Freeconomy Blog
Sat
06 Jun
Two cups of tea
From most people's viewpoint there are many ways to 'make' a cup of tea; black or white, with or without sugar, weak or strong, to an infinite number of degrees. If you consider the whole process of 'making tea', however, it mostly falls into two categories.
One of these is what we'll call the 'sane' way of making tea. This is working off the assumption that the overwhelming majority of the population is in fact sane, and given that this is the way that this majority make their tea, then it stands to reason that this is the sane method of doing so, otherwise people would choose otherwise. It goes something like this:
1. Get people in India to grow some black tea - plant it, weed it, harvest it, sell it to a local wholesaler for a price they find it increasingly difficult to survive on.
2. Have it imported 6,500 kilometres by air freight.
3. Get it sent to a UK wholesaler / central warehouse by a truck.
4. Get it sent from the warehouse to a retailer close to where you live, usually by van.
5. Drive, cycle or walk to pick it up from the shop.
6. Give the shopkeeper about £1.99, which actually isn't a lot when you consider the amount of people involved in the process.
7. Bring it home.
8. Order the national grid to give you enough electricity to boil the kettle with, by plugging it into the socket.
9. The national grid effectively sends you 3 times that which you've asked for, as they already know 67% of it will be lost on the way to your socket.
10. Grab yourself a mug.
11. Kettle boils, pour it on the tea, and enjoy a cup of tea made from dry leaves, statistically most likely in your house watching TV or outside a cafe watching cars go by.
12. Feel awake and alert from the caffeine fix it supplies.
13. Feel tired from the effects of the caffeine wearing off and, over time, from lacking the nutrients it has leached out of your body.
14. Urinate the tea, the toxins and your nutrients into your drinking water supply through the entrance called 'the toilet'.
Contrary to popular knowledge, this is not the only way of making tea. Another way is possible.
This we shall call the 'insane' method, simply on the basis that the sane masses choose not to do it this way:
1. Pick a handful of the abundant tea that grows freely around you at any given moment. My tea this week (below) - nettles and cleavers - grows wild within a 3 metre radius of my rocket stove, where I boil it.
2. Pick up some bits of wood lying around to fuel the rocket stove to boil the tea.
3. Take a look around at the stunning landscape you find yourself in, and wonder how lucky we all are.
4.Grab yourself a mug
5. Light up the rocket stove using this foraged wood and boil water with nettles and cleavers in it for 10 minutes.
6. Pour it into the mug (and a flask for later) and enjoy it outside in the country, listening to the bird's dusk chorus and watching a squirrel bury his nuts. Get some free Vitamin D from the sun into the bargain. (that is me in my kitchen below).
7. Feel refreshed and pumped full of iron, calcium, magnesium and anti-oxidants.
8. Urinate into the compost heap and activate the fertiliser for the crops you can't just find at the side of your house.
9. Watch the sunset over the horizon.
One thing that mystifies me is why people continue to buy, for example, dried nettle tea bags in a shop for a premium price, then pay their local council, through their taxes, to chop down fresh nutritious nettles all across their county!
And best yet - people pass a huge rosemary bush by the footpath entering a gigantic Tesco near where I used to live in Bristol, and then go and pay premium prices for the stuff inside, dried and in little plastic packets!
Can people no longer even see food, though it surrounds them everywhere?
THE FREECONOMY BLOG is written by Mark Boyle, founding member of the Freeconomy Community.
Comment on this Post:
Claire comments ...
I'm deffo gunna try the nettle tea! Thanks for the advice. I've always found the whole chain of events that leads our products to us a bit vague, when you sit down and think of it, it all seems a little crazy! more people need to start thinking like this. Thanks for your input x
baruk comments ...
sweet! defi*nitely worth a try, mark, thanks!
the nilgiris in india, where a lot of tea is grown, are also drying out because of the tea and the eucalyptus. spoke to a planter a few years ago, who said they were having to bore deeper to get water, as rain water was not enough.
another large tea growing area, assam, has the workers in acolonial conditions-many of the planters/owners live the flash life, and the workers need to depend on them for *everything. it is better on the smaller plantations, where the workers are often treated like part of the family, but the large corporation owned plantations are pretty bad. all the profits from tea are sent outside the region, an very little (if at all) actually benefits the area it is grown.
another reason to think twice before that cuppa!
Christine comments ...
Nope Mark, people can't see the food around them because they aren't educated in what they can eat from the hedgerow. Or they won't touch it because it's dirty, covered in car fumes, might have been peed on a by dog. It's when people won't accept food from the ground because it's dirty instead of clean and prepacked from the shop that you know the world has gone crazy. Yes I've seen that happen.
