Nonprofit Aggregator: Catalogue for Philanthropy: Greater Washington

This post is a reprint of a post that originally appeared at College Bound.

This post is a reprint of a post that originally appeared at Accokeek Foundation.

The term, Permaculture, was coined by Bill Mollison, an Australian scientist, research professor, and author, who borrowed the concept from the book title, Tree Crops, a Permanent Agriculture, written in 1929 by Virginian, J. Russell Smith, a geographer, conservationist, and Wharton School of Business economics professor.

A culture can not survive without a permanent, or sustaining, form of agriculture.  

written by Patricia Ceglia, Permaculture Designer and Instructor

We can all become producers as well as consumers. Permaculture Design is a methodology for creating human habitats that produce more of our daily needs for food, medicine, water, energy, shelter, waste cycling and fiber. Permaculture Design is a process for managing your land and dwelling to be highly productive in an ecological manner. By making relationships between design components, we expand efficiency and create a living system that regenerates itself, rather than depletes itself. The result is increased security and harmony.

I first discovered Permaculture in 1990, after a year of searching for a more ethical design approach than that which I was practicing as a young architect. My boss had just asked me to design a gigantic strip shopping center with a parking lot as large as a football field (not the glamorous type of building I was used to designing as a college student). So I attended Bill Mollison’s workshop at San Xavier Indian Reservation near Tuscon, AZ and was hooked.  

Original design created by Permacutlure Design student.

Mollison was inspired by his childhood experience growing up in Tasmania, where he lived next door to aboriginal people. He had the unique opportunity to observe their lifestyle, and later compare it to that of his western culture. He noticed that natives did not live in a true wilderness, but rather cultivated their forest ecosystem. If they observed an animal or fish dwindling in numbers, they stopped hunting it until it recovered. If a tree species started dying off, they collected its seeds and planted them. Mollison’s experience eventually led him to direct his life path to collecting and sharing universal indigenous knowledge as applied ecology.  

What do all native cultures have in common? They practice a behavior code of ethics, making decisions that ensure their own survival, and that of all species. We are all descendant of indigenous peoples. We can learn how to become native to a place, wherever we are, by adopting life-supporting ethics; by becoming intimately familiar with our land and natural resources; and by evaluating our daily needs, planning for the long term, and thinking creatively.

With his graduate student, David Holmgren, Mollison developed the current 2-week Permaculture Design Certificate curriculum so that it could be taught to anyone, anywhere, with no prerequisites for college education or specialized experience. The methodology contains a set of guiding ethics, a set of planning principles, mimicking those found in nature, and a toolkit of strategies for optimizing production. Permaculture Design is site-specific. A design for one site cannot be replicated elsewhere, because it is a response to its particular climatic, geographic conditions, and built structures.

The Accokeek Foundation is offering this 72-hour course over the span of 9 months this fall 2016 and next spring 2017. This time-frame enables participants to digest the comprehensive course content in between classes and produce a design of their own. Many students design their own properties. Others have designed more public habitats, such as schools and neighborhoods.  Here are a few examples:

• A multi-functional residential “Green Alley,” Baltimore, MD
• A vineyard, Colorado
• A low-income housing project, Pretoria, South Africa
• A multi-family townhouse complex, Annapolis, MD
• An organic CSA farm, Eastern Shore, MD
• A historic family vacation compound, southern France
• Public & private schoolyards in Hershey, PA, Baltimore & Rockville, MD, & Washington DC
• A suburban house, Accra, Ghana
• A “McMansion” & 26-Unit Apartment Building, Washington DC
• Adjacent empty lots converted to a farm/park/school garden, Baltimore, MD
• A rural mountain homestead, Montana
• A rural cohousing community, Libertytown, MD

Space is available for the 2016/2017 Permaculture Design Certificate Course, classes take place weekends at the Accokeek Foundation from 10 am to 6 pm, on the following dates:

• September 24–25: Bioregionalism, Ecosystems, Ethics & Principles, Design Process
• October 15–16: Patterns in Nature, Site Analysis, Water Harvesting, Soil & Gardening
• November 5–6: Nutrient Recycling, Design for Disaster, Social & Economic Permaculture
• March 25–26: Renewable Energy, Natural Building & Small-scale Technology
• April 22–23: Grains, Aquaculture, Forest Gardens, Guilds, Agroforestry, Animals, Cash Crops
• May 20–21: Forest Garden Installation, Final Design Presentations & Certificate Awards

More information on tuition and registration can be found here.

This post is a reprint of a post that originally appeared at Accokeek Foundation.

“With it being so hard to make a living as a farmer, is it just the will to do it that keeps people farming?”

That was just one of the many questions this year’s crop of 15 Agriculture Conservation Corps interns asked during a “Careers in Sustainable Agriculture” panel during the penultimate week of their internship.

2016 Agriculture Conservation Corps (ACC) interns listen to a panel discussion on “Careers in Sustainable Agriculture.”

The panel, which was set up as a Q&A session with Fred Tutman, a Patuxent Riverkeeper and farmer, and Garrett Graddy-Lovelace, a professor at American University focused on international agricultural policy, ended up serving as a chance for the students to delve deeper into everything they learned in the weeks leading up to it.

