Permaculture Design Certification and Apprenticeship

July 15 to August 14, 2014 - 4 weeks
A unique mentoring journey with Warren Brush at Casitas Valley Farm and Creamery Carpinteria, California, USA
Cost: $2600
www.casitasvalley.com www.permaculturedesign.us ana@regenerativeearth.com

Join international educator and permaculture practitioner, Warren Brush, the co-founder of Wilderness Youth Project, Quail Springs Permaculture, Sustainable Vocations, Regenerative Earth, True Nature Design, Casitas Valley Farm, and Casitas Valley Creamery, for an inspiring journey into the heart of applied permaculture. This mentoring and hands-on experiential journey, with a small number of students, will weave together a full Permaculture Design Certification course (recognized by the international Permaculture Research Institute), financial permaculture, nature awareness, and community and cultural regeneration.

This learning journey will encompass the full curriculum of the internationally recognized permaculture design course that is creatively delivered through a mentoring journey with Warren and his family and friends, storytelling, lectures, hands-on farm experience on a working farm, and visiting other local permaculture and community sites of interest including Quail Springs Permaculture. While residing on our family farm you will have an opportunity to combine learning and working into a unique dynamic and living classroom, gain valuable skills in permaculture farm planning and implementation, earn your Permaculture Design Certification, grow in your understanding of nature and be steeped in an exciting diverse business that is showing how permaculture can be financially viable.

Casitas Valley Farm is located in a beautiful valley six miles from Carpinteria, California (and the ocean at Rincon Point which is one of the best surf spots on the south coast) and is just 16 miles south of Santa Barbara, California. It is situated in a small inland valley 700 feet above sea level and has sub-tropical growing conditions and is a borderline arid landscape with just an average of 12 inches of rain per year. This family friendly farm sits amidst oak groves, 1600 avocado trees, 160 apple trees, 300 persimmon trees, walnuts, blackberries, aloe vera, apuntia, ginger, fig, citrus, along with many other plants and trees, heritage pigs, chickens, goats, a roadside farm stand, and a legal, fully operational artisanal cheese creamery.

Included in the cost of tuition is:

Camping in the shade of the persimmon orchard, basic healthy food staples, course instruction, mentoring, experiential learning, a possibility to creatively contribute to the farm vision, nurture and appreciation.

Living the Learning Journey

This four week intensive Permaculture Design Certification and

Apprenticeship will include:

Living the Learning Journey

I.

II.

The Beginning Place

1. Story, Community Dynamics, Surrender, Council

2. Introduction to Permaculture, its influences, history, principles, ethics and issues

   of energy and sustainability

3. Creative problem solving, individual learning styles, parallel thinking, and group

   dynamics

Ecological Literacy, Patterns and Processes for Sustainable Living

1. Basic earth sciences, patterns in nature, patterns in business, patterns in community

2. Landform and landscape reading, water’s role in both landscape and political- scapes.

3. Soil as a living system, business as a soil building enterprise, composting and broad acre application

4. Global climate systems, climate weirding and its influence on health, business and community stability, biomes, and microclimates

III. Sustainable Design, Productive Ecology and Healthy Economy

1. Design processes and methodologies applied to homes, farms, business and conservation

2. Zone 1: appropriate technology, energy and resource efficient house design, site planning, home-scale economics, micro-earthworks, garden design, harvesting, adding value, long- term storage, seed saving, farm to table pathways

3. Zone 2: Livestock, orchards, food forestry, beekeeping, export economics and production and waste stream planning, community food stability

4. Zone 3: Main crops, windbreaks, long term financial viability, market gardening, forage systems, aquaculture, broad scale earthworks, horizontal and vertical farm planning, farm product sales strategies and micro-farm-enterprises.

5. Zone 4: Tree crops, grazing and foraging systems, primary production and value adding, community relationships and integration, integrated pest management, sustainable vocations

6. Zone 5: Nature integration and stewardship, conservation, erosion mitigation, wild harvesting, fire mitigation and planning, visioning

IV.Bioregional Stability, Social Ecology, Family, and Financial Modelling

1. Transition planning, community wealth, cultural regeneration, legal structures, land access and community dynamics and projects

2. Financial permaculture, investment strategies, economic capital to natural capital

C. International development for a sustainable world

V. Wrapping the Bundle
A. Creating peace, inherent gifts, envisioning, lighting the fire, and “letting go of the

lamp-post”

Daily activities may include:

• Solo sit spot routine

• Shared meals

• Farm chores

  • tending to animals

  • watering

  • harvesting

  • planting

  • saving the harvest

    •

• Work at the farm stand

• Tend to orchards

• Process farm products for sale

• Cheesemaking

• Contribute to a gratitude circle

  Hands-On projects planned in our time together include:

• Building a greywater system

• Learn to make and market cheese in our artisanal creamery

• A “cob” natural building project

• Build a pig shelter

• Compost and compost tea making

• Build an egg mobile

• Planting and tending various annuals, perennial shrubs, herbs and trees

• Create a hugelkultur planting bed

• Plant a food forest

• Implement an earthworks

• Make a top-bar bee hive

• Make a compost toilet and “tippy tap”

• Complete both a holistic and system design

Living the Learning Journey

We are looking for people with or willing to develop the following characteristics:

• Willingness to learn

• Expresses positivity and gratitude

• Desires community and mutual interdependence

• Have a sense of self-worth

• Interest in being an active vessel of culture

• Willing to work within the ethics of permaculture

• Love of nature

• A joyous work ethic

• Be truly helpful

• Have an appreciation for family and friends

  To apply for this Apprenticeship please email Ana Brush ana@regenerativeearth.com for the application along with a letter of interest or you may call her at 805-649-8179. She will send you a registration package and explain how to become a part of this exciting learning journey.

  Permaculture is a conscious integrated design system based on ecological principles that create resource efficient and productive human environments. Permaculture provides a framework for consciously designed landscapes that mimic the patterns and relationships found in nature. These systems yield an abundance of shelter, water, energy, and food for the provision of local needs that provide diversity, stability, and resilience for local populations.