2017 Homesteaders PDC (permaculture design course) & ATC (appropriate technology course) in Montana

The date of the 2017 PDC (Permaculture Design Certificate) at Wheaton Labs
will be Sunday, May 28th  through Saturday, June 10th, 2017, with one day off on the Saturday right in the middle.  


Due to such high interest, web streaming is a go!  Full details on our kickstarter:

http://kck.st/2q6Ycay




https://richsoil.com/pdc.jsp

Visit our Facebook event page for the PDC HERE!

The date of the ATC (Appropriate Technology Course) will be Monday, June 12th through Friday June 23rd, 2017 with one day off on the saturday right in the middle.

https://richsoil.com/atc.jsp

Visit our Facebook event page for the ATC HERE!

Happy graduates of the 2015 PDC




This thread is provided so folks can ask questions about the PDC and ATC.


This will be a homesteaders' PDC, with a strong focus on rural acreage. So, while other PDCs tend to cover urban permaculture equally with five to 200 acres (homestead size) and broadacre (200 to 20,000 acres), this PDC will shrink the urban and broadacre stuff so there can be more about homesteading.


There is a possibility that the PDC and ATC could be streamed over the web.   If this is of interest to you, please click on the thumbs up of the appropriate posts here so we can guage interest.



Instructors and Guest Instructors:


This PDC will be led by:

Tim Barker, who is keen on working a lot of Holistic Management (Alan Savory's stuff) into it.

tim barker - permaculture design course instructor

Tim has come a long way since his days as a diesel fitter mechanic, and now spends his time between Australia and New Zealand (and sometimes the US) as a semi professional pyromaniac and mad scientist teaching people how to burn stuff and make really cool machines and devices for low carbon living. He currently teaches Appropriate technology for the Koanga institute in New Zealand and Very Edible Gardens (VEG) in Melbourne, to name a few. Read more here.

Paul Wheaton, who is keen on making permaculture beautiful and profitable.



Paul Wheaton, the bad boy of Permaculture, was proclaimed by Geoff Lawton in 2012 the Duke of Permaculture. He is the creator of two on-line communities. One is about Permaculture, permies.com, and one is about software engineering, CodeRanch.com. Read more here.

Guest Instructors

Thomas Elpel



Thomas J. Elpel is an author, natural builder, educator and conservationist. He has authored multiple books: Foraging the Mountain West, Botany in a Day, Shanleya's Quest and numerous other ones about plant identification, wilderness survival, and sustainable living. He has multiple videos: Building a Slipform Stone House from the Bottom Up, How to Make a Grass Rope, Build Your own Masonry Fireplace - Masonry Heater - Masonry Stove, and many more. Thomas regularly teaches classes on plant identification, primitive skills and natural building. He is founder/director of Green University, LLC in Pony, Montana.

Helen Atthowe



Dubbed goddess of the soil by Paul Wheaton, Helen is a master gardener, farmer and consultant. She had first hand experience with Masanobu Fukuoka and was a horticulture extension agent for 15 years in Montana. She owned and operated Biodesign Farm near Missoula, Montana for 17 years. She has been doing consulting for different vegetable growers, including a 2000 acres organic fruit and vegetable farm. She is now an advocate of veganic permaculture.

Ernie Wisner



Ernie is a botanist, educator, writer, researcher, rocket mass heater innovator, natural builder, and boat aficionado. He worked in the merchant navy and has tremendous experience with hydraulic and hot water systems. Ernie is semi-retired due to a disabling injury, but still makes time for the occasional workshop or fascinating prototype project. He co-authored multiple books with his wife Erica and he is featured in many videos, documentaries and podcasts. Ernie is a wealth of knowledge; there are not many topics on which he does not have an opinion.

Erica Wisner



Erica is a science and art educator, curriculum developer, writer, illustrator, researcher, and rocket mass heater innovator. She loves making things from scratch - anything from blueberry scones to the oven itself. Erica is a skilled educator and project coordinator, with over 15 years' experience building teamwork and leading hands-on learning experiences. Her and Ernie have taught numerous workshops on natural building and rocket mass heaters. Erica has written multiple books on rocket mass heaters, fire making, and survival shelters. She is featured in many videos, documentaries, and podcasts on rocket mass heaters.

Jacqueline Freeman



Jacqueline is a biodynamic farmer, author, and natural beekeeper. She is known for her gentle and understanding ways with bees. She appears in the honeybee documentary, Queen of the Sun and was hired by the USDA to work with rural farmers and beekeepers in Dominican Republic using historic methods of respectful beekeeping. She lives on a farm in Washington state with her husband Joseph where they have orchards, gardens, two big greenhouses, a small forest, rich pastures and plenty of flowering bee forage. Jacqueline also has lots of experience raising livestock: cows, goats, chickens for laying and broilers, turkeys, and horses. She has two websites: SpiritBee.com and friendlyhaven.com.

Zachary Weiss - 2017 PDC Guest Instructor



Protégé of legendary Austrian farmer, Sepp Holzer, Zach is the first person to earn Holzer Practitioner Certification outside of the Krameterhof training program. Blending a unique combination of systems thinking, empathy, and awareness, Zach uses an action-oriented process to improve human relationships with earth. Enhancing ecosystems and harvesting natural productivity over time is the ultimate goal - with high initial input, high yield systems that will last until the next ice age.

