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Design Your Land Course in Eastern Ontario

It's almost time for our Design Your Land Course!


Get more information at:
http://www.eonpermaculture.ca/content/design-land-Fall2014

One Creamy Trick for Busting Aphids

OK, so you've got aphids. Here's what you do:

1. Get a spray bottle
2. Put milk (2% or greater fat content) in the bottle
3. Spray it on the aphids. That's it.

Please insert your jokes about lactose intolerance in the comments.

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Permaculture Home Design, Part 1

The first volume of The Rhizome: Permaculture Journal of Ontario and Québec is out! [76.5 MB PDF]

You can read many fine articles, including a piece recounting part of my journey designing and building a passive solar home.

Kingston Introduction to Permaculture Course

Registration for the Kingston course ends Friday! 

This course is also the introductory module for our PDC, should you decide to decide to take the whole course. 

More information is available here.

Permaculture Earthworks Workshop, July 13th & 14th

Permaculture Earthworks Workshop, July 13, 14, 2013

Thank you to all the students for making this event such a wonderful experience. Invite yourselves back for a visit to see the results.


This class aims to give students a practical understanding of the water-harvesting earthworks techniques used in permaculture. A theoretical section will be taught in which a variety of approaches will be introduced, including dams, swales, ripping, and more. This section will also cover site assessment and design. Students will have practical hands-on time for site measurement, design, layout and implementation. The topics covered in this course will allow students to assess and design their own sites. 

Course books for the theoretical section will be provided to ensure all students have a copy of the material for future reference. The theoretical section will be taught using lectures some topics with student-directed deductive reasoning used wherever possible. 

July 13 
Day one will cover design theory. Students will also learn how to measure the site and map it for design purposes in a hands-on environment. Time will be devoted to design work with student design teams creating their own plans for the workshop's site.

July 14 
Day two will focus on site layout and implementation. Swales will be cut into the site with a dozer. A subsoiler will also be used for patterned ripping of the soil. As part of the hands-on component, the swales will be groomed and level-sill spillways cut into the swales. The use of various levels will also be demonstrated, with students having an opportunity to use them in practice. 

Equipment needed 
Students should bring a notebook, pens, pencils, a shovel (if possible), work gloves, boots, and rain gear. Sunscreen is also recommended as we will spend prolonged periods outdoors. Meals and accommodations will not be provided during the course. Contact Douglas for a list of area accommodations.

Please note that to provide the best learning environment, we are limiting ticket sales to 20 tickets.

Event Registration Online for Permaculture Earthworks powered by Eventbrite

Site Mapping for Permaculture Design – November 2012

Date: Saturday, November 3, from 1-3:30pm
Rain date:  Sunday, Nov. 4th, from 1-3:30pm
Location: meet at Just Food Ottawa’s office,
2389 Pepin Court, Ottawa, ON, (in Blackburn Hamlet)
Suggested donation: $10-30 (no-one turned away for lack of funds).  Any extra money raised will go towards Permaculture Ottawa’s Community Urban Food Forest project.
Transportation: OC Transpo bus #94 Millenium, some ride-sharing will be available.

Join us for a hands-on workshop that will introduce you to the basic site mapping skills used in permaculture design. Participants will learn how to measure and map a site’s features, including elevation.  The workshop will be led by Douglas Barnes, an experienced permaculturist who is the president of EcoEdge Design Ltd. Douglas studied with permaculture founder Bill Mollison, and has worked on projects in Canada, Japan, India, and Australia.

This workshop will take place outdoors, so participants should take the weather into account and dress appropriately. Participants please bring your own paper, pens or pencils- and if you have one, a 100′ tape measure will come in handy!  The workshop organizers will provide a set of workshop notes for the students, a surveyor’s level, A-frame level, bunyip level, farmer’s level, GPS, twine, stakes, a measuring wheel, and two 100′ tape measures.

* Limited space available- to reserve a spot email

Sarah Lévesque-Walker at info@permacultureottawa.ca

and write “Mapping workshop” in the subject heading.

