Workshop Schedule and Descriptions (remember, this schedule is still subject to possible changes!)
-- click here to find our Presenter Bios!
SESSION 1: 9:30 - 10:45
Climate, Water, Soil and Hope: A Whole Systems Approach to Thinking about How Landscapes Function
- Didi Pershouse
How can we create healthy landscapes that turn atmospheric carbon into a water-holding, climate-cooling “soil carbon sponge”? Didi Pershouse of the Soil Carbon Coalition, author of the Ecology of Care and Understanding Soil Health and Watershed Function will lead participants through several investigations that demonstrate the biological processes and principles involved in the creation of spongy landscapes that soak up, store, filter, and slowly release clean abundant water and provide resiliency in the face of flooding and drought. A few of the questions we will answer are: How does soil biology influence water issues such as runoff, water storage, and filtration? How does soil carbon accumulate, and what is its relationship to atmospheric carbon, ocean acidification, and global warming? What are the principles necessary to grow healthy productive landscapes that absorb and filter water? This workshop is great for educators, farmers, rural and urban planners, conservation groups, policy makers, and anyone interested in learning simple steps towards creating a better future.
Intro to Permaculture
- Liz Kelly
This workshop is an interactive introduction to permaculture ethics, principles, and practices. It will introduce permaculture design and describe how to take a holistic approach to creating systems that are sustainable and ecologically harmonious (whether you're a homeowner, a renter, an urban dweller, or a rural inhabitant).
Funding for Community Permaculture Projects
- Leigh Cameron and Karen Ganey
How can we access funding to expand our permaculture efforts to the neighborhood and community scale? Join us for an interactive conversation about funding sources and opportunities for community-based permaculture projects as well as how “social permaculture” organizing strategies can help you build a stronger proposal. We’ll discuss strategies for fundraising including traditional grant writing as well as alternative fundraising models such as crowd-funding and shared-gifting. You will learn about funding and resources available through the Grassroots Fund that are available to community permaculture projects TODAY and specifically for projects that are focusing on social equity and justice. We’ll also share inspiring examples of community permaculture projects across the region.
Preparing Your Herbal Apothecary for Cold & Flu Season
- Jonah Roberts
Join Jonah of Unity Mountain Herbs for a fun foray into learning to prevent and treat the common cold and flu with herbal medicine using primarily herbs local to our New Hampshire wilds and gardens. This class will be rich with demos and will offer you a list of herbs and preparations you can stock your Apothecary with, along with the knowledge of how to use them, so you are ready for the cold season ahead.
Homemade Games
- Jill Schock
People all over the world have been playing games for thousands of years. Come make and play some games that come from many cultures and used simple materials! Kids of all ages are welcome, most games are geared toward school aged kids K-8.
Designing the Self
- Valerie Piedmont
“Designing the Self” draws on Permaculture Principles to plot out a course to our happiest, most alive, intelligent, and beneficial relationship to ourselves, each other and the universe. Join in this fun workshop for skill building and the sense of being part of a loving, caring community.
Designing Ecosystems with Farm Animals
- Marty Castriotta
This workshop will explore the coevolution of productive ecosystem design with farm animals. Depending upon your own site and goals, farm animals might be the perfect components to integrate into your permaculture design. Whether it be small animals like rabbits, ducks or chickens or big ones like sheep, cows and pigs, this workshop will help you create a lens by which to determine how to best harness their wild tendencies for work and, in turn, how to best co-create the environment that suites their needs and desires.
Mushroom Foray
- David Wichland
In this workshop Dave will discuss the mushroom life cycle and how to forage for mushrooms, including what to look for in their habitat and how to safely go about identification. We will foray and ask people to bring a basket, knife and favorite id book. We will bring back the mushrooms and present them on a table.
SESSION 2: 11:00 - 12:15
Resilient Leadership for the Permaculture Movement: Thinking Together, Listening Deeply, Moving Forward
- Didi Pershouse
Anyone working towards making things go better around them is a leader, whether their efforts are recognized or not. How do we extend and deepen the connections we have at these gatherings in order to effectively grow the Permaculture
movement and lead society towards a better place? How can we effectively back up leadership from marginalized groups? Didi Pershouse, Author of The Ecology of Care: Medicine, Agriculture, Money, and the Quiet Power of Human and
Microbial Communities will show effective ways to build strong, dynamic networks of support that know how to “lead from behind” as well as out front.
We will also discuss ways to:
- Work in public (or hidden) leadership roles without burning out
- Facilitate meetings where people listen to each other with interest and synergize their ideas and strategies for everyone’s benefit.
- Ensure that your community or organization grows leadership and management that is diverse, vibrant and resilient.
