A Balanced Middle Way
The current education-information system will become a more flexible entity where cultural exchange between educators, students and stakeholders establish communication that precludes a deeper reading of the Book of Nature and the practical application of ideas quarried from that reading. Through a mixture of theoretical and participatory hands-on teaching and learning in the art of The Three Epochs and Permaculture methods, a responsive, learning dynamic results. By delivering a systemic approach such as The Three Epochs to a larger and more diverse audience, an ethically balanced “middle way” approach to land use leads to a sustainability “mind-set”, viable for a large cross-section of producers, educators and students.
The systems approach is all-inclusive. If the underlying “law of unity” is constantly at the threshold of our thinking in education, research and communication, we will always be called to look for what brings us, and nature, together in harmony, rather than the separation from the natural world that most of the populace feels. This includes farmers and stakeholders who manage huge mechanized and mono-cultural corporate farms. They have “lost touch with the land “. By studying and applying this course in the ethics and principles of The Three Epochs and Permaculture we take a step closer to the stability of sustainability that we, in one way or another, all seek, for ourselves and for future generations.
The Three Epochs of Humanity and the Permaculture Certification Course seek to integrate
holistic education with all aspects of life and learning that promote personal self discovery in the natural world by:
-Encouraging self reflection on Nature
-Increasing and defining ecological and bioregional literacy
-Studying cultural and natural diversity
-Teaching global thinking and the spiritual understanding of the natural world
-Celebrating change, observing and studying the rhythms and evolution of Nature
-Creating sustainable designs for living within a region of study
-Recreating the life and folk ways of local prehistoric and historic cultures
-Intertwining environmental and ecological studies with our daily existence
“We must create designs for human settlements that incorporate principles inherent in the natural world in order to sustain human populations over a long span of time.” (John Todd)
The entire Permaculture Design Certificate course materials are included in this on-line course.
Permaculture is a copyrighted word of the Permaculture Institute of Australia. Graduates of the certificate course are permitted to use the word Permaculture in their choice of livelihood.
The Permaculture Design Certificate Course is a training utilizing Bill Mollison’s “Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual” as the essential text. The goal is to achieve a working understanding in ecologically-based site planning, design, implementation and management.
The Permaculture Designer’s Manual is the main course text. You will receive this book along with your registration.
Biological-Ecological Design Precepts (By John Todd, Creator of the “Living Machine”)
1. The living world is the matrix for all design
2. Design should follow, not oppose, the laws of life
3. Biological equity must determine design
4. Design must reflect bio-regionality
5. Projects should be based on renewable energy sources
6. Design should be sustainable through the integration of living systems
7. Design should be co-evolutionary with the natural world
8. Building and design should help heal the planet
9. Design should follow sacred ecology
As we study the development of human settlement throughout history we will utilize what we have learned by creating a final design that depicts an ecologically-biologically sound and sustainable rural, suburban or urban settlement, emphasizing zero-waste, circular models of development and energy integration. Through observation, creating maps, learning appropriate hand skills, problem solving initiatives, community building and working in design teams, we will come to know our site intimately and build settlements that are self-sustaining. By invoking intuition and practicing the arts of communication, advocacy, planning and management, and backwards thinking, where we start with the whole and move to particulars, we come to know ourselves and our personal and team creative process, intimately. Areas covered during the course include:
-Primitive living skills
-Pastoralism
-Settlement, village life-ways and folkways
-Map building and modeling
-Permaculture principles
-Concepts and themes in design
-The local ecosystem
-Forms of eco-gardening and farming
-Broad scale, bioregional site design
-The application of specific methods, laws and principles to design
-Pattern understanding and observation skills
-Climatic factors
-Plants and trees and their energy interactions
-Water: collection, storage, purification
-Soils
-Earth-working and earth resources
-Infrastructure and roads
-Zone and sector analysis
-Food forests and small animal husbandry, forest management
-Cropping and large animal husbandry
-Harvest and utility forests
-Natural forests
-Land and forest restoration
-Aquaculture
-Planning the homestead
-“Green” structures, ecological building practices
-Craftwork and chores, machinery
-“Natural” medicine
-Clothing
-Cooking and food preservation
-Equipment, tools, bio-fuels and vehicles
-Renewable energy, system design and implementation
-Energy conservation
-Biological waste management and recycling
-Strategies for different climates
-Urban and suburban strategies
-Small farm and garden management and marketing
-Project planning, budgets and timelines
-Office procedures
-Building and planning software
-Communications
-Emergency preparations, safety procedures
-Building codes
-Strategies of an alternative global nation
-Political, social, economic issues and solutions
-Designing public policy
-Designing sustainable economy
-Human settlement and local ecology
-Site selection, mapping and modeling
-Dividing, distributing, apportioning land
-Practical work on design