Water, Water, Nowhere

What a summer! Hot and dry, followed by hot and dry periods, interspersed with the promise of thunderstorms that bring furious, desiccating winds, and nothing else.

For a few reasons, there has been little activity on this site until this month. A large part of the reason for this is that I have been building a passive solar home by myself (big hat tip to my wife who helped hoist heavy things and who passed me tools at many critical moments).

Last summer we had a trench dug to hook us up with electrical power. While the backhoe was here, I got my earthmover to get a chinampa started. At that time, the water table was much higher, and when we dug deep enough, it was like a water main was burst. Water gushed into the chinampa.

But then we had a relatively dry winter with next to no spring run off. This turned into a rather dry May, which became a dry June, which became a parched July, followed by an arid August. Just a couple minutes walk from my door there are poplar trees in the ditch (those wet channels that run alongside roads) that are dead and dying from lack of water.

I had planned an earthworks seminar at our farm for July, but an inability to track down the equipment needed in time (namely a subsoiler) led me to cancel it for this year (sorry to all the folks who inquired). This is very unfortunate because we really could have used all the help we could get this summer.

The back end is the bottom of a ditch that
holds water during wetter years. This year
The water dried right to the bottom of the
chinampa, about 130 cm down below the
bottom of the ditch.

The water level in the chinampa grew lower and lower until all the water in one dried up, taking all the fish with it. Another one was down to a little wallow with a few surviving minnows and tadpoles. I dug a water hole in that one and gave the minnows and tadpoles a second chance, but without rain soon, that little hole will dry up, too.

Clearly, I will have to start putting into action some of the techniques I used in the more arid India. I am shocked at how bad things have gotten in one year. Mature trees are turning colours (some as early as July) because of the lack of rain, while temperatures remain about 3 to 5C higher than normal. If there has been one upside, it is that the lack of water has meant a lack of mosquitoes. But there is a lack of more other things, too. Dragon flies and damsel flies are missing in action, as are most of the other insects you would expect to see.

Happily, our garden has done rather well. Our beds are either hugelkultur beds, or heavily mulched beds, so when we water them, they stay moist for a long time. But the pasture looks rather disastrous. Lots of farmers in the area have had to cull herds due to a lack of hay, and the large round bales are selling as much as $45 higher than normal.

Doom and gloom. But what about answers?

Answers there are! There are subsoilers around, or so goes the rumour. Hitting our pasture with an intelligently applied subsoiler will allow more infiltration. It will also capture more of the snow melt that otherwise runs off the land. We can place swales across the pastures to allow more water to sink in, too. Planting up some pioneering trees will help with soil building, which will help with water retention, as well.

It seems the devastating droughts that climate modellers have been warning might have slipped over from future possibility to present reality. It's time to start getting greedy with the water that hits this site.

2nd Annual Ottawa PDC

The Permaculture Institute of Eastern Ontario is pleased to present its second permaculture design course in Ottawa, beginning September 21st.

Who is this course for?

If you want to learn how to design human environments in a way that benefits the Earth rather than degrading it, this course is for you. If you believe that there is a way for humans to repair the damage done to the Earth, and you want to know how to do that, this course is for you. If you want to get out and start building a sustainable future for yourself and others, this course is for you.

What will you learn in this course?

You will learn how to design sustainable systems to meet material needs in any region of the world where there is permanent settlement. We will cover regions from tropical to arid to temperate. And as a side benefit of this knowledge, you will learn how to save a lot of money along the way.


