Climate change is man made, very few people deny it now, even large corporations with vested interests are resigning themselves to the facts.
There are practical ways to decrease the extremes of climate change and these can be very cost effective, indeed they are actually economically advantageous. Planting Eucalyptus trees in order to produce sustainable firewood, though the topic of this post is the benefits that Eucalyptus trees provide in terms of shade and natural cooling.
The temperatures on the thermometers were actually showing a 7℃ difference when I went to collect them in about forty minutes later.
- 35.7 in the full sun
- 28.3 in the shade of the Eucalyptus trees.
I’d say this is more accurate as the one in the shade was previously in the poly tunnel at around 40℃ and the one in full sun was in the outhouse at around 26℃
So a whole 7℃ cooler in the shade of the Eucalyputs trees.
NOTE also that today isn’t the warmest day of this heat wave, Saturday was when it was showing 32℃ on the car thermometer, compared to today when it was 26℃ in the car.
So if you want to scale that up, cattle standing in temperatures of 40℃ or more. I’m sure they won’t be enjoying this temperature extreme 🙁
The Milk Kefir is certainly making a difference and I recently discovered that Milk Kefir has fungi in it, though which variety isn’t clear from the limited research I have done so far. I’ve always thought that it was having an impact on the soil health rather than feeding the plants directly.
With climate change increasing the extremes of temperature here in Ireland, sustainable organic methods of resilience should be given serious consideration. As I say elsewhere, using Milk Kefir has improved the vigour of my trees significantly.
The video above was taken during the afternoon, most of the insect life emerges during the early evening, and it is very apparent that my strategy of no chemicals and allowing wild areas under the trees has improved the abundance and diversity of the insect population. I don’t have any Swallows or House Martins nesting this year, though I have far more of them coming up to feed in the early evening, they’re fabulous 🙂
