Overview
Are you looking for an empowering and sustainable way to create change in yourself, the land you live on, and your community?
Permaculture is a design science rooted in the observation of natural systems. The principles of permaculture teach us how to design ways of living that have the stability and resiliency of natural ecosystems – they show us positive solutions for creating and managing systems for food, medicine, and building materials, as well as relationships with ourselves, animals, and our communities. Permaculture always keeps in sight three ethics: care of the Earth, care of people, and sharing the surplus.
Permaculture is good news! We have solutions that are available on any scale, and we can make a change that will reach out to future generations.
Instructors:
Brian “Busha” Green, Nate Olive
Bryan “Busha” Green is an agricultural consultant with extensive experience in organic production farming, agro-forestry, farm design, and establishment of bio-regional food security systems. Bryan assists in farm startup operations around the globe. His career has taken him throughout the world including organic mountain farm consulting in the Philippines, organic potato farming in Maine, and management of a 200-acre diversified organic farm in New Mexico. He guided the VIrgin Islands Sustainable Farm Institute through a holistic management process that helped shape their award winning programming.
Bryan has a Bachelors of Science in Horticulture and Plant Science from North Carolina State University and a Masters of Science in Plant, Soil, and Environmental Science with a concentration in Sustainable Agriculture from the University of Maine.
Bryan will be a primary instructor and student advisor for the Ridge to Reef Beneficial Farmer Training course, Permaculture, and more to come as he works with Ridge to Reef Farm at VISFI for the 2011 program season!
RECENT INSTRUCTORS:
Penny Livingston-Stark
Penny Livingston-Stark is internationally recognized as a prominent permaculture teacher, designer and speaker. See her CBS interview above!
Penny has been teaching internationally and working professionally in the land management, regenerative design and permaculture development field for 25 years and has extensive experience in all phases of ecologically sound design and construction as well as the use of natural non-toxic building materials. She specializes in site planning and the design of resource-rich landscapes integrating, rainwater collection, edible and medicinal planting, spring development, pond and water systems, habitat development and watershed restoration for homes, co-housing communities, businesses and diverse yield perennial farms.
With her husband James Stark, and in collaboration with Commonweal – a cancer health research and retreat center – Penny co-manages a 17-acre certified organic and certified salmon-safe farm in Bolinas, California, called the Commonweal Garden. In addition, Penny and James are stewarding and working to restore 200 acres of land in Trinity County, California.
Penny co-created the Ecological Design Program and its curriculum at the San Francisco Institute of Architecture, and she co-founded the West Marin Grower’s Group, the West Marin Farmer’s Market and the Community Land Trust Association of Marin. Penny has also worked with the Marin County Community Development Agency and Planning Department to develop recommendations on sustainability for updating the Community Plan.
Penny is a founding member of the Natural Building Colloquium, a national consortium of professional natural builders, creating innovations in straw bale, cob, timberframe, light clay, natural non-toxic interior finishes and other methods using natural and bio-regionally appropriate materials for construction.
Brock Dolman
Brock Dolman is the Director of OAEC’s WATER Institute. He is also the director of OAEC’s Permaculture Program, he co-directs the Wildlands Biodiversity Program and he co-manages the Center’s biodiversity collection, orchards and 70 acres of wildlands. Living up to his specialized generalist nature, and rekindling the dwindling art of the peripatetic natural historian, his experience ranges from the study of wildlife biology, native California botany and watershed ecology, to the practice of habitat restoration, education about regenerative human settlement design, ethno-ecology, and ecological literacy activism towards societal transformation.
