Edible Forest Gardens Logo

Upcoming Events

January 24-26, 2012, Chestnut Ridge, NY, With WES JACKSON!
CARBON FARMING COURSE: PERENNIAL AGRICULTURE
Sponsored by: Gaia University Northeast, LLC
Location: Pfeiffer Center
260 Hungry Hollow Road, Chestnut Ridge, New York
Cost: $445 plus food and lodging
Group discounts of 25% & 50% for full-time farmers.
For Info/To Register: http://carbonfarmingcourse.com/


Dr. Wes Jackson and the Land Institute have spent the last 40 years creating high-yielding perennial grains to replace fossil-fuel intensive annual production. In the first day of this 3-day workshop, participants will learn the principles of Natural Systems Agriculture: a new paradigm for food production where nature is mimicked rather than subdued and ignored. Natural Systems Agriculture produces farming systems that are:
  • Resilient – and therefore productive over the long term,
  • Economical – the need for costly inputs would be significantly diminished, and
  • Ecological – protect and restore natural ecosystems.
You will spend the last two days of the workshop exploring The Essence of Ecosystem Mimicry with Dave Jacke. Ecosystem mimicry, at its core, involves understanding and mimicking four fundamental organizing aspects of ecological communities: emergent system properties, ecological principles, and the physical and invisible patterns and processes that create, maintain and transform ecosystems.   As designers, we seek to apply the principles as strategies to design the physical elements of the habitat in patterns that generate healthy ecosystem processes and desired emergent properties such as stability, resilience, self-regulation, self-maintenance, self-renewing fertility, and so on.

Using these four "essences" as a lens, we'll engage with some core ecosystem-design issues, such as:
  • What practical design processes can best support the creation of healthy agroecosystems in diverse landscapes?
  • What landscape patterns promote efficient and effective ecosystem design?
  • How do we design effective guilds and polycultures--vegetation patches that minimize competition, stress, work, waste, and pollution while maximizing cooperation and yields?
  • How might we design agricultural ecosystems that generate self-renewing fertility?

By exploring these questions through participatory exercises, as well as lectures and discussions, you will leave this session with both an intellectual understanding and an embodied sense of both applied ecological theory and some practical design patterns and processes for small-scale food forest systems.


February 1-4, 2012, State College, PA: with local permaculturists
Farming for the Future, 21st Annual PASA Conference:
2-DAY PERMACULTURE PRE-TRACK AND
FOUR CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS!
Sponsored by:Penna. Assoc. Sust. Agric.
Location: Penn Stater Conference Center
215 Innovation Blvd., State College, PA
For Info/To Register: PASA
P.O. Box 419, Millheim, PA, 814-349-9840
http://www.pasafarming.org/conference2012/index.cfm

Wednesday, February 1: Introduction to Permaculture Track
  • Permaculture: Design for Regenerative Descent
    Darrel Frey, Three Sisters Farm, and Dave Jacke
  • Principles of Permaculture, Juliette Jones, Pittsburgh Permaculture
  • The Medium is the Message: Ecological Design Processes, Dave Jacke
  • Site Design and Development at Three Sisters Farm, Darrell Frey
  • Permaculture Community and Resources, Juliette Jones
  • Evening Design Clinic and Lounge

Thursday, February 2:
Applying Permaculture Design to Urban and Rural Landscapes Track
  • Permaculture: Building Resilient, Local Communities Worldwide
    Melissa Miles, Eastern Penna. Permaculture Guild
  • A Deeper Look: Site Design and Development with Rural Case Studies
    Darrell Frey (Three Sisters Farm); Joel Cahalan (Wild Meadows Farm); Dave Jacke (NH Homesteads)
  • Urban Site Design and Development Case Studies
    Phil Forsyth (Surveying the urban world, Philadelphia Orchard Project); Juliette Jones (Hazelwood Food Forest and Hottle Urban Homestead); Dave Jacke (Wellesley College Botanic Garden, social ecosystems, and Los Angeles watersheds)
Friday and Saturday, February 3 & 4: Conference Workshops, Dave Jacke
  • Gardening Like the Forest, Sessions 1 & 2
  • Soil Ecology and Self-Renewing Fertility
  • Forest Succession and Its Lessons for Ecological Garden Design

