We're busy constructing what we think will be the most extensive and comprehensive online training for folks looking to start their own profitable regenerative agriculture. We're passionate about Making Small Farms Work, and this training builds and extends on our book and dedication to helping others get started on their pathway. We've filmed over 100 clips in the field as well as a bunch of whiteboard based lectures and computer based tutorials, created customizable planning and business spreadsheets and a whole load of other resources.

The training will revolve around the pragmatic approach we have towards designing, installing, managing and monitoring our own successful operations. We're in a very challanging cilmate from a geographical, economic and regulatory standpoint. Whilst we focus on our situation, most of the content is adaptable and relevent to anyone setting out on this pathway for themselves.

We're hoping to release the training early in the new year.
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If this is something that you are looking for, you can register interest by dropping us a line here, and we can contact you when the training is online. We also want YOUR input. Have a look at the overview below and let us know in the comments if there is subject matter you'd value being included in the training.

We expect the price to be 8995.00 SEK

We aim to keep this training as pragmatic and functional as possible. Whilst we work as professional educators and designers, we also farm for a living. We understand the importance of getting straight to the point. There is no wild abstract theoretical nonsense here, just design and implementation strategies, shared insight and planning tools to get you started on the right footing.
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Please let us know if you want to be updated with the release of the training and comment below on aspects you feel are of most value to you.
Thank you so much, hope to see you on the inside!

Reflecting back on my life journey that has led me to this point, I take a moment to ponder where we are at as a species, and what has really changed in my short window into the world. It feels poignant to consider all the thought, care and attention that is invested in creating a farm worthy of people’s interest, worthy of a future and perhaps worth my children taking it on. With my second child on the way what sort of a world can I expect my children to inherit? A basic question we probably all share, and yet humans are still casting a big shadow over planet Earth right now; billions of people that make up the population are failing to be acceptably housed, clothed, educated or employed in meaningful work. When I consider the complexity and the fragility of the miracle of life on Earth I feel it is probably fair to assume that is still the rate of affluent nations consumption that casts this shadow, not really the numbers of our population. Whilst the affluent people of this earth, ourselves included, enjoy lifestyles that imposes a grossly disproportionate pressure on planetary ecosystems, our over development through our technological advances has sped up the use, and misuse, of the Earth’s resources and now this shadow stems from all of us, darkening our lives. We have destroyed so much of the soil on earth, even that which was marginal at best, and continue the rampage to the tune of billions of tons per year. This most precious resource, the very foundation of life on terra firma, is being washed and blown away each year largely as a result of industrial agriculture to which we all contribute by way of our consumption patterns. The resulting deforestation, habitat destruction and poor water management, which is one of the biggest limiting factors in agriculture, means that in the next decades we can expect to lose much more of our remaining arable land if we choose to continue, whilst populations continue to grow and stretch the seams of the exhausted resource base. The massive problems with deforestation, particularly in the tropics where nutrients are held up in the plants rather than the soil like in our temperate climates, is happening with a zest that will leave very little for my children’s generation.

​I see continued destruction in all other areas; in the oceans we continue to ravage fishery after fishery, and the great mammals of the sea are all following the sad track to the whales. Seas all over the globe are now awash with plastic particles that attract and suspend heavy metals in a dangerous soup that is absorbed by plankton and then makes its way up the food chain to toxic high levels in the pelagic fish species which we tend to eat. The effects of nuclear pollution will play out for decades or longer, no doubt. The lakes and rivers are virtually all polluted all across the globe, many of the great rivers no longer flowing year round to the sea. We are using the skies as dust bins and filling bigger and bigger holes in the ground with other toxic waste products of an increasingly consumerist industrial world. We have upset the carbon dioxide balance in the atmosphere triggering global weirding and the unpredictable extreme weather events that threaten agriculture more than anything. People are cashing in on that too, from carbon taxing to green waves of consumerism leaving us in a fuzzy place consuming just as many products of slightly more ecologically minded makeup; yet never actually encouraging the radical notion of a widespread limit to consumption.