Our team

Bonita Ford has a Permaculture Diploma with l'Université Populaire de Permaculturein France, an M.A. in Holistic Health Education from JFK University in California, and a B.Sc. in Biochemistry from Queen's University in Ontario.  Bonita took an Introduction to Permaculture with Brock Dolman in 2002, and took her first Permaculture Design Course through Urban Permaculture Guild and Oakland Permaculture Institute in California from 2005 to 2006.  Shortly thereafter, she directed and co-facilitated one of the first Urban Permaculture Design Courses in the San Francisco Bay Area.  She did work exchange with permaculture teachers Steve Read, Andy Darlington and Jessie Darlington in France.  In 2011, she was a teaching assistant in a Permaculture Design Course in Haiti, taught by Larry Santoyo and Hunter Heaivilin.  In Haiti, she also created a training program and trained a group of over 40 teachers, community facilitators and agronomists in basic concepts from permaculture and Nonviolent Communication. Bonita has led workshops and groups worldwide for over eight years, including in Port-au-Prince, Budapest, Soweto, San Francisco, Seattle, New Mexico, Vermont, Toronto, Ottawa and Perth. She is a co-founder of Transition Perth and the Permaculture Institute of Eastern Ontario.

Sébastien Bacharach, originally from France, is an Eco-logical Educator, Community Builder and Web Architect. He is the former Education Director of the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners (SLUG) and co-founder of the San Francisco Permaculture Guild. Sébastien became certified as a permaculture designer in the spring of 2001, at the Permaculture Research Institute, New South Wales, Australia, by internationally renowned PRI Director Geoff Lawton. He trained as a Permaculture Teacher in 2004 at Ocean Song, California. He has applied his knowledge in many different settings, in France and especially in San Francisco, California.

Douglas Barnes has been an educator for 20 years, and part of the permaculture movement for 8 years. He has taken two permaculture design courses, one in Brisbane with Geoff and Danial Lawton in 2004, and the other in Melbourne with Geoff Lawton and permaculture founder Bill Mollison in 2005. Using what he learned in his courses, Douglas has designed a passive solar home in Tweed where he is in the process of setting up a permaculture farm. He has taught permaculture in Canada and Japan, and has consulted on projects in Japan, Australia, Canada, Uganda, and India. In 2006, he established EcoEdge Design Ltd., a permaculture design and consultation company. In 2009, he worked with the Green Tree Foundation in Talupula, AP, India on a local agroforesty project, regreening an arid 7-acre hillscape, turning it into a productive polyculture mango orchard. 

What our students say

When I first learned about permaculture, I thought it had to do with the garden. I was amazed when I attended the permaculture course with Bonita, Sebastien, and Doug at how much permaculture can be applied to everything in your life. This course taught me so much, and completely inspired me in other areas of my life that I didn't think had anything to do with permaculture. I met so many great people, and we've started lots of initiatives within the city using the permaculture principles. This course expands your mind and encourages you to get out there and be part of the solution. I would take this course again in a heart-beat! - Nathalie P.

Taking the Permaculture Design Course was an eye-opening experience. It taught me how communities can design cooperative livings spaces in ways that contributes to the vitality of the planet. - Chris B.

This is one of the best courses I've ever taken. The teachers were great, the course itself was life changing, and some of the relationships I made will probably last a lifetime. - Brittany Boychuk

Schedule

The course runs September 21 (evening), 22, and 23, September 29 and 30, October 13 and 14, October 27, and 28.

Enrolment

$750 CAD, HST included. For more infomation, please see the PIEO site.

Toronto PermaCon

Come on out to the TPP-GTA PermaCon this weekend. I'll be giving a seminar on design strategy and compromise in design and one on earthworks.

Workshop: Make Compost in 18 Days!

Learn to make compost that is ready in just 18 days!

Fee: $10 per person or $12 for 2 (Refreshments and workshop notes provided.)

Time: July 10, 1 pm - 3 pm

Location: 231 Rusholme Rd., Toronto

Please register HERE: workshop@ecoedge.ca.


Please note that space is limited to 30 participants.

Selling Big Ag

Selling Big Ag or: False Dichotomies Are Fun!
By Douglas Barnes


I just had the misfortune of reading Robert Paarlberg’s article Attention Whole Foods Shoppers in Foreign Policy in which he pooh-poohs what he thinks is “sustainable” agriculture. What is the prescription from this political scientist who sits on the Biotechnology Advisory Council to the CEO of Monsanto? Why, more industrial agriculture, of course! While I find many faults and outright falsehoods in the story, I shall reserve my critique to only the most egregious of errors in the piece to avoid making a book out of this.

