(1) Care for the Earth
(2) Care for People
(3) Redistribute Surplus

These three ethics have always been at the heart of Permaculture thinking and teaching. At least, that is what folks in the Permaculture movement claim - including me. They are hard to disagree with too strenuously, no? This is partially because they so vague. This abstraction is part of their strength - they are widely appealing, and serve as a commonsense and positive entry point to draw people into a conversation.

The trick is, their abstraction is also part of their weakness. I have often found that the Ethics are taught in a watered-down and feel-good style, that does more to create good vibes and excitement than it does to challenge students, or help designers navigate the sometimes-murky waters of choosing clients, partners, and projects. If they get reduced to a story about tending our garden, then sharing our kale with our friends, and then composting our “surplus” kitchen scraps back into the garden, then what does the movement really gain by having ethics at all? Other than to say - in Permaculture, it is so easy to be ethical!
(more…)

And pictures from the last Mushroom Power! workshop at Growing Power can be found here.

Our website is under construction, and in the mean time you can find us here, on Facebook.
We are based in Burlington, Vermont currently, but not for long. We will be relocating in the next year to a major city in the northeast. We’re not sure which one yet! We’re doing outreach and research to find our way to a place that the local leadership, the need, and the potential for change are strong. We won’t land anywhere without an invitation.

We’ve just formed over the past 10 months, but we’ve been busy…
• Design and installation of a gorgeous raised bed garden at a Burlington grade school (see picture above).
• Facilitating a community-driven design process of an ecological master plan, for the landscape of that same school (and supporting a Masters thesis at the same time).
• Running an ecological design / social design workshop curriculum on campus here.
• Managing field trials on the effects of biochar on organic vegetable production.
• Mentoring a dozen or so undergraduate interns through various service learning projects.

And lately, as a part of Ecological Learning Institute, I’ve been working with the flagship urban agriculture project, Growing Power, out of Milwaukee, WI, to incorporate mushroom production with their integrated urban ag model. If you don’t know their work already, check them out. Their combination of sophisticated ecological design and a grounded, inspiring, community development model will blow your mind. I’m so excited to be working with them. Check out a post on the Growing Power blog about the first (of five) workshops here.

I’ll post more soon, I promise.

Sean and Sophie, the organizers, are just great. They bring a gentle and determined focus to the connections between our personal awareness and our world-changing work. Rather than choose one or the other - too often the default model - I think they understand that worldly engagement is the context that makes our personal development matter. As, at the same time, personal work makes our ethical engagement more effective, and more sustainable - and even as activism creates the challenges that demand that we continue to grow.

Thanks to Sean and Sophie, and to all the participants, for a grounded and moving weekend.

The Ecology of Transformation
June 18-21
SEEDS Festival, Plainfield MA

The Sustainable Landscape, Mycoscaping, + Liberation Ecology
With Rafter Sass + Skott Kellog
Full Workshop: $270 - 320
Day Rate: $75 - 85
Thursday Afternoon: $35

NEW 4-DAY Format with Daily Drop-ins, Thursday - Saturday

This four-day participatory workshop offers the tools to start reclaiming ecological and social health - all the way from broad strategies to specific techniques. It combines the mushroom permaculture of the Mycoscaping Intensive, the technology skills of the Sustainable Landscape, building aquacultures + compost teas, and the social project design tools of Liberation Ecology. You can come for the whole 4 days, or drop-in Thursday, Friday, or Saturday.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON ::: 2:30-6PM
Introduction to Permaculture, Introduction to Mycoscaping, and a Mushroom Walk on the Land.

Permaculture works to create sustainable, labor-saving ways of meeting all our needs for food, shelter, and infrastructure. As both a design science and a global movement, it is accessible to ordinary folks AND scientifically grounded. Permaculture is a powerful toolbox for individuals and communities to take charge of their livelihoods and their ecological impacts. This workshop will introduce participants to the history, ethics, principles and principles of permaculture - and the strategies, and techniques we need to create harmonious relationships with the environment and everything we do.