Obviously this overtaxing of the world’s resources leads to increased conflicts and ultimately breakdown of political, economic and social systems. So this cloud over the Earth, this long shadow, feels like the darkest and the deepest it has been during my short life. Whilst the debate is really over for ‘peak’ everything and climate change, we inhabit a paradoxical state where increasing amounts of positive media and diverse opinion carry risk of forgetting consumption still exponentially increases all the while. The hopes of democratized media through new digital channels has really proved a double edged sword, where scandal and control still pervades, and fleeting unsubstantiated opinions often quickly cement into “fact”. It does, however, give birth to a breeding ground and an opportunity to engage in a new conversation about the world we wish to live in and indeed bequeath our children with. And the question ultimately, for me, is can we turn from a world of war to a world of peace and respectful relating? From patterns of dominance to a model of cooperation, from violence to healing? From empire to global village community?

It seems evident to me that the leaders of political and corporate powers in the modern world are really incapable of providing the necessary leadership inthis great work, so we have to look at local solutions and look for new dynamic leadership. That is a gift which anyone can choose, as indeed so many of us already are. These problems began long ago when our ancestors put aside their more egalitarian and gender balanced ways of earlier human society to establish the rule of dominion by bow and sword, and since that there has been a brutal competition for power that has created a restless play or die, rule or be ruled dynamic of violence and oppression. Conquest, therefore, has became a measure of greatness where male vengeful gods replaced forgiving goddesses, and the wisdom of the elders and priestesses gave way to the all-powerful kings and queens of the hall. People lost, (and were often forced to lose) their attachment to the earth as societies became divided by the ruler and ruled.

This happened many thousands of years ago in Mesopotamia in the land we call Iraq today and there is evidence, such as from the work of James de Meo and Jared Diamond, indicating that intense and rapid climate change is undoubtably linked to rapid cultural shifts from Matriarchal to Patriarchal warring societies, where the first waves of armoured patriarchs come from there rapidly changing desert regions in the Sahara and central Asia; once the bread basket of the world. Lush Savannahs dense with animals and abundance that are now barren and bear witness to some of the most violent societies on earth. In the area that is now at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, where sea levels rose incredibly quickly as the Bosporus flooded, displacing countless communities, people had to fight neighbours for basic resources. We see archaeological evidence of plump, forgiving female goddess figures suddenly replaced with male vengeful archetypes. This occurred all the way east through to what is now Pakistan, where river systems changed their courses leaving people to fight over limited resources. It is not hard to imagine major cultural shifts when we imagine the world of abundance we have always known suddenly shattered; trust in the all providing entities undermined. Modern history illustrates how people will most often descend into a basic conditioned self- survivalist mentality when faced with grave risk. Since that early fateful turn away from earth community, imperial institutions have been systematically denying humanity to the vast majority of humans, instead reducing them to conditions of servitude whilst elevating the most power driven and ethically challenged among us to the highest positions. The era of empire would seem to be reaching the limits of what people on earth can tolerate now, and social, ecological
and economic break down that is happening around us are just manifestations of this. In these last several thousand years we have seen the primary institutional form of empire move from city states of ancient times to the imperial nation states of the modern era and now the imperial global corporations that have been emerging and entrenching their positions in my short lifetime.

Personally, I find that really quite radically scary because they appear beyond, or possibly replacing assumed roles of government, and that pattern of dominance and exclusion remains constant.  Radical and potentially devastating change that will shift the economic advantage from global corporations to local communities is perhaps the inevitable benefit ofany deep economic breakdown, energy crises or heavy climate change impacts. Obviously without oil life on earth will look very different. Long haul transportation and global supply chains will have to become relics of a dying era, and vast sprawling suburban landscapes and out-of-town shopping based on car dependency will have to diminish. Perhaps of greater consequence; oil based agricultural will have to end. Increasingly people are aware that many fertilisers and agrochemicals are based on pure oil products, yet we still rely so heavily upon this production chain. And thus the resulting wars to secure access to more cheap oil to keep the whole thing growing and perpetuating. History continuously reminds us we will likely see a lot more wars for the last remaining resources. The consequences of climate change will only be exacerbated in this time, the resulting shorter or less predictable growing seasons and loss of global crop yields will no doubt affect the poorest people on earth the most. Water shortages are hitting wider regions in more countries and that brings about things like forest fires and famines, which lead to disease epidemics. The ensuing endemic resource wars, uncontrolled migration and continually growing trade gap in major world economies is another indication of people living way beyond their means, and running up a credit card debt to the rest of the world, which will obviously be left to our children.

