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paul wheaton
master steward


Paul Wheaton, The Duke of Permaculture, is an author, producer, certified advanced master gardener, and owner of. 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.
His bitcoin thing-a-ma-bob is 177pNU2a9iCpUXQwXX9EbtA2UwZpgeqcMT

Burra Maluca
Mother Tree

Burra is a hermit, and a dreamer, and an eternal optimist. She loves ideas, and she loves testing them out and sharing what she finds out. She's constantly starting new things but rarely finishes them. She is hopelessly disorganised and lives in a state of total, blissful chaos. She loves apricots. And cherries. One day she'll grow all her own food so she never has to venture off her farm.
She is currently taking some time off to spend with her family.

Nicole Alderman

Five acres, two little ones, one awesome husband, 12 ducks (give or take), and a bunch of fruit trees and garden beds. In her spare time, Nicole likes to knit, paint, draw, teach kids, make fairies & dragons, philosophize, and read fantasy. She doesn't HAVE spare time, but does like to fantasize about it!

Anne Miller

We manage a 40 acre wildlife area of the Texas Hill Country in the Edwards Plateau at about 3030 ft above sea level. The region is notable for its karst topography and tall rugged hills of limestone. The terrain throughout the region is punctuated by a thin layer of topsoil and a large number of exposed rocks and boulders, making the region very dry and prone to flash flooding. Native vegetation in the region includes various yucca, prickly pear cactus, native grasses and wildflowers. The predominant trees in the region are Ashe Juniper, Shin Oak and Texas Live Oak. Soil is alkaline consisting of caliche and clay.

r ranson

an insomniac misanthrope who enjoys cooking, textile arts, farming and eating delicious food.
and who almost never replies to pm's or emails.

Pearl Sutton

Chronic reader, creative dreamer, a LOT of hand skills to make things real, intense health issues that limit my activity, but not my creativity or dreams. Moved to southern Missouri with enough tools and junk to build a life that might work well with my health. One of god’s gigglers, I punctuate with smiley faces and exclamation points when I type, and smile and laugh a lot in real life. (Often at things no one else understands.) And I both curtsy at people (even when wearing grubby work clothes) and purr when hugged, both online and in real life. “Normal” is not a word that has ever been used for me.

Been organic gardening all my life, and bought 4 acres that I have designed from the ground up. Making it happen is being the most fun I have ever had in my life, the best 3D jigsaw puzzle ever! Reading Mollison’s Designer’s Manual was like coming home, ah, THERE I am! A reality where I can use all of my multifaceted talents and skills!
Dumpster diver, recycler, second hand store shopper, I tell people I am attracted to rust and lace. I have violated every warranty I have ever met, I’m a tool using animal, and I use my tools to modify everything in my world. And it only gets weirder...

James Freyr

James is in his forties, is an active homesteader who is married, and has no children aside from five cats. He is a graduate of The American Brewers Guild and while he no longer brews beer he does dabble in the fermentations of food and dairy. He resides in the state of Tennessee where he runs a small farm. An avid gardener for more than twenty years, he also raises chickens and cows, has a few fruit trees and hopes to add bee keeping, pigs and goats to the farm. When he has free time he enjoys hikes through the woods and reading books.

Mike Haasl

Mike is a homesteader, gardener, engineer, wood worker, blacksmith and most recently a greenhouse designer. He heard about permaculture in 2015 and has been learning ever since.

Joylynn Hardesty

Joy discovered Permaculture in 2015. Thanks, Paul! And suddenly the vast expanse of grass began to shrink. Her hubby is appreciative, as mowing is not fun for her guy.
Joy is designing her permaculture paradise from the edges. Fumbling and stumbling all the way. She successfully grows weeds and a few fruits and veggies in the humid Mid-south.

Devaka Cooray

Devaka started programming with Pascal and BASIC languages when he was 13, and he has been coding with Java since 2003. Devaka got his bachelor's in computer science from the University of Moratuwa, and currently holds SCJP, SCWCD, and SCBCD certifications. He is mostly known as the author of ExamLab , which is a popular exam simulator for SCJP certification.
When he is not wrangling with his JavaEE and enterprise projects, he likes to play with sneaky web application security stuff.
More about Devaka can be found at his website http://www.devakacooray.com/

Jocelyn Campbell


Jocelyn's life is all about balance. Maybe that's why she's an accountant and is such an advocate for keeping our natural systems healthy.
As a child, she perched on branches, collected moss and fungus, caught frogs and snakes, and climbed up into swaying tree forts in her beloved Pacific Northwest woods. Then, as a teenager, she learned that reining in sugar kept her more alert and energetic. These youthful observations grew into passions for walks in the woods, gardening, herbal remedies, and natural parenting with whole and traditional foods. More recently, Jocelyn's interest in the natural and healthy led to all things permaculture and she completed her first permaculture design course in 2010.
Jocelyn enjoys helping 1- and 2- person micro-businesses spend less time on their bookkeeping, growing and wildcrafting herbs and greens, plus cooking and fermenting veggie filled, health-promoting goodness.

