April 11 Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) Course Now Full
Courses/Workshops, News — by Craig Mackintosh March 8, 2010
The April 11 Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course at Zaytuna Farm (home base for the PRI, in northern NSW) is now full. People keen to attend this particular course are welcome to email education (at) permaculture.org.au to register your interest, and we’ll put you on a waiting list in case any of the existing registrants cancel.
Alternatively there’s Morocco on April 17 with David Spicer, otherwise our next Zaytuna PDC is on July 11 (there are still a few spaces left on this one).
Comments (0)Morocco PDC Update (for April 17-30, 2010) – Let’s Get Behind This!
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Courses/Workshops, Education Centres — by Andy Homer March 5, 2010
Editor’s Note: A couple of months ago we advertised (on the blog and in our course listings) the exciting opportunity to take a Permaculture Design Certificate course (PDC) in an amazing location, and with an excellent permaculture instructor, and where in doing so you’ll be supporting impoverished locals to begin to take charge of their future in a sustainable way. We bring this to your attention once more, and encourage all who can to support this very worthy endeavour by booking now! The climate, culture and instructional quality will make it the experience of a lifetime, and a major additional bonus is it’s all bundled up with that warm fuzzy feeling you get from helping make a difference.
As the time for our design certificate course in Morocco draws near, we have plenty of local people, and some from Warsangeli in Somalia. Warsangeli is a Sultante of peaceful people unfortunate enough to be surrounded by war. Supplies are difficult to get in and people are starving, and drinking dirty water. Permaculture could solve the food and water problems very well.
Current circumstances mean we could not open up courses in Somalia to international students, but a Warsangeli organization in london has secured funding and wants to work with us to spread permaculture there. Inviting a few people from Warsangeli to our course in Morocco would enable us to make much better progress over there.
We do not have enough paying students yet to make the course viable. We’ve been told that many people leave it until the last minute to book, so please, if you’re coming on this course, let us know as soon as possible so that we can confirm it with the African students.
Spring is an ideal time to be doing the course in Morocco, as the weather is fine and warm. This is a wonderful opportunity to get qualified and make a massive difference to the lives of many people by helping us promote permaculture in two areas where there is almost no knowledge of it. (Starting to sound like a missionary!) A lot hinges on the success of this course. As an incentive we will waive the price increase for late booking.
Comments (4)Permaculture Samoa – Part III
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Courses/Workshops, Demonstration Sites, Education Centres — by Tamlyn Magee
Editor’s Note: This is the latest update on the Samoa Matuaileoo Environment Trust Inc. (METI) premaculture project. Previous updates here, here and here. Way to go Tamlyn and all involved!!
Information is the critical potential resource. It becomes a resource only when obtained and acted upon. - Bill Mollison
There is a moment, according at least to Geoff Lawton, when a permaculture student becomes ‘terminal’; forever destined, perhaps, to spout interesting (to some, anyway) facts/theories about ducks and lofty (but totally do-able) plans for future garden designs and/or the ‘edible meadow’, all the while flicking off light-switches everywhere and drying seaweed on the clothesline in between those telltale permaculture dreams….
Well, I can’t say for sure at this stage that we have any new terminals among the 18 students who just completed the first ever Permaculture course in Samoa, (and I dare say the Samoan incarnation of a permaculture addict might differ on specifics) but I definitely saw familiar sparks in a few eyes over the last 2 weeks, which means at least – they are infected!
Comments (2)April Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) Course in Detroit, Michigan, USA
Courses/Workshops — by Killian OBrien March 4, 2010
Date: April 12-25
The Permaculture Design Certificate course is an internationally-recognized, seventy-two hour course resulting in a Permaculture Design Certificate. It provides an introduction to permaculture design as set forth by movement founder Bill Mollison. The course is taught Rhamis Kent, with Geoff Lawton appearing via live stream and video as Special Guest Instructor, and other permaculture and/or sustainability educators.
The PDC serves as foundation for further permaculture work and study and is a prerequisite for the Diploma in Permaculture Design, offered through The Permaculture Institute. Credit for this course is now accepted by a growing number of universities around the world.
To date, thousands of permaculture designers worldwide have been certified in PDC courses, and now comprise a global network of educators, ecological activists who influence major corporations, individuals creating new business alternatives and groups of committed people working together to change the way we view and design into our landscapes.
