Compost Class July 22nd, Noon – 2:30pm – Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, 5090 Center Street NE, Salem, Oregon
July 31st, 6-8:30pm – St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 822 Washington St., Oregon City, Oregon
A well made compost is as good as gold when you want your garden to thrive with healthy plants and nutrient rich produce, but compost can easily go wrong with the wrong recipe or the wrong conditions. Permaculture educator, Lichen June, of the NW Permaculture Institute, teaches this fun and fact filled class. Learn about soil structure and function, how plants eat, pH effect on available nutrients, weeds as indicators and paramedics, compost recipe and care, and how to adjust that recipe when things go wrong or when you need to speed up the process. Class fee $20, all handouts included. Class info and registration, (503)449-8077, ljuneclasses(at)gmail.com
Compost Class
May 27th, Noon – 2:30pm
Silver Creek Coffee House, 111 N Water St, Silverton, OR 97381
A well made compost is as good as gold when you want your garden to thrive with healthy plants and nutrient rich produce, but compost can easily go wrong with the wrong recipe or the wrong conditions. Permaculture educator, Lichen June, of the NW Permaculture Institute, teaches this fun and fact filled class. Learn about soil structure and function, how plants eat, pH effect on available nutrients, weeds as indicators and paramedics, compost recipe and care, and how to adjust that recipe when things go wrong or when you need to speed up the process. $15 Silverton Food Co-op members, $20 general. Class info and registration, (503)449-8077, ljuneclasses(at)gmail.com
Permaculture Essentials for the Pacific NW, 36 hour class
Build resilience, save money and energy, save water, and feed your family or community.
Come join our latest classes!
12 classes – $15 each (If all classes are paid in advance, course discounted to $160)
Permaculture is “Earth Care, People Care, and Return of Surplus,” combining traditional and innovative methods that are sustainable and energy saving, enriching to the soil and all life. Design a system to feed your family, or complete additional short classes to earn your certificate and work as a consultant.
Permaculture Essentials for the Pacific NW covers permaculture history and ethics and goes into depth on the core concepts for creating sustainable systems by observing connections and capturing energy. Explore the energy transactions of trees, the roles of fungi, and the many functions of living soil. Learn pH, mineral availability, and enriching your soil with worm beds, weeds as repair tools, and compost fixing strategies. Study landscape effects on climate and temperate climate design for your home and landscape from kitchen gardens to main crops and food forests. This course prepares you to design a sustainable system for your yard or small farm in the Pacific NW.
Saturdays, starting September 10th, 2016, 10am-1pm, @ Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, 5090 Center St. NE, Salem, Oregon. Instructor, L. June, email nwperma at gmail dot com, or call 503-449-8077 for questions or registration
Build resilience, save money and energy, save water, and feed your family or community.
Come join our latest classes!
12 classes – $15 each (If all classes are paid in advance, course discounted to $160)
Permaculture is “Earth Care, People Care, and Return of Surplus,” combining traditional and innovative methods that are sustainable and energy saving, enriching to the soil and all life. Design a system to feed your family, or complete additional short classes to earn your certificate and work as a consultant.
Permaculture Essentials for the Pacific NW covers permaculture history and ethics and goes into depth on the core concepts for creating sustainable systems by observing connections and capturing energy. Explore the energy transactions of trees, the roles of fungi, and the many functions of living soil. Learn pH, mineral availability, and enriching your soil with worm beds, weeds as repair tools, and compost fixing strategies. Study landscape effects on climate and temperate climate design for your home and landscape from kitchen gardens to main crops and food forests. This course prepares you to design a sustainable system for your yard or small farm in the Pacific NW.
Wednesday evenings, starting June 8th, 2015, 6:30pm-9:30pm, @ First United Methodist Church, 1771 West Harvard, Roseburg, Oregon. Instructor, Diana Cason, call 941-735-0452, or 541-459-3938 for questions or registration
NWPI 2016 Salem free film series starts February 25th!
The NWPI offers a free film series in Salem, Oregon on the 4th Thursday of the month, February-October in 2016. We are lining up films and speakers on transition towns, natural building, worms, and other permaculture topics. We are also considering repeating key films that have gotten many repeat requests. So, as we finalize the series for 2016, we’d like feedback from you. Please send an email letting us know which films you’d like to see again, and what topics interest you for future films? If you are not already on our mailing list, keep up to date on our events by sending an email with “subscribe” in the subject line to, nwperma at gmail.com.
