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Caring for the Earth...Caring for People...Sharing Resources

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Our aim is to liberate people everywhere to provide for their own & their communities' food, energy, and shelter from the smallest practical area of land, & a design a decent life without exploitation or pollution.
You can learn to restore degraded landscapes, shelter & feed displaced and hungry people & wildlife,& convert energy-wasteful infrastructures to thriving ecological systems that meet our needs with excess to share...

...in the Permaculture Design Course!

Planetary Permaculture Course Calendars

Advanced Design Course in Basalt CO, Central Rocky Mt. Permaculture Inst.
(photo Keith Johnson)

What is Permaculture?
Elements of the Curriculum
Design Course Syllabus
Read about, or post your own, Permaculture courses and events. If you use these calendars to promote your events, PLEASE follow these instructions and give just the title, location, and primary teachers. There's plenty of room for details when you create the popup or link to your own website. Brevity allows more people to use it. Thanks.
United States Canada Europe France Australia / Oceania
South & Central America Mexico Africa Everywhere Else

2008 Permaculture Courses and workshops taught by Peter Bane, Keith Johnson and associates.

Instructors: Peter Bane (Dipl. Perm. Des. & publisher Permaculture Activist), Keith Johnson (Patterns for Abundance), and guests. Midwestern natives, Peter, and Keith have between them facilitated over fifty permaculture courses and led groups from four to over a hundred students and between them have graduated 2000 design students. They have gardening, building, design, and teaching experience in all regions of the United States.

Two classes with Permaculture Designer and Green Man Frank Cook.

Foraged Wild Food

Wednesday May 21, 2008, Copper Hill, Floyd County VA.
3:00-5:30PM Forest / Field Plant Walk*for Edible & Medicinal Species
6:00-7:30 PM Vegetarian / Vegan Potluck - Bring Goodies - Foraged Food Welcome
7:30-9:00 PM Plants & Healers Around the World* - Multi-Media Presentation
Call 540-322-2192 for directions & to register* for all events by Monday May 19th
*Tax deductible donations will be requested to support Frank's work.
Download PDF Poster (111K)

Green Local Food
Explore Permaculture Nourishment
Thursday May 22, 2008, Roanoke, Virginia
3:00-5:00PM Plant Walk for Edible & Medicinal Species - $10.00 (scholarships available)
6:00-7:00 PM Local & Foraged Food Meal - $18.00 - vegan or omnivore
7:30-9:00PM Discussion & Permaculture Resource Sharing $10.00 w/take home written info
Download PDF Poster (113K)

Frank Cook is a thrivalist who has spent the past fifteen years as a Gaian repository of plant knowledge. He makes a wide range of foods & medicines to share with his family, friends & community. (see plantsandhealers.com)

Frank trained as a clinical herbalist at the Northeast School of Botanical Medicine in Ithaca, NY & holds a BS degree in zoology & computer science from Duke University. He's currently a Master of Science candidate in Holistic Science at Schumacher College in Devonshire, England.

Frank has taught at the Appalachian School of Herbalism in Asheville, NC for the last six years.

Sponsored by
Associations of the Light Morning www.lightmorning.org
Anahata Educational Center of Floyd - a non-profit organization initiated in 2007 to provide ecologically-focused service learning, research, & teaching opportunities.
Association for Regenerative Culture (ARC) A 501-c-3 permaculture charitable effort to promote an informed understanging of the value & responsibility for personal & planetary transformation at culture's edge.
Good to Go Foods of Roanoke. Operated collaboratively by Nancy Maurelli. Good to Go connects people with delicious, nourishing local bounty. Offering subscriptions of handcrafted prepared foods, custom catering using local products, local food sourcing, as well as culinary, horitcultural & community education.

June 1 - 15, 2008, 6th Annual Two-Week Design Course in Paoli, IN
(3 credits from Indiana University available http://www.indiana.edu/~llc/permaculture.shtml)
Contact Andy Mahler to register, 812-723-2430 andy@blueriver.net
This course will take place at the Lazy Black Bear Retreat Center in Paoli, Indiana, located in the beautiful Hoosier National Forest.

Participants will be camping outdoors for the duration of the 2 weeks. Bathroom and shower facilities are available. Course fee covers food, lodging, and course materials. Students who successfully complete the course will receive certification in Permaculture, which enables them to practice or teach the art and science of Permaculture.

