2021 SKIP: Skills to Inherit Property (PEP1) event --July 11-24th, Wheaton Labs

make a bird house, insect hotel, snake and toad habitat
make a hugelkultur garden
hot water bath canning
fermenting
pickling
foraging
harvest and eat wild edibles
harvest and preserve natural medicine: comfrey poultice, dried mullein leaves, and more!
make public art and branding a location
textiles: sewing, darning, crochet, basket weaving, making twine
using rocket stoves, rocket ovens, and rocket water heaters
everyone who wants to can drive the excavator

Nicole Alderman wrote:You can actually attend both events for a discounted price!

There's a Super Early Bird Price until September 20th (man, that's getting close! I should send out a dailyish about it!). And, there's a discount for doing two events.

All the prices are on the Wheaton Labs website (https://wheaton-labs.com/skip/#tickets), and right now for the PTJ and SKIP, it's 1,500 (regular price is $2,400). I'm pretty sure you could get this discounted price even if one of you attends one event, and the other the other event.

I haven't been to either course (I have little kids and live far away!), but those two courses go along very well and compliment each other. They are actually made so that--if you want to--you could get your PEP1 certification at the event. Or, you could spend your time at the PTJ (Permaculture Technology Jamboree) gaining the specific skills you really want. Both events are very open--you can chose each day what you want to learn about and be a part of.

Another thing you can do is work through the "Badge Bits" here on permies. I learned a lot of roundwood woodworking skills by just going through the Round wood Badge Bits that I felt comfortable.

If you learn what Badge Bits/Badges you can at home, you'll have an even better feel for what you want to learn at the events. You can see what's covered at the PTJ HERE. Since the PTJ is less structured, you might find that there are things your wife might want to learn while you learn other things at the same events.

For example, there's a "Homesteading Track" at the PTJ that covers:

make a bird house, insect hotel, snake and toad habitat
make a hugelkultur garden
hot water bath canning
fermenting
pickling
foraging
harvest and eat wild edibles
harvest and preserve natural medicine: comfrey poultice, dried mullein leaves, and more!
make public art and branding a location
textiles: sewing, darning, crochet, basket weaving, making twine
using rocket stoves, rocket ovens, and rocket water heaters
everyone who wants to can drive the excavator

Perhaps one of you is more interested in food preservation and will spend a lot of days doing that, and some days in a different track (for example, one day in the homesteading track, they might do crochetting, and you don't care to learn that. So you go over to the Wood and Cob track and learn how to work with cob).

While one person is learning those skills, the other might be learning roundwood timber framing and how to make rocket stoves.

The Permaculture Technology Jamboree was especially made with couples in mind, so that both could come and learn what was interesting to each.

---

The Permaculture Design Course does cover alternative energy and natural building, but not nearly as much as the PTJ. And since you're wanting to make a WOFATI, you might be more interested in the how-to skills in the PTJ or SKIP event. The PDC is great for learning design and is super handy. It might be the person who is more interested in building attends the PTJ, while the one more interested in food production attends the PDC.

The price for PDC+PTJ is $1,600. The stand-alone price for the PDC or PTJ is $920.

Megan Meigs wrote:Are the tickets to SKIP transferable to a future event if someone buys one but ends up unable to attend?

Kaitlen Osburn wrote:Howdy - I filled out the google form a few months ago re: lodging; but need to change my answers. Should I just fill the form out again? THANKS!

Mike Haasl wrote:The SKIP program in general is a pathway for people to build skills in homesteading and permaculture with the hopes of finding connections with people who have land and need a steward for that land.  

You can build these skills at home, on your own.  You can pay someone to come to your house and teach you skills.  You can go to a place that is having a workshop to teach the skills.  Or in this case you can pay to go to an event where they have the tools and equipment for you to demonstrate a lot of skills with a bit of guidance.  

Mike Haasl wrote:There is a list of land owners.  No you can't look at it.  Usually when an land owner says they have land, they are inundated by people saying "Oh Oh, give it to me!" and then they wish they hadn't said anything.

This program never said it would match you with a land owner.  It just gives you the means to prove you have the skills that they might respect and appreciate.  College also doesn't match you with a job, it just gives you the means to prove that you might be worth employing.

