Alaska Permaculture Design Course, Fall 2012

Day 10

August 13th 

Ageya Wilderness Camp

Permaculture Design Course with Rico Zook and Cindee Karns 

Boy what a day yesterday was.  We squeezed in as much as possible with only a few minutes to spare (in more ways than one.)  We left Ageya at 8:15 to head to Neil and Kyra's place.  Neil has had a PDC, but grew up on a production farm in the mid-west and Kyra spent time in the peace corp.  Their views were pretty opposite as far as gardening goes.  It was funny.

NEIL'S HIGH TUNNEL

KYRA'S HIGH TUNNEL  (zone 54)

I've always heard opposites attract!  The very best part though was their AWESOME strawberries.  They were so generous to let us just graze in their strawberry patch.  YUM!

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After lunch we came back to AGEYA for a hands on workshop about building a herbal spiral garden.  Rico did a lot of the work, but the rest of us worked hard too, collecting boulders, digging dirt, and suggesting the right rocks.  

 T
 The trick was to move the spiral higher and higher leaning the rocks in toward the center.

We hat to stand back and observe to make sure we didn't leave any flat sides.  A couple times we had to re-do a section. 

The finished herbal spiral garden

 When we were finished, we placed a flame-shaped rock at the top and spoke some words  of gratitude.

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Only 30 minutes after finishing the garden, we packed up dinner and headed to Lasse Holmes' cabin in the woods.  It was a 4 wheel drive only 10 mile rutted dirt trail to get there.  We managed just fine and when we saw the view, we realized why he lived way out there. 

Lasse's Straw/Clay House

 Lasse is a natural builder.  Natural building is all about building with the materials we have around us, not about building GREEN.  Green building is more about mechanical systems and manufactured pieces, not making the building materials yourself.  What he has built and is building is quite amazing. 

Here's Lasse starting our campfire.

Building with straw and some clay bricks

Building with lots of clay and a little straw or cow parsnip bricks.

 After Lasse was just getting warmed up and after we had all sampled some of his homemade barley, yarrow and goldenrod beer, it started raining.  And then it rained more.  And then some more.  And then we couldn't see the mountains.  And very politely Lasse told us if we wanted to get home that night, we'd have to leave in 10 minutes.  So, we high tailed it home.  It was a very steep slick 10 miles, but all of us made it back, saddened that we didn't get to hear the rest of the tour, but eager to learn more.  He wet our appetite for building naturally.  :-)

It was a very full day and we were all happy to crawl into our sleeping bags that night.