Caroline comments ...
blinkin heck... we're all insane! Funnily enough I did pick some nettles and cleavers from the cycle path yesterday for a refreshing brew. But how should I overcome the need for caffeine on a 6:30 to London for work... oh yeah give up work and stay in bed right?!?
Robert Howes comments ...
Hi Mark,
Just taking a first look at the new site. I don't drink tea or hot drinks at all, but we have some nettles here if you want to come and make tea from them. We'll find you some sticks to heat a kettle of water. By the way, if people took bits of the rosemary bush it would soon be gone, but they could grow their own.
Cheers,
Bob
***
Andy Hamilton comments ...
We used to have a rich culture in this country of herb tea drinking as they still do in many parts of Eastern Europe. Plants such as mugwort acts as a window into this past, how do you think it got it's name? MUG wort.
Topping up your vitamins etc with many of the plants around us just makes more sense and they tend to grow when we need them. Cleavers are much better in the spring and work as a purging herb helping rid our bodies of the winter indulgence and elderflower that is around at the moment will help hayfever sufferers.
So is it hard work picking those nettles hence having to take your shirt off or is Frances right and you are in danger of turning into a exhibitionist mate! ;)
Mark comments ...
Bakur - thanks for that insight. Its a WIN-LOSE-LOSE-LOSE situation, the winners being the middlemen.
Christine - I couldn't agree more with you. We live in a sterilised world, thats one of the major reasons we have to pump so much of the taxpayers money each year to sort out the NHS, though the queues just get bigger.
Caroline - my advice, don't go to London. Though it is for a good cause. The only reason you need a coffee to kickstart your day though is because you drink coffee. Make todays your last. Tomorrow have a self-disciplinochino at 6.30pm. You'll feel great by Friday.
Robert Howes - same offer for you. The rosemary bush - I agree, but I don't think they are taking some off it because they are conservationists.
Andy Hamilton - very hard work indeed! For everyones sake I decided against the pics of me down by the river having a wash just after the cuppa!
Fritha comments ...
how do you power your computer? and where was it made, and how about the camera? where is it from? Im just off to bed with a cup of pg tips, ooooo love a cup of tea!
Cheese comments ...
Hi Mark, obviously influenced by seeing the video this week then ;-) feel free to link to/use it as much as you like.
Fritha - Mark is living for a year without money, his laptop is powered by the sun, through a solar panel. I enjoy a cup of indian tea as much as the next person, but its madness when you think about its impact. People talk about 'Carbon Footprints', think how much the simple act of making a cup of tea can contribute to your carbon footprint, then look at the alternatives, like nettle tea. I know which one I'll be able to sleep better after.
Mark comments ...
Cheese - here is a bit of footage Steve Cheeseman took as part of a project for his final year in Winchester Uni. Its nettle and cleaver tea making with a bit of philosophy thrown in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouo2IJQ62Qs
Fritha - yes the laptop and camera are made from bamboo shoots. No they're not. I said numerous times in the past that laptops and cameras are transitional tools. I don't need them to survive - in fact every moment I am using it I am not being out in nature like I really want to be. But if we are going to make the transition to a new way of doing things, the internet is realistically the best way of achieving that. I certainly don't need the internet, its bascially to communicate what I think are important issues that effect billions of people, the planet and all that dwell on it.
Enjoy the cuppa.
Ana comments ...
Bon appetit!. Sorry my criticism but how do we stop the stove pumping pollutants into the atmosphere?. If the energy prices keep rising we ourselves are planning a wooden burner for our heating/cooking soon. Solar cooking?
At this time of the year you could make a borage tea as well, or could use it in stew (still used in Spain as a vegetable), as I usually do. But my children hate it!
Another great post!
k comments ...
just like animal poo on stuff turns my stomach, the urine on the compost heap to help it, for to grow crops turns my stomach.....
maybe it shouldn't, as other insects animals may be going to the toilet in it anyway, and guess you are living naturally with little toxins?
nope, it still turns my stomach.....
like those compost toilets- fine if they're gonna be buried out the way somewhere, but on food crops- turns my stomach....
still, the nettle tea sounds gorgeous......i don't think i'd recognise cleavers...
it can be easier to just buy nettle tea bags, when theres no nettles nearby/if you can't get to nettles
(and the gross food given to most dogs excreted out of dogs - yes thats right-turns my stomach)-
luckily have some nettles growing in my little garden (tho my dad was suprised at me keeping them), and they are in the allotment too-
my health has improved by not having caffeine btw, lots or fresh organic fruit and smoothies are surely superior forms of energy.....(it definitely is if my son is anything to go by :)!