June 8-17, 2012, Brook's Bend Farm, Montague, MA: with Jono Neiger & friends
9-DAY ADVANCED PERMACULTURE DESIGN COURSE
Sponsored by: Dynamics Ecological Design
Location: Brook's Bend Farm
119 Old Sunderland Road, Montague, MA 01351
For Info/To Register: Dave Jacke or Jono Neiger
Dave: 603-831-1298 • davej a t edibleforestgardens d o t com
Jono:  413-658-7048 • neiger at csld dot e d u
bbfadvpcdesign.eventbrite.com


Lay the groundwork for your deepening practice of permaculture design for the establishment of a permaculture training and demonstration center at Brook's Bend Farm. This Advanced Permaculture Design Course (APDC) offers you direct experience designing permaculture systems that will build your design skills, your confidence and your portfolio, and spur you to deepen your self-study of the field. At the same time, you will help plan the transformation of Brook's Bend Farm into a thriving multi-dimensional permaculture and nature awareness training and demonstration facility.

Course Format:
Course staff and participants will together form a large-scale paraprofessional design team tasked to resolve key design challenges and create a Schematic Master Plan for Brook's Bend Farm. This involves integrating farming, livestock, forest garden, coppice, and building systems for the farm's 90 acres of woods, streams, pastures, and farm buildings. We'll dive into previous site assessment and design work by students of the Conway School of Landscape Design (CSLD). Each participant will then focus on one of several key "design streams" relating to the whole design, such as: water supply and waste water treatment systems; food production, processing, storage, and distribution systems; forest use and management; livestock grazing and foraging, and buildings and energy systems. Each stream will take on design problems in a mentored group-learning environment. As a collective, we will synthesize these streams into a unified Master Plan and present to a larger public audience by course end.

In this APDC, you will learn through design exercises, participatory classes, observation sessions, and self-study. Pre-course homework will be required. The course itself will be a fun, full-on design charrette with classes mixed in. At course end, you and your team will synthesize everything you have learned into design schemes and details to present to the clients and the public. The design process will be your main teacher; it will tell you what you need to learn. We'll be there to support and guide you along the way.

Instructors:
Primary instructors Dave Jacke and Jono Neiger co-developed and co-taught 'design-centered' permaculture courses together over many years. Dave is primary author of the award-winning book Edible Forest Gardens(www.edibleforestgardens.com), and teaches design, permaculture, and forest gardening across the USA and Canada. He has run his own design firm, Dynamics Ecological Design, since 1984, and is now working on his second book, Coppice Agroforestry, with Mark Krawczyk (www.coppiceagroforestry.com).   Jono cofounded the Regenerative Design Group, a Greenfield, MA design firm (www.regenerativedesigngroup.com), is on the faculty at the Conway School of Landscape Design in Conway, MA (www.csld.edu) and is on the board of the Permaculture Institute of the Northeast.  Dave and Jono both graduated from CSLD, Dave in 1984, and Jono in 2003. Apprentice teachers, as well as a coterie of guest instructors and design reviewers, will also join the course's faculty.

Course Cost:
Tuition and food: Sliding scale $1,150-1,550, with an early registration discount of $50 before April 1, 2012. Scholarships will be available; inquire for more information. Tuition payments above the bottom of the sliding scale will be used for scholarships, so please be generous if you can.
Meals: All meals will be provided as part of the tuition.
Accommodations: Camping and limited indoor accommodations will be available on site for an additional nominal fee.

Prerequisites:
All course participants must have completed a certified Permaculture Design Course, and must furnish a copy of their course certificate with their deposit to hold their place in the APDC. If you want to take the course but cannot meet this prerequisite, please inquire.



