“Our current industrial method of food production is increasingly viewed as an unsustainable system, destructive to the environment and public health. But what is the alternative?
Fresh profiles the farmers, thinkers, and business people across the nation who are at the forefront of re-inventing food production in America. With a strong commitment to sustainability, they are changing how farms are run, how the land is cared for, and how food is distributed. Their success demonstrates that a new paradigm based on sustainable practices can be profitable and a model for our food system, if people choose to support it.
Fresh opens with a short summary of the problems and consequences of industrialized food production, then focuses primarily on the individuals who are creating new approaches to address environmental, health, and economic challenges throughout the food chain.
Joel Salatin is a world-famous sustainable farmer and entrepreneur who, by observing nature, devised a rotational grazing system for his animals that heals the land while making his operations many times more profitable than his conventional farming neighbors.
Will Allen, a former pro basketball player and recipient of a Macarthur “Genius Award”, is now one of the most influential leaders of the urban farming movement. He teaches people in the inner city the value of healthy food and how to grow their own.
David Ball saw his family-run supermarket and a once-thriving local farming community dying with the rise of Walmart and other big chains. So he reinvented his business, partnering with area farmers to sell locally-grown food at an affordable price. His plan has brought the local economy back to life.
Fresh also features a farmer in Iowa who illustrates the struggles family farmers face, a hog farmer in Missouri who stopped using antibiotics on his pigs, and commentary by noted food expert and author Michael Pollan.” Film 70 mins.
Interested in restoration agriculture, sustainable gardening, and local solutions? Come join our latest free film to meet other like minded folk and learn more.
NW Permaculture Institute Free Film and Lecture Series
Held in Salem every 2nd Wednesday @ 6:30 pm
At Salem Friend’s Meeting House, 490 19th Street NE (19th at Breyman)
For more information: 971-218-4772, or dianedalychavez@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
March 26th @ 6:30pm, The NW Permaculture Institute presents, Fresh – film 70 mins
“Our current industrial method of food production is increasingly viewed as an unsustainable system, destructive to the environment and public health. But what is the alternative?
Fresh profiles the farmers, thinkers, and business people across the nation who are at the forefront of re-inventing food production in America. With a strong commitment to sustainability, they are changing how farms are run, how the land is cared for, and how food is distributed. Their success demonstrates that a new paradigm based on sustainable practices can be profitable and a model for our food system, if people choose to support it.
Fresh opens with a short summary of the problems and consequences of industrialized food production, then focuses primarily on the individuals who are creating new approaches to address environmental, health, and economic challenges throughout the food chain.
Joel Salatin is a world-famous sustainable farmer and entrepreneur who, by observing nature, devised a rotational grazing system for his animals that heals the land while making his operations many times more profitable than his conventional farming neighbors.
Will Allen, a former pro basketball player and recipient of a Macarthur “Genius Award”, is now one of the most influential leaders of the urban farming movement. He teaches people in the inner city the value of healthy food and how to grow their own.
David Ball saw his family-run supermarket and a once-thriving local farming community dying with the rise of Walmart and other big chains. So he reinvented his business, partnering with area farmers to sell locally-grown food at an affordable price. His plan has brought the local economy back to life.
Fresh also features a farmer in Iowa who illustrates the struggles family farmers face, a hog farmer in Missouri who stopped using antibiotics on his pigs, and commentary by noted food expert and author Michael Pollan.”
Film includes potluck and discussion at 5090 Center Street NE, Salem, Oregon 97317. For more information: 503-449-8077.
This event is made possible by support from the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, Life Source Natural Foods, and private donations from people in our community. Thank you for your support!
Growing Cities: A Film About Urban Farming In America
A documentary film that examines the role of urban farming in America and asks how much power it has to revitalize our cities and change the way we eat. In their search for answers, filmmakers Dan Susman and Andrew Monbouquette take a road trip and meet the men and women who are challenging the way this country grows and distributes its food, one vacant city lot, rooftop garden, and backyard chicken coop at a time. Join them as they discover that good food isn’t the only crop these urban visionaries are harvesting. They’re producing stronger and more vibrant communities, too.
Febuary 17th @ 6:30 pm, Pringle Creek Community 3911 Village Center Drive, SE, Salem. Made possible with support from the Pringle Creek Community. For more info call Diana Cason 941-735-0452
The Man Who Stopped the Desert
“Yacouba Sawadogo, a peasant farmer from northern Burkina Faso in Africa, has succeeded where international agencies failed. Over the last twenty years he has become a pioneer in the fight against desertification and hunger. Yacouba’s struggle is pure, inspiring drama. It is about one man’s determined efforts that have the potential to benefit many thousands living in the Sahel region of Africa.
As early as the 1970′s, the Sahel became a bleak land as a result of severe drought combined with overgrazing, poor land management, and overpopulation. By the 1980′s the region, which once had a population of some 30 million, suffered from severe poverty and starvation. Yacouba remained undaunted. Through the combination of his vast reforestation project and the adaptation of an ancient agricultural ‘zai’ planting technique, his name is now synonymous with reversing the process of desertification and combating food shortages. Yacouba’s work over a quarter century has resulted in the successful rehabilitation of farmland, the regrowth of forests, and the return of many to their homeland, as well as praise from international organizations eager to learn more about his techniques.”
February 26th @ 6:30pm, Event includes finger food potluck and discussion, @ 5090 Center Street. NE, Salem. Made possible with support from the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem and Life Source Natural Foods. More info call: 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:
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.
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
Permaculture Essentials for the Pacific NW, 36 hr. class, only $5 per hour, schedules vary by location.
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 one of our latest classes!
Saturdays, starting Oct 4th, 2014, 10am to 2pm, @ Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, 5090 Center St NE, Salem. Instructor, L. June, call 503-449-8077 for questions or registration
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 DivisionStreet, Silverton. Instructor, Diana Cason, call 941-735-0452
For more information call, 503-449-8077, or visit nwpermacultureinstitute.org
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 present classes at low rates, as well as free film and lecture series to further educate our students and the community.
A documentary film that examines the role of urban farming in America and asks how much power it has to revitalize our cities and change the way we eat. In their search for answers, filmmakers Dan Susman and Andrew Monbouquette take a road trip and meet the men and women who are challenging the way this country grows and distributes its food, one vacant city lot, rooftop garden, and backyard chicken coop at a time. Join them as they discover that good food isn’t the only crop these urban visionaries are harvesting. They’re producing stronger and more vibrant communities, too.
Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share: Free Film and Lecture Series, presented by the Northwest Permaculture Institute. Every 4th Thursday @ 6:30 pm. Bring Item for finger food potluck, enjoy event and discussion, at UU Congregation of Salem, 5090 Center Street NE, Salem. For more info, 503-449-8077, nwpermacultureinstitute.org, or nwpermacultureinstitute on facebook.
Made possible in part with support from Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, and Life Source Natural Foods.
NW Permaculture Institute 