DAILY MORNING TRACK ::: 9:30 – 11am
LIBERATION ECOLOGY (For full-time workshop participants only)
What would sustainability look like, if it refused to sustain inequality? All too often, our quest for sustainability is hampered by a lack of understanding of the social reality we work in. We’ll apply holistic design to the the social sphere, and design collaborative projects for long-term sustainability, while connecting them with large-scale social transformation.

FRIDAY ::: 11:30 – 6
MYCOSCAPING: Mushrooms in the Permaculture Landscape

Mushrooms everywhere! Food, medicine, bioremediation, and more - fungi have a crucial role to play in creating healthy and abundant landscapes. Come explore the world of wild and cultivated fungi through a holistic permaculture lens. Includes lots of hands-on! 

SATURDAY ::: 11:30 - 6
THE SUSTAINABLE LANDSCAPE: Aquatic Polycultures and Bio Brews

We will overview sustainable technologies and then focus on making aquacultures and compost teas. We will build a pond that will be stacked with anarray of aquafic plants and animals for making food, fuel, and fertilizer. We will also brew compost tea: a liquid culture of beneficial microorganisms that can be applied as a fertilizer to crops or be used to remediate contaminated soils.

SUNDAY ::: 9:30 - 1
Liberation Ecology and Mycoscaping Wrap-Up (for full-time participants only)

Liberation Ecology hosted by Burlington Permaculture

When: Saturday, March 21st 1:00 - 3:00pm
Where: Burlington Infoshop - 117 Bank Street, Burlington, VT
Cost: Free or by donation
• This will be my first local workshop since relocating to Burlington. There is such an amazing scene in Burlington, including a thriving local permaculture community - I’m excited to get into conversation with the people here who are passionate about making change.

Ecology of Transformation / Mycoscaping at the SEEDS Festival

When: June 15-18
Where: Earthdance Intentional Community, 252 Prospect Street, Plainfield, MA 01070. (413) 634-5678
Cost: The prices aren’t listed on the website yet - check back through the links above.
• This will be a very interesting workshop. Thanks to the long format, I’ll be able to incorporate a lot more Permaculture design into the syllabus. I’ll be combining a longer-form Lib Eco workshop with a mushroom-Permaculture workshop I do called Mycoscaping. So we’ll not only be doing lot’s of hands-on social project design, along with a lot of hands-on mushroom-centric Permaculture. Think of the theme as “underground networks of transformation,” or just enjoy the interdisciplinary mix of social and ecological design.

Although I don’t talk about it much on this website - which is oriented specifically toward the Liberation Ecology workshops - I also work professionally in permaculture design, teaching, and consultation. I’m looking forward to this chance to more thoroughly integrate these two aspects of my work.

The venue is an intentional community that - from what I hear - is a very lovely place to be. They began hosting this broad-ranging, future-oriented festival last year. After my four days, I’ll be sticking around for the weekend to guest-present with the wonderful Skotty Kellog from the Rhizome Collective, who will be facilitating a workshop on compost tea and aquaculture. We’re going to make a pond! Hope to see you there…

This weekend, July 4-6, I’ll be presenting at the Northeast Permaculture Guild Summer Gathering. It runs all weekend. I’m not sure when I’ll be presenting - so come for the whole thing! It’s going to be great way to ‘observe’ our national holiday. From a distance, as it were.

I’ve been working with a group of amazing organizers to put on this event, coming up in just a few weeks:

Grassroots disaster response network, anyone? That’s one of the goals we’ll be working toward at the Confluence - along with a lot of other strategies, and questions, that are emerging in the space between social justice and climate change. If you are anywhere near the northeastern US, come on by.

I will be be doing some Liberation Ecology workshops, helping with some hands-on permaculture… and who knows what else?

If you’re around for the Confluence, you can come visit Regeneration CSA, the sweet permaculture farm where I’ve been staying since the April - we’re just 5 minutes down the road.

On August 10th, I’ll be presenting at the
2008 Northeastern Organic Farming Association (NOFA) Summer Conference.
Check it out here.

And then, at the end of the season, please come check out this amazing event:

Back in Austin now, and here for another two weeks.