NWPI will be offering our 36 hour, Permaculture Essentials for the Pacific NW, class again starting in September. If we have enough interest in a Saturday morning summer series, we may offer it then as well. Please contact us as soon as possible if you are interested in taking classes, as seats fill up fast. NWPI will also be offering our two 12 hour follow up classes that complete the PDC, Permaculture Solutions for Recharging Landscapes with Water and Earth, and, Permaculture Strategies for Community Building and Global Repair, 2016 dates TBD.
We were impressed with this article on the history of fruit walls and wanted to share the link with you below. Happy 2016 from NW Permaculture Institute!
Fruit walls in Montreuil, a suburb of Paris
Fruit Walls: Urban Farming in the 1600s, by Kris De Decker
We are being told to eat local and seasonal food, either because other crops have been transported over long distances, or because they are grown in energy-intensive greenhouses. But it wasn’t always like that. From the sixteenth to the twentieth century, urban farmers grew Mediterranean fruits and vegetables as far north as England and the Netherlands, using only renewable energy.
These crops were grown surrounded by massive “fruit walls”, which stored the heat from the sun and released it at night, creating a microclimate that could increase the temperature by more than 10°C (18°F).
Later, greenhouses built against the fruit walls further improved yields from solar energy alone. It was only at the very end of the nineteenth century that the greenhouse turned into a fully glazed and artificially heated building where heat is lost almost instantaneously — the complete opposite of the technology it evolved from….
To read more, visit lowtechmagazine.com
Design your own lower maintenance garden and reap the benefits for years to come
Permaculture Essentials for the Pacific NW
12 classes – $15 each (If all classes are paid in advance, course discounted to $160)
Permaculture is “Earth Care, People Care, and Return of Surplus,” combining traditional and innovative methods that are sustainable and energy saving, enriching to the soil and all life. Design a system to feed your family, or complete additional short classes to earn your certificate and work as a consultant.
Permaculture Essentials for the Pacific NW covers permaculture history and ethics and goes into depth on the core concepts for creating sustainable systems by observing connections and capturing energy. Explore the energy transactions of trees, the roles of fungi, and the many functions of living soil. Learn pH, mineral availability, and enriching your soil with worm beds, weeds as repair tools, and compost fixing strategies. Study landscape effects on climate and temperate climate design for your home and landscape from kitchen gardens to main crops and food forests. This course prepares you to design a sustainable system for your yard or small farm in the Pacific NW.
Let’s build resilience, save money and energy, save water, and feed our communities now.
Come join one of our latest classes!
Monday evenings, starting September 28th, 2015, 6:30pm-9:30pm, @ Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, 5090 Center St NE, Salem. Instructor, L. June, call 503-449-8077 for questions or registration
Presented by the NW Permaculture Institute. Our instructors and staff studied permaculture with world renowned permaculture designer & instructor, Geoff Lawton, of PRI, Australia, and his students. We offer classes at low rates, as well as free film and lecture series to further educate our students and the community. NWPI works with homeless and low income families to provide education to those who would otherwise be unable to take a permaculture course. Scholarships are available on a limited basis for those with financial need. Contact us for information on applying, or on donating to our scholarship fund, or to support our free film and lecture series, nwpermacultureinstitute.org
Don’t delay! This will be the first time in three years that Dave Jacke’s Design Intensive will be taught in the U.S. Scholarships available, see below.
Edible Ecosystems Emerging:
Food Forestry for the 21st Century
Forest ecosystems exhibit many beneficial properties we humans would be wise to emulate in our culture, agriculture and horticulture:
They maintain, renew, fertilize, and propagate themselves without human inputs.
They build, store, and conserve clean air, clean water, nutrients, soil quality, and biodiversity.
They exhibit stability, resilience, and adaptability.
These qualities emerge from the dynamics of the forest as a whole system, not from any one or more of the elements that comprise the forest alone. To design productive edible ecosystems that express these same qualities, we must understand forest structures, functions, patterns, and processes, and use this knowledge wisely.
In this nine-day intensive course, you will dive deeply into the vision, theory, and practice of designing wholesome, dynamic, and resilient edible ecosystems using temperate deciduous forests as models. Dave Jacke and his teaching team will offer lectures, site walks, and experiential exercises to help you understand how the architecture, social structure, underground economics, and successional processes of natural forests apply to the design of edible ecosystems of all kinds. You’ll learn a variety of ecological design processes while designing a range of food-producing ecologies at the Feathered Pipe Ranch, while also providing detailed polyculture designs for an actual Public Edible Forest Garden Park, currently in the installation phase in Helena, MT. We’ll also engage with issues of garden management, economics, and the deep paradigmatic shifts required to succeed at co-creating “humanatural” landscapes and cultures. You will leave inspired and empowered to design food forests at home for yourself, and your friends, neighbors and clients.
