No idea what permaculture is but want to know? Check out my introductory article about it here.
I'm in the second year now of my 2 year Permaculture Diploma process. I'm doing my diploma with my teacher Delvin Solkinson and an incredible team of advanced permie people. The course is called All Seasons. If you have your PDC you can do this course too! The main body of the work is to document all the work I've done for permaculture through the course of the 2 years, with photos and journalling. I'm going to let this be my online sketch pad for that 2-year journal, and from there I'll make a printed version to submit for my diploma at the end.
So, something magical has been happening, where my garden has been starting to really educate me. There have been a lot of learning opportunities on a very practical level.
So this only took a second, but it felt like finally time to update my garden map. I got a message from my neighbour asking if he could participate in the process. I filled him in on everything so far and asked if he could help me with a design jam on this map before planting or getting his hands in the dirt. I had been doing some planning in my mind, but I was behind on my design layer so this was a perfect opportunity to get going.
I was so excited. We got up, not quite so bright and early the next day, being sure to sleep in and have a mega breakfast, and K and I met up with L, got geared up in our rain gear, and set off for a 2 hour hike through this stunningly beautiful property.
Recently I had an amazing time visiting Portland for a series of learning opportunities, and some relationship building with other permaculture people in my spirit family. The most exciting learning opportunity (although that's a tough call), was the chance to consult with a couple of portland allies about their beloved property, a huge plot of land that they purchased together and are developing into an ecovillage, with their team of 7 people total.
Now spring is here, and I am feeling eager to plant a whole bunch on all this lovely bare soil I've just laid out. Not only am I excited to have some food growing in this gorgeous weather, as I watch all sorts of things popping up everywhere and growing like crazy in the sun and rain..... but I am also a little worried about the ongoing quality of my new soil. I paid for all this great soil that is cut with mushroom fertilizer. It's great. But I realize thanks to some reminders from my friend Shane Wilson that if I don't get a ground cover and maybe some mulch going on there, the sun will burn it out and lose all its quality. I wanted to get off to a good start, so I got going.
Wow, our Integrative Permaculture class today was amazing :) Shane and I are so happy, we feel it was a raging success. We filled the course to capacity, I think everyone really enjoyed the experience and learned a lot, and both Shane and I learned a lot too, while still feeling very proud of how well we filled the day.
Since re-releasing the Gaiacraft Principles Card Deck, Delvin and I have been working on creating an extension set of the cards. Delvin has already written the text based on his research, and I have been working on designing 2 cards per week. Every week I design one new card from the extension set, and I redesign one old card from the original set.
One thing that I've decided to do to evolve my life, is expand myself into a new career by doing a year program called Integrative Nutrition. It's a holistic health training which focuses on nutrition but also acknowledges all the main areas of life. Above is a nice brief overview of their philosophy, of course, not meant to be a specific guide necessarily so much as a general guidepost.
Wow, I feel like such a super hero after all the work I've just done on my property over just one weekend.
It all started with a realization that I could have quite a bit of soil delivered to my home from a place... really good soil too. So I went crazy and ordered 5 metric yards of a really good soil / mushroom fertilizer blend. It was only $26 per metric yard, and I figured that was a good deal, and would by far be so much better as a way of creating raised beds.
My friend Carlie alerted me to some awesome grants happening through Village Vancouver, and today I filled out their application form to see if I could arrange subsidies for community members to take our Integrative Permaculture course for free or half-price as needed, as I continue to offer them monthly over the coming year.
I decided to hire someone to come and consult with me and help me out with my tasks around the yard. Aaron from Land-One Landscaping has been really helpful in assisting me to source out what I need for my soil, my pieces for the edges of my raised beds, the best way to clean up and haul away whatever I don't need from the yard, and he's also taking care of some power washing on my deck.
Delvin is such an awesome teacher for the All Seasons diploma process. One cool thing he's been doing for all his students in his various courses, is actually oranizing these "permaculture socials", where people from different courses and potential students can all mix at interesting events and meet each other. We recently did a great one where we went to a very interesting talk from Toby Hemenway, who was incredible and blew me away.
i would love you to share about whatever you get up to this Spring
but also how you are organizing your Mapping + Design Process as a whole and how you are organizing your Diploma Folio / Journal as a whole
To seed intentions for the second half of the course it would be great also to hear of peoples potential plans and projects for the year to come.
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