Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Transforming Spaces workshop at Symbiosis Gathering 2013

Ryan Rising of Rising Roots Design will be facilitating a workshop, storytelling, and dialogue at Symbiosis Gathering 2013 (www.SymbiosisGathering.com) of Transforming Spaces: implementing permaculture through direct action.  Symbiosis Gathering takes place September 19th through 23d in Oakdale, CA and will be hosting a permaculture intensive, Elementary Alchemy, before the gathering September 14th through 18th. 

Transforming Spaces workshop

This workshop will explore how we can act directly to change the world in which we live and transition our created environments, urban and otherwise, to be in greater balance with the earth's natural ecosystems. We will start with a story telling of direct actions over the past two years that have gone outside the realm of what is necessarily legal to create permaculture in the world around us; transitioning from systems based on resource importation and relationships of domination and capital to systems that embody symbiosis, mutual aid, and horizontal structures. From liberating busy city streets to allow the human movement of dance, to emancipating the earth below our feet for growing food, this conversation will explore the many ways in which we can create environments that foster community, ecology, and vitality.

Come hear stories from the occupy farm, renegade festivals, the struggle to save neighborhood gardens, and politically-active tent cities, and share some of your own. We will talk about future plans for a regional Village Building Convergence and the creation of greenhouses, plant nurseries, urban farms, and accessible kitchens in each and every square mile of the places we inhabit. Join in a dialogue around how each of us can create permaculture where you live, whether by creating a guerrilla garden in an abandoned lot near your home, or facilitating a skills and assets mapping of your whole town to connect people in a gift economy of food, medicine, and other needs and services. What can you think of outside the bounds of the current paradigms of hierarchy and capital? What is it you want to create? Come learn how to imagine, organize, and act together!

Some Notes from the August Meeting of the East Bay Permaculture Guild


Some Notes from the August Meeting of the East Bay Permaculture Guild
August 12th 7pm @ PLACE for Sustainable Living in Oakland, CA

BOOKS
-Vegetable Gardener's Guide to Permaculture 
--Christopher Shein 

PROJECTS
-PLACE for Sustainable Living in North Oakland is facilitating a place making project on the intersection where PLACE is located.  Look for their block party coming up on September 28th.  There will be a street mural painting and place building projects!
-In the Basque Country near Spain, visitor Ortzi Akizu Gardoki is co-creating a EcoPark called Ekogunea Ecopark.  Find more at ekogunea.net
-East Bay Co-Housing facilitator Raines Cohen just got back from 5 weeks touring European eco-villages; report backs and pictures to come
-Brennan will be facilitating earth bench and other natural building projects in San Francisco and needs volunteers; get in touch with him through www.earthbench.org to learn and volunteer on upcoming cobb, clay, straw, and plaster work projects 

EVENTS
-September? 6th, 7th, and 8th - ranch and farm-scale water development including springs, floating island, wetlands, etc. through David Cody
-Roberto Perez permaculture talks 
-Eric Toensmeir workshop coming up by Living Mandala
-Toby Hemenway teaching a course with Daly Acts in Petaluma 
--scholarships and work trades available 
---Toby Hemenway author of Gaia's Garden


NOTES ON PRESENTATION - REPORT BACK FROM ERIC TOENSMEIR WORKSHOP
-presenter has been working with Daly Acts 
--Daly Acts installed food forests at Petaluma City Hall; installed perennial polyculture; will be harvesting first Kiwi vines this year
-transforming problems into solutions
--lawns into gardens
---lawns waste water, resources (soil, space) 
---gardens create food, connections, diversity 
-mentioned Trathen's greywater system 
-MORE FOOD FORESTS INTO OUR URBAN SYSTEMS
--Occidental Arts and Ecology Center is far away 
---27 people took food forest workshop there 
---feeling of being grounded and safer there 
-a food forest is a garden modeled after a forest ecology 
-AGROFORESTRY 
--Eric Toensmeir is working with a corporation who is sequestering carbon, growing chestnuts, and coppicing them 
--Land Institute pioneering perennial food crops in Kansas 
-(lawns are the largest irrigated crop in the US!, second is corn)
--Sunflowers
--Wheat Germ
--Wheat Grass 
--Sorghum 
---perennializing these four crops
--we need nuts, fats, oils for a balanced diet 
-Eric Olson's permaculture skills center 
--sunflowers from Chevron action came from here
---organized by Urban Tilth 
COPPICING
-Black Locust is coppiced on a 6 year cycle
-looking for the diameter of pole you need for your use
--such as for tool handles, structure poles, etc. 
-indigenous practice (Tending the Wild?) 

WEBSITES
-Perennial Solutions: perennialsolutions.org 
--Eric Toensmeir has a website of plant guilds 
--"All Nitrogen Fixers are not Created Equal": article by Eric Toensmeir 
-Apios Institute: ApiosInstitute.org
-Plants For A Future: pfaf.org 

PLACE MAKING 
-BAY AREA PLACE MAKING WEBSITE is in the works!
-Placemaking Facilitation
--Ask the people in the neighborhood:
---What's the issue?
---What's the root problem of that issue?
---What's the basic solutions?
---How is that solution developed/embodied?
---What are the effects of solving that issue?