2024 SKIP: Skills to Inherit Property (PEP1) event - July 15th-26th, Wheaton Labs

About SKIP:

SKIP is a curriculum of experiences you can complete to prove you can do permaculture.  While a PDC  teaches you how to do permaculture design and analysis, SKIP is hands-on.  You are making things.

When you complete several things, you earn a badge.  Sixteen badges will make you PEP1 certified.  After several years of progress, you can be PEP3 or PEP4 certified.  At that point you are basically self-sufficient and can prove it.  Many older homesteaders don't want their property to turn into a strip mall or subdivision.  This program (not this event) enables connections between qualified candidates and those landowners so you can skip the rat race and skip the debt.

Feel of the Event:

In this program, you will gain and demonstrate new skills.  It isn't about training, classroom time or lengthy discussion.  It's about pounding out actual projects.  This event will be heavily focused on giving attendees the ability to complete badges.  It's our third event like this. We have reduced the pace a bit due to some exhaustion during last year's event.

There will be a guide/facilitator for all the planned work.  The attendees will be focused on a given task for each time slot.  If they complete it quickly, there is time to complete additional badges..  If they want to take their time, that is fine, but they may not complete as many badges during the event.

Our aim is to allow you to get as many BBs done for things that are hard to do outside of Wheaton Labs.  We are aiming for a nice blend of complete badges alongside specific BBs that are very helpful to do while in Montana.



Daily Schedule
This event will include two tracks.  You can jump between tracks as much as you want.

     Track 1

Day 1-5 Mornings: Roundwood Woodworking: 3 log bench, hugelkultur scaffold, mallets, dry peg project

Day 1-3 Afternoons: Gardening: Making a hugelkultur garden, planting, chop and dropping, mulching

Day 4-5 Afternoons: Woodland Care: Making junkpole fence and cedar shakes

Day 8-11 Mornings: Woodland Care: Felling trees, peeling and bucking, splitting wood

Day 12 Morning: Foraging: Making seed balls

Day 8-9 Afternoons: Dimensional Woodworking: Woodburned sign, birdhouse, step stool

Day 10-12 Afternoons: Metalworking: Build a kindling cracker

     Track 2

Day 1:  Homesteading:  Make a rock jack

Day 2 and Afternoons 3-5:  Earthworks: Make a dry stack retaining wall, make a trail, maintain a trail, use an excavator, improve a berm, use the tractor loader

Day 3-5 Mornings:  Natural Building: Make adobe bricks, create and use natural paint, low grade cob on a wofati

Day 8-9: Animal Care and Food Prep: Sewing, knitting, darning, basket making and twine making plus water bath canning, solar dehydration, cooking with rockets, hayboxes and cast iron

Day 10: Toolcare: Make tool handle, sharpen knife, chainsaw, shovel and hatchet

Day 11-12: Textiles: Sewing, knitting, darning, basket making and twine making


Instructors

Mike Haasl -- Instructor
Mike Haasl is a mechanical engineer, woodworker, blacksmith, and permaculture homesteader in northern Wisconsin.  He constructed a sweet greenhouse, builds with pallets and upcycled material, and experiments with compost heat.  He is developing a demonstration site for permaculture homesteading, and collaborating to create the SKIP program.

Paul Wheaton -- Host/Instructor
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.

Opalyn Rose -- Instructor
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.

Sean Phillip -- Instructor
Sean is a returning SKIP attendee from California on the path toward a more productive and sustainable lifestyle. Sean aspires to one day manage a homestead integrating permaculture practices, and purposely connects with others pursuing similar goals.  This year he will be volunteering to assist Paul, Mike, and Opalyn to facilitate the events at SKIP 2023.

Jae Gruenke -- Instructor
Jae Gruenke is a Feldenkrais practitioner and lifelong forager who loves permaculture for giving her a way to apply systems thinking to growing things, and to create a "garden" she can forage in. She lives in Salt Lake City, where she just completed a permaculture design course and is converting the lawn and flowerbeds of her new home into a permaculture garden and mini-food forest. She believes skills are among the most valuable things a human can have. She's a returning SKIP attendee looking forward to assisting Paul, Mike, and Opalyn this summer.




Tickets