If we allow this situation to continue to the “last man standing” competition for the final resources that remain we can surely only anticipate further escalations of military conflict, terrorism and deeper societal fragmentation. Was that not so after the fall of the Roman Empire? Everything is always changing, but does it not somehow still all look the same? We really have a choice to bring forth a new era. An era grounded in the principles of community, cooperation, justice, ecological awareness and nonviolence. Unfortunately it seems the ability to make the obvious choice for life is seriously hampered by the ill-advised economic policies of the military-industrial-globalist think-tanks that have taken over and hijacked the modern political system. The commitment to the elitist agenda of imperial wars and occupations in the name of peace and democracy still gives priority to corporate profits at the expense of people, their communities and nature. These stories are alarmingly embedded in all of us. The idea of our western democratic life is bred into us at such a young age, but when I look around I do not really see much evidence of any such thing as democracy. Just look at wartime rhetoric, which follows the same pattern over the last century, in the repeated assertion that we only intervene with other nations to promote peace and democracy, human rights or economic justice. Fortunately more and more people understand this to be blatantly false.  

​Yet it shall be said, we are species of many incredible possibilities; so many gifts, strengths and talents pervade our communities. It is, in my experience, the foundation of our nature to be of benefit to all through our words and actions. Does nature not reveal this basic pattern so thoroughly and undisputedly? Yet this basic human right, to express benefit to all, has been categorically and systematically denied by the institutions and culture of
empire. My experience is that greed and violence in humans, even the most subtle forms, are only symptoms of developmental pathologies that are systematically cultivated by imperial cultures and its institutions. Our cultural stories are really defined by prosperity and security. The prosperity story tells us that an eternally growing economy benefits everyone and that growth requires really wealthy people to invest and create jobs, and thus we should free up these rich people from taxes and regulations. Meanwhile we should cut away any benefit programs that might strip the poor of their motivation to contribute to society. Then we have a security story that tells of this dangerous world full of criminals and terrorists and foreign enemies who have got to be controlled or removed by strong police and military forces. This idea spreads scarcity at the same time as affirming economic inequality and legitimising the use of physical force to impose the will of rulers. It surely gives some degree of protection to the citizen, but more weirdly often affords a sense of righteousness to the rich and powerful. 

Given the reach and tenacity of these stories, would it not it follow that effectively all we need to do to change the course of history is to change the stories that we live by? Whether we like to think so or not, the media continues to shape so much of our values for political gains, infectingevery deep sinew and fiber of our beings. Yet at thecore, of all the things we really wish for in the world, is there anyone who could truly represent those desires for us? My wish is to simply live my life as fully as I can. Where the line between work, rest and play has become so obscured that it is life itself to which I am employed. What has all this got to do with agriculture? Whilst global situations seem to have worsened parallel to my exposure to all the solutions oriented work of so many, perhaps the biggest change is in the ability to share our voices. The rapid ease in which we can tell our stories and connect across the ether in this time is unprecedented. It has never been easier to forge ahead true to our beliefs and dedicate ourselves to the benefit of all. It is the truth and passion of our stories, that resounding hope, that people long for. We all long for connection to the world around us, the people around us and the food that nourishes us. Regenerative agriculture is in the business of supplying more than just food. For it is the nourishment for the senses and mind, nourishment or the whole family experience that we bring. Regenerating community involves empowering and including everyone. With the combined gifts, strengths and talents in our communities we have all the creativity, passion and resources to start a new course. 

The Permaculture space has done so much to benefit so many around the world, and yet it still remains very much a fringe movement. How do we normalize the movement? Are we listening and understanding the needs of the wider communities around us, who are also committed to be of benefit with the skills and means available to them? The danger of any collective identity is the sense of “us and them” mentality, which fails from the outset to connect with the whole. How are we to make agricultures that can restore the soils and ecosystems whilst rekindling local economy and community the new normal?  One foundation that unites us all on the most basic level is food. Whilst the market for real food is continually growing, the larger pool of potential customers are not even aware they want this kind of food, this experience, to enrich their lives. Education, then, is a huge part of the long-term solution to benefit the whole. Fling open the gates to the farms, invite the people back in….
 

