You can read many fine articles, including a piece recounting part of my journey designing and building a passive solar home.
Friday, March 21, 2014
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.
You can read many fine articles, including a piece recounting part of my journey designing and building a passive solar home.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Kingston Introduction to Permaculture Course
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This course is also the introductory module for our PDC, should you decide to decide to take the whole course.
Monday, June 17, 2013
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.
Sunday, October 07, 2012
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.
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.
Monday, September 03, 2012
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 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.
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. |
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.
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