Dave Burton

ASBMB Certified BS in Biochemistry from the University of Montana in May 2019!
Permaculture is my passion, and I intend to gain hands-on experience in permaculture and make the world a better place! It's time enough to stop being angry at the bad guys and get to work making a new world!
At the moment, I am currently looking for farms, intentional communities, and ecovillages that I could be a part of, so that I can get hands-on experience and practical knowledge of permaculture.
I am always available for hire for any in real life or online projects. Just make me an offer, and we can start talking.

Julia Winter

Pediatrician with a Master's Degree in Nutritional Sciences. Moved to Portland, Oregon in the summer of 2013. Took Geoff Lawton's first online PDC in 2014.

Joseph Lofthouse


Joseph Lofthouse grew up on the farm and in the community that was settled by his ggg-grandmother and her son. He still farms there. Growing conditions are high-altitude brilliantly-sunlit desert mountain valley in Northern Utah with irrigation, clayish-silty high-pH soil, super low humidity, short-season, and intense radiant cooling at night. Joseph learned traditional agricultural and seed saving techniques from his grandfather and father. Joseph is a sustenance market farmer and landrace seed-developer. He grows seed for about 95 species. Joseph is enamored with landrace growing and is working to convert every species that he grows into adaptivar landraces. He writes the Landrace Gardening Blog for Mother Earth News.
Farming Philosophy
Promiscuous Pollination and ongoing segregation are encouraged in all varieties. Joseph's style of landrace gardening can best be summed up as throwing a bunch of varieties into a field, allowing them to promiscuously cross pollinate, and then through a combination of survival-of-the-fittest and farmer-directed selection saving seeds year after year to arrive at a locally-adapted genetically-diverse population that thrives because it is closely tied to the land, the weather, the pests, the farmer's habits and tastes, and community desires.
Joseph lives under a vow of poverty and grows using subsistence level conditions without using cides or fertilizers. He prefers to select for genetics that can thrive under existing conditions. He figures that it is easier to change the genetics of a population of plants than it is to modify the soil, weather, bugs, etc. For example, because Joseph's weeding is marginal, plants have to germinate quickly, and burst out of the soil with robust growth in order to compete with the weeds.
Biodiversity
Joseph is preserving the genes of thousands of varieties of plants, but does not keep individual varieties intact or pure. The stories don't matter to him. What matters is the web of ongoing life. For his purposes a squash is a squash is a squash. Plant purity doesn't exist in Joseph's world, other than in very broad ways like keeping hot peppers separate from sweet peppers. Some landraces might even contain multiple species!

tel jetson


zone 7? 8?: woodland, washington and portland, oregon. grower, builder, beekeeper, engineer.

Tracy Wandling


Tracy is an artist, graphic designer, musician, gardener and permaculture addict. She has recently moved to the Sunshine Coast, British Columbia, and is enjoying getting to know a new area.

Adrien Lapointe


Adrien grew up in Northern Quebec where he was exposed to gardening, hunting, fishing, and small fruit gathering. He was also exposed to large scale farming as his parents owned a farm for some years growing barley, canola and at one point raising milk sheep. Growing up he always had rabbits, chickens and various other small livestock.
Now an avid gardener, foodie, amateur woodworker, and raw milk advocate, he is experimenting with hugelkultur and polyculture, cooking from scratch, experimenting on reducing his ecological footprint, and much more.
Adrien was introduced to Permaculture few years ago through Joel Salatin’s techniques and travelled down the rabbit hole to end up at Permies.

Craig Dobbson

Craig is a permaculture designer and consultant with a focus on temperate climate, perennial food forests and homestead management. He has been testing and implementing his own designs while sharing knowledge and experience with others for the past seven years. In 2014 he completed his PDC and began a larger expansion of his homestead and business. The future is bright, as long as you're willing to face it.