First off, I suppose that I should praise Paarlberg for having the courage to so publicly demonstrate that he has no clue as to the meaning of sustainable. He makes the claim that

“[S]ustainable food” in the future must be organic, local, and slow. But guess what: Rural Africa already has such a system, and it doesn’t work. Few smallholder farmers in Africa use any synthetic chemicals, so their food is de facto organic.

For the benefit of the reader, I shall give that definition in a manner that is clear and concise and has a useable metric behind it: A system is sustainable if it can capture and store more energy over its lifetime than it consumes in its creation and maintenance. A system can be organic and still be unsustainable, and many are, especially when externalised costs are properly included in the calculations. As far as the modern farming he advocates goes, it is virtually always, if not always unsustainable.

Why is that important? It is important to realise that the word “sustainable” can also be traded for the word “survivable.” Modern conventional agriculture is wholly dependent on fossil fuels to exist. In fact, ten kilocalories of exosomatic energy – energy outside of human labour – are needed to provide a U.S. consumer with one kilocalorie of uncooked food energy.

Now, I fully admit that I am not an accountant, so take the following with a grain of salt. It seems to me that if a system relies on consuming over ten energy units of a finite energy resource to produce one energy unit of an item, that system is neither sustainable nor survivable in the long term. I say “over ten times” because when losses from cooking, soil and water degradation and the documented adverse health effects of the modern food system are factored in, the costs increase.

I have trouble with Paarlberg's the assertion that we have two choices for our future: The energy-intensive approach to farming in the so-called developed world, or traditional agricultural approaches. It is worth pointing out that many of these “traditional” approaches are the not-quite sustainable approaches developed in the temperate world and exported inappropriately to tropical, sub-tropical, arid and semi-arid regions of the world via colonialism.

While this does make arguing the case easier, it is a logical fallacy known as a false dichotomy. A false dichotomy is an argument that reduces an argument to just two options, ignoring all other options. In this case, it offers only labour-intensive approaches to farming or energy-intensive approaches. Totally ignored is a design-intensive approach to farming. More on this later.

Paarlberg writes of “bringing improved seeds and fertilizers to traditional farmers,” but what are these “improved seeds”? Many of them are genetically modified seeds that he has advocated elsewhere. These crops have never been tested for long term health effects on humans, although the amount of research finding harm to animals fed GMOs is increasing. This is to say nothing about the hubris of randomly jamming transgenes into crop DNA when the science of genetics is just reaching the point where we understand that we don’t really understand what a gene is. In other cases, it means promoting the spread genetically homogeneous seeds. Luckily, this project is not complete. If it were, we would not have the 100 or so varieties of wheat resistant to the strain of Puccinia graminis tritici that popped up in Uganda in 1999, more commonly known as Ug99 - a fungus that threatens world wheat supplies.

And then there are the synthetic fertilisers he wants to bring to “traditional farmers.” I’ve written about this before, so the question is, why does he want to destroy soil organic carbon content, particularly when that is so vital to soil fertility and the ability of soil to hold water?

Image from AATF 

Coming back to design-intensive approaches, let's look at Africa, since Striga hermonthica. S. hermonthica is a fascinating genus of plant that actually parasitizes other plants, tapping into their roots for nutrients and water. Now, the folks Paarlberg work for propose a solution: genetically modify your crop so that it resists herbicides that would kill Striga. But Striga is actually a useful plant, in that it is an indicator plant. When it starts to appear, it is saying, “Hey Bozo, stop farming the wrong way!” You see, Striga only survives in conditions with very low available nitrogen. So, if you are repeatedly farming corn, a nitrogen-demanding crop, and are in a region such as East Africa that is prone to Striga, you will have a problem if you don’t take soil health seriously.
Paarlberg is so intent on focusing on it. No, agriculture there isn’t sustainable. There systems are bleeding energy on the whole. Consider the case of

