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Please join me in welcoming the instructors for the 2022 Permaculture Technology Jamboree!

You can find out more about the event HERE

Every new post in the Homestead forum this week (besides those in this welcome thread) count as an entry to win a free ticket to the PTJ




Say howdy to our instructors:

Uncle Mud (aka Chris McClellan) raises free-range, organic children in the wilds of northeast Ohio. Between building things out of mud and junk he writes for Mother Earth News Magazine and teaches simple DIY skills at workshops and fairs.



Rocket Hot Tub


Alan Booker is the founder and executive director of the Institute of Integrated Regenerative Design, which trains professional design practitioners to create systems that are ecosystemic, biocompatible, and regenerative. With over 30 years experience in engineering and 20 years in sustainable design, Alan is the author of multiple books. In addition to teaching PDCs, he also provides consulting and workshops on earthworks, soil remediation, composting, forest gardening, holistic management of pastureland, keyline design, aquaculture and aquaponics, off-grid energy systems, and natural building systems.

Sepp Holzer Style Spring Terrace

Paul Wheaton, The Duke of Permaculture, is an author, producer, and certified advanced master gardener. He has created hundreds of youtube videos, hundreds of podcasts, multiple DVDs, and written dozens of articles and a book. As the lead mad scientist at Wheaton Labs, he's conducted experiments resulting in rocket stoves and ovens, massive earthworks, solar dehydrators and much more.


Lisa Orr is a potter in Massachusetts working to create a Permaculture Pottery Paradise on her property with winter warmth supplied by two rocket mass heaters.  She is determined to create and refine a rocket kiln and spread the gospel of smokeless + low wood pottery firing throughout the land. Her pottery pieces promote ideas of nutrient cycling and other permaculture values.




https://permies.com/t/166853/permaculture-projects/Kiln-melting-glass-baking-pottery


Opalyn Rose has been exploring a truly raw-material life while stewarding land and community in south-central Washington. Opalyn tends the sheep and the forest, transforming a fleece or a tree into not only yarn and lumber but clothing and snowmen too.  She brings her love of that transformation to the classroom sharing her skills while helping you develop yours.


Austin Durant has been playing with his food his whole life, and fermenting it for over ten years. In 2011, he created Fermenters Club with a mission: To improve people’s lives by teaching them why and how to make and enjoy fermented foods; and to create communities that are connected through their guts. He teaches classes (online courses and hands-on workshops) on many fermented food traditions such as sauerkraut, pickles, kimchi, kombucha, miso, as well as seasonal specialties. He writes and shares recipes, videos and other fermentation adventures on his blog, fermentersclub.com. An otherwise permie newbie, Austin tends to his small garden in zone 10a, urban/coastal San Diego, California and is greatly looking forward to attending his first PDC and instructing at the PTJ at the Lab this year!

https://permies.com/wiki/178200/Preserve-Million-Calories-Food-Preservation

James Juczak is an author/lecturer on topics such as self-reliance, true sustainability, building off-grid energy systems and mortgage-free housing. He has had numerous articles published; his book "The High Art and Subtle Science of Scrounging, 2nd ed." is currently available and he is presently writing several other books. He has been dubbed "The King of Scrounge". Jim has taught energy, solar certification and electronics as an adjunct professor at three colleges. He has also worked as a Community Energy Educator in 10 northern New York counties. He also brought skills to Kandahar, Afghanistan where he worked as a civilian contractor with the US Army's 10th Mountain Brigade teaching appropriate technologies to the US and Afghan armies as well as the local civilian population. Jim lives with his wife, Krista, in their round, cordwood and papercrete home on the property where they have established an off-grid intentional community. He is an EMT and an adjunct professor at SUNY Jefferson where he teaches the NABCEP Solar Installers course.

