Permaculture Instructors

Permaculture Design Course Instructor Mark DuPont

Mark DuPont has 25 years of experience in Permaculture as a farmer, nurseryman, instructor, consultant and organic inspector in California and Latin America. He is a founding member and current President of the Mid Klamath Watershed Council, and has worked on every level from small garden to large farm, village to watershed. He has grafted over 10,000 fruit trees and milked several thousand gallons of goat's milk. Together with Blythe Reis he is a co-founder and steward of Sandy Bar Ranch.

Permaculture Instructor Blythe Reis

Blythe Reis has had her hands in the dirt for over 19 years, designing, planting and tending the Permaculture homestead at Sandy Bar Ranch. She has taught yoga and practiced shiatsu massage and bodywork for over 25 years. Together with Mark DuPont she is a co-founder and board member of the Mid Klamath Watershed Council.

Permaculture Design Course Instructor Dan Equinoss

Permaculture Design Course Instructor Dan Equinoss

Dan Equinoss is a Certified Permaculture Designer and owner of High Tide Permaculture, a full service, insured Permaculture design company with over ten years of experience in Humboldt County. He works with the Laurel Tree Charter School as a Sustainability Coordinator and organizes workshops for the Beneficial Living Center in Arcata.

Permaculture Instructor Frank Lake

Frank Kanawha Lake, PhD, is a Research Ecologist focusing on Traditional Ecological Knowledge, including enthno-botany and eco-cultural resource management practices. He cultivates a deep and passionate knowledge of his native Klamath watershed and Karuk culture, and has worked extensively as an ethno-ecologist and socio-cultural consultant.

Permaculture Instructor Levon Durr

Levon Durr has been involved in Permaculture since 1996 as an instructor and practitioner, sharing his skills in wild food harvesting and processing, organic gardening, and seed saving. After training under Paul Stamets of Fungi Perfecti in Mushroom Cultivation and Mycorestoration Levon founded Fungaia Farm, which develops innovative mycotechnology solutions to restoration, education and Permaculture systems.

Permaculture Instructor Lonny Grafman

Lonny Grafman is an Instructor of Environmental Resources Engineering and Appropriate Technology at Humboldt State University; the Advisor for the Waterpod and the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology; the Executive Editor of the International Journal for Service Learning in Engineering; and the Founder and President of the Appropedia Foundation, sharing knowledge to build rich, sustainable lives. Lonny has worked on hundreds of domestic and international projects across a broad spectrum of sustainability - from solar power to earthen construction, from micro-hydro power to rainwater catchment. Throughout all of these technology implementations, he has found the most vital component to be community.

Permaculture Instructor Andrea Lanctot

Andrea Lanctot holds a degree in Environmental Science/ Appropriate Technology and Community Organizing and Permaculture Design Certificate. She is a past Co-director and Project Manager for the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology (CCAT). She has spent years honing her Permaculture skills and building community through a variety of internships and workshops and as an active member in the Humboldt Permaculture Guild. Her passion lies in natural building and anything that allows for her hands or feet to be in contact with the earth.

Affiliates

Permaculture Instructor Brock Dolman

Brock Dolman has taught over 50 Permaculture Design Courses and is a founding member of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center OAEC), as well as director of the WATER Institute (www.oaecwater.org) and OAEC's Permaculture Design Program. 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.

Permaculture instructor Penny Livingston-Stark
Penny Livingston-Stark is internationally recognized as a prominent Permaculture teacher, designer and speaker. She has worked 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.

Permaculture Instructor Michael Smith
Michael G. Smith helped found the Cob Cottage Company in 1993 and the Natural Builders Colloquium in 1994. Since then he has taught hundreds of hands-on Natural Building workshops in the US and abroad. He is the author-or co-author of four books, including The Art of Natural Building and The Hand-Sculpted House.

Permaculture Links

For more information on Permaculture check out these websites:

Klamath Knot Permaculture

Permaculture is the design and creation of sustainable human habitats and food production systems. It is a design method that has been applied worldwide at every level, from homesteading and farming to community planning and national policy. Global climate change, peak oil and financial meltdown are converging to form a constellation of challenges unique to our time. While pessimism and cynicism are easy to come by, Permaculture offers positive, tangible solutions, from how to sustainably meet the basic needs of food, energy and shelter, to how to vitalize our communities and restore our watersheds. Permaculture is both a land use ethic and community building movement, which strives for the harmonious integration of human dwellings, energy systems, micro-climate, annual and perennial plants, animals, soils, and water into stable, productive communities. The Klamath Knot Bioregion encompasses the Klamath-Siskiyou mountains and rivers as well as the coastal region of northwest California. It is the cross roads of the West, where north meets south, the coastal range meets the interior Great Basin, and the Sierra Nevada meet the Cascades, creating a rich and unique region of endemic plants found nowhere else in the world. One of the most biologically diverse and complex temperate bioregions on the planet, it includes the coastal fog belt, hot interior canyons, and the most diverse conifer forests on the planet. Klamath Knot Permaculture is an affiliation of Permaculture instructors, consultants and practitioners working on tangible solutions for navigating these challenges. We are engaged in a long term conversation, and we invite you to join us.

Topics employed by Permaculture and incorporated into Permaculture Design Courses include:

Design Process
Organic Gardening & Farming
Ethics & Principles
Integrated Pest Management
Natural Building Techniques
Plant Propagation & Grafting
Tools and Appropriate Technology
Agroforestry
Patterns
Ecological Literacy
Traditional Ecological Knowledge
Invisible Structures
Renewable Energy Systems
Soil Fertility
Water Harvesting, Storage, & Conservation
Animal Husbandry
Community Mapping
Mycology

Klamath Knot Permaculture Design Course, March through October, 2012

An extended Permaculture Design Certification Course that will teach you how to transform human habitats into diverse, resilient, self-sustaining systems. This course will draw on a wide array of sites and instructors, from the Northcoast to the interior Klamath River, meeting one weekend a month and offering an in-depth learning experience through the seasons. Upon completion participants will receive a Permaculture Design Certificate and the skills and tools to make positive change within their communities.

