Teacher Jonathan Bates on polyculture design We took our PDC last fall with Permaculture F.E.A.S.T. (for ecological and social transformation). As working folks, we could not find the time off to attend a week-long course. F.E.A.S.T. is one of the few offered on weekend. We woke up every other Saturday for 4 months at 5:30am for the two hour drive to Northampton to start class at 9am. We'd return after a full weekend of theorizing and practicing permaculture principles and ethics, urban homesteading, forest gardening, water harvesting, soil regeneration, creative waste cycling, micro-livestock, energy and building systems, social justice, food systems planning, cooperative economics, design for climate change, community building, aquaculture, design projects, methods, and tools. We spent a lot of time talking and digging deep, unlearning and learning, thinking and strategizing. We did hands-on, skills-building activities during the course and have been immediately able to apply with little previous knowledge most of the projects and methods we learned about during the course. This includes our aquaponics system, our backyard polyculture plantings, harvesting rainwater, organizing the permaculture convergence, and doing it all with 'permaculture goggles' on. We had an incredible teaching team and field trips to local permaculture sites. Our permaculture trip was catalyzed by this design course, and we highly recommend it. There are only a few spots left for the Fall 2012 course, so register now. We've posted several videos on ourYouTube channel from the course and have shared one and some photos below. There are also pictures from the design project we did as part of the course if you are interested in learning more. If you've taken a PDC, share your yields in the comments. We'd love to hear what skills and ideas have been influenced by such a course.
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