Ag use plan for Earthaven Ecovillage.(NC)

Restored dam with new waterfall. (PA)

Click here to view pix of our 10,000 gallon ferrocement rainwater tank project,
Bloomington, IN.

Building contour infiltration channels (CA)

Landscape rapidly losing value & in need of serious repair.

Click here to see us teaching and designing.

"As a system of design, Permaculture provides a new vocabulary and pattern language for observation and action, attention and listening, that empowers people to co-design homes, neighborhoods, and communities full of truly abundant food, energy, habitat, water, income, and yields enough to share." Keith Johnson

Peter Bane, Keith Johnson & Associates

Peter & Keith are experienced permaculture site designers and teachers. They have been providing consulting advice and design for 26 years. They have developed an intimate knowledge of various regional landscapes and resources. With their wealth of experience in temperate climate permaculture systems they can offer a range of consulting services to regional and distant clients.

They have served clients in North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, Minnesota, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, California, Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Kentucky, Ontario, South America, and elsewhere.

     Peter is a native Illinoisan who grew up in the university city of Champaign-Urbana. He has lived in various regions of the U.S., taught permaculture extensively from Canada to Chile for 15 years, and was recognized in 2005 with the Diploma of Permaculture Design for his 18 years of publishing, teaching, design, and community work. He has trained over 1000 students and published the Permaculture Activist magazine since 1990.

     Keith was raised in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (where he learned at an early age he was related to Johnny Appleseed), and has been a commercial landscaper, stonemason, and organic gardener since 1976 in places as varied as subtropical Bay Area of California, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Michigan, & the mountains of W. North Carolina. After devouring Permaculture One in 1978 he continued to learn all he could on the subject. He's been teaching Permaculture since '95, has instructed more than 1200 students, many of those through Indiana University's annual Design Course which began in 2003. He's taught or trained with Bill Mollison, Larry Santoyo, Tom Ward, Penny Livingston, Peter Bane, Chuck Marsh, Starhawk, and Jerome Osentowski.

      Now resident in Bloomington, IN, Keith participates in a number of local activism projects including the editorial guild of the Permaculture Activist, the founding of Transition Bloomington (Indiana's first Transition Town Initiative), boardmember of the Local Growers Guild, contributor to Bloomington's Peak Oil Task Force, member of the Bloomington Permaculture Guild, member of the Bloomington Food Policy Council and the Trillium Horticultural Park Project. Renaissance Polyculture is the suburban forest garden he co-manages on the 2/3 acre site where he homesteads with Peter Bane and a regular flow of interns. A frequent public speaker and radio interviewee, he works constantly to share a vision of cultural and ecological regeneration and continues to provide ecological design and consultation services via Patterns for Abundance. Keith blogs at:

Permaculture & Regenerative Design News
Transition Indiana
Permaculture Politics
& Bloomington Permaculture Guild

and can be found on Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon and other networking sites. He also is webmaster for the Permaculture Activist and Transition Bloomington.

      The Patterns for Abundance team brings a broad range of experience to guide you through the process of creating abundant, whole system yields for your family or community. By applying fundamental ecological principles and careful attention we work to reveal, reevaluate, map, list, measure and magnify the abundance already present or potential in your landscape or bioregion. We can also identify the "leaks" (of energy, money$, water, species, or nutrients) in your system and suggest essential "repairs" necessary to plug them.

      A new post-industrial, post-imperial world is forming under our feet - a holistic reality to serve as a seed pattern for future generations. This new culture represents the "graduation" of the species to maturity and biological legitimacy; exemplified by miniature rural and urban communities that meet most human needs within their regions. These models of bioregional self-sufficiency arise from a tide of cultural creation that has been in motion for fifty years and centuries in some cases. Its basic pieces have already been road-tested over several millennia. Permaculture is one of several models which addresses the increasing destabilization of civilization.

      The challenges are enormous, including global warming / cooling, peak oil and energy decline, deforestation, pollution, desertification, vanishing topsoil , dying oceans, species extinction, and diminishing water supplies. The basic behavior mode of the world system is exponential growth of population and capital followed by collapse.