Mark comments ...
To 'k' - pesticides turn my stomach. Breathing in the fumes of the world's transportation vehicles turns my stomach. Well done for giving up coffee and glad you like the nettles!
To 'last commentator who doesn't have a name' - what is a weightbuilder? Is it someone who builds weights? Sorry, couldn't resist.
Aunty Ann comments ...
Hi Mark
dont forget the abundent dandilion rich in iron and delicious especially young leaves in salad...A Chinese herbalist said to me that if it if it did not grow in Britian it would be a hugely expensive herb asit is so high in vits/minerals
Lyssa M comments ...
I looked up cleavers and am I correct in believeing they are the things that leave little balls stuck to your trousers when you go in search of hedgerow delights? I never realised you could make tea from them.
BTW... I didn't want to say earlier... but you certainly look very good in that pic! this whole living for free must be doing wonders for your health!
Damiano comments ...
fantastic...i totally agree...i made a nettle tea for my potatoes and tomatoes a few days ago and gave it to them earlier this morning...
Damiano comments ...
one more thing: the dust tea you buy in a supermarket is out of any international classification about tea quality: if you compare its price you will find that a good tea in leaves is less expansive and you know what you buy, but in the dust they can put everything...
Mark comments ...
To Lyssa M - why, thank you. Yes I feel healthier and fitter than ever. I eat predominantly fresh food (picked the day I eat it) and my body has to do the work machines used to do, so my physical fitness has increased massively, and has had to being honest. I can't overstate how much I think fitness will be one of the critical skills in a post peak oil society. Give cleaver and nettle tea and go and let me know what you think!
Myles comments ...
Hi Mark, I agree with one of the previous comments, people are not educated to see food around them. Most people I know associate tea with Indian tea (actually, it was originally a Chinese plant but stolen by the British to be planted in India) and wouldn't associate it with any other plant. More exposure to home grown foods using TV, radio, internet, and books, may help to reverse that trend. For example, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingtall's River Cottage series.
As for lighting fires to make a brew; the industrial revolution saw an end to that. We are brought up to spend our time earning money to buy labour saving items such as packet tea and mains electricity. We live in a leisure society and, arguably, putting the kettle on is more leisurely that picking tea and lighting a fire.
There may well come a time when people will light brew fires again either through education or necessity.
comments ...
Realistically, I think lighting fires will be forbidden because smog and pollution, and we all be force to use nuclear, unless of course an alternative source of energy is quickly found.
Ana comments ...
I forgot to add that IMO the carbon foot print of the modest ordinary people is very insignificant if compare with the wasteful rich and powerful, I refuse to feel any sense of guilty about that.
Mark comments ...
To Ana - good comment. Either way you shouldn't feel guilty. But the average carbon footprint of what you call the 'modest ordinary person' in the UK is 10 tonnes, and if we want to stabilise our atmosphere, we need to get down to 2 tonnes per person. The modest ordinary person uses 5 times the energy that is required for us to stop irreversible climate change, whose repercussions none of us really know.
Also, it is the purchases of the modest ordinary person that make the wasteful rich person rich! I do agree with you about nuclear, that will be pushed on us really soon, the only way it won't be is if we vote with our pockets, the only really effective way left to vote. if we don't all reduce our energy usage (including embodied energy in the stuff we buy), then nuclear will be used.
Lyssa M comments ...
Even tho it is the big companies that use the most there's no reason not to try to reduce our own emissions and our own energy use... besides... fires are waaaaay more fun that just lighting the gas, lol
I tried the tea... very nice, Glad I tried that and found a patch of cleavers just down my road so don't even need to venture far, lol.
I find myself watching the ground as I walk incase I can find anything edible, lol... tho I don't recognize much... so when you pick "weeds" make sure we get pics!! lol! I so loooove it tho... picked a whole load of elderflowers to make cordial for me and my little girls.
Danielle comments ...
you raise a very good point- it would be interesting to see society without the effects of caffeine though! I grow nettle in my garden and lots of other tea style herbs but i must admit i still enjoy a good old cuppa.
Rachel comments ...
Hi
im with you re the herb bushes used fro "ornimental" planting and then go and buy some in the shop. whilst I live a resonable convetional life, I rarely buy things new and try and shop and make best use of the money I have and the food I buy as fro waste there is very little ,we have a jack russle who sees to that and like you we have a compost bin. When we move house I know this I will turn over half my garden to growing some food for the table. great post was a pleasure to meet you.