PRESENTERS

  • SEAN CARNEY:    Sean was born and raised in New Hampshire, but has spent the recent years in North Dakota, Seattle, and Dublin, Ireland doing a mix of farming, building, teaching and activist(ing).  Sean earned his PDC in 2012, earned a Teacher Training Certificate in 2014 and has taught and studied various Permaculture subjects around the country ever since.     Workshop: Permaculture, Politics and Activism - Stories, lessons and a cry for help
  • THUMBS CASSIDY is a nomadic natural builder working with Intentional Communities and Ecovillages across North America. His specialty is collapsible natural structures, and within that he has a passion for yurts inspired by the various nomadic cultures of Siberia. He is not simply interested in the brilliant architecture of these ancient and still thriving cultures, but also the lifestyle which inspired their home design. Inspired by the nomadic wisdom of moving in a migratory loop to glean the resource each environment has to offer, he now travels seasonally to various communities to build, teach, learn, and expand the Nomad Network (ask him about it). His ancestors 5 thousand years ago were foragers in Doggerland, more recently he descends from the gypsies of Roma, tea farmers of Java, Indonesia, and boat-builder Rotterdam, Holland. He is a published researcher in the scientific discipline of restoration ecology with a focus on native ecosystems within Chumash Tribe land on the Pacific Coast of Turtle Island.   Title: Natural Building
  • MARTY CASTRIOTTA:  Marty is the co-owner and founder of Village Roots Permaculture in East Alstead NH (on the Orchard Hill Community). He and his wife Ellen and son Joules have been operating a diversified farm on this property since 2004. They grow and sell pastured meats, greenhouse greens and PYO berries and run regular permaculture workshops and a full Permaculture Design and Certification course every other year. Marty has a background in engineering, environmental education and natural construction, but his passion is farming and mentoring future farmers and ecosystem designers.  Workshop: Designing Ecosystems with Farm Animals
  • LAUVIAH CHARBONEU:  I was born and raised in La Cité Écologique of Ham-Nord, a thirty-four-year-old ecovillage in Quebec, Canada I worked there four years after finishing high school, and this winter my desire to learn about animal husbandry brought me to a little farm in British Columbia where I learned to make cheese in the most natural way possible. Workshop: Natural Cheese Making For Beginners
  • STACEY DOLL:  Is President of the Root to Rise board. She has a degree in Urban and  Regional Planning, has led sustainability, climate and energy programs around the state, and is a permaculture educator and consultant. Stacey currently teaches permaculture courses at Green Mountain College and Colby Sawyer College and with other permaculture colleagues, formed Root to Rise in the winter of 2017 to provide hands-on learning and experiential education in permaculture throughout our communities.  Workshop: Roots To Rise: Applying Permaculture in Local Communities
  • NEBESNA FORTIN was born and raised in an ecovillage called la Cité Écologique in Québec, Canada. Since 2010 I have been working as an outreach program coordinator, particularly around projects for interns and visitors of la Cité Écologique in Québec. In 2014, I took part of an EDE course in Findhorn. Since then, I have been planning and facilitating an EDE each summer. My passion is to connect people, projects and networks to share the best tools that can support the transition toward respectful, fulfilling, sustainable lifestyles that invite communities to develop their full potential. Title: Ecovillage Ecosystem in a Global Network   
  • ANN-MARIE JACKSON: has been a practitioner of herbal medicine since 2002, a Massage therapist since 2007, and teaching about medicinal mushrooms since 2014. She holds a Bachelor’s in Anthropology from University of New Hampshire class of 2000.  Workshop: A wild mushroom’s walk and discussion
  •  REX JAMES:     

    Workshop:  Residential Solar 101

  • JESSE LABBE-WATSON: is the is the primary organizer for the Midcoast Permaculture Network which hosts workshops, meetups and potlucks. He is also the owner of, Midcoast Permaculture, a permaculture landscape design/build and sustainability consultation firm and serves as president of the board of PAN – the Permaculture Association of the Northeast. Workshop: The Art of Creating A Permie Business
  • PATTY LOVE:   owner of Barefoot Edible Landscape & Permaculture and Founder of Rochester Permaculture Center, is a permaculture designer, teacher, consultant, and researcher based in the Genesee River Valley (Rochester, NY).  She is also the organizer of Genesee Valley/Rochester Permaculture and Resilience Network and serves as the Board Coordinator for PAN.   Workshop: The Art of Creating A Permie Business

  • LEON MALAN: Is a faculty member at Colby-Sawyer College where he teaches topics in sustainable food and farming and permaculture design. He manages the college’s permaculture garden and food forest and he engages students in applied permaculture designs on campus.   Workshop: Home Gardens in the Caribbean: What can we learn from the tropics?