The tour was fantastic. When I introduce myself as a presenter, I often say something like: “I do this work because I want to be in conversation with people who are hungry for change, and the tools for making it.” Since that happens to actually be the case, the week of workshops earlier this month was just about the best way I could imagine to spend my time. The participants, and the participation, were amazing. Folks from all different communities and background… urban and rural, ethinic-, age-, class-, and gender-diversity; the only common theme was wanting to be a part of changing the path we are on. I’ve never been so inspired.

Of course, the tour was also demanding, in some ways - kind of grueling, travel-wise. But while I don’t necessarily seek out a challenge like driving out of Manhattan at 6:00pm on a Friday, most of the demands of the tour were the kind of problem I want - adapting the workshop to different contexts, focusing more and more on participatory learning, getting challenged by participants to think in new ways…

Hopefully I’ll be doing some workshops in the midwest this May… more on that as things develop.

I was fortunate enough to teach at the R.U.S.T. Workshop this past weekend. Skotty and Stacy, from the amazing Rhizome Collective here in Austin, put on several of these Radical Urban Sustainability Trainings each year. They are a fantastic, weekend whirlwind introduction to a whole array of cheap, low-tech, ecological systems. My first post on this blog was a review of their first R.U.S.T held in the northeast, at the Albany Free School in Albany, NY.

In addition to helping out with some material on mushroom cultivation, biogas, natural systems, and where ever else it was useful, I gave a 1-hour Liberation Ecology workshop. Trying to squeeze participatory learning activities into a 1-hour timeslot was a crazy, but worthwhile, experiment. It was a good session, despite feeling rushed.

I’ll have a chance to continue the experiment in two weeks, when I do it again! I’ll be teaching another 1-hour workshop at the second R.U.S.T. training at the Rhizome this season. Space is still available in on the weekend of April 12,13, so get in touch with the Rhizome if you are interested.

March 1,2 - Manhattan
Permaculture Design Course - Opening Weekend 
I’ll be doing a full-day Liberation Ecology workshop in the opening weekend of a Permaculture Design Certificate course in Manhattan. It’s sponsored by Local Energy Solutions. It’s a great format - stretching a 2-week (72 hour) course out over a year, in order to be as accessible as possible to working folks. I’ll be teaching on the second day of the opening weekend (and then on the closing weekend, a year later). There are still several spots available in what promises to be fantastic PDC. You can register here. (You may need to scroll down to find the course info.)

March 5 - Hampshire College | Session I:
Liberation Ecology / Refuse to Choose! (Between Social and Ecological Health)

Full 5-hour Liberation Ecology workshop. Free to Hampshire students. See here for more details on the workshop, and email Patrick with questions, and for times & places.

March 6 - Northampton, MA | 3-hour Evening Workshop
Lisa Depiano, one of the tireless visionaries behind Montview Neighborhood Farm, is producing an evening Liberation Ecology workshop, open to the public. Email her here for details, or to sign up.

March 7 - Manhattan
Liberation Ecology & Permaculture Design
Andrew Faust, principal of the Center for Bioregional Living, is running a modular Permaculture Design Course each Friday at the Rutherford Place Friends Meeting House in Manhattan. Unfortunately, this session is not open to folks who haven’t registered for the course. Some later sessions are, though, so check out the website for details.

March 8,9 - Epworth Center, High Falls, NY
Permaculture Design Course - Closing Weekend
I’ll be working with my good friend and collaborator Ethan Roland, of Appleseed Permaculture, to co-teach this last weekend of the 07/08 PDC (hosted by the wonderful folks at the Epworth Center). This will be a full weekend with the students: seeing presentations, giving feedback on design projects, sharing the Liberation Ecology workshop, and working with the plans and visions of the participants.

Incidentally, if you are looking for a Permaculture Design Course in the northeast in 2008, email me and I’ll be happy to refer you to one.

March 10 - Hampshire College | Session II:
Liberation Ecology / Refuse to Choose! (Between Social and Ecological Health)

This second evening a Hampshire will be a full repeat of the 5-hour Liberation Ecology workshop, for folks who were unable to attend the earlier session. Free to Hampshire students. See here for more details on the workshop, and email Patrick with questions, and for times & places.

March 11: Fly back to Austin, and sleep for a few days…