So, the solution could be spend millions on research to develop a proprietary technology (i.e. GM crop) allowing plants to survive dousing with expensive and dangerous herbicides, ignoring the problem (neglect of soil health). Or the solution could be the one that has actually been put into practice: Treat soil fertility seriously by inter-cropping corn in an alley-cropping regime such as the Taungya system, inter-planting with nitrogen-fixing trees such as Leucaena that can also provide fodder, wood and fuel. The use of nitrogen-fixing plants, green manure and mulching are an effective way to address fertility without relying heavily or solely on animal manure, which Paarlberg asserts organic agriculture is dependent upon. Additionally, human wastes can be composted and returned to the land. This closes the fertility loop while tackling the water-borne disease problem so prevalent in Africa. Unfortunately, the latter, sustainable approach does not make money for industrial agribusiness.

Paarlberg also writes of “learning to appreciate the modern, science-intensive, and highly capitalized agricultural systems we’ve developed in the West.” Well, no one who knows me or has read my articles in this blog would accuse me of being unappreciative of science, but it is true that I do not appreciate Western agriculture. Why would I appreciate a system that has ruined more soil more quickly than at any time in history, reduced nutrition (more on this later), contaminated groundwater and riparian systems, ruined farming as a way of life, while subjecting an unwilling population to ongoing experimentation that may be making them infertile, among other things (i.e. GM crops)? All for a system that is so inefficient that it requires 10 units of external energy (not counting human labour) to produce one unit of food energy and cannot survive without massive public subsidy? No thanks. You can keep that system.

He also asserts that organic has been found to be no more nutritious than conventionally grown produce and provides two sources to back him. I’ll provide two of my own. The first is a study by chemist Donald R. Davis published last year in HortScience in which it was found that

Recent studies of historical nutrient content data for fruits and vegetables spanning 50 to 70 years show apparent median declines of 5% to 40% or more in minerals, vitamins, and protein in groups of foods, especially in vegetables.

The second study was also released last year by the UK’s Food Standards Agency. The study omitted numerous studies showing higher nutrition in organically grown food and made the claim that there are “no important differences in the nutrition content , or any additional health benefits, of organic food when compared with conventionally produced food.” So, why am I citing this as support for my argument? Because despite the FSA’s characterisation of the study, the study found that organic produce had 53.6% more beta-carotene, 38.4% flavonoids, 13.2% more phenolic compounds, 12.7% more protein, 11.3% more zinc, 10.5% more sulphur, 8.7% more sodium, 8.3% more copper, 7.1% more magnesium, 6% more phosphorus, and 2.5% more potassium. It sure would help us to form a reasonable opinion about the issue, if the people presenting the evidence were even remotely honest. But I digress.

Without a shred of evidence, he makes the claim that "Organic field crops also have lower yields per acre." Well, the Rodale trials don't square with that claim very wall. They found that

After a transition period of about four years, crops grown under organic systems yield as well as and sometimes better than crops grown under the conventional system. Moreover, organic systems can out-produce the conventional system in years of less-than-optimal growing conditions such as drought. [The Rodale Institute Farming Systems Trial: The First 15 Years, The Rodale Institute, Kutztown, 1999]

As mentioned, Paarlberg assumes that the only way to address soil fertility is through animal manure, which would require more forests to be cut down in order to provide for the animals, saying “Mass deforestation probably isn’t what organic advocates intend.” Actually, increased trees cover through agroforestry is what I intend, though I don’t speak for organic agriculture.

Our simple monoculture approach to production is a product of simple thinking. It’s time to stop burning those calories on either back-breaking labour or on producing synthetics and the machines to spread them around, and start spending it on brain power as outlined in the approach to Striga above.

The Winter That Was

The Winter That Was
By Douglas Barnes

We had been bizarre winter here in Ontario, Canada. For most of Canada, the winter was rather anemic. While it did ease the home construction I did over the winter, it also threw us for a loop. So, imagine my surprise when renowned scholars such as real estate magnate Donald Trump made comments like this one: ""With the coldest winter ever recorded, with snow setting record levels up and down the coast, the Nobel committee should take the Nobel Prize back from Al Gore."

