planetary Permaculture Pilgrimage - Day 3 to 4

Planetary Permaculture Pilgrimage - Day 3 to 4

Hello beautiful people!

My camera is on the blink so this blog is mainly words... but Delvin has been taking pics - and day 5 will be almost entirely pics!

The afternoon of day 3 saw everybody giving a 5 minute presentation. I chose animals - birds, insects, mammals etc. We broke into small groups shared out the topics. The people who were newer to permaculture chose first and then Alex and I took the rest. I had animal husbandry, animals essential to diversity and I tried really hard to stick to Geoff's suggestion of breaking it down minute by minute to hit a start, a mid point and a close, and to make people laugh once, get serious once, and tell a story. I told a story about Smithy, the boar I looked after last year at Bill and Lisa Mollison's farm, a very friendly large black pig who fathered the piglets I also looked after and who used to push me into the electric fence when wanting a scratch.

Day 4 started with Geoff excitedly telling us that our blog was up on PRI website, Delvin and I were so stoked!

Geoff showed us the World Wide Permaculture Network - connecting permies everywhere. It showed us projects, people, climates. I felt strongly that it was time to put a larger profile up of myself and the places I have done projects after asking the appropriate permissions.

Geoff spoke about the master plan sites – that become a PRI in that area. Two of the people in the course are setting up a site together in Victoria, about an hour from Melbourne. One thing that struck me about this is that I hope they and the local Melbourne permaculture network could get to know each other in a positive way, and a wish that it was possible to build a bridge between all the different styles of people within the movement.

We looked at curriculum in the afternoon. Geoff went through all the different teachers notes he's used over time - he showed us Scott Pitman's notes – who is at PRI USA - which come from the 1983 teacher notes that Bill Mollison wrote. They are wonderfully simplified, a distillation written just beforet the designers manual came out.

Geoff told us he'd mind-mapped the whole manual - these things are on the resources page on the pri website. He also told us about a class he taught with men who in a refugee camp and he needed to write on butchers paper and put them all up on the wall. He also said that when he is teaching an into to Permaculture he uses the chapters from Intro to permaculture. That afternoon we again broke into groups to brainstorm curriculum and put all of that info into a 90 minute timeframe for a class. I didn’t hear what we were supposed to do and Geoff was unavailable for me to ask questions so we slightly buggered up – but we still got to apportion the time for each topic area into percentage. 

It was really really hot that day - a precursor to a storm coming - so Delvin and I stayed in a B & B that night - so we didn't have to pack up in the rain and a treat for us to get through the first week. Thanks Delvin!

Love to all out there - and more soon xxx