INSTRUCTORS :
Dave Jacke is the lead author of the award winning two-volume book Edible Forest Gardens. Dave has been a student of ecology and design since the 1970s, and has run his own ecological design firm –Dynamics Ecological Design in Greenfield, MA – since 1984. Dave is an engaging and passionate teacher of ecological design and permaculture, and a meticulous designer. In addition to extensive teaching, he has consulted on, designed, built, and planted landscapes, homes, farms, and communities in the many parts of the United States, as well as overseas. A cofounder of Land Trust at Gap Mountain in Jaffrey, NH, he homesteaded there for a number of years. He holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Simon’s Rock College (1980) and a M.A. in Landscape Design from the Conway School of Landscape Design (1984). Read more at http://www.edibleforestgardens.com/.
Juliette Olshock, M.S., M.Ed., studied sustainable agriculture and permaculture design at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania and completed a permaculture apprenticeship at the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute. She is an adjunct professor with Chatham University’s Food Studies program, teaching about sustainable agriculture, permaculture and forest garden design. She was instrumental in designing and implementing the Hazelwood Food Forest. She co-founded Pittsburgh Permaculture, LLC, an ecological design and education firm. Read more at http://pittsburghpermaculture.org/.
Jessica Peterson and Caroline Wallace founded Inside Edge Design, LLC, based in Helena, Montana. Together with Dave Jacke, Inside Edge Design co-created the design for the 6th Ward Garden Park, the first public forest garden to utilize Dave’s design framework. They continue to work on the Park’s planning and implementation while offering a range of professional ecological and social design services. Read more about Inside Edge Design at www.insideedgedesign.com.
Accommodations include three organic, locally-sourced meals a day and use of all amenities – bathhouse, sauna, hot tub, as well as the Feathered Pipe Ranch facilities and grounds
OUR EDUCATION SITE: FEATHERED PIPE RANCH – Our education site is one of the oldest centers for conscious living and yoga retreats in the country. Surrounded by millions of acres of forest and mountains, your intensive experience delving into edible forest design systems will be complemented by the ability to “lounge, stretch, laugh, stroll, and savor the gift of releasing everything you don’t need…” as the Feathered Pipe Ranch’s website so aptly describes.
There are numerous private or shared lodging options, from luxurious, chalet-style rooms to tents, tipis and yurts nestled in the surrounding forest. After course registration, we will contact you to confirm your lodging preference.
Fall is one of the most spectacular times to visit Montana. Days that are still warm and very cool nights are the norm. The fall colors, and the crisp clean air will be something you remember!
PAYING FOR THE COURSE – We have been able to reduce the cost of this course to $1,580-$1,880 on an income-based sliding scale and will still be able to offer scholarships.
SCHOLARSHIPS – Payments over $1,580 will be added to the existing scholarship fund! If you are in need of a scholarship, please submit a letter (as a .pdf, please) in which you answer the following questions to InsideEdgeDesignLLC@gmail.com:
Why do you want to take this course? What do you hope to get from it?
What do you plan to do with what you learn in this course? What are your hopes and dreams as a teacher of permaculture?
Are there specific areas on which you would like to focus your teaching, in terms of topic areas, audiences, regions of the country/world?
DEPOSIT AND PAYMENT IN FULL – A $500 deposit is required upon registration, with payment in full due by September 2, 2015. $250 of the deposit is non-refundable.
Scholarships available, see the website below for details.
Note, This is not a NWPI event, but rather an exciting opportunity we believe might interest our audience. All questions about the event should be directed to Inside Edge Design.
Concerned about Oregon’s drought and the future of farming?
Rising fuel prices are a wake up call for filmmaker, Rebecca Hosking, as she investigates how to turn her family’s farm in Devon into a low energy farm for the future. Going beyond mere alarm raising to present practical, ingenious solutions from pioneering farmers and gardeners, Rebecca shows that nature holds some surprising keys to abundance. Film 50 minutes.
