Time goes so fast here in the Arctic. It´s already the end of February, the sun is so close to get over the mountains and I´ve been at the local government for more than a month now. As mentioned in my earlier blogpost my placement is at the technical department, where I follow one of the people responsible for questions regarding the environment. I really like this concept of having just one supervisor as it gets so much easier to understand and get into the every-day work, have good communication and be able to discuss why and how things are […]
James – Polar Permaculture
7 posts
This is my final blog about my time at Polar Permaculture which I thoroughly enjoyed. Since I started a lot has changed, and the circle is complete as I began as a student and finished as a mentor for the new interns. We finished preparing the dome for the season and got the hole patched up, so it is now fully operational. We planted a lot of beans and moved some chillies and other plants out, hoping they will cope with their new environment. The other day temperatures almost reached 38C, so we had to make sure plants didn’t dry […]
In less than a month my semester at UNIS will come to an end. But I certainly will return. The picture above shows me standing in room one of the barrack – the place where I have been spending a lot of time to tend to our plants, such as our approximately 2m high tomato plant with its two tomatoes. Last week I held a short live presentation at UNIS about my internship, but since most of you probably were not able to attend, I will outline here what I talked about. Polar permaculture is an ambitious and challenging project. […]
In my previous post I wrote about how nervous I felt about talking in front of an audience, but there was an even bigger challenge ahead when I was told we would be on live television. In fact, I was barely able to sleep the night before the ‘God Morgen Norge’ team visited us. They started shooting outside in front of the dome with Ben, who told them the story about Polar Permaculture. There was a little misunderstanding when the reporter gestured to go inside to see the lab and Ben thought she wanted him to look more towards the […]
A visit from Oslo Speaking in front of an audience can be intimidating, but it can also be a valuable and transferable skill. What does this have to do with Polar Permaculture one might ask? Well, we had 25 students and lecturers from an architect school come visit us for a tour. Before they arrived in the evening we had to complete our usual daily tasks, and then also prepare for the visitors. Apart from tidying up, cleaning the ‘dishes’ (trays, pots etc.), this also meant to assist Ben with making some healthy veggie snacks while he made mango smoothies […]
We want more greens! The demand for local microgreens is increasing, so we started to increase production. Our current goal is to produce 20 trays each week, therefore I was tasked with working out a schedule to allow us to meet the desired delivery by the hotels and restaurants. The main difficulty was to figure out a way to keep the seeding of trays evenly distributed while still ensuring all the different microgreens had enough time to develop, because for example radish is ready after seven days whereas black kale and cress take approximately ten days. Let’s do some science! […]
About me My name is James Davidson and I live on a small farm back home in rural Scotland. I’ve studied Applied Animal Science for two years, a course that focused more on the agricultural side of biology, but recently switched to Sustainable Development. I usually enjoy ‘learning by doing’ more than lectures, so I hope I will learn a lot this semester, especially as the knowledge and skills associated with cultivating plants could possibly help me in developing a similar project back home. Initial Expectations This is my second time on Svalbard, so I’ve previously seen ‘the dome’ of […]