2012 Vermont Permaculture Design Course

The 2012 course is now full.  We are taking names for a wait-list should any cancel and for the 2013 course.

For more about the 2011 course please see this page dedicated to it, including testimonials.  

See past course images and more on our Facebook Page:

Utilizing the incomparable Whole Systems Research Farm permaculture site in Vermont's Mad River Valley, our design studio resources, and a team of leading facilitators, Whole Systems Design, Ben Falk, Cornelius Murphy and Mark Krawczyk present a skills-based resiliency training experience.  Please see the Whole Systems Design Studio and Research Farm site for more info.  

[Please see funding info below - great opportunities for VTers to have much of this course funded.]

This course offers an unparalleled opportunity to gain hands-on applied permaculture skills immersed within one of North America's most diverse and intensive permaculture research sites.  Participants will engage with high-performance home and community resource systems that will be more resilient in the face of problems posed by peak oil, climate change, environmental toxicity, and the inability of existing economic and social systems to deal with such challenges.  Participants have the unique opportunity to live in a working small farm and homestead and see exactly what opportunities and challenges arise in developing and maintaiing a productive and resilient home and land resource system. The site represents numerous cutting edge design opportunities for developing a self-reliant, liberated lifestyle customized for the cold climate, temperate biome. 

This course includes the standard certificate curriculum but goes way beyond the typical Designer's Certification Course by utilizing the background of skills-based trainings offered in Whole Systems Skills, and is filled with practice-based, learning-by-doing experiences, not only concept and information-based study.  Students in this course will not walk away from the experience without basic post-peak oil resiliency literacy including: how to plant a tree, fell a tree, split firewood, inoculate soil, make aerobic compost tea and biochar, layout on-contour swales and build them, harvest biomass with a scythe and sharpen it, sharpen and maintain other basic tools, perform earthworks, plumb basic waterworks and harvest water, inoculate mushroom logs and spread mushroom patches, perform basic metal work relative to home and farm fix-up projects, and innumerable other hard skills available to us via our working homestead, farm and practitioner-teachers.

Unlike at many permaculture course, we will actually be practicing these techniques on the farm throughout the course.  

Course Highlights

• Immersion and practice in one of the most sophisticated permaculture sites in North America.
• Living at a beautiful site in the heart of Vermont, in the Mad River Valley.  See more here.
• Ecological design and engineering pioneer John Todd anchors a team of guest instructors and visiting presenters.
• Field trips to regional sites to see models of permaculture strategies in action.  

Join us in developing new solutions to unprecedented challenges. 

Garden produce from the farm (we'll be eating from)

Meals and accomodations provided.

Course Instructors

Mark Krawcyzk - Keyline Vermont

Ben Falk, M.A.L.D. - Whole Systems Design      

Cornelius Murphy - Whole Systems Design

Guest Presenters - Various 

Additional Information

Grafting practice at WSRF

This course includes the core Permaculture Design curriculum including applications of Permaculture in a range of settings and strategies for meeting human needs via mutually-benefical participation in our ecosystems. Lectures and hands-on work will also explore: bioregional strategies, ecological history of the northern forest bioregion, energy and nutrient cycling, watershed health, gravity-fed water systems, tree crop care, agroforestry, mushroom inoculation and management, rapid soil building and more.  The course will conclude with students doing their own Permaculture site design. Permaculture design is a basic and highly sophisticated tool for identifying challenges and problem-solving holistically.  Permaculture is of immense benefit to community leaders, professionals in the fields of architecture, planning, ecology and education, town and regional planning, builders and many other fields.

What skills will I be exposed to?