Permaculture is a design pattern for living more harmoniously with our life support systems, and with each other. It is a rapidly growing and internationally recognized design system for creating sustainable human environments. It is a set of principles and techniques that aims to create ecologically sound and economically prosperous human communities. This course gives students innovative conceptual tools and the chance to view that future from as many angles as possible. This is a unique opportunity for a hands-on experience in a class at Indiana University.
--David Haberman, Indiana University Department of Religious Studies

Permaculture principles are now being adapted to all systems and disciplines that human settlement requires. Architects, planners, farmers, economists, social scientists, as well as students, homeowners and backyard gardeners can utilize principles of Permaculture Design.
--Larry Santoyo, University of California, Berkeley

Because Indiana weather is highly variable, we need to be prepared for different kinds of weather, from warm sunny days to rainstorms and cooler nights. The best solution is to bring layers, but we also need to travel light, so all our gear can fit into 2 vans. Here are some suggestions – happy packing!

# Sturdy hiking boots (preferably waterproof)
# Warm weather gear (shorts, T-shirts, sunglasses)
# Sweatshirt and long pants
# Comfortable footwear (running shoes, Tevas, etc,)
# Sun hat or visor/sunglasses
# Rain slicker or windbreaker
# Swimsuit
# Day pack (large enough for notebook, sweatshirt, etc.)
# Sunglasses/sunblock
# Bug spray
# Toiletries (unscented soap & shampoo will be provided - NO FRAGRANCES PLEASE!!!
# Personal first aid kit
# Medications
# Water bottle
# Notebook, pens, pencils
# Flashlight
# Binoculars
# Bandanna
# Pen knife
# Compass
# Camera, film, batteries
# Spare prescription sunglasses or contact lenses
# Long distance phone card
# Musical instruments

Permaculture Fundamentals July 11-19, 2008 near Athens, Ohio
The course that’s been called “life-changing, transformative, and enormously affirming.”
Prepare to respond to climate change and peak oil. Build networks of support and empower yourself with the skills of ecological design as we search for the roots of permanent culture.

co-sponsored by: Association for Regenerative Culture and Greenfire Earth Regeneration Center. Contact Mary Hogan 740-664-4028 • Athens8(at)ARCulture.org

Located near New Marshfield, west of Athens, Ohio, Greenfire Farm embodies a vision of Appalachian renewal amidst the new ancient forests of the Hocking River valley. The 75 acres under stewardship encompass organic gardens, pastures for a small herd of goats, a large pond with ducks, examples of natural building, and a variety of traditional and modern structures for human use. A permaculture settlement is being designed here as home for a dozen households.

We start Friday at 6 p.m. and meet til Saturday noon the next week. Students not lodging on site should stay within 30 minutes. Some indoor space is available at an extra fee. Local, organic food lovingly prepared with vegetarian options. Tuition of $695 includes instruction, materials, on-site camping, and all meals. A Certificate of Apprenticeship in Permaculture Design is awarded to those who complete both Fundamentals and Practicum. Register and pay for this course.

Instructors:

Peter Bane for the past 18 years has published Permaculture Activist, now the world’s longest running permaculture journal. Since 1992 he has taught permaculture to over 1000 students in locales from Canada to Patagonia. Additionally, Peter consults with landowners and communities about the design and development of homes, farms, and productive landscapes. In 2005, Peter’s efforts in community development, teaching, media & communications, and site development were recognized by the British Permaculture Academy when he was awarded the Diploma of Permaculture Design.

Rhonda Baird has been a labor organizer and a student of religion. A working mother and fiber artist, she took teacher training at the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute, and is now writing curriculum as she teaches permaculture to young children. In 2006 she launched the Bloomington-area Permaculture Guild. Her current projects include designing a food landscape and living roof for Middleway House—a women’s shelter, raising rabbits, and home-schooling her seven-year old daughter.

Josh Beniston is a Columbus-based landscaper and passionate student of agroforestry. A native of Youngstown, he earned a B.S. in ecology at Ohio University, and is now doing graduate work on carbon sequestration at OSU. His work has taken him to California and the humid Neotropics, where for a number of years he has worked as a guide and program leader at the Belize Agroforestry Research Center.

Download PDF Brochure (3.20MB) / Flyer (231K)

Register and pay for this course.

Weekend Series Full Design Course near Indianapolis, IN.
Dates: October 10-12, 24-26, November 7-9, 14-16, 21-23; Friday evg., Saturday and Sunday, 5 fall weekends.
Contact: Indy8(at)ARCulture.org, 812-335-0383, Peter Bane
Cost: $895 includes tuition, materials, and weekend lunches
Location: Rocky Ripple on Indianapolis' mid-north side.
Instructors: Peter Bane, Rhonda Baird, and guests

Register and pay for this course.

 

The Purpose of the Course

 In a world of diminishing resources and increasing stresses on natural and social systems we must rapidly implement strategies to restore degraded landscapes, shelter and feed displaced and hungry people, and convert our energy-wasteful infrastructure to holistic and ecological systems that meet their own needs and the needs of those who manage them. This course lays the foundation for understanding the workings of natural systems and for designing human environments that produce food, shelter, and energy. It also provides participants with models of community development and extension by which they can create networks of support for themselves and empower others to do the same.

