Permaculture Design Course 2021
16th — 19th Jan, 17th — 20th April, 9th — 11th July, 7th — 10th Oct
On behalf of Toru Education Trust, we are excited to announce the 2021 Permaculture Design Course, to be jointly held at Hanawera and the Waihoanga Centre, both near Otaki. We offer our course in a new format: instead of the 15 day residential course, it will now take place in each of the seasons, with four 3–4 day modules.
This article gives you
- A description of permaculture and an overview of the course
- A description of the team of tutors
- Course details such as cost, dates, venue etc. including a link to the registration form and our contact details for questions
- A description of the building module as one example of content
Permaculture
Permaculture is where the needs and aspirations of people are met within the natural characteristics of their place. Permaculture is a holistic design approach integrating regenerative earth stewardship techniques with resilient lifestyles and livelihoods, in order to safeguard ecological systems and ## thriving communities.
Internationally recognised and taught by highly qualified and experienced teachers affiliated with PiNZ (Permaculture in New Zealand), our certificate course is dynamic and interactive. It involves lectures, discussions, design exercises, practical activities, field trips, group work and a personal project and presentation. We strive to embrace an experienctial teaching method with a principle of ‘from experience to concept’.
Course content includes:
- Introduction to permaculture principles and ethics
- Guidelines and strategies for sustainable living
- Connection to nature and place
- Eco-literacy: recognising ecosystem patterns and relationships
- Introduction to biodynamics and astronomy
- Te Ao Maori: an introduction in the context of this course
- Hua Parakore: a kaupapa Maori approach to growing food
- Personal well being: nourishing body, mind and spirit
- Home gardening: from living soil (compost!) to nourishing food
- Water: essence of life
- Appropriate technology: energy, tools and buildings
- Earth building materials and methods
- Waste and recycling
- Cultural transformation: including effective team work and communication, collaborative leadership, gift economy, time banking
- Design methods and presentation
- Creating resilient and healthy communities
- Topics responding to the interest of the course participants! Each course develops its unique flavour, as we respond to participants’ interests, questions and offerings.
Our team of tutors
Gary and Emily Williams
Gary and Emily live on their farm Hanawera, in Horowhenua, cultivating a wide diversity of farming and forestry activities. These include home gardens and orchards, staple crops, animal grazing, firewood and plantation forests, as well as regenerating native bush. Their stewardship of this land is guided by the principles of permaculture and the practices and methods of organic and biodynamic agriculture. Gary is a water and soil engineer, biodynamic farmer and forester, permaculture activist and natural philosopher. Emily is a landscape architect and longtime tutor of organic horticulture. She is an enthusiastic gardener, passionate about healthy soil and loves harvesting the bounty of the garden with bottling, fermenting and drying. Her farmhouse kitchen exudes the aroma of fresh sourdough bread, nourishing soup broths and hearty stews!
Rachel Pomeroy
Rachel brings a love of star watching and a reverence for living soil, cows, and perfect compost! She is a tutor and advisor for Biodynamics in New Zealand and India for many years. Rachel brings her practical and poetic expertise of enlivening soil and plants of your garden.
James Richardson
James is a teacher, designer, builder, farmer and cultivator of social change. His research in sustainable food system planning explored some fundamental questions such as what it would take to feed the city of Vancouver. His PhD in resilient regional planning utilised ecological footprinting to redesign Wellington, NZ. He brings an experiential flare to his teachings following a dynamic teaching career in Canada, New Zealand, Guyana, and the United States. James is a student of Permaculture, natural building, biodynamic farming and brings to the team a deep understanding of the art and science of sustainability.
Jessica Hutchings
Jessica is a biodynamic and hua parakore grower on 10 acres in Kaitoke, Upper Hutt. She trained as a multi-disciplinary researcher in the fields of environmental studies, Māori studies and kaupapa Māori, has a PhD in Environmental Studies and has taught in this area for 15 years. She also completed the Diploma in Biodynamics at Taruna College. Jessica has a deep investment and passion to undertake teaching, research and on-farm practices that support the broad area of Māori development, hauora, wellbeing and tino rangatiratanga. She is a member of Te Waka Kai Ora, the National Māori Organics collective and has been involved in the development of the hua parakore approach for growing kai.
Matt King
Matt has been using permaculture approaches to land development, business practices and emergency response for 12 years, both in NZ and in remote areas of Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. He currently develops a 2 ha section of land in Otaki, including food forest, tiny home and appropriate technology. Matt started the social enterprises Green Earth and Emergency Compost Toilets, working with organisations, communities and individuals to develop and implement appropriate solutions for sustainable living.
Steve Porteous and Jenny Lindberg
Jenny and Steve kindle together renewed reverence and curiosity for the natural world. They offer skills that enable deep nature connection through bushcraft and wild living. Steve proves an excellent mentor for bird language, tracking, bushcraft, survival skills, foraging, natural building and more. He champions other ways of knowing and won’t mind challenging your edges! Jenny blends her expertise in midwifery, native parenting, wild food foraging and compassionate communication, as well as her jovial and gentle spirit into a living example of what it means to live simply and deeply with the land.
Emma Matthews
Emma is a permaculture enthusiast who is keen to make this way of thinking accessible to as many curious minds as possible. Her excitement for permaculture sprouts from its universal applicability and inherent encouragement of community. While she is currently exploring the world of web development she is enjoying using what she knows of permaculture to guide and shape her experience of designing web pages, empathising with the end user and building fantastic team culture.
