poisoning of our life support systems in nature. Nature is the great provider and if we pollute and poison nature we ultimately do it to ourselves.
One of the best pieces of advice i have to get started on your journey and free up more creative time is to get rid of your TV. TV is literally programming people. TV companies that produce the programmes and advertising have only one motive and that is to make money. Morals are in short supply. I haven’t owned a TV for 14 years and when i am in houses now where TVs dominate the living room or kitchen it saddens me to see how people are being controlled. The News especially is very negative and depressing to watch each day. So free your mind, free your time and be more creative with your life. The internet is a great way to discover more ecological ways of living and if you set the task of learning new skills each week there is a lot of information available on the web to help develop those skills. We live in an age of vertical integration where mega corporations are buying up all companies that influence their marketplace, including TV stations. If you wish to break free from the Big Business influence in your life getting rid of your TV is a great start. Also most mainstream print media is compromised by Big Business so stop buying newspapers and save some trees from being cut down at the same time.
Becoming eco aware doesnt mean moving back to a caveman lifestyle. You will find your life will gradually become more fulfilling and rewarding. Many people are going through life wondering what it is all about and i believe we are facing severe economic hardships in the coming years, due to the repurcussions of collapsing economies. This will be difficult for many to cope with . Learning to live with less and becoming a producer, not just a consumer, will be essential for surviving the changes ahead.
Eco Home and Garden
If you are living in a city and you intuitively feel the changes that are coming it is time to move to the country. If possible look at buying (if you can afford it) or renting a property with a piece of land. An acre of land will allow you to grow a substantial amount of food including keeping some small animals that will provide eggs/meat and manure for your vegetable growing . I rent 4 acres and a small two bedroom cottage from an old school friend that has enabled me to develop an offgrid agritourism business. You can read more about this on another website i maintain called IrelandEcotourism.ie. Essentially during the spring, summer and autumn i operate a camping and glamping business and then during the winter i purchase a small flock of turkeys and broiler chickens for meat that i can store in a chest freezer. The poultry produce plenty of manure which can be used as organic fertiliser for the vegetable garden. I grow willow biomass for wood fuel to go with turf which i harvest from my own piece of bog each summer. i plant native trees where i harvest my turf (peat) each year to regenerate the carbon that i burn heating the two bedroom cottage where i live. i have had no heating or electricity bills for the past four years.
There is an intial investment to get established but if you can focus on your work complementing and supporting your offgrid vision it is possible to get to where you want to be in a few short years. If you have money to invest straight away you can achieve what i have achieved in 4 years in less than a year. I only had enough to invest in my renewable energy system initially and purchasing some poultry. Each year i have added a little. I will discuss the How to’s of keeping poultry and, installing a micro renewable energy system along with many more topics in more detail with their own unique posts.
Each week i will include a video with each post that is related to the message. The first video is from Christian Westbrook a.k.a. Ice Age Farmer and discusses the oncoming supply chain collapse and hyper inflation you as a consumer are facing because of the billions our governments borrowed in 2020 to pay for so many people out of work. Christian also introduces people to the grand solar minimum a natural solar cycle that everyone needs to be aware of (i will discuss grand solar minimum in a future post).
By the way many people who receive the pandemic unemployment payment are not aware that this is in fact a loan that you have to pay back. It will be deducted from your salary as an annual tax .There is no money for nothing.
BRACE FOR IMPACT: “About to get much worse”. Christian is a brilliant investigator who reads the studies and fine print of important documents that most people cannot find time to do and i will be showing some of his videos from time to time. The phrase ‘Conspiracy Theorist’ has come to the fore in the mainstream media the past year as a way of ‘debunking’ anyone who questions the mainstream narrative that Big Business is pushing. Many of these theories are coming true so a more correct description of one who questions the narrative is Critical Thinker.