Portland workparty and presentation, Building Relationships with Plants and People

Wanted to give Permie folks a clue into a presentation

Join, Lindsay Hagamen and Andrew Schreiber, permaculture practitioners and Stewards of the Windward Community, for an evening of conversation and collaboration - interweaving threads of permaculture, place-making, inter-generational intentional community, and forging resilient and productive partnerships between plants, animals, people and place.

We'll start with a skill-share and work-party demonstrating a variety of plant propagation techniques to empower those in Portland's ecological movement to enhance the urban food-shed. And in the process make the Ujima Center's permaculture garden even more awesome!

The work-party will be followed by a presentation (which we hope you all will help evolve into a conversation) about Windward's approach to creating a socially resilient, ecologically regenerative, economically viable community.

Suggested Donation: $5-20. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Bring some work gloves and a snack to share, we look forward to seeing you there!

Hosted at the Ujima Center in NE Portland. Friday, September 19th 2014.

RSVP on the event page , or send me a PM.

Dang, that sounds like it was a fountain of knowledge! How did it go? Any chance another one of these could be coming up? Really disappointing we missed it.

I thank you for keeping us in the know!

Hi Rachel,

The workshop went well. A small turnout but they made up for it with their deep interest. We demonstrated how to propagate a goumi using mound layering technique, and a fig using trench layering. We also showed pruning techniques and shared some examples on Ujima's property of how plant spacing and light availability effect the growth form and productivity of plants - and gave some suggestions as to how the system could be easily modified to enable a more diverse yield and solve some of the systemic problems they were facing with their woody perennials.

After we did some work with our plant partners, we talked about Windward's community's approach to creating and sustaining a small village in the deep country.

We do not have another workshop planned in the Portland area. However, we're planning a "field day" style workshop in the spring, focusing again on practical techniques and perspective when working on propagating, establishing, and otherwise working with perennial plants in a forest garden situation. That will be happening in Wahkiacus Washington on Windward community's property. If you'd like I can keep you informed about that. send me a private message with your email and I can add you to our mailing list.

Cheers,
Andrew

Thank you Andrew, I'll be talking to you soon -- keep in touch!

Rachel

I just came across this thread.  It’s an interesting one.  I liked the idea described in the opening post - work parties as a way to introduce people to understanding something and/or learning how to do something… and getting something accomplished at the same time.

Sorry to read, in post #3, that the show-up-and-participate level was low.

I’d love to read other stories here at Permies about more people getting into work parties.  I started a thread on the topic, and it got a bit of posting…  https://permies.com/t/39844/Share-barn-raising-type-stories#487437

I think this matter gets to the heart of what it would mean to change food production in North America and evolve a permanent (sustainable) culture.  Don’t get me wrong, my partner and I live on an individual homestead and most of the time we’re accomplishing the food production, maintenance, and building projects with our own physical and mental energy.  So I applaud all of you who are doing that.  But that’s not what traditional rural cultures have done exclusively in the past, and by itself is not what we need now and into the future.

There’s a big problem of people growing up now only exercising imagination (in entertaining ways) and exercising their thumbs on online devices.  And that happens, to quite an extent it seems, in rural communities, as well as in the suburbs and cities.

So I think it's good to be sharing stories about how cooperative effort is working out in today’s homesteading scene.  Why not post what you’re experiencing and noticing?