  • DR. SUZANNE MOBERLY, EdD :   Dr. Moberly first became interested in ecovillage life when she was conducting research for her doctoral dissertation:  Walden III or Cult: Examining the Organizational and Structure of Life Within Contemporary Permaculture Communities.  Her primary interest was to determine the correlation between individual well-bring and a sense of one’s self within a larger community structure. What she discovered, however, was much more involved. 

    Dr. Moberly is the Director of the Child Welfare Academy for the State of New Hampshire, which provides pre-service and in-service education for the New Hampshire Division of Children, Youth and Families staff; foster and adoptive parents; and residential care providers throughout the State of NH.  The lessons she has learned through her experience within the various ecovillages has been extremely helpful in understanding the process of creating community within organizations and within a learning environment.   Workshop: Does Living a Sustainable Lifestyle Make You Happy?

  • MICHAEL PHILLIPS:   Is renowned for helping people grow healthy fruit using herbal protocols. The “community orchard movement” that he helped found at GrowOrganicApples.com  provides a full immersion into the holistic approach to orcharding. His Lost Nation Orchard is part of a medicinal herb farm in northern New Hampshire. He is the author of The Apple Grower and The Holistic Orchard which recently received Garden Book of the Year honors from the American Horticultural Society. Michael teamed up with his wife Nancy to write The Herbalist’s Way, to explore the many paths whereby herbalists find their green niche. His work has been compared with Sir Albert Howard and J.I. Rodale’s classic books on organic gardening. Michael’s latest, Mycorrhizal Planet: How Fungi and Plants Work Together to Create Dynamic Soils, will rock you!   Workshops:  Orchard Ecosystem &  Fungal Consciousness  
  • NANCY PHILLIPS:    Is a Community Herbalist, Holistic Health Coach, and Yoga Instructor. She loves blending these healing paths together to support people in their health, wholeness and happiness. Her work includes coaching individual clients, small groups and leading weekend retreats. She and her husband, Michael, own Heartsong Farm and Healing Center, an herb farm, organic orchard, and educational center in the northern mountains of NH. Nancy and Michael are co-authors of The Herbalist’s Way: Sharing Plant Medicines with Family and Community. herbsandapples.com   Workshop: Ten Herbs for Family Health
  • AVIRAM ROZINIs the Founder and International Director of Sadhana Forest, a vegan volunteer-based organization focused on creating long-term plant-based food security through environmental restoration. Sadhana Forest trains local people in India, Haiti and Kenya in the use of water-saving irrigation techniques and provides them with free seedlings to plant drought-resistant, indigenous, food-bearing trees around their homes. Every year the organization's India, Haiti and Kenya 100% vegan centers host and train a total of over 1,500 volunteers, students, and interns from around 50 countries. Aviram and his family live in the experimental township of Auroville, South India, since 2002 where their dedication to veganism and their low-carbon footprint lifestyle have inspired many. He is a board member of the Foundation for World Education and the first council member from India in the Global Restoration Council.   Workshop: Reforestation and food security in arid areas in India, Haiti and Kenya
  • CELESTA VAILLANT was born and raised in an ecovillage named La Cité Ecologique in NH and here we have 4 acres of organic gardens that provide lots of vegetables in the summer, but not much in the winter. So I wanted to find a way to provide vegetables for our community all year long. That's when I discovered aquaponics. From there I started doing research and got even more interested in the concept of aquaponics. In 2016, we built a 1,225 sf greenhouse, which we isolated to last winter. It took us a while to get it running, but it is finally producing for the 80 people in our community all year long. Title: Aquaponic System & How It Can Be Used To Create Community
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