"To my mind the very act of enrolling for a permaculture design course is one of the most political acts most people ever engage in. Since I have certified over 3,000 people I feel that I have helped create a small village of active, engaged and aware folks who now have the tools to change the reality around them - and many of them are very busy doing just that.

The very act of reading "Permaculture - A Design Manual" is extremely radical and political as the information and realizations sink in of the ultimate outcome of following the permaculture path. The beauty of permaculture has always meant, to me, that I can travel all over the world, in some of the most brutal dictatorships, espousing a revolutionary system of design and I am considered harmless by the powers that be. That is an incredible advantage in a world that has become increasingly polarized by the paranoia of rampant capitalism and lack of ethical guidance.

The effect of Permaculture worldwide is certainly more profoundly political than Students for a Democratic Society of which I was a proud member for several years. The primary difference being SDS was fighting against something while permaculture is fighting for something. Within the ethical guideposts of permaculture are contained all the political guidance one could need."

Scott Pittman, Permaculture Institute, NM

What is Permaculture?

"Permanent agriculture" or "permanent culture," a term coined by Australians David Holmgren and Bill Mollison in the 1970s, describes a design system for creating human settlements that function in harmony with nature. Incorporating traditional knowledge, modern science, and the ecological patterns of the living world, permaculture design is applicable to farms, gardens, organizations, housing developments, towns and villages, or city neighborhoods.

Since 1978, tens of thousands of individuals on all continents have learned and taught to others the principles of energy flow and materials cycling, and the simple appropriate technologies of self-reliant living: gardening, shelter, water and waste management, aquaculture, forestry, and how to organize supportive local economies. The aim of this grassroots international movement is to liberate people everywhere to provide for their own and their communities' needs for food, energy, shelter, and a decent life without exploitation or pollution and from the smallest practical area of land.

What Kinds of People Take Permaculture Courses?
Thousands of people from all over the planet!

(Photo by Keith Johnson: Students & teachers at Permaculture Design Course, VA)

Gardeners, farmers, homeowners and prospective buyers of land  and homes will benefit from the energy-saving and productive insights of permaculture, while students and professionals in the fields of ecology, agronomy, resource management, architecture, and planning will find their work enlivened by the holistic and interdisciplinary perspective of the course. Community development and aid workers, real estate brokers, municipal officials, and religious leaders will find practical and creative applications for permaculture design in their respective fields of endeavor.

  • Renters & Homeowners: Learn simple steps to improve your home ecosystem and your immediate surroundings while saving money, resources, and building a healthy habitat for family, friends and neighbors.
  • Planners & Managers: Learn how to integrate sustainable design methodologies into the planning process using a multi-disciplinary approach for the well-being of the whole community.
  • Municipal, State & Federal Employees: Improve public service & work efficiency and community benefits via creative land, water, and air resource management techniques.
  • Building Design & Construction Professionals: Learn about current practical systems of natural building, as well as how to integrate land-use design into the built environment.
  • Landscape Architects, Designers & Gardeners: Learn principles and techniques of sustainable landscaping, with an emphasis on functional, edible,  and economic plants, the creation of microclimates for extended growing seasons, and rainwater harvesting.
  • Social Workers: Acquire tools for empowerment and new dimensions in place-based professional practice applicable to micro through macro change processes.
  • Non-profit & Community Leaders: Integrate ecological design, professional networking, and social marketing approaches to advance your mission and programs.
  • Entrepreneurs: Explore how ecological models can be used to design, develop, implement, and manage a sustainable business venture.
  • Students & Educators: Integrate ecological systems design and social/environmental change practices into your academic studies.

Elements of the Curriculum

  • Evidence of the Need for Change and the Ethics of Sustainability
  • Principles of Permaculture
  • Observation and Landscape Analysis
  • Pattern & Design
  • Ecosystems: the Models of Nature
  • The Gaian System: Climate and Biogeography
  • Forests, Trees & Tree Care
  • Water Harvesting, Management, and Conservation
  • Building Soil Fertility
  • Creating the Home System
  • The Third Skin: Natural Building Design
  • Waste Recycling and Treatment
  • Aquaculture and Animals
  • Agroforestry and Forest Gardening
  • Useful Plants and Planting Strategies
  • Feeding Yourself from Home
  • Garden Design & Establishment
  • Integrated Pest Management
  • Tools & Appropriate Technologies
  • Patterns of Settlement
  • Cooperative Economics, Money & Financial Systems
  • Mapping and Design Exercises
  • A Home in the City
  • Villages and Neighborhoods, The Hope and the Results
  • Elements of Practical Design
  • Team Design Projects
  • Broadscale Landscape and Systems Design

Participants from over 100 countries in all regions of the world and from all walks of life have called the permaculture design course "life-changing, transformative, and enormously affirming." In the lively company of a diverse group of engaged and motivated women and men with a common interest in the future of humanity, learning is rapid, multidimensional, and long-lasting.

