Lay the groundwork for your deepening practice of permaculture design and for the establishment of a permaculture training and demonstration center at Brook’s Bend Farm. This Advanced Permaculture Design Course (APDC) offers you direct experience designing permaculture systems that will build your design skills, your confidence and your portfolio, and spur you to deepen your self-study of the field. At the same time, you will help plan the transformation of Brook’s Bend Farm into a thriving multi-dimensional permaculture and nature awareness training and demonstration facility.

Course Format:

Course staff and participants will together form a large-scale paraprofessional design team tasked to resolve key design challenges and create a Schematic Master Plan for Brook’s Bend Farm.  This involves integrating farming, livestock, forest garden, coppice, and building systems for the farm’s 90 acres of woods, streams, pastures, and farm buildings.  We’ll dive into previous site assessment and design work by students of the Conway School of Landscape Design (CSLD). Each participant will then focus on one of several key “design streams” relating to the whole design, such as: water supply and waste water treatment systems; food production, processing, storage, and distribution systems; forest use and management; livestock grazing and foraging and buildings and energy systems.  Each “stream” will take on design problems in a mentored group-learning environment. As a collective, we will synthesize these streams into a unified Master Plan and present to a larger public audience by course end.

In this APDC, you will learn through design exercises, participatory classes, observation sessions, and self-study.  Pre-course homework will be required.  The course itself will be a fun, full on design charrette with classes mixed in.  At course end, you and your team will synthesize everything you have learned into design schemes and details to present to the clients and the public.The design process will be your main teacher; it will tell you what you need to learn.  We'll be there to support and guide you along the way.

Instructors:

Primary instructors Dave Jacke and Jono Neiger co-developed and co-taught “design-centered” permaculture courses together over many years.  Dave is primary author of the award-winning book Edible Forest Gardens, and teaches design, permaculture, and forest gardening across the USA and Canada.  He has run his own design firm, Dynamics Ecological Design, since 1984, and is now working on his second book, Coppice Agroforestry, with Mark Krawczyk (www.edibleforestgardens.com).  Jono cofounded the Regenerative Design Group, a Greenfield, MA design firm (www.regenerativedesigngroup.com), is on the faculty at the Conway School of Landscape Design in Conway, MA (www.csld.edu), and is on the board of the Permaculture Institute of the Northeast. Dave and Jono both graduated from CSLD, Dave in 1984, and Jono in 2003.  Apprentice teachers, as well as a coterie of guest instructors and design reviewers, will also join the course’s faculty.

College Credit will likely be available for this course through University of Massachusetts Amherst!  Inquire for details.

Course Cost: 

Tuition and food: sliding scale $1,150-1,550, with an early registration discount of $50 before April 1, 2012.  Scholarships will be available; inquire for more information.  Tuition payments above the bottom of the sliding scale will be used for scholarships, so please be generous if you can.

Meals: All meals will be provided as part of the tuition.

Accommodations: Camping and limited indoor accommodations available on-site for an additional fee. 

Prerequisites and Registration:

• All course participants must have completed a certified Permaculture Design Course, and must furnish a copy of their course certificate with their deposit to hold their place in the APDC.  If you want to take the course but cannot meet this prerequisite, please inquire.

• A $400 deposit is required to hold your place in the APDC.  The full balance is due by May 15, 2011.  Make checks out to Dynamics Ecological Design and mail to the contact address below.  Credit card/Paypal payments will incur a fee from Eventbrite.

• Your deposit or full course fee is refundable minus a $100 fee until May 15, 2012.  Between May 15 and June1, your course fee is refundable, minus the $400 deposit.  After June 1 no refund will be given.

For More Information:

Contact Kemper Carlsen
163 Rattlesnake Gutter Road   
Leverett, MA 01054
413-367-2304    kempercarlsen@earthlink.net