Michael Otten (Stoic the Dirt Hippy) is a traveling sustainable developer with a passion for earthen building and passive solar design.





https://permies.com/wiki/177249/PTJ-Event-Solar-Yurt-Design


Sky Huddleston is an experienced entrepreneur with a demonstrated history of working in the renewable energy industry and commercializing obscure technologies. Over a decade of combustion system engineering experience including the engineering of diesel and aircraft engines and biomass combustion systems for residential and commercial applications. Extensive experience in mechanical engineering and mechanical drafting. Currently the Founder and CEO of Liberator Rocket Heaters and Eternal Engines. Currently developing next generator pulse detonation engine technology using the fickett-jacobs cycle and integrating turbine generator technology and rocket nozzles into rocket heater technology.

https://permies.com/wiki/177516/Round-Door


Ashley Cottonwood is a passionate advocate for sustainable living and homesteading re-skilling. She runs a beyond-organic market garden, compost program, and poultry operation. Ashley helped to create the Skills to Inherit Property Book (by Paul Wheaton). She teaches a variety of homesteading skills including gardening, animal care, beginner's textiles, natural medicine, home care, and more!


Samantha Lewis grew up weaving and doing needle work with her mother and grandmother. After high school she bought 60 acres of Washington forest land and built an off grid homestead. She attended Wilderness Awareness School and taught youth programs there for many years. She apprenticed with educator, author, artist Heidi Bohan, learning baskets and medicinal and traditional uses of plants. She likes to make her own clothes and grow her own food, living the permaculture dream on 5000 acres of Washington prairie land where she raises Finn sheep and other animals.

Beau Davidson is an audio engineer and music producer, and natural building contractor and consultant. He resides on his multi-generational family farm in South Central Kansas, where he makes innovative, ecologically-contextualized structures, landscapes, and spaces out of the physical materials at hand. He and his wife co-lead an ecological research initiative to tend the borderland between philosophy and practice of academic rigor, resource-stewardship, creativity, and whole-living.



https://permies.com/t/177485/Homegrown-Mushroom-Mycelium-Insulation-Panels



Jacob Wustner is a second generation beekeeper born and raised in Missoula, MT.  After graduating from Northland College in 2008 with a degree in Environmental Studies with an emphasis on public policy, he moved back to Montana.  During and after college, Jacob worked in the family business, eventually starting his own.  His passion for agriculture and beekeeping has grown and he has been involved in a few different beekeeping operations. Spending more than 10 seasons in California almond pollination, his experience with honey bees and commercial agriculture has driven him to seek new ways of beekeeping and growing food.




Instructors for the PTJ will be hanging out in the forums until this Friday answering questions and sharing their experiences with you all.

At the end of the week, we'll make a drawing for 1 Ticket to the PTJ event! From now until Friday, all new posts in the Homesteading Forums forum are eligible to win.

To win, you must use a name that follows our naming policy and you must have your email set up to receive the Daily-ish email. Higher quality posts are weighed more highly than posts that just say, "I want this book!"

When the winner is selected, they will be announced in this thread and their email address to receive the details of the event.


Please remember that we favour perennial discussion.  The threads you start will last beyond the event.  You don't need to use any instructor's name to get their attention. We like these threads to be accessible to everyone, and some people may not post their experiences if the thread is directed to the author alone.


Posts in this thread won't count as an entry to win the ticket, but please say "Hi!" to this years PTJ instructors and make them feel welcome!
COMMENTS:
 
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Chris, Alan, Paul, Lisa, Opalyn, Austin, James, Michael, Sky, Ashley, Samantha, Beau, and Jacob; thank you for your time for presenting . . .
 
