An introduction to Permaculture 26 and 27 June 2010!!!
I'm so excited!!! this is going to be good!!
Come join Vivienne Brown, Tina De Waal and Paul Barker for a 2day introductory workshop for home gardeners. Your facilitators are all internationally recognised educators and have more then 25years combined experience with Permaculture design, administration and education.
Over Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th June, we will cover a wide range of tangible gardening skills and methods of Permaculture design, which you will find indispensable in designing your own gardens layout, into an energy effective and abundant system that lessens your “foot print”.
We will demonstrate how to go about maintaining your creation, easy to use methods of soil preparation, planting calendars, along with storing and preserving your produce as sources of good nutrition from your home garden.
We will cover the following:
Designing a Garden, Garden Location (Sunlight, Water, Soil and Wind), Garden Plot Design, Swales (Ditch and bund on contour), Live fencing,
Soil Preparation, Garden Maintenance, Providing Plant Food, Watering, Weed and Pest Control, Planting Methods, Succession Planting,
Food Calendar, Crop Rotation, Crop Integration, Companion planting, Small Garden Nurseries, Harvesting and produce care, Sources of Nutrition from the Home Garden
Date: 26-27th June 2010
Time: 09h00 – 16h00
Where: BackBackers Midrand
Cost: R500.00 both days
R300.00 single day
Includes: Tea, coffee and lunch will be provided.
Bring: Pen, notebook, hat and a gleaming smile
Contact: Paul Barker or Myself, Viv for booking
If you are needing accommodation to save early morning travel time...or just to have more time closer by, get in touch, we'll make sure you're comfortable!!
Directions:
We are situated in Midrand, Johannesburg, South Africa (obviously)
For detailed directions, please contact me by mail,
or call me, Viv, (011) 022 3290
or mail Paul or call him on 072 410 8044
The Timber House....
Moving from planning to initiation in a permaculture system has been about really looking at all the elements that affect each other and how the obvious elements seem to be straight forward enough but haven't been able to really fall into place without the human factor being taken care of. Strangely, this fell into the area I thought would be a breeze, but turned out to be the pivotal point in the system, and my biggest challenge.
The first born vision was to host an accommodation venue where we could be the experimental practice runners of alternative living, in and amongst city dwellers so that the curious could come and see it in action. I got my inspiration from the CCAT house in Arcata. But we needed to also make sure we could generate resources enough to keep up the maintenance of a healthy lifestyle.
The human challenge showed face when I attempted to solicit a team. Having a vision and putting that vison into words well enough to represent the vision, as well as manage the effort towards acheiving the vision and putting word to action, was skill developing to say the least. It requires an understanding of psychology, project management and resoursefulness within critcal time frames and a great amount of patience and willingness to disaster manage. And when you think you've juggled all of that fairly enough, there's the element of control and a balance between being a control freak versus being careless.
Having done a Permaculture Design Course with Food and Trees for Africa 10 years back and feeling very comfortable with it supporting a natural inclination in myself to mimic nature, it seemed it would be the easiest system to implement. However, the indoctrination of gardening with excessive force to make nature do what we want it to and pouring money and installing elements that make gardening 'easier' however unsustainable, was deeper set in people than what I imagined, and for all of it's sensible principals, suggesting using them got no further than debates between us or total disregard under the broad 'hippie' label.
In July 2005 we had our 'launch' and announced our intention to our sphere of influence and people began to come in a constant flow.
The success of attracting so many people was a blessing and a curse because it highlighted exactly what the expectations were, from people, to use as guidence to finding a happy medium between 'at-home-and-familiar' with 'functional facilites'. It was a real time learning curve.
It took 5 years before we could actually take a solid step forward in terms of solidifying a plan where the flexability matched the goal.
So our big step now is the building of our accommodation in a timber structure. It will have six private rooms and a loft upstairs that can sleep 6. Camping will be welcomed and communal cooking and eating a pleasure. We expect it to be a 4 - 6 month wait before it's in ship shape for bookings.
In between getting that done we keep improving our system and managing our projects that are geared towards reducing waste and expenses and generating resourses to maintain a quality lifestyle enough for us to share with you.
author Viv Brown