The coldest winter ever recorded? Really? Well, the popular myth goes that the very wealthy are very wealthy because they are very intelligent and very knowledgeable. But let's have a look at what happened this winter nonetheless.

The combined global average of land and sea temperatures for December, 2009 made it the eight warmest winter on record; and the month came in 0.49°C above the average for the 20th century. The following image shows the temperature anomalies for December. The more an area was below the average, the larger a blue dot it has. The higher above the normal, the larger the red dot it has. The map is very red.What was really bizarre was the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic taking a detour and heading towards Western Greenland instead of Europe. I would suspect that this under-reported phenomenon contributed to the cooling from the arctic oscillation that kept Europe and the eastern seaboard of the U.S. so chilly this year.


This phenomenon continued more or less right through the winter as can be seen in the Mercator reports over the winter.

The story for January was a little different. Whereas 2009 had the eighth warmest December on record, 2010 had the fourth warmest January on record with temperatures 0.60°C above the 20th century average for combined land and sea temperatures. The picture for January looks like this:
Yes, yes. But what about February when it was so cold in the eastern U.S. and when Trump made his comments?

Well, I have to admit, there is a gotcha. It was only the sixth warmest February on record with the combined land and sea temperatures 0.60°C above the 20th century average. Incidentally, the sea temperatures for December, 2009 through February, 2010 were the second warmest on record at 0.54°C above the 20th century average. The picture for February looks like this:

As for March, this year was the 34th year in a row where March was above the 20th century average. The combined average of land and sea temperatures were 0.77°C above normal making it the warmest March on record ever. March looked like this:

So what happened? Donald Trump and too many pundits were wrong? How can that be? Simply put, they made the shockingly common error of assuming that where they happened to live was the entire world when, in fact, it is only a tiny corner of the world.

The figures for April aren't out yet, though I know that the region I live in is a full month ahead of where it was last year and will be showing up as a large red dot on the map when it is released. Stay tuned...





References

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2009&month=12&submitted=Get+Report

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2010&month=1&submitted=Get+Report

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2010&month=2&submitted=Get+Report

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2010&month=3&submitted=Get+Report

Getting the Gist of Permaculture

If you are just running into permaculture or are attending my upcoming seminar (fully booked, sorry) and are wondering just what this permaculture thing is anyway, the following links might help out:

What is permaculture?

What does "sustainable" mean?

What are the ethics of permaculture?

What are you trying to achieve with permaculture?

Show me what you mean.

Show me another example.


Be sure to check out some of the links in the right hand menu to see some of our friend's takes on permaculture, too!

Composting Workshop in Toronto, Feb. 15

On Monday, February 15th, 2010, I will be running a composting workshop in Toronto, Ontario. To find out about 18-day composting and vermicomposting (using worms to compost), come out the the 3rd annual La Famille festival. Tickets for the event are only $12 or $30 for a 3-adult family pass. For more infomation see Tovaco Productions.





These guides may help if you cannot attend:
18-Day Compost
Worm Composting

Please see my recent article in Interesting Times Magazine, page 8.

Cheers all!

When was the last time you stopped and asked,

“What are we doing here? What is our goal as a

society?” By just looking at the outcomes, we

are pursuing neither happiness nor trying to

maximize human potential – that is assuming we

aren’t grossly ignorant and incompetent.

Kafrin Site Video

I have posted a few articles on Geoff Lawton's work in Jordon. Here is a new video, updating the status of the site.

Greening the Desert II: Greening the Middle East from Craig Mackintosh on Vimeo.

We are flooded!

My apologies the the readers of this site for missing the Species of the Month for April. It has been a hectic month. I've been finalizing a house design and prepping for a project in India. Scott Meister has had his hands full, too.

Scott will be publishing a piece here in about a week's time and I will give some updates from India. Please bear with us.

2009 Sustainable Living Symposium

I will be giving a presentation on Designed Landscapes for Food, Fibre & Energy at the Sustainable Living Symposium at 10:30 am at Loyalist College in Belleville, Ontario. Click the banner below for more information.

The event is selling out fast, so click now to ensure entry!

Sustainable Living Symposium