We practice the following techniques and tool uses in this course in addition to others.Mushroom log inoculation (shiitake) on site

• Blade sharpening: scythes, knives, sickles, axes
• Scything/pasture and yard management with scythes
• Metalwork and basic tools for farm/homestead repair work
• Chainsaw maintenance and observational use
• Forest management, tree selection, harvesting methods, hauling/skidding methods
• Basic tractor and truck use and maintenance
• Mushroom inoculation tools and techniques
• Fruit harvesting
• Putting up food in root cellars, storage and processing methods
• Basic carpentry and building tools including saws, chisels, shop tools, drawknife, and more
• Rotational grazing: fencing, moving fence, moving animals, setting up permanent fence, electric use and wiring for fencing
• Waterworks for home and farms: sweating (soldering) copper pipe, welding poly water line, irrigation systems
• Numerous other rural living and farm/homesteading techniques simply by living on the active farm site for the duration
• Students are encouraged to bring both tools to practice with and skills with which to share in the group. There will be ample time for group skill sharing as the 2011 course was filled with experts in various disciplines relating to permaculture.

How is this course different from others? The Whole Systems Design permaculture design course varies from others nationally and in the area like the Yestermorrow permaculture course in several important ways:

• It takes place every day on a working homestead and small farm.  For those interested in improving their own home or farm, or those seeking to develop one, this offers the opportunity to learn directly from the systems here, their successes and failure points, their best aspects and those that need advancement further.  
• It is hosted along with a professional design and planning firm - Whole Systems Design, LLC - for those in the design fields or seeking to perform professional design this offers an inside view of how a leading firm in the field functions.  
• A focus on HARD SKILLS through hands-on practice differentiates this course from others in the world.  We send required readings out well ahead of the course date to help us cover the PDC curriculum while allowing more precious time on site for direct practice of skills with practiioners.  This is much less academic-focused and more hands-on practice focused than any other permaculture course we know of. It is heavily focused on know-how, not just know-why.  
• Other courses like the Yestermorrow School's permaculture course may suit those interested in building systems more optimally as their are more diverse examples of construction found there, such as straw bale, concrete and tree house structures.  We do immerse in the high performance built strategies and working example of the WSD studio-shop here, however.  

Registration

You may register online or email us for forms to submit in the mail.  A non-refundable $300 deposit is required upon registration to hold your place in the course and the course is very likely to fill before spring of 2012.

The remaining balance due in cash or check is due 3 weeks prior to course date for $1700 course fee, and it is due 8 weeks before for the $1500 course fee.
The courses is filled on a first come first serve basis. The student-instructor ratio will ensure that participants receive an exceptional level of training.   

Credit

University credit can be arranged through your own school via Ben Falk (M.A.L.D.), course instructor who can sign off on studies completed even if the sending school requires a Master's degree of instructors.

PaymentLog rolling - a favortie pasttime in the bottom pond | photo Emberphoto.com

Payment can be made with cash, check, travelers check, or money orders.  Please make checks payable to Whole Systems Skills.

If you cancel enrollment at least eight weeks prior to the start date we will refund all payments less the deposit.  No refunds will be given for cancellations after the eight week deadline.  

Discounts and Financial Aid

Residents of the State of Vermont may be eligible for assistance through the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation (VSAC).  The application process takes two weeks to a month and funds are limited.  For more information contact VSAC at (800) 642-3177 or online at www.vsac.org.  NEW Funding opportunity via Vermont Green - up to $800+ off the course tuition is available for VT residents:  http://www.vtgreen.org/individuals/

What other's have said about Whole Systems...

An autumn eve at the WSRF permaculture course siteYour work is at the cutting edge of food and energy security" ~Dennis D., Waitsfield, VT

"The work of Whole Systems Design is fascinating, visionary, and vital. They craft living solutions out of what a place is and what it can be. They are testing the waters for a new wave of design that embraces social and ecological  complexity and finds a fundamental fit between the two."

~Paul Cawood Hellmund, ASLA, Director, Conway Graduate Program in Sustainable Landscape Planning & Design

A video account of some of the systems which course participants will be immersed in:

Another video account of the site - this one focused on swales:

Regenerative Landscapes: Ben Falk, Whole Systems Design from TerraVisus on Vimeo. 

A film clip showing our rice research plots: