Visiting Milkwood Permaculture farm
Past weekend my partner and I combined fun and study, and went for a visit to the Milkwood Permaculture farm. Not only was it a beautiful experience to leave the city and spend a weekend under the stars, but we also got to meet many amazing people, including Nick Ritar and Kirsten Bradley. Click to continue…
where we began, and where we came to completion
A blink of an eye and a lifetime later the course came to an end. Wow, what a journey, and I am not just saying it.
The party yesterday lit a fire within me, and I saw a whole other side of people I set side-by-side with throughout the course. People wrote poetry, sang, danced and told some very clever jokes. We laughed to tears, and I had a distinct feeling of “coming home.” It wasn’t just me, though. Today we completed the course by going around in the circle and each saying how we experienced the course, and what we plan to do in the future. Many people expressed the feeling of coming home and awe of being in the company of so many like-minded individuals. Hear hear.
“Permaculture is living. Everything before was waiting.” -Matt
“Walk in bare footed and say, ‘Stand with me. I don’t belong to anyone.’ And people will help you.” -Bill Mollison
“Education gives you huge power.” -Bill Mollison
So what’s next? Wherever the energy guides me. We’ll have to wait and see 
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our piece of land to design
This is a photo of the paddock we are working with. As you can see, it’s mostly an open field sheltered by the surrounding buildings and a tiny amount of slope.
land maps, research, surrounding structures
We did some homework and found an aerial view of the property on Google Maps and a campus map, which accurately outlines the surrounding structures.
Equipped with these tools, we set to work.
We set outside at the highest point of the paddock with a blackboard and a box of chalk, trying to fit in all the elements, but it was obvious that our design process was not very efficient…too many drivers and not enough focus… Click to continue…
Today Bill and Geoff shared information about what may be the main questions we all have. How do we fund all these wonderful ideas we’ve learned. How do we navigate community and government structures; how do we organize people for action. It was not a topic we expected from a Permaculture course, but it’s a very important one. It stirred up questions and lengthy discussions, skeptical gazes and hopeful eyes.
There are two types of community economies: formal economy and informal economy. Click to continue…
Cattails by David Hoffman
Water has to perform 3 main duties before it runs off to the sea. If rain water lands (of flows) straight into the river and is carried out to the sea, it hasn’t performed its duties, and thus it hasn’t been most beneficial to the Earth and its inhabitants.
It is to our benefit and benefit of the system to re-cycle water was mush as possible before allowing it to leave the system.
House sewage water can be completely cleaned up and become suitable for putting back into house by using a long trench filled with gravel and Typha reeds. The roots of the reeds have little trap doors that catch any organisms that pass next to them and digest them. Typhas can even take out E. coli bacteria to safe levels.
Click to continue…
The world of water by Snap®
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