Pewrmaculture
Education & Certification:
A First Person Account
The land
occupied by the Happy Valley School and the Ojai
Foundation has a beauty that comes from its unique
location in isolated mountains near the relentless
urban sprawl of Los Angeles. The beauty of the upper
Ojai valley made it a logical selection as the site
of the fictional Valley of Shangrila in the 1939
film, The Lost Horizon. As I arrived in Ojai's upper
valley on a late afternoon in June, hawks soared
overhead and wisps of fog slipped over the mountains
in the gathering twilight. In the quiet of a Sunday
night, it was apparent that the next two weeks of
permaculture study would take place in an ideal
location.
On the top of a scenic ridge, the Ojai Foundation
land is covered with California live oaks. With the
rustic ambiance of a summer camp, the Ojai Foundation
is an ideal place to retreat from everyday life and
to focus on the study of permaculture. Walking each
morning down the hill to a large tent, where the
permaculture lectures were held, was an invigorating
start for each day. The evening hikes back up the
hill to the Ojai Foundation featured the nightly roll
call of coyotes and skies filled with stars.
Beginning with the first day of class, it was clear
that a permaculture design course teaches more than a
set syllabus of material. One of the first lessons we
learned was that 100 people, taken from their
familiar surroundings, could coalesce into a
community. When someone suggested the idea of
composting the food waste from the group's meals, a
crew immediately assembled to dig a compost pit.
Buffet meals, eaten under ancient walnut trees,
became the focal point for fascinating conversations.
A realization quickly dawned that we had all been
independently thinking many of the same things
regarding the need for sustainable community,
appropriate technology and alternative solutions to
many of the world's thornier problems. Mealtime
conversations became one of the best aspects of the
permaculture design course experience.
The organizers of the course utilized a variety of
appropriate technologies to provide services for the
course participants. There was an innovative form of
air conditioning that included a large tube, with
fans pumping cooler air out of a hole dug in the
ground. For heating dish water, there was a solar
water heater placed in a strategic location. There
was also a shower set up, erected for use by the
students who camped in tents. The shower stalls were
made out of bales of straw. After a few days of the
course, it was easy to conclude that one could live
comfortably under rustic conditions with appropriate
but minimal equipment.
The founder of permaculture, Bill Mollison, lectured
during many days of the course. Along with his
humorous stories and iconoclastic tall tales,
Mollison included many pearls of wisdom on the
subjects of trees, forests, water usage, domesticated
animals and the perception of patterns in landscapes.
His co-instructor Scott Pittman brought a dry wit and
years of experience in the design and construction of
adobe, cob and strawbale buildings. Pittman also
taught the class how to dig the water-catching
trenches known as "swales." Even though
much has been written, including several textbooks,
on the subject of permaculture, there was great
benefit in learning about these topics directly from
teachers with years of experience.
In addition to the formal classroom lectures, course
participants received the additional benefit of
learning from our peers during evening presentations.
Each evening, our fellow students shared video tapes
and other materials, with any interested classmates.
Included in the evening programs were lectures on
community-supported agriculture, architectural
applications of fractal geometry, eco-feminism,
sustainable forestry, inner-city gardening projects,
and a humorous, but serious, video that depicted a
cross-country car trip using discarded frying oil
instead of diesel fuel. The various evening programs
were informative and they complemented the material
covered in the permaculture course curriculum.
After a week of lectures, we moved out onto a ridge
at the Ojai Foundation. Armed with shovels, we
learned the art of digging swales. The somewhat
archaic word "swale" refers to the
terracing of the hillsides for the purpose of
capturing water run-off and avoiding damaging
erosion. With the use of simple leveling tools, made
from bamboo and a "plumb" line with a rock
as a weight, it was possible to dig the swales while
following the contours of the hillside slope. Before
we ventured out to dig swales, we learned that the
U.S. government, during the WPA projects of the
1930s, put in many large swales in the arid regions
of the Western United States. These landforms may be
seen today, still working correctly after nearly six
decades.
The culmination of the permaculture design course
came when the students were divided into teams with
the intention of creating a landscape design for use
by the organization that owns the land of the Happy
Valley School and Ojai Foundation. The land was
divided into two sections, with four design teams
focusing on each section. The design teams studied
aspects of gardening/agriculture, water, physical
structures, and the invisible structures of
administration that make the other aspects of the
design possible.
As individuals and as groups of design teammates, we
walked the land. In our study, we observed signs of
water flow, noted the slope of hillsides and looked
for potential that could be worked into the completed
permaculture design. After the preliminary
observations were completed, each design team met to
produce maps and reports on their area of study. The
result of all of this labor was a meeting for the
entire class in which the teams presented their
completed designs to the land's governing board.
After the lectures, design meetings and other
activities, the permaculture course came to a close
with a talent show. On the last two nights of the
course, there were mandatory talent presentations by
all of the course participants. These talent shows
included diverse performances such as the singing of
"Robbie Barley and the Swalers," as well as
a dramatic peeling of an orange by an organic cotton
farmer from Texas. The talent shows demonstrated the
evolution of a community that came together for two
weeks with a common interest in permaculture's ethics
of care of the earth and care of people. Attending a
permaculture design course can be a great opportunity
to learn useful skills, to acquire unique information
and to renew a commitment to integrate life and work
in the service of permaculture's ideals.
by Susan
Newcomer
[reprinted from www.crescentmeadow.com]
