Weekend Intensive in southWA - surveying contours, seedballs, dryland forest gardening, and more!

The image links to a page with a bunch more info about the course.

LOCATION: It's taking place at the Windward Intentional Community in Klickitat County Washington. Where right in the middle area between PDX, Seattle, and Spokane. About 1 hour North-East of Hood River OR, up the plateau above the Klickitat River.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Some more wordage describing what we will be covering in this course:

A weekend of permaculture theory and design, forest ecology, forest gardening, and practical skills including surveying with water levels, and making seedballs for no-till farming,

This course is relevant to people living in a variety of bioregions, as we are going to be detailing strategies for mitigating or work commonly associated with agriculture in dry and degraded sites - using the wisdom of the forest as our guide.

Permaculture on the Edge is a crash course in ecology, permaculture design and practical implementation that stresses 1) observation as a method to learn from nature, 2) ecological transformation through harnessing the processes of natural succession and 3) passive and dynamic methods to increase soil biomass, fertility and water retention.


This a group from our POTE course in March this year in front of the humongous hugelbed we constructed together. It was great fun.

Friday we will focus on the theoretical principles of ecology and permaculture, and get a tour of how Windward is creating regenerative, self-regulating agricultural systems on to produce food, forage, fuel and fiber with minimal energy, time and hassle on more of a village-scale.

You will get a chance to see how we are integrating plants and animals in our efforts to transform a 131 acre forest hillside into a food forest that will provide food, fuel, and raw materials for our growing community.

On day two, we will be getting our hands dirty, making seedballs to help regenerate several different polycultural landscapes. Ranging from perennial pasture, productive under story of a young food forest, and regenerating compacted and disturbed areas.

We will also be using a simple, and effective water levels to map the contours of to extend existing terraces on a 5 acre site windward is currently developing into a perennial food forest.

More information is available at:
http://windward.org/2.0/events/permaculture_15sept2013.php

**Cost**
$50-100 sliding scale for tickets purchased in advanced.

$75 at the door

**Camping**
Participants will be camping in Windward's 40 acre campground.
Tent, RV and car camping are all welcome.

Mid-September weather on the dry-side of the cascades is likely to be fair and sunny, but it never hurts to be prepared. Here is a list of things to consider packing:

Warm sleeping bag and sleeping pad
Tent
Clothing layers for a range of temperatures
Sturdy Boots
Work Gloves and clothes you don't mind getting dirt.

**Meals and Food**
We will be offering a hardy selection of vegetarian food on Friday and Saturday evening. You are welcome to bring food to contribute to these meals

Plan to Bring your own meals (breakfast and lunch) and snacks to energize you through the day on Saturday and Sunday. Remember we will be outside most of the time, and on Sunday we will be very active during the workshop. So please plan your food accordingly.

We will have limited space for refrigerating perishables food items. So please bring coolers to meet your refrigeration needs.

A ~20min video segment of Lindsay and I at the last POTE course in March.

An Introduction to Ecology: A Science of Relationships, Processes, Cycles and Systems



Enjoy!

Just posted the Supplemental Materials Packet (16 page PDF) on the Windward Server.

You can access it here.

Here are two parts to an intro to Permaculture section of the last course. We encourage anyone considering going will take the time to watch these introductory videos to help us cover more ground, more quickly in the Course, and get to a more in-depth examination of translating ecological understanding into directive for designing, creating, and maintaining diverse forest permaculture systems.





Hope you enjoy!

The Weekend's schedule is now more solidified!

Workshop Schedule

Friday
3-5pm: Check In & Camp Set-up
5pm: Group and Windward introductions
6pm: Intro to Permaculture
7pm: Potluck Dinner (bring a dish to share)

Saturday
Breakfast (Bring your own)
9-10am: Frameworks for Permaculture Design
10-10:30am: Break
10:30-12pm: Forest Gardening - Designing like a forest
12-2pm: Lunch and break (Bring your own)
2-3:30pm: Surveying Contours with water-levels and more!
2-3pm: Walking Observation of Forest Structure & Design
3:45-5: Establishing a Forest Garden - Practical Stratagies
5-6pm: Q&A
6pm: Dinner (Provided, bring something to share)
7pm: Campfire & Forum on Social Dimensions of Permaculture

Sunday
Breakfast (Bring you own)
9:30-10:30pm Walk-About: a look at forestation patterns
10:45-12pm: Making and Using Seedballs - a useful tool for permaculture on the Edge
12-2pm: Lunch and Q&A Wrap Up

You can see it on the website as well

http://windward.org/2.0/events/permaculture_15sept2013.php

Confused Sept 15th? or 6-8?

Hi Dustin and all,

We had to cancel this course, for lack of pre-registerants. IE, no one has registered yet. So we've decided to cancel it. Sorry to any of those who were looking to do a walk-in. Next time we will probably not have walk-in registration, and set a pre-registration date, and have early bird specials. That way we will have more surety that their will be people to attend!

Sorry again if you were planning on attending, but hadn't made that intention known via this thread.

All the best,
Andrew

Disappointing...

Can a visitor stop in, check out what you have & have a conversation?