Food for Thought

Hello All
Well it has been a fairly uneventful week in the land of Franklin. The usual things have happened daily, wake up, feed children, ferry children, feed sheep, feed adults, do some butchery work, feed dogs, fetch children, feed children and adults, go to sleep. Variations may include drive a larger distance to ferry the children to an activity, drive a larger distance still, to get to a market. 
There seems to be a theme to our lives which involves rather a lot of feeding and rather a lot of ferrying, which leads me to wonder,and has for some years now, how one can involve some kind of energy friendly management systems into our business through control of our fossil fuel usage. Quite an important issue as it is remarkable to ponder on the fact that we have progressed at such a slow rate with regard to transportation and yet at such a fast rate when one looks at milking cows with robots rather than hands, or driving tractors with GPS systems rather than people, or communicating with people across the globe using satellites and fibre optics rather than paper and ink. 
I have always resented being controlled by people, but sadly the control that is held over the general population by the people who mange the tax systems and fuel supply is really strangulating and seems to suck the energy out of the desire or ability to change the way the world is structured.
Now a few years ago Gavin was aimlessly wandering around the internet and stumbled across the aircar:

A car that runs on compressed air. That sounds pretty eco minded and we waited to see if anything would come of it, and yes they are used quite extensively in airports in France, don't see many on the open road though. We tuned in to our weekly Top Gear jaunt on a Sunday evening and learnt about the new BMW hybrid car that is oh so fantastic.... ah yes until we discover that the elctricity charging points are impractical and inevitably one is forced to use the fuel tank once again to get from A to B. And the fuel consumption in real life is oh yes only 34 miles to the gallon. Not to mention the expense of buying one for the average Joe Bloggs.

In the 1970s during fuel rationing in Zimbabwe, Gavins Grandfather used to run a Land Rover on gas from a charcoal burner. Last time I checked trees were a renewable resource and yes maybe the technology is cumbersome and crude but where is the innovation now. Talking of trees I am still trying to understand in my head why chopping trees down in La Fôret de Double to make way for oceans of roadway and concrete to put in windmills to generate power in a low wind area was ever a good idea. However if I have understood correctly a Tribunal in Bordeaux has cancelled all the windfarm development in Aquitaine. If I haven't then the suffocating powers that be are hard at work again, more worried about where their tax euros are coming from than actually conserving the planet for the generations to come. 
Oh my, I have just turned into my Father.
So on a lighter note this is Mini our last lamb of this lambing period called Mini because she fitted in Gavins hands when she was born.
See you all soon
Helen