San Luis Obispo:
We returned to Four Elements Farm in June for another great Two Week Design Course.
Toby Hemenway joined us as guest instructor,
Joe Bullock made a surprise appearance, Travis Semmes of
Mobile Solar Power brought one of his transportable solar generators to class, Tony Kelly of
Morro Bay Bees gave a presentation on topbar beekeeping (and later returned to bring the farm its own topbar hives!),
Ken Foster came by, Mikel Robertson of
Green Goods gave a tour of his handbuilt cob and earthbag home and Caroline Duell of
Elemental Herbs spoke about her experience creating an ethical organic body products business. Want more? Check out student Derek Leong's slideshow of the course
here.
Santa Cruz: Thanks to the Trout Gulch crew for hosting our 2cnd annual PDC. In addition to being a talented group of artists and animators, they're also working together at their site to test and implement a variety of natural building materials and techniques.
As the course wrapped up, students decided to continue their work together by starting a micro-loan program. Opportunities to learn about animals and permaculture in the broad landscape continue at the property of one of the class members as well.
Los Angeles:
Beyond the Garden... We've seen a dramatic increase in the design team projects moving from the
theoretical to the actual: teams worked on greening the Ritz Carlton in
Marina del Rey, designed ways for schools and their local communities
to collaborate on improving their local environment, consulted with a
neighborhood burger joint on greening its operations and developed a
business plan for a salvage boutique and designers guild for local
economic opportunities. Eric Knutzen of
HomeGrown Evolution and Ferris Kawar of
Greenopia stopped by for a visit as well as Autumn and Lisa from the
Echo Park Time Bank -a project we're proud to say was inspired by one of our Design Course graduates.
The current session culminates in September. We're pleased to have started a new collaboration with
Project Butterfly which hosted our first 2 weekends, thrilled to hold class at the
Environmental Charter High School in Lawndale (a site that was a project for one of our past class design teams) and appreciate returning once again to
FarmLab for our class finale.
Coming this October we'll start the
new session at the
Heaven on Earth Holistic Healing Center near Hollywood. Hope to see you there!
The Permaculture Institute & The Center for Pattern Literacy...As
always, EarthFlow works in close collaboration with Scott Pittman of
The Permaculture Institute and Toby Hemenway of
The Center for Pattern Literacy... this year, we completed another broad-scale permaculture
course at Wind River Ranch in Las Vegas, New Mexico as well as urban
courses in Portland and in Seattle.
Author (and senior instructor for EarthFlow), Toby Hemenway has just released the new edition of 
