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Summary
part 1 of a 2 part podcast
Paul discusses creating permaculture communities with Stephen Brooks from Ecoversity.
Paul relates that many communities he's visited seem not to be working well. However Stephen has a different approach and currently has 3 communities up and running. Paul met Stephen a few years ago at a prepper event in Texas.
Stephen lives in Costa Rica where there's no army, but people are allowed to have guns. Stephen doesn't and hopes never to need one.
At the event where they met Stephen did a presentation about the community he was running. Stephen relates things from his life which led to where he is now. He visited Costa Rica in 1995 and loved it. Watching a plane spraying a banana plantation and the inevitable drift of toxic chemicals led to him deciding to move to Costa Rica with the idea of trying to build something better.
Having moved to a farm in Costa Rica, he started bringing students there. He bought an off-grid property where he met an old Jamaican who was born there in 1928. He started growing food and employed local people who knew how nature worked. They built a community and then started getting wwoofers there. He took a course in 1999 in Hawaii as that was the only tropical permaculture course he could find. He began to teach in 2001. To begin with most attendees were young hippies, and it expanded to various retreats. Following a Netflix show in 2020, the government came and shut them down.
After this he defined his criteria for the ideal site for a community, and that done he went out to buy land to build a community. In 2007 they started a second community and in 2018 they bought 170 acres more land for a third. There are now over 200 families between the 3 communities and 150 kids in the school.
Their latest project is 100 acres on the beach and includes what is effectively a permaculture school.
Relevant Threads
south america / central america / mexico Forum
Permaculture community forum
Ecoversity
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This podcast was made possible thanks to:
Dr. Hugh Gill Kultur
Kyle Aster
Sasquatch
Bill Crim
G Cooper
Mehron Kugler
Bill Erickson
Julia Winter, world's slowest mosaic artist
Sean Benedict
Rita Bliden
Brent Lawson
Song Zheng
Dana Martin
David Lucey
Janelle
thomas adams
Clay McGowan
Shay Riggs
Dr. Jackie
Keith Kuhnsman
Cindi Duehmig
Banter Couch
Eric Tolbert
Paul Tipper
Paul F
Gerald Bernard
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