T Walker wrote:

Mike Haasl wrote:There is a list of land owners.  No you can't look at it.  Usually when an land owner says they have land, they are inundated by people saying "Oh Oh, give it to me!" and then they wish they hadn't said anything.

This program never said it would match you with a land owner.  It just gives you the means to prove you have the skills that they might respect and appreciate.  College also doesn't match you with a job, it just gives you the means to prove that you might be worth employing.

To be clear I would not ask for personal information over the internet. I just wanted to confirm there is an actual networking aspect to the program because you do claim “This program will connect qualified candidates with those landowners so you can skip the rat race and skip the debt.”
Now that we have established there is a networking aspect; is there a forum to post a cv, detailed project reports, videos to accomplished projects that these land owners can view or is the only way to network through the class?
I appreciate you taking the time to respond, I feel like this is coming across roughly but I’m trying to speak clearly and plainly to limit confusion.

Now that we have established there is a networking aspect; is there a forum to post a cv, detailed project reports, videos to accomplished projects that these land owners can view or is the only way to network through the class?

Mike Haasl wrote:The networking, cvs and opportunities to post your accomplishments are here on permies.com.  Each PEP pursuant gets their accomplishments displayed as badges under their posts (see all my pretty badges below).  Participants also have a link in their profile that takes the viewer to a list of their accomplished skills (Example).  You can create a thread here on permies to show off how awesome you are.  

Nicole Alderman wrote:

T Walker wrote:

Mike Haasl wrote:There is a list of land owners.  No you can't look at it.  Usually when an land owner says they have land, they are inundated by people saying "Oh Oh, give it to me!" and then they wish they hadn't said anything.

This program never said it would match you with a land owner.  It just gives you the means to prove you have the skills that they might respect and appreciate.  College also doesn't match you with a job, it just gives you the means to prove that you might be worth employing.

To be clear I would not ask for personal information over the internet. I just wanted to confirm there is an actual networking aspect to the program because you do claim “This program will connect qualified candidates with those landowners so you can skip the rat race and skip the debt.”
Now that we have established there is a networking aspect; is there a forum to post a cv, detailed project reports, videos to accomplished projects that these land owners can view or is the only way to network through the class?
I appreciate you taking the time to respond, I feel like this is coming across roughly but I’m trying to speak clearly and plainly to limit confusion.

There's a whole section here on permies devoted to SKIP. You can see all the SKIP threads here: https://permies.com/c/skip

Every person who's completed SKIP badges or badge bits, has their own badge log that can be located in their profile. For example, here is mine: https://permies.com/forums/meritBB/profile/167341

So, if a landowner is wanting to inspect the work of a SKIP candidate, they can go to their profile and find links to ALL of the badge bit activities they've done. Maybe the landowner will be impressed and contact that person. Maybe the landowner will look at their Badge Bits s and think, "Wow, this person just barely met the qualifications on these activities, I think I'll pass them by."

If all these Badge, "Badge Bit" (BB), SKIP, PEP, etc terms are a bit confusing (and we understand that it can be!), there's a thread I made that hopefully explains all of them:All about SKIP, PEP, Badges, BBs and More!

Now that we have established there is a networking aspect; is there a forum to post a cv, detailed project reports, videos to accomplished projects that these land owners can view or is the only way to network through the class?

If someone takes a class, like the Wheaton Labs SKIP event this summer, they still need to come and post their pictures and get certified here on permies. I've completed over 80 badge bits, but never took a class. So, someone could definitely get certified without ever attending a class. But, some skills (like cooking on rocket stoves or building a 7 foot tall hugelkulture garden bed, or driving an excavator) might be hard to do if they do not have access to those things. For those, people, coming to an event or class might be a really good way to round out the rest of the skills that they couldn't easily get on their own property/apartment/etc.

I hope that helps!

Malek Ascha wrote:Hello! I'm not sure where to ask this, I sent an email too.  Are any of the accommodations outside of camping still available during the SKIP event? I'm okay with camping too, but I'd like to know what's available.

I also would like to know about the logistics of the event. I read on permies that I could pay to get someone to pick me up from the airport. Are the accommodations at Wheaton labs close enough to the SKIP event that I can get there everyday without a car?

Thanks for putting this on, I really like the concept. It's hard to learn a lot of this stuff living in a city.