The Agriculture Conservation Corps (ACC) program offers an introduction to varying aspects of sustainable agriculture, from animal husbandry to production farming, all while providing a local historical context. And this year’s high school interns came to the Foundation through a partnership with the Prince George’s County Youth@Work Summer Youth Enrichment Program.

After spending a week each on subjects like permaculture, urban farming, homesteading, and careers in sustainable agriculture, the panel gave students the opportunity to learn how this internship could continue to serve them well after their final presentations on August 12. They discussed not only what a career in agriculture could look like, but how someone without a green thumb could advocate for the sustainable farming community and food justice through daily choices.

During the permaculture week, Patricia Ceglia taught a class on hugelkultur (a German growing technique), and the students were able to build their own hugel on the Ecosystem Farm. The urban farming week included a field trip to ECO City Farms, a brainstorming session for urban farming inventions (the winning idea involved using a warehouse to combine a food pantry with vertical growing space), and a vacant lot debate: urban farm versus housing development. Homesteading week involved hands-on activities, such as pottery making (using clay harvested on-site), canning jam, wool dyeing, and a National Colonial Farm homesteader relay against visiting students from ECO City Farms.

Working together to solve a problem in order to win the homesteading relay race.

While it’s unlikely that all 15 interns will pursue a career in sustainable agriculture after graduating, it was clear during the panel that much of what they learned has taken root in their lives in some way. As they discussed chemical and pesticide use, animal cruelty in factory farms, activism through the arts, and reclaiming the agriculture narrative, the theme of “finding what fascinates you” emerged, and the students were invited to think about all of the different ways they could play a part in the food system.

This final week, the “Capstone Week,” has challenged these 15 students to take what fascinates them and turn it into a project that combines the key elements covered during the internship. Their projects, which include a guinea fowl house on the National Colonial Farm, a sunflower maze on the Ecosystem Farm, and an updated European section of the Museum Garden, will remain as demonstration spaces for future interns and students interested in exploring sustainable agriculture.

Creating a Sunflower Maze on the Ecosystem Farm was one of three capstone projects completed by the interns this summer.

“Before, if asked where my food comes from, I also would have said the grocery store. But now I know there’s a lot of work that goes into it.”–Malik, ACC intern

This post is a reprint of a post that originally appeared at Accokeek Foundation.

“With it being so hard to make a living as a farmer, is it just the will to do it that keeps people farming?”

That was just one of the many questions this year’s crop of 15 Agriculture Conservation Corps interns asked during a “Careers in Sustainable Agriculture” panel during the penultimate week of their internship.

2016 Agriculture Conservation Corps (ACC) interns listen to a panel discussion on “Careers in Sustainable Agriculture.”

The panel, which was set up as a Q&A session with Fred Tutman, a Patuxent Riverkeeper and farmer, and Garrett Graddy-Lovelace, a professor at American University focused on international agricultural policy, ended up serving as a chance for the students to delve deeper into everything they learned in the weeks leading up to it.

The Agriculture Conservation Corps (ACC) program offers an introduction to varying aspects of sustainable agriculture, from animal husbandry to production farming, all while providing a local historical context. And this year’s high school interns came to the Foundation through a partnership with the Prince George’s County Youth@Work Summer Youth Enrichment Program.

After spending a week each on subjects like permaculture, urban farming, homesteading, and careers in sustainable agriculture, the panel gave students the opportunity to learn how this internship could continue to serve them well after their final presentations on August 12. They discussed not only what a career in agriculture could look like, but how someone without a green thumb could advocate for the sustainable farming community and food justice through daily choices.

During the permaculture week, Patricia Ceglia taught a class on hugelkultur (a German growing technique), and the students were able to build their own hugel on the Ecosystem Farm. The urban farming week included a field trip to ECO City Farms, a brainstorming session for urban farming inventions (the winning idea involved using a warehouse to combine a food pantry with vertical growing space), and a vacant lot debate: urban farm versus housing development. Homesteading week involved hands-on activities, such as pottery making (using clay harvested on-site), canning jam, wool dyeing, and a National Colonial Farm homesteader relay against visiting students from ECO City Farms.

Working together to solve a problem in order to win the homesteading relay race.

While it’s unlikely that all 15 interns will pursue a career in sustainable agriculture after graduating, it was clear during the panel that much of what they learned has taken root in their lives in some way. As they discussed chemical and pesticide use, animal cruelty in factory farms, activism through the arts, and reclaiming the agriculture narrative, the theme of “finding what fascinates you” emerged, and the students were invited to think about all of the different ways they could play a part in the food system.

This final week, the “Capstone Week,” has challenged these 15 students to take what fascinates them and turn it into a project that combines the key elements covered during the internship. Their projects, which include a guinea fowl house on the National Colonial Farm, a sunflower maze on the Ecosystem Farm, and an updated European section of the Museum Garden, will remain as demonstration spaces for future interns and students interested in exploring sustainable agriculture.

Creating a Sunflower Maze on the Ecosystem Farm was one of three capstone projects completed by the interns this summer.

“Before, if asked where my food comes from, I also would have said the grocery store. But now I know there’s a lot of work that goes into it.”–Malik, ACC intern