“Det industriella kemiska jordbruket producerar tjugo gånger mer död eroderande jord än livsnödvändig mat varje år. Det är mänsklighetens mest destruktiva industri - värre än fossila bränslen eller alla former av gruvdrift. Utvecklingen av ett biologiskt baserat regenerativt jordbruk med holistisk planering är en nödvändighet för att civilisationen som vi känner den ska kunna överleva. Jag rekommenderar varmt Richards bok till alla socialt medvetna nya och gamla lantbrukare.”
 
Allan Savory direktör för Savory Institute och ordförande för Africa Center for Holistic Management. 

“Det här är en av de bredaste designöversikterna för regenerativa lantbrukssystem sedan Bill Mollisons ursprungliga “svarta bok”. Richards bok lär bli en viktig handledning inom regenerativa jordbruksmetoder för dem som startar gårdsverksamhet oavsett storlek. Det är en högaktuell och detaljerad genomgång av väsentliga faktorer för att starta och driva en gård. Jag kan inte tänka mig någon, från nybörjare till rutinerade bönder, som inte skulle ha lärdomar att hämta från Richards arbete med starten och driften av Ridgedale Permaculture.”
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Ben Falk Whole Systems Design Författare till The Resilient Farm and Homestead

"Richard och Yohanna visar föga respekt för den svenska landsbygdens väl utvecklade känsla av hopplöshet. De tränger sig på med vackra bilder och handfasta råd, som om det goda livet på landet vore fullt möjligt. Sådant kan förefalla oskyldigt, men dessa utlänningar kan faktiskt hota vår livsmedelsindustri som så framgångsrikt upprätthåller alienationen mellan oss människor och den natur som håller oss vid liv. Folket på Ridgedale vet mycket väl vad de håller på med. De tillämpar Holistic Management på riktigt, och lyckas därför manövrera i den intensivt småskaliga och komplexa mångfald som ger dem det liv de själva önskar. Så alla ni som vill försvara era rättigheter som hjälplösa offer för olyckliga omständigheter, läs absolut inte denna bok."

Jörgen Andersson (Fjällbete) Nordic Savory Hub

“Den här boken är en milstolpe inom storskalig permakultur …. en helt unik bok…. Varenda sida är proppad med fakta och sprider gedigen kunskap…. Jag läste den med nöje och tror att den kommer att inspirera många fler att börja med regenerativt jordbruk. Lantbrukare eller blivande lantbrukare har säkert större utbyte av en nydanande bok som Making Small Farms Work än av andra böcker som får jordbruk att framstå som en dans på rosor. Jag håller själv på att bygga upp min egen gård, så boken kommer i precis rätt ögonblick. Den har redan hjälpt mig att betrakta min design och projektet i stort i ett helt nytt ljus.” 

Lorenzo Costa Permies.com Bokrecensent och blivande bonde

“Läs den här boken noggrant. Det Richard och Johanna har åstadkommit på bara två år sätter ribban högt. Denna bok ger oss värdefulla byggstenar inte bara för att hitta, designa och bygga upp ett kommersiellt jordbruk, utan dessutom hur man gör det på ett ytterst effektivt och välplanerat sätt.” 

Stefan Sobkowiak www.permacultureorchard.com Les Fermes MIRACLE Farms 

​“Industrial chemical agriculture, producing twenty times as much dead eroding soil as food needed every year, is the most destructive industry of mankind - more so than fossil fuels or any mining.  Developing a new biologically-based, and holistically managed, regenerative agriculture is imperative if civilization as we know it is to survive.  I heartily recommend Richard's book for all socially conscious new and old farmers.”
 
Allan Savory President, Savory Institute & Chairman, Africa Center for Holistic Management. 

The way the crowd source campaign works, early birds get a discount from the retail price; the quicker you purchase a copy the cheaper it will be.  You can sign up below if you are interested to know exactly when the campaign launches.  After the upcoming campaign copies will only be available directly from the farm in Sweden, and can be posted worldwide

This book offers fresh perspective for the Permaculture & Regenerative Agriculture space, and focuses solely on real-world stuff.  A pragmatic and profitable approach to a farming life worth living.  No nonsense and no abstract theory devoid of context.  The aim is very much a 'how-to' approach to designing, installing and managing small farms effectively.  Our own farm Ridgedale Permaculture is small at 10ha,  but our approach to design is scalable from 1- 1000 ha. The book is stuffed full of colour images that explain everything described, as well as sharing financial details, spreadsheets, decision-making processes and other elements required to Making Small Farms Work.