Doris Zuur
Doris brings a love for life and ‘living it’! She has studied Biology has worked for 20 years as a teacher/principal, co-founding and developing Te Ra Waldorf Primary School. She is now an all rounder, living the permaculture principles on a daily basis, with her partner Bob and fluffy dog Honey on their property in Paekakariki. Doris is well known for her sourdough bread and love for compost. She has special interest in applying the permaculture principles into social situations, in particular one’s own life: Designing your life as you would design and landscape a piece of land!
Other course details
Cost
The cost per person is $1800 - $1500 for the four modules. This includes accommodation, delicious meals throughout the programme, and tuition fee. The latter covers contributor honorarium, pdf manual, personal project mentorship and internationally recognised PDC certificate. We are a private education provider and the participants’ payments are the only source of income to cover the costs of the course.
The fee is given as a range ($1800 - $1500) to allow for different financial situations. The range of fees applies for applications before the 1 December 2020 — after this date it is a fixed fee of $1800.
If this fee still prevents your participation, please contact us to discuss payment plans and scholarship options. Partial scholarships are granted, based on availability, to those who do not have the financial capacity to pay within the specified range and who are committed to applying the kaupapa of the PDC to the benefit of more than just themselves. Scholarship applications must be made by 1 November 2020. Contact us!
A $200 deposit with your registration form confirms your place on the course. It is non-refundable if you choose to cancel your registration but naturally refundable if we need to cancel. The course will go ahead with a minimum number of 12 participants committing to the whole course by 1 December 2020.
We may open the course for participation of individual modules but the spaces are given in preference to those who commit to the whole course and wish to gain the certificate.
Full payment must be made before the course start date (16 January 2021). Payment can be made to “Toru Education” Kiwibank account: 38–9018–0332936–00.
Commitment and certification
Please note, the course is an intense programme. A firm commitment to fully attend and participate in the course is required to attain the certification and to support group cohesion.
To gain the Permacultue Design Certificate, the following criteria must be met:
- Participation in 80% of all PDC modules, lectures, workshop, field trips and practical exercises.
- Demonstrable contribution to community life, including but not limited to meal preparation and cleaning.
- Presentation of a PDC project, developed within the course, either individually or in a small group. The scope for this proejct will be set during the course. It will require participants to demonstrate an understanding of the permaculture principles, ethics and design method in an applied form.
Together we:
- create a learning community, learning from our tutors’ and each others’ skills, experience and knowledge;
- engage in practical design exercises;
- visit a number of sites in various stages of development, designed according to permaculture principles;
- visit and hear about individual and community lifestyles and about social enterprises/cooperatives that reflect the permaculture principles.
Venue
The programme is split between two residential venues. The first two modules (summer and autumn) take place at Hanawera, just north of Otaki, the 50 ha property that Gary and Emily have stewarded for the last 30 years. Here we have the pleasure and the privilege of observing and learning about the mixed use property, which includes everything from organic / biodynamic management, orchard, animals, tree plantations, bio-filtered swimming pool and eco-farm stay. Accommodation will be a mix of camping and simple shared rooms.
For the winter and spring modules, we will be at the beautiful Waihoanga River Lodge and Retreat centre in Otaki. The accommodation is backpackers style offering several rooms with twin bed rooms and ten bed dorm rooms. There is limited cell phone and internet coverage. We are also exploring an alternative option of holding the winter module in central Wellington, embracing social and community topics such as shared economy and urban agriculture. We will decide on this together with the group that has enrolled.
Kai
We source our food from organic, local, seasonal ingredients where possible and can accommodate most dietary needs upon request. Community living is part of the experience of the PDC, so everyone will help with meal preparations, cleaning, etc. Please indicate your special dietary requirements on the registration form.
Dates
16th — 19th January, 17th — 20th April, 9th — 11th July, 7th — 10th October 2021
There is a limit of 20 participants, first in first served! So enrol now with this registration form . If you have any questions e-mail us on toru.experience@gmail.com.
We are looking forward to another course in 2021!!
Appendix: The Building Projects as an example of on of our practical modules
The Building Project is a 10 m2 cabin constructed using manual tools from locally available natural materials. The aim is to demonstrate how to build a small shelter using hand tools and locally sourced materials, without having specialist skills or equipment. The building project was begun in March 2017, and the foundations have been laid! We will work towards its completion, most notably on the walls and roof.
No hard labour, no fuelled machines, no metal. Just what nature provides, plus some hand tools, and a few recycled car tyres — to bury them deep! It will have a timber post and beam structure, with all joins being by mortise and tenon (chiselled slots and tongues) and pegs. The timber rafters will have a centre key and be joined into the posts and beams. The timber will be sawn!
The walls will be an infill of straw covered with a clay slip, from clayey subsoil. Light to handle and to tamp into place. Abode blocks of the subsoil earth will provide a base plate under the clay-straw. The internal side of the walls will be earth plastered, using a mix of clayey subsoil and pulped paper. The external side will be lime plastered. This does required burnt lime.
The foundations will be river-run gravel in a rim trench and in the post holes. This gravel provides a firm foundation and protects the posts and base from moisture, when the selected gravel is well graded. The posts have a footing with tyres above to provide a solid anchor and earthquake support.
The floor will be pressed clay, using the same clayey subsoil material, and can be finished with the earth plaster. This requires only light tamping, but built up in layers, over a sandy gravel base.
Shape is considered too. No square box or flat ceiling. The building will have a hexagon shape, like a beehive. Symmetrical with identical dimensions and angles all round, it can be a module and joined up in different arrangements with outside spaces.
The roof will be an add-on project. That’s the tricky bit, and different materials will be trialled in the roof segments.
The building exercise during the permaculture course aims to give you a sense of what natural building construction involves. We will work hands on with the adobe block base and clay-straw infill and the internal earth and external lime plastering. We will also cover practical demonstrations on the use and care of hand tools.