Ken Peavey

8b/9a N FLorida

Josiah Wallingford

Josiah Wallingford grew up on organic farms that supported his mother's organic body care business.
He started training technical support representatives for Hewlett Packard when he was 16.
When he turned 19 he joined the united states army as a 19D (Cavalry Scout).
After the military, Josiah worked as a project manager installing video on demand systems in luxury hotels.
Josiah was recalled by the military after being out for three years to go to Afghanistan.
After his tour in Afghanistan Josiah became an intern of Jack Spirko of The Survival Podcast.
During his internship, he started Brink of Freedom and PermaEthos as a partner with Jack Spriko, Nick Ferguson, Kevin Keegan and Charlie Mitchell.
In 2017 Josiah became the sole owner of PermaEthos and launched a community building site called ThriveThrough.

Steve Thorn


Steve started his first "permaculture" garden when he was about 7 years old and has been addicted to growing things ever since! It was only about 20 square feet back then, and he didn't know much about gardening except what was on the back of the seed packet, but he knew he didn't want to use any fertilizer or pesticides, and wanted to grow everything as naturally as possible.
Years later, when he got some land of his own, he started planting a larger garden, berry bushes, and fruit trees, and also discovered permaculture and Permies! Permaculture has made growing things so much easier and enjoyable! He is passionate about growing things naturally using natural farming and permaculture methods to minimize work and maximize enjoyment!
He is also passionate about saving seed and creating new and locally adapted vegetable and own root fruit varieties to increase the natural growing vigor, flavor, and pest and disease resistance of the plants, to make them easier and more enjoyable to grow.
Creating a plant nursery selling these types of plants occupies most of his free time right now, and he is hoping to start selling these types of plants and seeds soon! He has learned so much from the Permies community and is excited to learn and share our experiences together!

Greg Martin

Biochar maker, forest gardener/edible landscapist, plant breeding dabbler, forager.

thomas rubino

13 acres in extreme rural Montana 100% off grid since 1983. Solar and micro hydro. Summer time piggy farmer. Restoring 2000-04 Subaru outbacks wagons for fun and a little profit. Not quite old enough to retire YET but closing on it fast... until then I must occasionally leave Paradise "home" and run large construction cranes on union job sites across the inland northwest. I make (Well try) A-2 A-2 cheese, I love cooking with my wood smoker for everything! Would not live anywhere else but rural Montana ! My wife Liz runs "Rocks by liz" a successful Etsy store and we have a summer booth at the Missoula peoples market. We currently breed and raise persian cats but are about to retire all the girls and let them be happy kittys for the remainder of their days.Oh and my biggest thing is... I LOVE MY RMH !

Jay Angler

I live on a small acreage near the ocean and amidst tall cedars, fir and other trees.
I'm a female "Jay" - just to avoid confusion.

Tereza Okava

I cook for fun, write for money, garden for food, and knit for therapy.

Kate Downham

I'm a quiet goatherd establishing a permaculture homestead on old logging land at the edge of the wilderness.

Jennifer Richardson

Currently in the boot camp at Wheaton Labs, preparing to spend the winter in Allerton Abbey testing the annualized thermal inertia

Carla Burke

Former homesteader working toward doing it, again.
Summer '19 Update: we bought a log cabin on 30acres, last fall. Logisticly, we couldn't do much with it, right away, but spring (2019), the permaculture was to begin! Orrrr, you know, the rain may have drown everything we've attempted to grow... At least the chickens are doing great!!!

Daron Williams

Hi, I’m Daron, and there’s nothing I love more than cultivating food, habitat, and beauty for my family and the wild critters that share our home.
Home, for me, is the Wild Ride Homestead—the little piece of earth where my wife, Michaela, and I are raising a family and running a business.
Michaela tends to the “home” part of the homestead—turning our harvests into wholesome, tasty meals, and taking the lead raising our little toddler. She also helps out quite a bit with Wild Homesteading, acting as my editor and helping me translate some of the abstract concepts into concise, actionable tips.
Our son Arden is also a cornerstone of our life and work, keeping us smiling and laughing even when times are tough.
Michaela and I both work outside the home to pay the bills—I work as a restoration project manager, and Michaela works at our local public library.

Mike Barkley

After a long career electro-geeking for R&D labs in the electronic industry Mike has checked out of the rat race & moved to the woods. Not entirely off grid but trying to achieve that goal. He raises a few animals & enjoys growing healthy food in various gardens. He is a life long nature lover, adventure seeker, & to a certain extent a minimalist. Eventually bears will probably eat him & turn him into compost. He is ok with that.

William Bronson

Montessori kid born and raised in Cincinnati.
Father of two, 14 years apart in age,married to an Appalachian Queen 7 years my junior,trained by an Australian cattle dog/pit rescue.
I am Unitarian who declines official membership, a pro lifer who believes in choice, a socialist, an LGBTQ ally, a Black man, and perhaps most of all an old school paper and pencil gamer.
I make, grow, and serve, not because I am gifted in these areas, rather it is because doing these things is a gift to myself.

Gerry Parent

Live with a small community of people out in the back woods of southern BC, Canada.
No cell phone, TV or car. Instead, I have a walkie-talkie, the internet and a tractor.
To keep warm I have a Rocket Mass Heater in the shop which I love to tinker with....often.

Ash Jackson

Hello there!
I've long felt the 'call to cultivate'. I found Paul and his stuff in 2017, and have been steadily watching and learning since.
I went to part of the 2019 PEP Jamboree at Wheaton Labs! Simply put, it was awesome.
I feel pretty un-knowledgable about a lot (all?) of this stuff, but I'm really excited to learn, and learn, and learn.
I am really into PEP; partly as a result of that, and also because PEP is awesome, too.
My big-wild-crazy-scary-to-say-out-loud dream is to build a town with no cars that can feed itself.
I'm a Pod People. Podcast Progress: 360/4NN

Marco Banks

We make our home in sunny So. Cal., where we've been able to transform our average suburban lot into a food forest with about 60 fruit and nut trees and dozens of veggies.  Our chickens add fertility and provide eggs and entertainment.  I teach, and so my backyard has become a classroom for my students who are deeply curious about growing their own food, yet have never had their hands in the soil.  All this is a natural expression and extension of my faith.  Life began in the garden.  It continues therein.

John Suavecito

Food forest in a suburban location. Teaches grafting and helps people learn how to grow food. Involved with a local food exchange group. Shares cuttings and knowledge with schoolchildren.

Bryant RedHawk

Part Nakota, part Irish. The Nakota took over long ago but still lives in two worlds, the European world and the first people's world. He lives on a small (15 + acres) piece of mother earth deep in the woods. Was trained in the cooper's arts as a child, since the family owned a cooperage. He has been a carpenter, and timber wright but love all aspects of farming.He holds a BS in Chemistry and Biology and a MS in Horticulture. Worked for the USDA for 16 years. Then PHD in Microbiology defended. Redhawk and his wife Wolf are setting up to be fully self sustaining, growing all their own foods and collecting rain water. "Soon we will be self sustaining and closer to being off the grid" he said when asked about future plans. They continue their own research both in Agriculture and soils with the hope to make the world more like it used to be, before mankind began screwing up the Earth Mother. This is the only way humankind will survive, we must fix what we have broken.

Dan Boone

Dan Boone gardens, plants fruit trees, and tends wild fruit and nut trees and vines in Central Oklahoma.

Rebecca Norman

Rebecca has lived in Ladakh in the Himalayas since 1992. She's a bit of a crabby, grumpy character but is trying to Be Nice on Permies.

Hans Quistorff

I have home movie proof that I started in agriculture at age 3 1943.

Kyle Neath

Somewhere in between a software developer and agroforester. Once upon a time I built a lot of software in a very fancy city, but now I can usually be found running around in the mountains.
Leaping Daisy is my main gig. It's an old high country ranch in the Sierra Nevadas. In the summers, I spend my time fixing 100 year old log cabins, improving the forest, and building out infrastructure to host small events. In the winters, I strap on my snowshoes and play in the snow.
In between that, I'm still trying to figure this whole life thing out. I spend a bit of time writing software to pay the bills, a chunk of it caring for my parents, and the rest playing around the mountains near Tahoe.

Peter van den Berg

He's been a furniture maker, mold maker, composites specialist, quality inspector, master of boats. Roughly during the last 30 years he's been meddling with castable refractories and mass heaters. Built a dozen in different guises but never got it as far as to do it professionaly. He loves to try out new ideas, tested those by using a gas analizer.
Lived in The Hague, Netherlands all his life.

Shawn Klassen-Koop

Shawn spent the most formative years of his life working at a summer camp where he quickly gained a passion for nature and for building a better world. Struggling to see how his future career in computer engineering was going to solve these big problems, he decided to leave it behind and dedicate himself to finding practical solutions that people can implement in their backyards. Shawn looks forward to starting his own homestead in southern Manitoba in the next few years, where he plans to implement many of the techniques laid out in his upcoming book and come up with a few more solutions along the way.