Permaculture Design Work and Certification

Upon completing this course AND a second week-long Design Practicum participants will receive a Certificate of Apprenticeship in Permaculture Design from the College of Graduates of Permaculture and will be entitled to use the term Permaculture in their professional work. This course presents 44 of 72 hours of the standard certificate curriculum. The Design Practicum is given at several locations in the United States and Canada each year and may also be done as an individual program of study by arrangement with senior teachers.
The Instructors: Midwestern natives Peter Bane, Dipl. Perm. Des., and Keith Johnson have between them facilitated over 50 permaculture courses and led groups from four to over a hundred students. They have gardening, building, design, and teaching experience in all regions of the Americas. Both instructors live in Bloomington, Indiana.

Cost of the Fundamentals Course averages about $800 or $1300 with the Practicum included.

Permaculture Design Course Syllabus

Fundamentals (Section One)

Ethics, Principles, and Design, The Key Permaculture Overview (1 day):

Evidence of systemic ecological and cultural crisis; derivation and evolution of ethics; spirals of degradation and the etiology of health; energy and entropy; the Permaculture innovation and synthesis; roots of permaculture knowledge; principles of energy efficient design, language and terms; exercise in observation of landscape; the nature of pattern in form, orders in natural phenomena; application of pattern to design; design process, purpose and methods.

Natural Systems (2 days):

Principles of ecology; energy flux and materials cycling; conservation and diversity; guilds; cooperation; niches; forests as organism; climate, global weather patterns, and biogeography; forest impact on climate and the hydrologic cycle; functions of the tree; landscape analysis; the nature, sources, and value of freshwater; water's duties in the landscape; water movement, storage, and purification; water in the domestic system. The soil community; oxygen/ethylene cycling and nutrient availability; soil biota regimes, mycorrhizal associations; carbon/nitrogen and other nutrient relationships; tropical and temperate soil conditions; building soil; physical properties of soils and soil testing; climate near the ground; factors in microclimatic design; windbreaks; moisture and humidity effects; modifying sunlight and capturing solar gain; thermal zones and frost pockets; limiting factors in living systems; exercise building swales, ponds, trellises, and/or brush fences; use of leveling devices.

The Domestic System (1/2 day):

Design of the home system; zone and sector analysis; placement of elements for beneficial function; the domestic economy; staging of development in small permaculture systems; building design, materials, methods, and examples; conservation of energy; building as organism; nutrient cycling in the domestic system; biological treatment methods for human and animal waste: compost, constructed wetlands, biogas; urine as fertilizer.

Elements of Cultivated Ecologies (2 days):

Energy advantages of aquaculture; designing aquatic systems; water quality and species composition; animals as energy translators; their utility and efficient management; self-forage systems; intensive grazing; silvopasture; agroforestry systems; forest gardening and farming; alley cropping, coppice-with-standards; ; orchards as floristic communities; principles of pruning and tree health; useful plants and planting strategies; guild assemblies; plant identification, plant families, nomenclature; wildcrafting; establishment of nurseries and intensive small systems; economics and rolling permaculture. Self reliance and food security; the year-round harvest; methods of food storage and adaptation to climate; garden design, establishment, and methods; exercise in sheet mulch bed preparation; short design exercise in creativity; tools and their energy implications; choosing appropriate technologies; favorite tools.

Community Design, Common Resources, and Larger Human Systems (1-1/2 days):

Patterns of human settlement; city and regional design; orders of magnitude; the village as building block of human community; building cooperative networks, organizations, and communities; resource inventories; business incubators; principles of economic design; how money works; the problems with present financial systems: interest, corporations, taxes, planning; community-based financial systems; the use of maps; simple methods of mapping; the integral urban house; resources in cities; appropriate scale for conviviality, economy, and security; components of village life; new village development; designing for human cooperation and interaction. Resources for further work; the permaculture movement; continuing education; how to organize locally; making a living; future visions and participant evaluations.

Design Practicum (Section Two)

The Elements of Practical Design - 2 days

Review of Ethics and Principles; pattern languages; site analysis exercise; mapping & field surveying exercise; introduction to client interview, cost & budgeting, earning a living.

Team Design Projects - 3 1/2 days

Small group projects for real clients son or near the course venue; mentored, hands-on design work involving application of all presented skills; site observation and analysis, mapping, client interview, conceptual design, mind mapping, and presentation.

Presentation - 1/2 day

Introduction of presentation skills; several opportunities for planned and impromptu presentation to the whole class; formal presentation in group of the team design with sketches, maps, speech, and other modes of work.

Broadscale Landscape and Systems Design - 2 days

Urban and Village systems; farm landscapes; design for wildlife; restoration and earthworks; economic design including financial systems; land access, regional strategies.

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