Days12 & 13

Ageya Wilderness Center 

Permaculture Design Course

Rico Zook/Cindee Karns, instructors

Downright boring to be a teacher now.  The design groups are going hot and heavy; fast and furious.  Tomorrow is the big day and party.  We've invited all sorts of people to come and hear the presentations.  The clients, owners/caretakers of Ageya will be here by SKYPE, while former students as well as those who have been so gracious by touring us around Homer, will be in attendance.  

Shower House Team

Here's what I've captured so far of the designs.  One is a shower house for the camp and the other is a modern Alaskan homestead meant to be an example for village kids to take back with them.

Bridget the writer----Shower House Team

Shower House design:  this is going to be awesome!

Modern Homestead Group

The Alaska Modern Homestead Team

Working hard!

Even Rico is designing!  It's going to be the coolest (very warm) high tunnel in all of Homer!

Day 11 

Ageya Wilderness Center 

Rico Zook/Cindee Karns, instructors

Permaculture Design Course

Today we were all dragging.  You can tell by the amount of photos I took.  We took a break after lunch to dig up our IMOs we buried last week.  We had 4 different bowls of food and put them in 2 different places.  The bowl of rice and the bowl of quinoa were buried close to the lodge.  The rice and banana bowl and the rice and quinoa bowl were buried out in the farm area.  The thought was that maybe there were more microorganisms over there.  Truth be told, there wasn't enough sun.  

So you can try this too, you bury a full bowl of rice for a week.  Cover it with another bowl the same size so that air can get in.  Be careful to not let the dirt get in, however.  

When you open it, there should be colorful bacterias on the rice.  Dump that rice in a PLASTIC or GLASS bowl and then add 2 cups of molasses.  

Stir it up well.  Cover the bowl with newspaper and put it in a warm dark place in your house.  Wait.  

We chose the rice without the fruit---it had lots more bacteria. 

This smells just like breakfast---fresh and edible after being buried in the cool Alaskan soil!

This is what we have sitting behind the stove.....waiting......waiting........

Tune in for the exciting conclusion of INDIGENOUS MICROORGANISMS and how to use them!

DAY TWO

Permaculture Design Course

Ageya Wilderness Center

Homer, Alaska

Excitement.  I couldn't quite contain myself.  After working a full year (our first meeting was last year at the Reap Fair) on putting this course together, we finally were all gathering!  Amazing!

Everyone, including Rico, our teacher, is doing it for almost nothing.  AND we had a generous gold miner donate money for scholarships so that it could happen.

We set up a tent village so that if a bear tried entering one tent, others would be around to assist!  

The female staff yurt----except for me---mine is the wall tent since I snore!  :-)

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. 

Day 9 

Ageya Wilderness Education Center 

Homer, Alaska 

DESIGN BEGINS

After standing back and watching the invisible structures of people and teams and how they work, their interests and abilities, Rico and I placed the student in design teams.  

The first activity was to get them to practice working together on something really silly, just to test out the waters. 

The scenario was that they crash landed in the Alaskan wilderness on their way to shoot an Alaskan Reality Show.  The camera was still intact as was the radio.  The TV network decided to drop in whatever they needed to survive for the year and they would be paid for the film after the year was over.  They went exploring and found 2 streams and a low flow hot springs, several clearings and lots of trees. 

They were given 3 cabins, a bunk house, a high tunnel, an old car that didn't run, a bear, a cave, chickens and a coop, 9 barrels, plastic flexible pipe, a stack of steel pipes, and some other random stuff.  They had to place them on their map and decide why each item was placed there.  

It was fun to listen to them talk it out.  And then calamity----a big gang of muscular, tatooed men with machine guns on their backs, riding 4 wheelers pulled up.  They had to have some way to deal with them. 

Anyway, we all had fun listening to the story that was built about their imaginary year and where they placed and especially why they placed it.  AND, bonus, they all still were communicating well at the end. 

Day 7 

Field Trip to the Dean/Harrison Farm 

Sorry---we were invited in to their homes and lives and hung out all day milking goats, spinning yarn, practicing using the reins on the donkey, petting the long horn Yow (yak and cow mixture), meeting the chickens and the rabbits in their nice homes and sharing homemade goat cheese with incredible friends.   We had such a fantastic day---words can't even describe it.  We honored their request not to take pictures.  So you will have to imagine it! 

Day 8
DAY OFF IN HOMER

Several us jumped in cars and went over to see Nancy Lee Evans' house. 

Two years ago at this time, some of us in the design course were designing her home site.  

We had an incredible picnic on her deck and checked out her High Tunnel (which she planted on June 21st).  Check it out! 

Friday, Day 6

Ageya Wilderness Center

Homer, Alaska

Seed Ball Making

One of the things that some of us have been trying, but haven’t been successful at is Seed Ball Making.  The idea is that instead of simply scattering seeds to feed the birds, we use some clay/soil and other amendments to keep the seeds together, give them an extra boost in the spring and allow they to grow as they melt in the spring.

We dutifully gathered seeds and brought other seeds from home and began making a concoction of support materials:  Dirt from the path, lime, bone meal, etc and mixed it all together.  We added just a tiny amount of water until we had the consistency that it would hold together. 

Then we gathered our seed guilds into bowls.  We put a few seeds in each ball and then laid it out to dry in the sun.  Actually we put corners on the balls so that they didn’t role down a slope.

One of my personal errors before was using only vermicompost around the seeds.  That glued up so well, that it was like cement and I found the ball the next summer untouched.  So…. Diversity is always good. 

We will distribute some of our seed balls around here, some we’ll take home and others we will guerilla garden in downtown Homer, Anchorage and Fairbanks.   Watch for an unexpected flower to show up next spring and think---ah, that permaculture group is at it again!

  Try it!  It's fun!!!

We had the pleasure of having Dr. Nancy Lee Evans at Ageya tonight.  She is a very experienced plant person and came to show us how to make tinctures, tonics, and salves from the plants we see every day under our feet. 

I was, as I always am, inspired by her deep connections with the plants and the work she is doing.

Day 4 

Permaculture Design Course 

Ageya Wilderness Center 

Homer, Alaska

So.... we're all getting a little tired, the routine is sinking in, and the sun,which comes out every-once-in-a-while, warms us and makes us sleepy.  The intensity of the information is almost at the saturation point where it's hard to listen any more.

Today's topic was SOIL, so we learned all about how to build up our soils and then keep things moist using swales.  To make swales to catch the downflow of water you need to find the contour of the slope.  We learned how to do that by making 2 $8.00 bunypips and an A-Frame made from scraps we found around here: low tech tools that work!  

 Devta and BJ sawing

 Bridget adds the cross piece

 Rico explains where the cross piece has to go.

 Can you even see the rock that we hung from the twine???  Its a camoflauged rock!

 After we found center, and found the contour line, we then put a 2 cm twig under one leg to add a slight slope for water drainage.

 We marked the spots on the yard stick and we began using the A-Frame!

 Connie and Devta started building the 1st bunyip:  a water level.

 Next they taped a clear plastic tube on it.

 Sonja fills the tube with water.

You can see that these too sticks, even right together, aren't on contour.  The water level is not level.  

We'll play more with these tomorrow.  Fun stuff!