Comments (0)The Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC)
Courses/Workshops, Education Centres, Society — by Jesse Lemieux February 22, 2010
Jesse Lemieux is a full time permaculture educator and design consultant, operating from Denman Island BC. He teaches a range of different permaculture based workshops and course, drawing on practical experience that spans 10 years and 3 continents. He is always on the look out for the next garden project or chance to share experience. If you would like to contact Jesse please send him a message: jesse (at) pacificpermaculture.ca
What is needed to design a sustainable human society full of abundance and security for all living systems? Information, empowerment and ethics. The Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) teaches students how to use information, resources and ethics to meet local needs on a limited land base. There are no "bad guys" and nothing is inherently evil. It is the designs of the systems we use that are the problem. A large machine can be used to bring down a forest, or it can be used to repair damage and degraded landscapes. In the same way, I can either use a hammer as weapon, or to build a house for a friend. The difference in outcome is one of intention and design.
Compost & Compost Tea Course – May 13th-15th
Courses/Workshops — by Ben Falloon February 16, 2010
 Paul Taylor |
We’re very pleased to present the Fusion Farms Compost & Compost Tea Course with Paul Taylor coming up in May 2010 in central Victoria, Australia. It is a practical workshop on how to hydrate, enhance and heal your soils by understanding the soil food web and how to make biologically active Aerated Compost Tea.
As many of you have been following the development of the compost tea and keyline injection rig here on Taranaki Farm, you won’t want to miss the opportunity to attend this very special workshop with both Paul Taylor and Ben Falloon.
Click here for more information on this course.
Comments (0)Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton Team Up for Melbourne PDC Again! (Sept. 2010)
Courses/Workshops — by Tagari February 8, 2010
For full details on this excellent opportunity to take your Permaculture Design Certificate course under the combined tutelage of legendary Permaculture teachers, Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton, please click on the links below (all PDF files):
This information can also be found in our course listing.
Comments (3)Jawaseri School Garden Project, Jordan
Aid Projects, Community Projects, Conservation, Courses/Workshops, Demonstration Sites, Developments, Eco-Villages, Education Centres, Food Forests, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Food Shortages, Irrigation, Land, Nurseries & Propogation, People Systems, Plant Systems, Rehabilitation, Trees, Urban Projects, Village Development, Water Harvesting — by Craig Mackintosh February 6, 2010
Just as I was leaving Jordan, after making the Greening the Desert II update video, another little project was just getting underway – the Jawaseri School Garden project. A few people have emailed pictures of progress over the last few months and I’ve combined these with Geoff’s narration from the PRI home base in Australia, to give you all a bit of an idea what’s happening there. May it inspire you to do similar where you are!
Permaculture education should be in every school, everywhere. If it was, I believe most of the world’s problems could be solved within a decade.
Comments (5)Keyline & Carbon Farming Workshop – April 12-14th 2010
Courses/Workshops — by Benjamin Falloon January 25, 2010
 Darren Doherty |
Taranaki Farm is excited to announce its role in the upcoming Keyline & Carbon Farming – 3 Day Workshop being organised by Fusion Farms. Taranaki Farm will play host to world-respected keyline & permaculture designer Darren Doherty as he stages his very popular Keyline course in Central Victoria, Australia, only 65km from Melbourne.
The workshop will be conducted on Taranaki Farm (for the first time), a fully featured demonstration site for keyline design principles, designed by Darren himself. Don’t miss this special chance to learn about keyline and carbon farming inside a complete keyline system that includes earthworks for water harvesting, lock-pipe gravity irrigation, multi-species agroforestry, keyline ploughing, rotational grazing and more…
Comments (5)Bill Mollison’s 1981 Permaculture Lecture Notes: New Edition
Courses/Workshops, DVDs/Books — by Thomas Fischbacher January 20, 2010
Bill Mollison teaching with Geoff Lawton at Trinity College, Melbourne, 2009
Photo © Craig Mackintosh
In 1981, Bill Mollison gave a Permaculture Design course for which Dan Hemenway produced lecture notes. While these originally were made available as a set of pamphlets for a small copying fee, they have been available on the web for quite some time, in PDF form, like here (6mb PDF), for example.
While the social and cultural context has changed quite dramatically in the last 30 years, and this material hence does not reflect that change, these pamphlets still provide quite a useful free resource that explains permaculture in detail. While the Permaculture Designers’ Manual certainly presents many ideas in a more accessible way than these transcripts of Bill Mollison’s lectures, they nevertheless are an often quite useful complementary resource. This holds in particular for a few issues which are presented in a slightly cryptic way in the Permaculture Designers’ Manual and benefit from an alternative explanation.