**


Teaching Permaculture Creatively:
A 9-Day Intensive Teacher Training
with Dave Jacke, Chris Jackson & Kim Almeida
Kimberton Hills Waldorf School
and Camphill Village, Kimberton, PA
March 23-April 1, 2012,


Consider this proposition: Events make the best teachers. The most significant learnings of our lives mostly come from situations we have experienced, and even when people lecture well, they make their presentation an event from which we learn. Given that events make the best teachers, it follows that  effective educators focus their energy on designing effective learning events. How does this apply to teaching permaculture?

This nine-day intensive Permaculture Teacher Training explores how to create permaculture learning events, applying ecological principles and processes to the design of workshops, courses, and other experiences. Learn how to quickly assess students' learning modalities, eight intelligences, and other niche characteristics; create effective learning environments; design multifunctional, functionally interconnected courses where the whole experience is far greater than the sum of the sessions!

Each trainee in this course will design and run short classes and exercises, speak in public, plan and budget an event, and co-teach a public one-day permaculture workshop at course end. What do whole learning systems look, feel and sound like? Come find out! The best way to learn is to do, and to have fun doing it. Join us!

Limited to 27 certified permaculture design course graduates; pre-course preparation required.

Course objectives:
  • Participants experience and develop the complete suite of skills needed to begin successfully teaching short permaculture workshops and other events on their own.
  • Participants leave able to contribute significantly to teaching certified permaculture courses under the mentorship of an experienced permaculture teacher.
  • Participants experience taking the seat of the teacher multiple times during the course in a variety of settings, both within the course and in a public venue. We all grasp the essence and significant details of what it means to create effective learning environments and effective learning events.
  • Participants come prepared to collaboratively co-create the teacher-training course and teach a one-day public permaculture workshop (specific requests for how to prepare will be laid out after acceptance into the program).
  • Participants clarify, articulate, and evolve their beliefs about what a teacher is and what is their teaching pedagogy. We all experience putting that pedagogy into practice consciously. We all have the opportunity to deprogram beliefs that inhibit our effectiveness as teachers and learners.
  • Participants collaborate to create a community of learning teachers and teaching learners:
    • we cocreate a safe, supportive, fun, healthy, and whole learning environment:
    • we support each other to take risks, share ourselves, grow deeply, move through edges and perceived restrictions, explore new ideas, and try new teaching styles and approaches;
    • we share and constructively evaluate each others' work;
    • we cooperatively develop shared resources for the larger permaculture teaching community.

Course Staff:
  • Dave Jacke, primary author of Edible Forest Gardens, has taught innumerable workshops and courses across the country using the principles you will learn in this training. This is the fifth teacher training he will lead.
  • Farmer, educator, and designer Chris Jackson homesteads in Plainfield, VT and works with at-risk youth and livestock at a school there. He took this training with Dave and Jono Neiger in 2007, and has taught three trainings with Dave since.
  • Kim Almeida hails from the south shore of Boston, where she farms annual and perennial vegetables, workshops, and social systems. This will be her second time assisting with this training, which she took in 2009.

Costs:
  •  A $25 nonrefundable application fee applies to course cost if accepted. You may register and pay the application fee at:  http://permacultureteachertraining.eventbrite.com/
  • An additional nonrefundable deposit of $275 is required to hold your place once accepted into the program. Full payment is required by March 1, 2010.
  • Total cost for tuition, meals, lodging: $1,300-$1,700 sliding scale. All amounts paid over the bottom of the sliding scale will go into the scholarship fund. Early application discount: $1,250 if completed applications are received before February 1! Commuters (no breakfast or lodging included): $1,050-$1,450 sliding scale, $1,000 early application.
  • Partial scholarships will be available, and your completed scholarship application will help us raise funds! Download the scholarship application at: http://www.meetup.com/permie/files/

To Apply: Download the brochure, course application, and scholarship application at http://www.meetup.com/permie/files/

For More Information Contact:
The Eastern Pennsylvania Permaculture Guild
c/o Melissa Miles, 101 Abbey Drive, Linfield, PA 19468
easternpennpermacultureguild@gmail.com
(484) 949-1600