Roberto pokachinni

Just a little guy with big ideas, trying to get it done in the Canadian Rockies.

Mandy Launchbury-Rainey

Retired teacher reforming a house with 1 acre at 'La Vida Verde', Virís, Lugo province.

D. Logan

D. Logan has made a point of broadening his perspective to the fullest in life. He's learned first hand a broad variety of jobs in the pursuit of knowledge. He's achieved a BA in Early Childhood Education, hiked the entire Appalachian trail in a single trip and done everything from working in a hospital to serving as a correctional officer. Each new area of life has given him a wider base of experiences to draw from when writing. He's written on many topics, crafted roleplaying games and published works of science fiction and fantasy.
In the last decade, he's focused a lot of attention on deepening his understanding of subjects such as homesteading and Permaculture. While there is always more to learn, he's come to a point where he is comfortable writing with a degree of authority on a number of topics within the scope of those subjects.

Karen Donnachaidh

I'm Karen Donnachaidh (pronounced donna-key). I grew up in a large Scots-Irish family (poor by many people's scale) where we grew most of our own food; had large gardens and many fruit trees; raised cows, hogs and chickens; preserved our bounty through canning and freezing anything that we could grow or forage; and, we made most of our own clothes. Growing up, these skills were necessary for our survival. While not exactly necessary today, I choose to live a frugal life and live close to nature just because it's in my very soul. Things I love: reading everything; word games; saltwater fishing (well, any kind of fishing) mostly for flounder, croaker and sand mullet; abundant sunshine; the smell of the marsh; creating new recipes and eating great home cooked food; lots of gardening; drawing and painting when I find time; secondhand shopping for great bargains; and, listening to music from the 40s/50s/60s. And I love Gaelic music, bagpipes, knobby knees in tartan kilts and a jolly fine céilidh (party).

Kim Goodwin

Native of Oregon, misses the forests, but now staying warm and dry in the desert.

Thekla McDaniels

Thekla has been studying soil life and the process of soil development since 1965, also, the then new idea that fossil fuels were a limited resource.  She currently farms 2 1/2 acres of what used to be fine grained blowing desert sand but is now 4 inch deep soil, and counting!

Amit Enventres

Urban homesteader, garden designer, and more.

Glenn Herbert

Early education and work in architecture has given way to a diverse array of pottery, goldsmithing, and recently developing the family property as a venue for the New York Faerie Festival, while maintaining its natural beauty and function as private homestead.

Thyri Gullinvargr

Thyri picked up Ianto Evan's "The Hand-Sculpted House" shortly after it was published because it was on display at a local bookstore and looked interesting. She's been picking up information about alternative building techniques, passive solar, gardening, etc. ever since. She loves learning new things and tinkering, so Permies helps keep her brain sponge decently saturated.

Casie Becker

Zone 8B/9A
Temp avg range 15 F to 100 F (cold temps are sporadically scattered through winter)
Avg rain 36 inches (plus or minus 25 inches)
Flood and drought both are common here.
Alkaline limestone/caliche based soil

Erica Wisner

Was born, raised, and turned loose on an unsuspecting world. Originally an educator, now growing into writing & publishing, fire fighting, family care teams, and mountain ecological maintenance. Prone to extended explanations. (I like to explain things so that a 5-year-old and her PhD grandparent can both enjoy and 'get it'... no offence meant if you're somewhere in between!)

Deb Rebel

Old Geekina and all around bodger with some engineering training in there somewhere. Been gardening since 1966. Like things like growing unusual things, playing with passive solar and solar heaters/cookers etc. I also speak clutch... heh. Been playing with yarn and beads since about then too, 1966. Can make torchon lace.

Destiny Hagest

I started working with Paul Wheaton here at Permies.com in January of 2016 as a virtual assistant, spreading the influence of this site, and assisting in matters such as customer/tech support, page design, promotion, advertising, and a smattering of other things.

Personally, I'm a work from home mom, trying to juggle living a more sustainable life in a very rural place while giving my husband and son the best life I can. I love hiking, foraging, hunting, and growing our own food, but I'm also a greatly terrible knitter, a devil-may-care cook, and a clumsy snowboarder.

When I'm not running from one end of my house to the next after my son, I'm handling official Permies business, busily running virtual errands for Paul, or managing my workflow through my personal freelance business as a copywriter.

In the midst of living so feverishly and fully, I try to remember to breathe, but I find the lack of oxygen only makes you appreciate it more when you finally get a deep lungfull.

Jeremy Bunag

Workin' Central IL converted farmland