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Hello Permies World!  Since the dawn of agriculture, people needed vessels to store food.  Since the dawn of the Rocket Mass Heater, people have been wondering where is the Rocket Kiln to fire pottery.  There is terracotta clay in them thar hills at Wheaton Labs, that we will harvest and fire using rocket technology.  Come try your hand at making something and firing with us.  Lisa Orr, a potter who is transforming a tiny piece of Massachusetts into a Permaculture Pottery Paradise
 
steward
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Lisa Orr wrote:Hello Permies World!  Since the dawn of agriculture, people needed vessels to store food.  Since the dawn of the Rocket Mass Heater, people have been wondering where is the Rocket Kiln to fire pottery.  There is terracotta clay in them thar hills at Wheaton Labs, that we will harvest and fire using rocket technology.  Come try your hand at making something and firing with us.  Lisa Orr, a potter who is transforming a tiny piece of Massachusetts into a Permaculture Pottery Paradise



Hey Lisa!  I so love your work and philosophy!  My wife is a ceramicist, coming off a long hiatus due to glaze toxicity, etc etc etc.  But we have been talking for YEARS about harvesting more of our own clay and retrofitting an electric kiln with a j-tube.  The upshot is that I have a high interest in investing energy into your projects!

Pertinent to this discussion -

I have appreciated the development of the kiln 2.0 process thread:

https://permies.com/t/166853/permaculture-projects/Kiln-melting-glass-baking-pottery

Additionally, there's this one: https://permies.com/t/30535/rocket-mass-stove-kiln

Put together, there's enough ideas for a lot of different approaches.  I can't wait to hear what you have in mind!
 
gardener
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Hello everybody,
I’m so excited to be returning to WL this summer. I’ll be leading a couple of textile projects.
Anybody interested in making a spinning wheel out of bicycle parts?
 
Lisa Orr
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Beau Davidson wrote:

Lisa Orr wrote:Hello Permies World!  Since the dawn of agriculture, people needed vessels to store food.  Since the dawn of the Rocket Mass Heater, people have been wondering where is the Rocket Kiln to fire pottery.  There is terracotta clay in them thar hills at Wheaton Labs, that we will harvest and fire using rocket technology.  Come try your hand at making something and firing with us.  Lisa Orr, a potter who is transforming a tiny piece of Massachusetts into a Permaculture Pottery Paradise



Hey Lisa!  I so love your work and philosophy!  My wife is a ceramicist, coming off a long hiatus due to glaze toxicity, etc etc etc.  But we have been talking for YEARS about harvesting more of our own clay and retrofitting an electric kiln with a j-tube.  The upshot is that I have a high interest in investing energy into your projects!

Pertinent to this discussion -

I have appreciated the development of the kiln 2.0 process thread:

https://permies.com/t/166853/permaculture-projects/Kiln-melting-glass-baking-pottery

Additionally, there's this one: https://permies.com/t/30535/rocket-mass-stove-kiln

Put together, there's enough ideas for a lot of different approaches.  I can't wait to hear what you have in mind!



Hi Beau-- I hope she gets back into it, there are plenty of clay and glaze materials that are non-toxic to use.  Ceramics is just ground up clay and rocks-- avoid certain materials (aka manganese, barium, lead, etc) and you should be good. Thanks for attaching those threads, they are my favorites from here as well.  We achieved a solid 04 in 2 hours before with a 12" square chamber.  We will need to modify our burn chamber to easily rake coals out or ?? because they built up and we needed more room for fuel due to constant loading/stoking.  We have an old electric kiln shell located for this project.  We will use ceramic cones (they measure the heat work-- time+temp) and pyrometers (to measure heat of atmosphere in kiln) to see the results we are getting.  This works, but we need to figure it out on for our kiln's larger scale.  Exciting to bring the ceramics and permaculture worlds together!
 
instructor
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Hey Everyone,

I just posted a couple of diagrams of a spring terrace over on the PTJ Spring Terrace thread. You can see them at

https://permies.com/wiki/177668/permaculture-projects/Sepp-Holzer-Style-Spring-Terrace#1406025

Looking forward to seeing everyone at the PDC and PTJ.
 
Beau M. Davidson
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Opalyn Rose wrote:Hello everybody,
I’m so excited to be returning to WL this summer. I’ll be leading a couple of textile projects.
Anybody interested in making a spinning wheel out of bicycle parts?



My household just got really excited about the spinning wheel project.  
 
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Oh hi, my name is Michael Otten and for some reason it's listed here with Chris McLellan and Paul Wheaton.