      If all the humans on the earth now were able to see the whole picture at the same time and take action, the situation could be handled over the whole earth even now. But, until this occurs, we will be moving foward and we can be the people who have the ability to demonstrate to others how to survive and thrive.

     Our job as designers, is to help you do that.

Required viewing for ALL Americans

The need to bring agriculture into Havana began with the fall of the Soviet Union and the loss of more than 50 percent of Cuba's oil imports, much of its food and 85 percent of its trade economy. Transportation halted, people went hungry and the average Cuban lost 30 pounds.

So Cubans started to grow local organic produce out of necessity, developed bio-pesticides and bio-fertilizers as petrochemical substitutes, and incorporated more fruits and vegetables into their diets. Since they couldn't fuel their aging cars, they walked, biked, rode buses, and carpooled.

The goals of this film are to give hope to the developed world as it wakes up to the consequences of being hooked on oil, and to lift American's prejudice of Cuba by showing the Cuban people as they are. The filmmakers do this by having the people tell their story on film. It's a story of their dedication to independence and triumph over adversity, and a story of cooperation and hope.

"To avert impending disaster we must act.
Inaction is no longer an option - in fact, it's immoral."
- Al Gore (who, nevertheless, still has a partial picture of the situation)

Cob architecture

Miles of contour infiltration channels in arid Napa County, Ca. This barren, depleted goat farm, with 19 inches of rain annually, exploded with diverse plant life after treatment.

Terraced polyculture makes efficient use of steep slopes

On site planning advice

We consult and design for projects of all scales including the following:

Residential Landscapes
Edible Landscapes
Commercial Developments
Farm Design
Nursery Design
Co-Housing Projects / Ecovillages
Public Projects and Schools
Decorative & Storage Ponds of all sizes
Waterfalls, Fountains and Water Elements
Stone Masonry and Hardscapes
Drainage Management
Erosion Control / Gulley Restoration & Mgmt.
Rainwater Harvesting and Storage (see our ferrocement tank pictures here)
Replicated Wetlands / Grey Water Systems and
     Bio-remediation
Aquaculture
Creek or Watershed Restoration
Alternative Construction:
     Strawbale; Clay / Straw; Cob (Earth)
Cob Ovens and Garden Walls
Gardens / Food and Resource Production
Orchard Design and Management
Soil Management and Improvement
Integrated Animal Management
Animal Tractoring and Rotation
Integrated Pest Management
Agroforestry
Silvipasture
Windbreaks
Forest Management
Fire Prevention

We also provide the following specialist services:

• Presentations for conferences, workshops and public events
• Technical writing and editing on green design, planning, environment, urban ecology and sustainable development
• Media commentary
• Critical review of urban design projects for compliance with  ecological and sustainability goals
• Design support for sustainability outcomes, including roof  garden design
• Consultancy support for ecological community development projects and programs

and More......

ReAforestation and windbreak plan, Crestone, Co.

Market garden in Pa.

CSA garden, Milan, Italy

Orchard planting on terraces in Pa.

Guard donkeys

Clay-straw infill for a home at Earthaven Ecovillage

 
Chisel plow for keyline plowing, carbon sequestration, and soil restoration.

Documented whole farm / site planning

A fully documented whole farm or site plan provides you with a well thought out road map for long term development of larger rural properties and farms where the investment of significant capital in revegetation, erosion control, soil improvement, dams, buildings, horticulture, etc. make thorough planning an essential function.

155 Acre farm near Pittsburgh Pa. with 6 large ponds, Food Bank and CSA production, livestock, wetlands and forest management, ecotourism.

Ecovillage development

Similar services are available for those planning ecovillage development. Our experience in designing and developing Earthaven Ecovillage in North Carolina, (and other properties around the country) enables us to provide general strategy plus planning and design for those committed to sustainable rural  or uban resettlement.

Post Petroleum Transition

Time, soils, minerals, and oil are running out as we enter the age of Peak Everything. This massive cultural transition will require a rapid education in basic self-reliance for all people, rural and urban. Climate change and rising prices for everything WILL have a direct effect on the quality of everyone's life. We can help design a plan of action and implementation to secure your family's, neighborhood's and community's future.

