Passionate Permaculture

I’m excited and honoured to be co-facilitating at Wise Up, Rise Up/Sagesse Radicale, a course in Permaculture and radical ecology for self-identified women, this September on Six Nations Territory in the beautiful Eastern Townships of Quebec.  Starting with the assumption that our ecological crisis has social roots, we will frame Permaculture skills and knowledge within a feminist, anti-capitalist framework and focus on empowering ourselves as women to be firestarters for social and ecological change in our communities.  It will also be my first chance to co-teach in two languages!  C’est un bon defi pour moi, parce que j’ai besoin du pratiquer (my french needs the practise).

The course is a two-week intensive, residential program at HeartRoot Farm, from September 28th to October 12th.  The course fee is $1500, including meals, accomodation, and all materials.  We’re doing our best to support students to raise funds for their attendance, so please don’t let the cost be a barrier, contact us about options.

It feels like change is in the wind this summer, doesn’t it?  I know that presenting this course will connect me with some amazing people doing fantastic things in their communities, and I can’t wait to see what happens.

I’m very excited to be offering another round of the Permaculture Design Course at the Richmond Sharing Farm at Terra Nova, beginning May 25th 2012! This year I’ll be joined by the very talented Sara Dent as a co-instructor, as well as other skilled and engaging guest speakers and some very cool site visits.

The course involves once-per-month four-day sessions, Friday to Monday, in May, June, and July.  With topics from ecological gardening, natural building, and soil and water conservation and remediation, to community food sovereignty, collaborative design strategies, and facilitation skills, this 72-hour course will combine classroom instruction with hands-on practica and real life design challenges on a community organic farm and orchard.  We’ll focus a lot of our work on how to integrate Permaculture strategies into a production organic farm, which is an exciting edge of Permaculture design and a fascinating design challenge that I’m excited to be engaging with, alongside the talented Sharing Farm staff.

Course Information:

12-Day Course:     May 25 – 28    June 22-25    July 27-30
Tuition:  $1000, scholarships and payment plans are available.
For more information, contact rin@passionatepermaculture.ca

I’ve just returned to Vancouver after another inspiring session at our Creating Community Abundance project in Powell River/Sliammon Territory, and I’m so excited about this new model of permaculture education and what it means for my personal practise, and for the communities that I’m honoured to be involved in.

It’s always been important to me to really focus on the Fair Shares aspect of the three ethics that underlie Permaculture as a design system, and look at ways that sharing the benefits of our work out into our community can be a front-and-centre part of all of our work.  In this project, we’re not just creating the course for the sake of the course, but rather are convening the learning process as just one of many functions embedded into a multi-year project to create a Permaculture demonstration garden in the centre of the Powell River townsite.  It feels so good to be focussing our learning around a real, tangible project whose benefits will spiral out into the community for years to come.

This is important to me because I really believe that individual actions by themselves will not get us through the multiple social, economic, and ecological crises that we are facing.  Only as a collectivity are we going to survive – there’s only one planet Earth, and either we all step up to repairing the damage that we’ve done, or we all go down together.  There are so many barriers between us that are the historical detritus of the systems of exploitation and destruction that dominate our world right now, and I have seen the magic that happens toward undoing those barriers when people are able to build something together, something real that they can pick up and touch (and eat!) that makes their whole community stronger, more abundant, and more beautiful.  So huge thanks to everyone who participated this weekend, and especially to my fantastic co-teacher Ron Berezan, for such a great and inspiring weekend.  I can’t wait to see what unfolds next!

**Registration Closes THURSDAY MARCH 8th**

This spring’s Urban Permaculture Design course is on at Langara College!  I’m excited to announce that Ander Gates, talented Permie, activist, clown and Farmhouse Animal will be joining me on the teaching team, as well as several local urban Permaculture superstars.  Read on for details…

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Overgrow, Everywhere! Permaculture for sane, just, and sustainable city living.

Eternal Abundance and Rooted on the Drive Cafe and Permaculture activist Erin Innes present three dynamic and interactive talks on Permaculture strategies for a radical reintegration of urban human communities with the ecology that supports us. All events begin at 7pm at Eternal Abundance, 1025 Commercial Drive.

All events are by donation, suggested donation $10 – $20. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

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