After the film, Lichen June, Director of the NW Permaculture Institute, will speak and take questions about how permaculture saves energy, money, and time while growing nutrient dense food, dropping your water usage, reducing heating and cooling bills, and benefiting the environment around us rather than decreasing fertility and life in the landscape. Learn about the content taught in the local NW Permaculture Institute class, “Permaculture Essentials for the Pacific NW,” and how you can use that information to benefit your land and living space, or go on to become a permaculture designer.
Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share: Free Film and Lecture Series
Held in Salem every 4th Thursday @ 6:30pm (except November and December)
Salem 4th Thursday events include potluck & discussion
@ Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, 5090 Center Street. NE, Salem
For more information: 503-449-8077
Here at the NW Permaculture Institute we are wishing you an abundant 2015 in education, fertile soil, and healthy home grown foods.
Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share: Free Film and Lecture Series presents our first films of 2015
January 20th @ 6:30pm – The Agro Rebel: Permaculture in the Salzburg Alps, 45 mins. How can Sepp Holzer farm fish, livestock, vegetables and herbs, a wide variety of fruits including lemons high in the Alps? No weeding, no watering, no annual plowing. The Agro Rebel explores the unusual, sustainable, energy and time saving, farming methods developed by Austrian farmer, Sepp Holzer. Film showing at Pringle Creek Community, 3911Village Center Drive SE, Salem. For more info call Diana Cason, 941-735-0452. Presented by NWPI with help from Pringle Creek Community.
January 22nd @ 6:30pm – The Greenhorns, 50 minutes. “Monoculture, monopoly, cheap food and poor diets – these are the consequences of an agricultural system gone awry, driven by policy and corporate control. Here we are, unhealthy. Re-orienting our food system is a project worth tackling, and these young farmers have chosen to become part of the solution, addressing the crisis they see by learning the skills needed, and starting the kinds of businesses that, one by one, can replace complicated, entrenched systems. Today’s young farmers are dynamic entrepreneurs, stewards of place. They are involved in local politics, partnering with others, inventing new social institutions, working with mentors, starting their careers as apprentices, borrowing money from the bank, putting in long hours, taking risks, innovating, experimenting. Farming with horses, with hacked tractors, with forgotten urban lots and Appalachian coal country. These young farmers have vision: a prosperous, satisfying, sustainable food system. It is ambitious, it will take work, but it wont be boring.”
Event includes finger food potluck and discussion, @ 6:30 pm, Thursday January 22nd at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, 5090 Center Street NE, Salem. For more info call 503-449-8077. Presented by NWPI, with support from UUCS and Life Source Natural Foods.
In January we are starting a new section of our 36 hour class:
Permaculture Essentials for the Pacific NW
Permaculture is “Earth Care, People Care, and Return of Surplus,” combining traditional and innovative methods that are sustainable and energy saving, enriching to the soil and all life. Design a system to feed your family, or complete additional short classes to earn your certificate and work as a consultant.
Permaculture Essentials for the Pacific NW covers permaculture history and ethics and goes into depth on the core concepts for creating sustainable systems by observing connections and capturing energy. Explore the energy transactions of trees, the roles of fungi, and the many functions of living soil. Learn pH, mineral availability, and enriching your soil with worm beds, weeds as repair tools, and compost fixing strategies. Study landscape effects on climate and temperate climate design for your home and landscape from balcony or kitchen gardens to main crops and food forests. This course prepares you to design a sustainable system for your yard or small farm in the Pacific NW.
Let’s build resilience, save money and energy, save water, and feed our communities now. Come join our latest class!
Classes will be three hours, 6:30-9:30 each Wednesday evening, held in Salem starting on January 28th. $15 per class. Space is limited, contact instructor, Diana Cason at 941-735-0452, to reserve your seat, or to ask for more information and location.
2015 – International Year of the Soils
There is little as important as the health and preservation of living soils. To learn more about the importance of soil and the relationship between soil and carbon, we recommend the following books:
Welcome to all of our new and returning students! We are glad to be sharing and supporting your learning journey. Everyone currently registered gets a hard copy of the 36 hour, 12 class breakdown from their instructor, however, we post here too for those of you who need to make up a class, or who just want to repeat a class and deepen your understanding of the core concepts. New students, if you have missed Class One, or any class session, call Instructor Diana Cason at 941-735-0452 to get details on how to attend a make up session. (Note: the Saturday classes have been changed to independent study schedules to meet the needs of our out of town students and are no longer meeting on Saturdays in NE Salem. We will be starting a new section of Permaculture Essentials for the Pacific NW in NE Salem in Early 2015.)
