Visiting Milkwood Permaculture farm
Past weekend my partner and I combined fun and study, and went for a visit to the Milkwood Permaculture farm. Not only was it a beautiful experience to leave the city and spend a weekend under the stars, but we also got to meet many amazing people, including Nick Ritar and Kirsten Bradley.
A blink of an eye and a lifetime later the course came to an end. Wow, what a journey, and I am not just saying it.
The party yesterday lit a fire within me, and I saw a whole other side of people I set side-by-side with throughout the course. People wrote poetry, sang, danced and told some very clever jokes. We laughed to tears, and I had a distinct feeling of “coming home.” It wasn’t just me, though. Today we completed the course by going around in the circle and each saying how we experienced the course, and what we plan to do in the future. Many people expressed the feeling of coming home and awe of being in the company of so many like-minded individuals. Hear hear.
“Permaculture is living. Everything before was waiting.” -Matt
“Walk in bare footed and say, ‘Stand with me. I don’t belong to anyone.’ And people will help you.” -Bill Mollison
“Education gives you huge power.” -Bill Mollison
So what’s next? Wherever the energy guides me. We’ll have to wait and see :).
Only one more sleep before the course is over…
Today there was excited buzz in the air, and it seemed like the group was slightly less focused on the lecture. The reason, I am guessing, is this afternoon’s session when we got to present our designs to the group. Many (most) of the people haven’t done a group assignment since school days, let alone stand up and talk about it. The pressure was on.
If this wasn’t enough, today is the last full day of the course, and it is set to conclude with a party at which everyone will have to present a talent, otherwise we don’t get our PC certificate! All of a sudden, the classroom and the lunch break were enlivened with people sitting in circles and sketching to prepare for their presentations. Music instruments made an appearance, women spinning Hoola Hoops on the lawn, didgeridoo and guitars. It was great! So cheerful, energetic and…very human.
The morning lecture discussed the risks of bush fires and how to survive them. If you are designing for a region with dry hot spells (like Melbourne region, for example), you will need to have a plan for bush fire shelter.
This is a photo of the paddock we are working with. As you can see, it’s mostly an open field sheltered by the surrounding buildings and a tiny amount of slope.
We did some homework and found an aerial view of the property on Google Maps and a campus map, which accurately outlines the surrounding structures.
Equipped with these tools, we set to work.
We set outside at the highest point of the paddock with a blackboard and a box of chalk, trying to fit in all the elements, but it was obvious that our design process was not very efficient…too many drivers and not enough focus…
Today Bill and Geoff shared information about what may be the main questions we all have. How do we fund all these wonderful ideas we’ve learned. How do we navigate community and government structures; how do we organize people for action. It was not a topic we expected from a Permaculture course, but it’s a very important one. It stirred up questions and lengthy discussions, skeptical gazes and hopeful eyes.
There are two types of community economies: formal economy and informal economy.