Flowforms aerate & purify water

Peter and Keith have 20 years teaching experience and have been leading Permaculture design courses for the last 15. Both have addressed large and small groups speaking on various topics related to ecological issues and the application of Permaculture. They have taught in numerous venues throughout the US, Canada, and in South America. Contact us for more info.

Peter addressing participants at the 9th Continental Bioregional Congress, 2005

Masonry by Keith at Earthaven
Click here to view images of Keith's dry-laid stonework.

Our field consultation rate is $600 / day / consultant plus travel expenses: $0.50 / mile round trip from our office to your location and $125 / day for overnight lodging.
Our minimum charge for a field consultation would be one full day plus expenses (somewhat negotiable if you are nearby). Depending on the extent of the detail in a design we could limit our work to the single-day walk-and-talk encounter, or could develop written and graphic materials to document a plan for development of the property. Our studio rates are $70 / hr. for maps, drawings, reports,  phone consultation (812-335-0383) , and related office work. Phone consultation can be a very cost-effective means to meet your needs for immediate guidance and planning. We're happy to provide an estimate for the cost of a prepared report, based on your needs.

We also do long-distance design that does not require us to travel to your site provided you can supply us with good maps, photos, and data.

We can normally save you the cost of consultation by helping you find ways to reduce your overall investment while still accomplishing your goals.

Some of Our Design Projects...

155 Acre farm near Pittsburgh Pa. with 6 large ponds, Food Bank and CSA production, livestock, wetlands and forest management, ecotourism.

Ecovillage development plan, forest, pond, and runoff management for 450 Acre site in Shipman, Va.

65 Acre plan for development of complex multifamily farming enterprise with extensive runoff management, contour infiltration, aquaculture ponds, food crops for Washington D.C. restaurants, food processing center, rotational grazing, bamboo production, and wind power in White Post, Va.

14 Acre family farm in rural housing development with ponds, nut and fruit crops, silva-pasture grazing in Purcellville, Va.

2300 Acre organic soybean and cotton farm, flood management plan, wetland restoration, wildlife refuge, and village development in Tiptonville, Tn.

130 Acre holistic horse boarding, teaching, and rehabilitation facility in Lexington, KY. Pasture improvement, water runoff management, natural building design.

300+Acre Ecovillage development in Grailville, Oh.

1/2 Acre site development plan with terraced gardens, greywater treatment system, water management system, for passive solar home, Asheville, NC

1.5 Acre site designing for flood abatement and sediment deposition plus edible landscape in Minnesota.

120 Acre "green" subdivision with 65 homes, apartments, community center, shops, fish and swimming ponds, community gardens, community supported agriculture, edible landscapes, in Tennessee.

1/3 Acre forest garden on suburban lot in Iowa.

25 Acre rolling polyculture farm in Ontario.

38 Acre vineyard, pastures, and market garden in WV.

1+ Acre SE Indiana suburban lot with gardens and food forest.

Many urban / suburban lots.

Renaissance Farm and Permaculture Ctr

Ongoing observation, analysis, design, imprementation, management,exploration on our 2/3 Acre home and residence / polyculture micro-farm site in Bloomington / Monroe County, Indiana.

The site performs many-edged functions dealing with multiple energy flow cycles, inputs and yields. Here's a few:

• Home base for Permaculture Activist magazine and book mail order, office for Patterns for Abundance Design, and Renaissance Farm and Permaculture Center.
• Heavy wet clay is being converted into very productive carbon- and mineral-rich garden soils.
• Rainfall from 2000 square feet of roof, 2000 sq ft of driveway, and 1000 sq ft of greenhouse is being caught, stored and used onsite in ponds, a 10,000 gallon tank (with add-on root cellar), rain gardens, soils and plants.
• Effective graywater reuse and processing systems.
• A multiple-yield small scale market garden growing at least 20 healthy crops with multiple extended yields of vegetables, small fruits, hazelnuts, flowers, and herbs.
• associated regional and local links / exchanges within Bloomington / Monroe County, Indiana.

...and many more. Please call for references.

Sketch for re-envisioned 25A soybean field
Ontario

120A "green" neighborhood in ex-cottonfield