http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2011/11/27/opensource-edible-landscapes-the-todmorden-story/
If you’re particularly into bad news, there are many places that will indulge your particular interest today. This is not one of them. Here, I want to spend a little time on things that give me hope for humanity, things that have an uplifting effect on me; things that remind me that I have much to be thankful for, things that make my heart sing with joy. Like Todmorden. Todmorden is a old Domesday-Book-mentioned market town that is in both Lancashire as well as Yorkshire (depending on which side of the Calder you’re standing), with about 15,000 people and almost as many ways to pronounce its name (though the locals apparently just call it Tod). I’ve never been there. But I will. Soon. This post will tell you why. Sometime in 2009, I’d seen coverage of something happening in Todmorden that intrigued me. Locals there had apparently agreed to work together to try and become self-sufficient from the perspective of food. Their initial focus was on fruit and […]
Tag Archives: economy
Towards B20
The previous tank of petrol was half B20 so that’s effectively 10% biodiesel (assuming it’s mixed). I’d noticed the car appeared to have (even) more juice, and come refill time I’m now at 6.3L/100km and that’s with most trips just across town and me behaving rather sporty (learning more about the gears).
With the refill the tank is now nearly all B20, and boy can you notice… it has even higher torque in any gear. In 1st it now pretty much races up my steep driveway without me touching the accelerator – previously it’d just hang or crawl gently. The effective range of all gears has thus increased at least on the bottom end, which is actually very handy in some busy traffic situations.
So I’m expecting the milage to rise further just on the basis of running on almost all B20 now. The stuff clearly has more energy (that’s a known fact but it’s fun to see it in action) so I’m basically getting more for the same price – unlike E10 petrol which actually gives people lower milage.
On that note though… with refuelling at the FreedomFuels bowser, I’m not making use of my Coles or Woollies petrol vouchers. So I suppose that’s “costing” me 4c/L, other than that the diesel price is pretty much the same ($1.225/L lately in this area, and for some reason diesel seems to not be subject to the weekly petrol price cycle so it’s pretty stable throughout the week).