Local Solutions: Building a Food Hub
- Hanna Flanders & France Hahn
Food Hubs represent a growing national trend to bring food production back to the local level.
At the core of any food hub is the idea that local food production is an effective conduit for personal health, community vitality, sustainable agriculture, and prosperous local economies. Food Hubs, however take many different shapes. In this session, we will explore what food hubs are, all the different ways they can function, and how they relate to sustainability and permaculture. We will explore where New Hampshire stands in this emerging world of food hubs by investigating key examples of hubs in the granite state. We will focus on the Kearsarge area’s own living example of a Hub, the Kearsarge Food Hub, specifically looking at how it developed, where it is now, and what it sees as challenges and solutions within our local network. Come explore what food hubs are all about and learn how you can be a part of this important movement!
Integrating Permaculture and Traditional Landscaping: Design, Install and Maintenance
- Sophie Viandier
How does Permaculture become a commonplace practice? As designers, homeowners, teachers and students, we Permies ask ourselves this question a lot. Fortunately, established gardens are everywhere in New England and there are plenty of lawns to be converted and forests to be enhanced. The landscape and fine gardening industries employ over one million workers with an annual revenue of more than $76 billion in the United States. By tapping into these sectors, Permaculture can become better understood as an option for beautiful, legible and low-maintenance gardens—not to mention the potential for the on-site grocery, medicine cabinet, and wildlife haven. Please join me to explore design, installation and maintenance techniques for newand existing gardens and landscapes.
Embodying Permaculture
- Stacey Doll
For many, permaculture is a design tool for regenerating our natural landscapes and gardens, yet to be an effective change agent in the world, permaculturist can also embody the principles and ethics in their patterns, relationships, work and lifestyle. Join Stacey for an interactive exploration of embodying permaculture and placing the SELF at the center of this transformative movement. Workshop will include interactive exercises, exploration and journaling, and mindfulness practices.
Storytelling
- Hears Crow
Join our special traditional storyteller Hears Crow for Tales from the Longhouse, a delight for all ages!
Unconventional Composting
- Val White
Everything organic can be composted to build soil. So why does so much organic matter still find its way to the trash? There are many simple, creative, convenient, and labor saving ways to compost everything. Join us in the garden to share in some of these wonderful methods that everyone, from apartment dweller to land owner, can use with ease.
Wild Herbs and Edibles Plant Walk
- Karen Tuininga
Take a walk with us around the museum grounds and let's see what kinds of useful plants we can identify together! We'll keep an eye out for medicinal and edible plants, and talk about some of their uses.
Killing Fruit and Nut Trees in Vermont
Buzz Ferver
In my search for suitable fruit and nut trees in Vermont I have planted, studied, and eliminated trees not hardy enough for Zone 4 (-25 degrees F. with no snow cover). I will talk about the historical background of nuts and fruits in Zone 4, and about the survivors to date.
SESSION 3: 2:00 - 3:15
The Power of Renewed Localism
- Neil Nevins
How can we regenerate a more permanent and self-reliant local community? This presentation will focus on the work of MainStreet BookEnds of Warner and the 501(c)(3) non-profit foundation, MainStreet Warner, Inc. in helping to improve the quality of life in their community by demonstrating the practices of a regenerative approach to building and maintaining more self-reliance and security in energy production, the development of economic resources, and protection of the local ecology, while enhancing the cultural and traditional resources of Warner and the surrounding area. The Jim Mitchell Community Park will be used as a model that can be applied in other communities utilizing the principles of:
- Efficient Use of Land, Resources, and Investments in a Greener Infrastructure
- Foster the Traditional Character of Warner
- Incorporate a Mix of Uses Enhancing Social and Cultural Capital and Ecological Literacy
- Protect Environmental Quality
- Involve the Community
GALA Sustain-a-Raiser
- Josh Arnold
Learn about the GALA Sustain-a-Raiser program and explore the opportunity of similar initiatives. Global Awareness Local Action (GALA) created the Sustain-A-Raiser Starter Kit after having great success organizing these “raisers” for a number of years in our local community. We began receiving requests for Raisers outside of our geographical reach so decided to invest in this Starter Kit as a tool these groups could utilize to launch their own Raisers. The initiative was inspired and informed by permablitzes, energy raisers, crop mobs, etc.
Sustain-A-Raiser is designed to engage audiences that are new to concepts of sustainability, resilience, and permaculture. We focus on the “low hanging fruit” of appropriate technologies like raised garden beds, compost bins, rain barrels, clotheslines, etc., as opposed to implementing full permaculture design. Essentially the Starter Kit offers a turn-key, replicable, community service and team building project for any school group, civic organization, business employee team, or Transition group.
