The Permaculture Podcast

Permabyte: Soil Structure

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This episode starts off the series on soils.

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Permabyte: What to Look For When Looking for a Permaculture Design Course

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Depending on where you live finding a Permaculture Design Course to attend can be difficult enough.  Knowing whether or not it is worth your time and money to attend, even more so.  There are so many details that the answer isn't always clear.  This episode is to help you find your way through what is on a website or advertised in a magazine so that you can find a class that is worthwhile by examining these points:
Ask for the Teacher's name.
Ask for the Teacher's course history and former instructors.
What are their projects? I.e. What Permaculture work are they doing?
How long is the class?
What material is included in the class curriculum?
What textbook should they use?
Buyer beware.
There are no Permaculture police.
Lastly, if you have any questions at any time, please feel free to contact me via email (The Permaculture Podcast), , or leave a comment on the website (www.thepermaculturepodcast.com).

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Permabyte: Musical Interlude - An Interview with Mr. Big Mountain

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Thank you to Andrew Millison for this piece of Permaculture themed music.  He gave me a few tracks to share with the world and those will be posted over the next few weeks. Listen, relax, and enjoy.

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Permabyte: Travel Tips for a Residential PDC or Other Courses

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Taking on the task to travel to a residential course, be it a PDC or otherwise, can be daunting if you've never done it before or if your travel experience is limited.  Given the geographic regions where theses classes are held, and the infrequency with which they occur if your only knowledge of them comes from the web or the major Permaculture literature, you want to go well prepared. This episode covers some of my thoughts and experiences on traveling to a course, camping there for a week or more, and how to get to the other side unscathed.  This will help you find out what you need to know before you go, how to prepare for when you are there, and some help on traveling through the U.S.A. Whatever you do, go to a class and have fun!

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Review: The Permaculture Teacher Training, as taught by Jude Hobbs, Andrew Millison, and Rico Zook.

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In this episode I give a review of the Permaculture Teacher Training I attended in Cottage Grove, Oregon, led by Jude Hobbs, Andrew Millison, and Rico Zook.
The Site - Wilson Creek Gardens.
The Teachers - as mentioned above.
Course Lessons - some of the nuts and bolt material.
"Take Aways" - in the form of aphorism that illustrate a point towards being a better instructor.
Specific Questions:  How was the food?  Was the class worth the money? Would I take this course again or recommend it to someone?

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Mulch!

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Here it is, the amazing, incredible, mulch show! 

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Permabyte: PDC - Water

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And we return to the PDC material with Water, including how to harvest, store, treat, use, and conserve it.  As this is a topic includes numerous techniques, to help round that out are links to many of the points covered in the show for additional reading and follow up. Early on, I mentioned some percentages that add up to more than 100%.  I blame that fully on my brain and a rounding error when putting the show together. Also, the word research comes up again and again and again in this episode.  Given the breadth of Permaculture, the bioregions we work in, and the variety of techniques we can use, the amount of information is encyclopedic.  Use the information contained within as a place to jump off from to find ideas that go with your observations and are applicable to that situation. Swales: www.doeni.gov.uk/niea/swaleguid.pdf Spreader Banks: https://www.southwestnrm.org.au/sites/default/files/uploads/ihub/study-tour-pondingwater spreading1994.pdf Tied Ridging: https://www.farmingsolutions.org/successtories/stories.asp?id=107 https://www.africanexecutive.com/modules/magazine/articles.php?article=4105 Micro-Catchment https://www.sci.sdsu.edu/SERG/techniques/microcatch.pdf https://www.ecocomposite.org/restoration/microcatch.htm FlowForms https://www.nationalwatercenter.org/flowforms.htm Constructed Wetlands: www.epa.gov/owow/wetlands/pdf/hand.pdf www.deq.state.ok.us/factsheets/local/wetlands.pdf Sand Filter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioSand_Filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_sand_filter Joe Jenkins: The Humanure Handbook

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Rachel Kaplan - Urban Homesteading

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I had a great time interviewing Rachel and am thankful for her, and co-author K. Ruby Blume's, perspectives on living a regenerative lifestyle based in permaculture. The artwork and photographs in the book are wonderful, it's well written, easy to understand, and contain a number of hands-on projects to get you started in whatever your area of interest may be. The chaptering of the book is a logical progression, with each chapter containing a description of the subject, information on it, interviews with people or organizations and how they are working with the idea, and hands-on projects.  Throughout there are some sidebars with more information and in some chapters a time frame you can use to implement gradually and not get overwhelmed. My favorite parts of this book are the Principles of Urban Homesteading, the interviews, the hands-on projects, and the inclusion, and focus on, the non-material. The Principles of Urban Homesteading reflect the way the Principles of Permaculture arose over time through the action of it's practitioners. They reveal a way to consider the urban environment while trying to practice permaculture there. The interviews are reminders that others face the same challenges we do.  I find them empowering and inspiring. Many books on Permaculture can be overwhelming with the amount of knowledge and information that is imparted in just a few pages. Rachel and Ruby have spread that out and the projects help to give us little things to focus on and then take action.  The reader can move forward without being caught up in paralysis by analysis trying to figure out "What do I do next? There's so much!".  Find something you like and do it.  Many of these can be done in an afternoon with supplies you already have at your home. The non-material is something that, though we discuss it as being part of our ever growing need to implement permanent-culture, I feel it is often overlooked as the focus becomes one of design, food, and stable ecosystems.  We also need to work on our stable social-systems. Urban Homesteading: Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living now has a permanent place on my book shelf and is on the short list of recommended reads for people beginning their path to permaculture.  If you've been doing this for a while and want something for someone who is still on the fence, this is the book. You can buy the book directly from the authors at: https://urban-homesteading.org/ And, if you'd like to listen to Rachel speak and possibly get to meet her, she will be at the Northeast Permaculture Convergence July 22-24, 2011.   Note:  I received my copy of Urban Homesteading from Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. for review.  Only after reading it cover to cover, and feeling it would be a value to you my audience, did I contact Rachel for the interview.

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Permabyte: Neal’s Garden Questions

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Neal from New Jersey wrote me a few days ago with the following questions.  I already had a chance to respond to him via email, so he could start working on this immediately, but this takes that response and expands on it a bit. 1) Is it bad to buy non-organic plants for your home garden? I know this isn't ideal, but since I wanted to get a few more veggies into the garden, I just bought a few from the local Agway. Now I'm wondering if that was a bad thing to do. 2) Should I get my soil tested to see how I can improve it 3) I understand there are a lot of things we can add to improve the soil such as manure (I can easily obtain horse manure where I live), veggie scraps, coffee grinds, etc. However, is it good to use these if we don't know if they're organic or not 4)Any tips on making/obtaining supplies to build a raised bed?

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Permabyte: Core Concepts - Prime Directive, Ethics, and Principles

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This brings us to the next portion of the Permaculture Design Course with the very core ideas of permaculture: The Prime Directive, Ethics, and Principles that make permaculture permaculture. The Prime Directive, from Mollison, states: "The only ethical decisions is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children." From there we move into the Ethics:
Earth Care
People Care
Fair Share
This time around, I present the Principles differently from those presented by Holmgren and others.  10 Principles in total are covered:
Whole System
Observation
Soil
Diversity
4-Dimensional Design
Relative Location
Planning Tools
Scale
Yields
Energy
For this episode, my primary resources were: Permaculture: A Designers' Manual by Bill Mollion Teaching Permaculture Creatively by Skye and Robin Clayfield The Earth Care Manual by Patrick Whiefield

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