This extended course is for aspiring or experienced gardeners, farmers, community organizers, land planners, builders and any active, engaged citizen seeking positive change. Instructors combine lecture, reading and hands-on activities based on an 19-year Permaculture site and the surrounding Klamath River watershed. Topics include zone and sector analysis, observation as the basis for design, keyline design of swales and ponds, organic gardening and farming, orchard management, plant propagation, animal husbandry, soil management, ethnobotany, pest management, natural building techniques, community process, watershed restoration, fire and fuels management and more. Upon completion participants will receive a Certificate of Permaculture Design.

We are excited to offer this extended Permaculture Design Course that provides an affordable and in depth alternative to a residential 2-week intensive format. Spring weekend sessions will be held at Sandy Bar Ranch, a 20 year established Permaculture site, and daily sessions will be hosted during the Summer and Fall at various sites in the Arcata/ Eureka area of the California North Coast. The array of sites and geographic locales will reflect the biodiversity and complexity of the Klamath Knot, while the extended schedule will encompass the seasons.

Course Schedule
Residential Weekend Sessions at Sandy Bar Ranch: March 15-18, Thursday to Sunday, April 13-15, Friday to Sunday, June 1-3, Friday to Sunday
Northcoast Sessions will be held on the second Saturday of each month, July through October, host sites to be announced: July 7, August 11, September 8, October 13

Costs and Registration
To register send a 50% deposit, either a check to Sandy Bar Ranch, PO Box 347, Orleans, CA, 95556, (please include Klamath Knot Permaculture in the memo); or if you prefer you may pay with a credit card using our secure webpage. Upon receiving your deposit we will send you a confirmation email with more details about course content and logistics. Full Course Fee: $900.00 (includes lodging/partial meals for residential sessions, site and instructor fees for coastal sessions, and course materials) Resigter by February 15 and receive a $100 discount, pay $800.00 for the entire course.

Contact us for more information or to register.

Permaculture Design Course Schedule*

Date & Place	Topics
Session One, March 15 - 18, Sandy Bar Ranch, Orleans, CA	Introductions, Overview & Logistics, Permaculture Ethics & Principles, Site Analysis using Zones, Sectors, Aspect, Soils, Design Process, Community Mapping, Pattern Observation, Treecrops & Food Forests, Plant Guilds, Hands On Pruning and Grafting
Session Two, April 13 - 15, Sandy Bar Ranch, Orleans, CA	Water and Watersheds, Frank Lake - Traditional Ecological Knowledge & Karuk Ethnobotany, Animal Systems. Hands-on Gardening
Session Three, June 1-3, Sandy Bar Ranch, Orleans, CA	Natural Building - Principles, overview, materials, techniques, Strawbale, cob, light straw clay, earthen floors, living roofs, Passive Solar Design, Hands-on - Natural Building!
Session Four, July 7, Fungaia Farm and Tule Fog Farm, Arcata, CA	Mycotecnhology, Mushrooms in Permaculture, Animal Systems
Session Five, August 11, High Tide Permaculture, Arcata, CA	Water Systems, Overview, Keyline System, Surveying, Swales, Rainwater Catchment & Storage, Greywater
Session Six, September 8, Arcata, CA	Appropriate Technology, Energy Basics and Urban Permaculture
Session Seven, October 13, Location TBA	Invisible Structures, Design Project Presentations

*dates and topics are subject to change

What is Permaculture?

(text Steve Diver, excerpted with permission from the ATTRA website: -http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/perma.html

Permaculture is about designing ecological human habitats and food production systems. It is a land use and community building movement which strives for the harmonious integration of human dwellings, microclimate, annual and perennial plants, animals, soils, and water into stable, productive communities. The focus is not on these elements themselves, but rather on the relationships created among them by the way we place them in the landscape. This synergy is further enhanced by mimicking patterns found in nature. A central theme in Permaculture is the design of ecological landscapes that produce food. Emphasis is placed on multi-use plants, cultural practices such as sheet mulching and trellising, and the integration of animals to recycle nutrients and graze weeds.

Permaculture Pond However, Permaculture entails much more than just food production. Energy-efficient buildings, waste water treatment, recycling, and land stewardship in general are other important components of Permaculture. More recently, Permaculture has expanded its purview to include economic and social structures that support the evolution and development of more permanent communities, such as co-housing projects and eco-villages. As such, Permaculture design concepts are applicable to urban as well as rural settings, and are appropriate for single households as well as whole farms and villages. "Integrated farming" and "ecological engineering" are terms sometimes used to describe perma-culture, with "cultivated ecology" perhaps coming the closest.

The Practical Application of Permaculture

Permaculture is not limited to plant and animal agriculture, but also includes community planning and development, use of appropriate technologies (coupled with an adjustment of life-style), and adoption of concepts and philosophies that are both earth-based and people-centered, such as bioregionalism.

Permaculture zones Many of the appropriate technologies advocated by permaculturists are well known. Among these are solar and wind power, composting toilets, solar greenhouses, energy efficient housing, and solar food cooking and drying.

Since Permaculture is not a production system, per se, but rather a land use and community planning philosophy, it is not limited to a specific method of production. Furthermore, as Permaculture principles may be adapted to farms or villages worldwide, it is site specific and therefore amenable to locally adapted techniques of production.