Gleaning Resources for Permaculture
- Laurie Lockwood
There’s treasure everywhere! Learn about gleaning nearby resources for permaculture projects and needs such as: waste lumber and sawmill slabs, wood chips and shavings, bark and leaves, brush, stone, wool skirtings, stable manure, old windows, and free plants.
Fermentation Station: Misos, Tempeh, and More
- Bret Ingold
A chance to talk about, taste and witness some less common, slightly more involved, fermentations. We will go over the equipment needed, a little of the history and heritage, resources available, and sample a variety of fermented foods. At the end we will have a chance for questions and a chance for other home fermentors to share their tips, tricks and excitement.
Backwoods Hill Farming: Living Off the Land & Off the Grid
- Ben Dobrowsky, Kate Dobrowski
This presentation will outline Greenhill Collective Farm, the people who work it, and how permaculture has influenced the small certified organic family farm. The workshop will engage participants with an interactive component that will inspire you to take action on your own dreams and aspirations.
Storytelling
- Hears Crow
Join our special traditional storyteller Hears Crow for Tales from the Longhouse, a delight for all ages!
Hand-Scale Hugelkulture Mound Building for Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum
Garden--A community work blitz!
- Jen Close
Experience the creation of a hugel mound start to finish. We'll get a good look at the layers that go into this great method of building soil fertility, increasing water-holding capacity, and maximizing surface growing area. This simple technique produces beautiful and functional raised beds while using up fallen and rotting branches, trees, and stumps gathered from the property woodline. Let's move around, work our bodies and minds, create a lasting garden-gift for
our amazing 2017 host site, get a little dirty and have a little fun!
This hugel mound installation is a component of Jen's permaculture design project for the Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum property.
Goat Milking & Cheesemaking
- Shaunna Bulcock
Join Shaunna for a demonstration of milking a goat and making a simple farmer’s cheese.
SESSION 4: 3:30 - 4:45
Landscape to Protect Water Quality
- Ruth Axelrod
Clean, non-salt water is a precious and limited resource even here in New England. Our choices in designing and managing our landscapes—particularly our farms and gardens—affect its quality and availability. Learn about the latest science and practices to keep it clean and plentiful. Be a steward of our waters.
Brewing Beers and Meads
- Dakota White
Join Dakota to learn how you can get started brewing your own beers and meads at home! She will cover the most basic and some more intermediate concepts and steps in the brewing process, including: water, sugar sources (different types of grains, the malting process, conversion of starch to sugar, as well as how to use honey, fruit juices and cane sugars), yeast, and fermentaton vessels. She will discuss how to make extract beers and a very simple mash infusion for making partial extract or all grain beers. New England is host to many species of herbs, trees, and mushrooms which can be used for brewing - learn how to find or grow them, how to harvest them, and what their special uses and properties might be.
Creating a Food Forest
- Colin Nevins
Join Colin for a discussion about his personal experience in the early stages of creating a “food forest”, connecting human habitats with wild ones, and facilitating a more diverse and “regenerative” landscape that will require little maintenance over time.
Composting With Worms
- Joan O'Connor
Join us at this informational session and learn how you can create rich compost all year round! Joan will show you how to set up a worm composting system and teach you what you need to know to get started yourself, at home.
A Children’s Guide to Traditional Planting Methods
- Katie Devoid
A workshop for children and their caregivers to learn about traditional Native American planting practices, followed by a hands-on craft project and traditional games.
Designer's Lounge
- Hosted by the Permaculture Association of the Northeast
Check out some of our designers’ work, and enjoy informal discussions with the designers themselves. This is an opportunity to network, socialize, and ask questions - don’t miss it!
Chickens on the Permaculture Homestead
- Laurie Lockwood
Learn how to keep chicken feed costs down and health, happiness and productivity up with permaculture plants and local resources. We will talk about integrating chickens into your system, with emphasis on using homegrown feed to reduce/eliminate the grain bill; and will also discuss breeds, housing, free range, predators, and more.
Sing it Together: Building community through group song
- Kristin Ingold
Singing experience is not required, if you can talk you can sing! Making beautiful and meaningful sound is our natural birthright! Group singing brings people together in primal, ancient ways that not only increase feelings of joy and communion, but also heighten our awareness of interconnection with all life. Kristin will lead the group in learning a variety of multicultural music that nourishes the soul, enhances community and gives back to the earth. Together you will co-create a one-of-a-kind musical experience!
Mushroom Plugging Demo
- David Wichland
Learn the basics to propagating your own mushrooms. Dave will demonstrate techniques for growing mushrooms on logs and stumps and go over what varieties are best suited for your situation. This workshop will include a totem demo and a log demo.
AND - Tours of the Mt. Kearsarge Indian Museum available each session
AND - Admission to The Little Nature Museum
FUN ALL DAY!!