Class One
Tuesday 10/7/14 @ 6:30pm at Pringle Creek, and Friday 10/10/14 @ 6pm at Silverton Grange Class business and introductions, beginning Introduction to Permaculture Chapter, Key Problems, Permaculture Ethics, Definition, Sustainability, History
* Class Two
Tuesday 10/21/14 @ 6:30pm at Pringle Creek, and Friday 10/31/14 @ 6pm at Silverton Grange Permanent culture, urban, repair and aid work, Permaculture in society, Permaculture as holistic design, Introduction Concepts and Themes Chapter, Hierarchy of soil creation in natural systems
* Class Three
Tuesday 11/4/14 @ 6:30pm at Pringle Creek, and Friday 11/7/14 @ 6pm at Silverton Grange Elements – needs & products, The sun – source of energy, Characteristics of natural ecosystems, Weeds, Pioneers, Niches, Weeds – fast tracking recovery by design techniques, Diversity leads to stability, Connections between elements, Positioning elements, Use of natural resources, Energy, Edge opportunities, Capturing energy, Extending entropy
* Class Four
Friday 11/14/14 @ 6pm at Silverton Grange, and Tuesday 11/18/14 @6;30pm at Pringle Creek Categories of resources, Dispersal of yield over time, Diversity of plants, Perennial food advantages, Diversity and security, Yield and energy inputs, Niches, Introduction to Methods Chapter, Analysis: design by listing characteristics of components, Slope, orientation, Zone analysis, Sector analysis, Designing with zones, Zonal placement, Sectors, Outside energies effect on site
* Class Five
Tuesday 12/2/14 @ 6:30 at Pringle Creek, and Friday 12/5/14 @ 6pm at Silverton Grange Listing possibilities, selection of random assemblies, Connecting elements, Simple efficiencies, Observation, Introduction to Pattern Chapter, Patterns in nature, Pattern forms, Fibonacci sequence, Formation of pattern, Working with nature and patterns, Scale and order of size, Order and form, Edge areas
* Class Six
Tuesday 12/16/14 @ 6:30pm at Pringle Creek, and Friday 12/19/14 @ 6pm at Silverton Grange Edge effect, Working with pattern design events, Looking for existing patterns, Translating pattern form, Re-patterning a river, Wind patterns, Pattern used for passing on knowledge, Pattern for productive form, The herb spiral, Traditional use of pattern, Re-patterning society, The pit garden banana circle, Edge to space relationships
* Class Seven
Tuesday 1/6/15 @ 6:30pm at Pringle Creek, and Friday 1/9/15 @ 6pm at Silverton Grange Introduction to Climatic Factors Chapter, Using local knowledge, Temperate climate, Orographic effect, Maritime effect, Continental effect, Rain shadow, Micro climate, Landscape effects on climate, Climate analogues, Characteristics of temperate climate zone, Orographic features, Humid landscape profile, Flatlands, Wetlands, Water – stop, spread and soak
* Class Eight
Tuesday 1/20/15 @ 6:30pm at Pringle Creek, and Friday 1/23/15 @ 6pm at Silverton Grange Introduction to Trees Chapter, Temperature effects, How a tree interacts with rain, Fungi Relationships, Forests, Legumes as support species
* Class Nine
Tuesday 2/3/15 @ 6:30pm at Pringle Creek, and Friday 2/6/15 @ 6pm at Silverton Grange Fruit tree care, function and interaction, Collapsing soil fertility
* Class Ten
TBA Compost, Chemical agriculture, pH, acid vs. alkaline soils, pH of soil and mineral availability to plants, Role of weeds, Ants, Soil fertilizer
* Class Eleven
TBA Perfect compost, Fixing problems with compost, Introduction to Temperate Climate Design Chapter, House design, Energy use, Garden design
* Class Twelve
TBA
Zone 2 food forest, Zone 2 main crop, Zone 3 design, Zone 4 farm forestry, Terraces and raised beds
Two Tuesdays per month, Starting Oct 7th, 2014, 6:30-9:30pm, @ Pringle Creek Community, 3911Village Center Drive SE, Salem. Instructor, Diana Cason, call 941-735-0452
Two Fridays per month, Starting Oct 10th, 2014, 6-9pm @ Silverton Grange #748, 201 Division Street, Silverton. Instructor, Diana Cason, call 941-735-0452
NW Permaculture Institute 