A re-edited version of this material, both in the form of HTML web pages as well as a PDF (using LaTeX-based typesetting which, hopefully, should be more homogeneous and easier to read than the original) is now available here: http://nmag.soton.ac.uk/mollison
This also provides a number of explanatory footnotes that should help to both provide more background on some ideas, and put them into more recent context.
Comments (1)Permaculture Master Plan: Planting up the Global Garden
Aid Projects, Bio-regional Organisations, Commercial Farm Projects, Community Projects, Courses/Workshops, Demonstration Sites, Development & Property Trusts, Eco-Villages, Economics, Education Centres, Ethical Investment, Networking Sites, People Systems, Project Positions, Society, Urban Projects, Village Development — by Andy Homer
You’re trying to say that you can live in the modern way and continue to think in the traditional way. That’s not true. The way you live affects the way you think. – Danny Billie, Traditional Seminole
I’d like to recount here my impressions of the PRI, and how different it is from many other organizations. We (Tribal Networks) first came across them when looking for solutions to problems we found in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, where we were starting a project to bring in a school and an internet / community centre. Searching for "dry land permaculture" soon found Geoff’s "Greening the Desert" clip, and things progressed from there.
A Report on ZERI Training Course (Zero Emissions Research Initiative)
Consumerism, Courses/Workshops, Society — by Owen Hablutzel January 18, 2010
December 3-5, 2009
Orella Ranch, CA
Remember the Chicken?
The ‘Permaculture Chicken’ is a classic example used by Bill Mollison and many subsequent Permaculture teachers to illustrate an extremely useful analysis technique for use when designing systems. In the case of the classic chicken example, this ‘element’ of the system – the chicken – is analyzed for its needs (inputs) and its products (outputs). Using this information a designer can begin to make connections between each of the diverse components of the system, integrating all of these elements into a whole, functional system.
Practicing Permanent Agriculture on Moloka’i
Community Projects, Courses/Workshops, Demonstration Sites, Education Centres, Land, Swales — by Jill Ross January 14, 2010
A follow-up to PRI’s Planning & Implementing a Permaculture Project course
Before…
On November 15th, a group of relative strangers gathered on the dry, red dirt of Moloka’i with the same question firing in their minds. How will we create permanent agriculture on this parched, eroded acre of red dust?
Comments (0)Farmers’ Handbook
Courses/Workshops, DVDs/Books — by Craig Mackintosh January 6, 2010
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. – Chinese Proverb
Worldwide, mainstream aid projects tend to deal with the symptoms of problems, rather than the problems themselves. In fact, often aid projects actually exacerbate the root issue, by supply free food and clothing that undermines the ability of people on the ground to make a living. In other words, we put them out of their low carbon business, forcing them off the land into cities where they must become part of the consumer treadmill, or perish.
But, sometimes, people with clear heads and unselfish hearts manage to help in much more substantial ways. The links to follow are to individual chapters of a Farmers’ Handbook created by Chris Evans (UK) and Jakob Jespersen (Denmark), who have spent considerable time in Nepal, helping to develop locally appropriate methods and technologies that can help the people of Nepal live better lives, and sustainably so.
Although the information is specifically tailored for Himalayan conditions, almost everyone will find some useful ideas and information in this comprehensive work. The whole handbook is 50 chapters in 5 volumes – a total of 792 pages, including 170 pages of colour photos and illustrations.
Aside from gleaning valuable ideas for your own region, I post this work, with permission, in the hope it will inspire others to do likewise for their own region and climate zone. This is the kind of information sharing that will move humanity onto a sustainable platform of peace and low carbon prosperity.
Please note: These files are free for personal use and circulation (please just link to this page), but can not be used for commercial purposes. They are copyright of Chris Evans and Jakob Jespersen. The Farmers’ Handbook is also still in a draft form and any suggestions of improvement are welcomed. Chris has the original editable version – if people are interested to translate this production into another language, or offer other suggestions, please contact Chris on: cevans (at) gn.apc.org
All files to follow are PDFs.
Comments (10)PDC in Morocco – 17-30 April 2010
Aid Projects, Courses/Workshops, Demonstration Sites, Education Centres — by Andy Homer January 5, 2010
Ait Attab is a Tribal Region in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Tribal Networks first visited the region with the intention of putting in modern communications to enable the people to make their world better. We found that there is a severe shortage of water most of the year, and the whole area is slowly turning into desert. We were aware of permaculture and knew that this could make a huge difference. We approached Geoff Lawton, and he and Nadia visited the site to see what could be done.
Comments (2)