Zach currently has projects in 11 nations on 4 continents, spanning a wide range of climates, contexts, land-forms and ecosystems. Having experience with a wide range of techniques and systems (from natural building, to greenhouses, to carpentry, to watershed restoration), Zach also graduated summa cum laude with a degree in Ecology. He has two websites elementalecosystems.com and holzerpermaculture.us

Davin Hoyt



Davin is an architect, artist, and entrepreneur. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Architecture and has 16 years of drafting experience. Davin has established two community gardens in Georgetown, Texas and he is the first to map Wheaton Labs. Davin practices architecture as a one-man firm and will soon be a small restaurant chain partner. He is the future illustrator of Paul's book on "Wofatis".

Byron Joel - 2017 PDC Guest Instructor



Byron Joel is based in Margaret River, Western Australia, from where he runs Oak Tree Designs, providing environmentally aware Human Settlement Systems design and education. Discovering Permaculture in the early 2000s, Byron devoured all the information he could find and set to work connecting with like minds and putting ideas to practice, taking his first Permaculture Design Course in 2004 and second in 2009. After taking the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia's 10 week internship in 2010, Byron returned to the positions of both Nursery and WWOOFer Coordinator at Zaytuna Farm. After relocating to New Zealand, he held the position of Nursery Manager at Kotare Farm, home of the Koanga Institute and the Permaculture Research Institute of New Zealand. Armed with the invaluable tool of hands-on field time and a Diploma in Horticulture, Byron’s embryonic affinity with plants has developed and evolved into a broader, impassioned drive to the broad scale regeneration and restoration of not only the planet’s much degraded ecology, but also the human communities that inhabit her. Byron has studied and integrated design and implementation techniques from numerous related systems including Holistic Management, Natural Sequence Farming, Bio-dynamics, Natural Farming, the Regrarian Platform and more…
Byron has worked internationally as both educator and consultant.


Lots of hands-on projects



Another thing that makes this PDC different from the norm:

Tim INSISTS that this is a DESIGN course. He is frustrated that in other PDCs people make ONE design with minimal feedback. By the end of this PDC, each student will have FOUR TIMES MORE experience designing than in a standard PDC.



About this course, Tim wrote:

I teach the design process, and with a good understanding of the design process you can design for ANY situation.

People are getting strategies and techniques mixed up with design, and so we have lots of PDCs where people are are doing lots of cool stuff but coming away very light on the design.

Design is the skill set that the PDC was made to teach. I teach design.

Strategies and techniques are the crack cocaine of design. People decide to use a strategy or technique and then work backwards to fit it into the design process and somehow justify it.

I teach how to assess the decisions we make by taking a good look at the human decision making process, and show people how to make good, well informed decisions.

Of course, having lots of examples of strategies and techniques around and doing some is great because they are how we translate the design into the real world; but the student has to be aware that the PDC has just a taste of those possibilities and that if the student wants to design well then they have set themselves a course for lifelong study.

Tim also said that there will be few videos shown during the PDC. People can watch videos on their own time. He said there will be a lot of time spent on designing, and there will be several hands-on experiences.  

Fun with the big toys!



This will also be an event where food is provided. So the price includes food.



War paint optional . . .



Hang out with cool people!



Selfies with Paul!






price:

pdc: $1850
at:  $1400
both: $3050


How to Pay

Send payment via:

paypal:  paul at richsoil.com

bitcoin:  177pNU2a9iCpUXQwXX9EbtA2UwZpgeqcMT

Note that there are no refunds this close to the event date.

This course will be limited to 24 students. So get in early to ensure you get a spot!



A PDC creates a sense of community and support.  



Travel Info

Nearest Airport:

Missoula International Airport

If you need a ride from the airport, it's likely that a shuttle service can be arranged for you. Notify us in advance, and we'll get something worked out to get you here.

For those that may not be able to fly with sleeping bags and tents, there are a limited quantity available for borrowing at the Lab, and of course, you can always rent the Tipi, Wofati, or other structures for your stay to lighten your luggage.

Childcare

There is a discussion about having on-site childcare for the duration of the courses here.
We will post the results here, once there is a dedicated childcare person chosen, and fees are decided.

PDC Schedule

This is the official schedule for the PDC. It is possible that a few details might change.

Day 1: (Sunday, May 28th) Intro to Permaculture Ethics and Principals

Day 2: Design Concepts and Themes

Day 3: Methods of Design

Day 4: Managing Holistically

Day 5: Climates and Landforms

Day 6: Water and Access

Day 7: All Day Break - Movie night

Day 8: Trees and Soils

Day 9: Soils and Crops

Day 10: Animals

Day 11: Appropriate Technology

Day 12: Bioregions and Communities

Day 13: Botany In a Day

Day 14: Permaculture Design Presentations and Talent Night


Learning, learning, and more learning!





ATC Topics

Here are the exciting areas of appropriate technology that will be covered in the course!


1. Solar - passive, heating, cookers, ovens, dryers. Panels, charging, storage, lighting, mobile powered units.

2. Heating Temperate shelters - rocket stoves - (dimensions, materials, uses - hotwater, oven, cooking, mass heating), wood stoves, solar, thermal mass, insulation, floors, and composting. Thermal mass greenhouses.

3. Cooling Tropical shelters - shade, wind, ground cooling ducts, orientation, thermal mass, roofs.

4. Water - filtering, purity, potibility, design, pumps, swales, ponds, air wells, drilled wells, collection systems, storage, IBC's, Grey water (recycling, uses, low cost methods, legal, productive uses)

5. Sustainability - energy audits, home, farm, food security - measurement

6. BioChar - production and use

7. Compost Toilets - Types, designs, Humanure, urine, safety, regulation, reality.


Hands-on projects that could change your life!