Ecological Living Summit | June 14-20 in Montana

A seed sown by Paul himself, tended and cared for over the last several months by the Sage Mountaineers has just started to sprout:

The Ecological Living Summit
June 14th-20th 2015 | Solutions Inspired by Nature
Sage Mountain Center in Whitehall, Montana



An Experiential Learning based conference taking place this summer, the Ecological Living Summit will expose participants to the wide variety of skills and techniques necessary to live in harmony with our natural world in cold climates. Workshops will provide innovative and practical solutions for self-sufficiency with regard to Food and Medicine, Energy and Housing, Regenerating Ecosystems, and Economic Resilience.

Participants will gain from the decade’s worth of experience of our educators within just a few days of intensive hands on learning. Our aim is to send participants home propelled years ahead on their quest for a more ecological lifestyle. Our plan is to knock down as many barriers to action as possible, so come ready to launch forward upon returning home. We believe this summit will facilitate sharing of countless innovations, grow networks, and help raise our voices in solidarity. Together we can create positive change in our lives, communities and world.

Our Summit is meant to be a compliment to all of the great education that is already going on within and around permaculture like Permaculture Voices, Geoff Lawton’s Online PDC, and the countless other convergences, workshops, and PDC’s taking place around North America and abroad.

This is not the conference to listen to a riveting power point presentation about how awesome Rocket Mass Heaters are and how much wood they save but rather the place to learn how to build a Rocket Mass Heater Core with your own two hands. This is not the place to learn about why Solar is important and what the paybacks look like - this is the place to come put together a small affordable Solar Power Plant. This is not the place to come learn how awesome Straw Bale Construction is but to gain experience building with Straw Bales. We aim to provide the experiential learning component (with retention rates around 75%) to all of the great lecture and audio-visual learning (with retention rates around 5-20%) that is already out there.

In order to provide such an intimate hands on learning experience we need to keep attendance for the summit relatively small, as a result space is very limited so don’t wait to register. Sage Mountain Center’s first annual Ecological Living Summit June 14-20, 2015 is sure to provide a transformative experience through inventive, relevant and hands on education inspired by nature. Come join the movement, share your ecological design recipes, grow your networks and empower yourself as we learn together and take action for positive change in our communities and world.

SOME HIGHLIGHTS OF THE SUMMIT

FOOD AND MEDICINE | Botany in a Day Plant Identification, Herbal Medicine Cultivation, Fermentation, Mushroom Cultivation, Mushroom Identification, Medicinal Fungi, Ethnomycology, Permaculture Kitchen, Livestock Health and Wellness, Getting Started with Animals and Grazing, Crater Gardens, Holzer Permaculture, A Dozen Ways to Prepare Food, Cooking with Fire, Primitive Fire Making

HOUSING AND ENERGY | Rocket Mass Heaters, Natural Building, Cordwood Construction, Straw Bale Construction, Solar and Wind Energy, Cheap DIY Solar Power Plant, Solar for Fencing, Outdoor RMH Cooking

REGENERATING ECOSYSTEMS | Severe Disturbance Restoration, Soils, Forestry, Holzer Permaculture, Mycopermaculture, Mycorrhizal Fungi, Mycoremediation, BioChar, Awareness: Reading the Book of Nature

ECONOMIC RESILIENCE | Holistic Life Context, Zones of Brilliance, Business Modeling, Pathways Platforms and Package, Evaluating and Purchasing Land


For More on the Summit or to Register Click Here

Here is our flier for the event as well as the current workshop list:

Over the next couple of days I'll be adding a variety of videos from educators of the summit to give people a taste of some of the skills and techniques that will be shared.

The Crater Garden built by Sepp Holzer, myself, and the Sage Mountaineers will be a key teaching tool throughout the event. I will be teaching a workshop all about crater gardens and creating effective micro-climates.



I will also be teaming up with Javan K. Bernakevitch for two different workshops all about Holzer Permaculture. We will be building an example Hugelkultur during the summit as well as covering Holzer style seed mixes and agroforestry systems among a suite of other skills and techniques.

Radical Mycology works to build relationships among humans and fungi for the benefit of larger communities and the world. The highly resilient life cycles of fungi and their interactions in nature serve as powerful learning tools for how humans can best relate to each other and steward the world we live in.

Fungi provide great potential for helping to repair and clean damaged ecosystems, having the ability to mine and concentrate pollutants from the soil into their fruiting bodies, the mushrooms. While this is by no means a silver bullet it is one of our most hopeful tools for repairing some of the ecological catastrophes that have occurred.

Mycologists are finding strains of fungi that can eat plastics and in the video below Peter McCoy, one of the co-founders of Radical Mycology, explains how he trained fungi to eat used cigarette filters.



Peter is one of the core educators for the upcoming Ecological Living Summit, he will be teaching a variety of workshops including: Medicinal and Ethno-Mycology, Cheap Spawn Production for Mushroom Cultivation, Aseptic Lab Work, Myco-Permaculture, Mushroom Identification, Mycorrhizal Fungi, and Myco-Remediation.

That is really cool! Who thought it was possible to train mushrooms to eat stuff! If he can do this then he might even be able to train kids to eat their greens

I'm very psyched to attend this conference and am hoping to find someone with whom to share a rental space in the area.

Early bird price ends March 31st 30th! Get yer tickets folks! Paul and I will both be there, and we are both presenting on financial and business aspects of permaculture.

(Edited to fix the early bird deadline!)

TEASE!!!
So what's the early bird price and what's the retail price?

Ha!

So on the registration page, www.ecolivingsummit.com/registration, for this 7-day event, these prices are listed:

Entire Conference - if paid by March 30 (I was one day off above, I will fix that!)
$950

After March 30th
$1,250

Thanks, I looked and couldn't find it.