I am the least impressive person on your instructor roster, but I know a thing or two about earth construction, general construction, passive solar and what I call intensive passive solar design -- where we take the principles of passive solar design to their logical extremes to severely minimize or even eliminate the need for mechanical HVAC in buildings in a surprising number of climates.

I got my start at Earthship Biotecture in 2016, spent five years as a volunteer/hobbyist and am now in my second year as a professional. I travel around in my car -- which has been described as an apothecary cart of tools -- and help people build appropriate and experimental buildings.

For this event I'll be modifying a prepackaged yurt with passive solar earth coupled functionality. We'll get to engineer an earth floor, cob walls, erect a very cool and authentic yurt, possibly incorporate bottles into the construction and learn about passive solar design principles.
 
gardener
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Lisa, firing clay in a rocket stove takes me back to when I was a kid.  In the late 80s I built a 6 in x 6in x 6in rocket into the side of a hill.  The hill was all clay.  We had a really clean blue clay vein down at the creek. It made nice bowls. I use coal and peat chunks to fire it.  Often I would use a piece of glass from a broken jar to see if it had gotten hot enough.  When the sharp edges dulled it seemed to be hot enough to cure the clay.  It would take almost all weekend to get it hot enough and I had no idea what I was doing.  It was fun to experiment with though.

Opalyn, I get a kick out of repurposing things.  I think a bike spinning wheel would be a great project.

Alan, us flat landers just sink it where it falls most of the time.  The little drop off I have I made a hugel berm to catch it.

Michael, it is such a great thing to work with all these permies people.  All the permies I know put on their britches the same as me every morning and get to it.  I fired up the rocket last night around 8 while doing chores and haven't touched it since.  It is 74 in the office and 48 outside.  Sure is nice to heat the house with a hand full of wood and properly placed trees to catch the sun at the right time.
 
Lisa Orr
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Christopher Shepherd wrote:Lisa, firing clay in a rocket stove takes me back to when I was a kid.  In the late 80s I built a 6 in x 6in x 6in rocket into the side of a hill.  The hill was all clay.  We had a really clean blue clay vein down at the creek. It made nice bowls. I use coal and peat chunks to fire it.  Often I would use a piece of glass from a broken jar to see if it had gotten hot enough.  When the sharp edges dulled it seemed to be hot enough to cure the clay.  It would take almost all weekend to get it hot enough and I had no idea what I was doing.  It was fun to experiment with though.

So cool!  You have been using rockets a long time!  I am just learning-- it will be fun to see how how we can get our rocket chamber.  Hoping to fire Wheaton Lab earthenware into some neat things.

 
pollinator
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Hey, y'all! Excited to be returning to WL and the PTJ as an instructor again.

This year, my scope is a bit broader than just fermentation (yes, after 10 years, I finally admit there are other ways to preserve food.) ;)

I'm tasked with helping to preserve a million calories! Here's the project thread:
https://permies.com/wiki/178200/Preserve-Million-Calories-Food-Preservation

Among other fun things, I'd reaaaaallly like to acquire a used oak wine barrel, which we can turn into a year-round fermentation chamber, filling it with delectables like sauerkraut and pickles. If anyone has a lead on one we can score locally, please Let me know!

I'd also love to procure a pasture-raised pig leg/ham/shank to cure, so again if you know a local source, please Let me know.

See you in June!
sauerkraut-barrel.jpg
[Thumbnail for sauerkraut-barrel.jpg]
 
author & steward
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What an impressive crew! We're delighted to have you with us this week on Permies. Welcome!
 
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Nice to join this thread. Would love to visit
 
Beau M. Davidson
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And the winner of the PTJ ticket is . . . .

Joylynn Hardesty!!!

Congrats, Joylynn!  


Thanks so much to all the instructors and participants for taking part in the promotion this week.  Your meaningful contributions to the Homestead forum have boosted the PTJ, helped Permies as a whole, and insvested in positive world-change and the spreading of invaluable homesteading and permaculture information!  

Huzzah!!!

That's a wrap, folks!
 
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