A bit more context about the book

I have written this book to share some of my diverse experiences with regenerative design, farming and project management, as well as address the misconception that small farms are not viable.  Our farm in Sweden has quickly become a beacon in Europe as a thriving example of effective farm scale Permaculture & Regenerative Agriculture.  I attribute much of the success to several factors; primarily built upon our approach that draws and integrates practices from other ecological design platforms.  For us, there are three main legs to the stool we use in our work.  Besides Permaculture design we rely primarily on Holistic Management and Keyline design. We also draw a lot of inspiration from pioneering US farmer Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms.
 
Most of us interested in Permaculture & Regenerative Agriculture in Europe look abroad for inspiration.  There is currently no literature in Europe covering the breadth of material presented in this book, and globally there are few financially viable examples of Permaculture farms.  We also see few comprehensive cold climate examples, so it feels great to share our experiences from up here at 59ºN.   Whilst we are situated in the most challenging economic and cultural context I have experienced anywhere on the globe, the approach to design shared in this book is relevant and instructive for people farming in any European climate zone.  Indeed, amazing people have travelled from over 40 countries to the farm to participate in our pioneering education programs.

Making Small Farms Work does not aim to be encyclopedic or claim to offer all the answers. There are no radical innovations that will suddenly make farming an easy profession.  It does, however, share an approach that looks far into the future, takes full responsibility for our actions and imparts deep insight and practical experience in the context of well planned and holistically managed operations.  My primary educational objective is to support others into professional design and regenerative enterprises of their own, so this book is super pragmatic, down-to-earth and focused on getting on with it in a well thought out, well planned and holistically managed manner.  Most books about design in this field are heavily theoretical. Not this one. This book is written for anyone wanting to farm in a way the restores the soil, reinvigorates local economy and food systems whilst maintaining a good livelihood for the farmer.  

"Richard and Yohanna are an invasive species in Sweden; threatening to destroy our traditional culture of hopelessness.  This book may seem harmless, full of sweet pictures and practical advice for small farms, but it is actually spreading revolutionary seeds that jeopardise agribusiness and the alienation between people and nature.  Romantic dreamers have been advocating rural livelihoods before, whilst struggling to make a living off the land.  Ridgedale Permaculture seem to actually know what they are up to.  These folks are walking the talk of Holistic Management, enabling them to manoeuvre within complexity without losing sight of what they really want to achieve.  So, good people, if you are standing up for your rights as victims of your circumstances, stay away from these people, and this book."  

​Jörgen Andersson (Fjällbete) Nordic Savory Hub

Ever heard that?  I have heard & seen comments to this tune around the web here and there over the years, and have found myself on the short end of that stick a lot too as I have always valued making trainings I offer as accessible as possible.  It’s a bold blanket statement that needs some context, reflection & unpacking.   I reflected today that with a relatively high amount of direct experience offering intensive education in this field, sharing some of my perspectives could perhaps benefit others.  

Personally I am less and less interested in my indulging points of view rather than sharing my direct experience, so this is a rare post where I'll just let it fly.  The www is seemingly saturated with what I feel are fruitless discussions that come about from this way of relating, but I’m choosing to share some of my experiences and points of view because I feel like there are a lot of mixed up ideologies represented in this field and that other "regenerative educators" may feel the same and not speak out so much.  I brought this up as a discussion topic with our awesome crew at the farm because I feel like they are in a very good position to reflect upon this. (Having invested a substantial sum to come here for intensive education)  Basically, the resulting conversation could be summarized as “it’s all down to Context”, and I wholeheartedly agree.  Blanket statements are never usually beneficial in my experience.  There is as much variation in content & caliber within Permaculture trainings as there are species on my farm and I see that this sort of statement probably has larger ideas behind it.  We’re always interested in addressing the root causes…

Someone suggested that perhaps a bigger underlying question was probably should all education be free?  Good question.  An important point is that if education is offered “free” then it’s usually funded by the state and educators still get paid, just from taxes.  The Permaculture movement is too fringe for this to be the case universally, so it’s not so relevant at this point.  You could argue that unless it’s free not enough people will be exposed to it.  That’s possibly true too.  But, hey, we have to work with the reality, or context, we find ourselves in.  Idealism has led this movement all over the place for better and for worse I would say.

This post has been stimulated by a message where someone proposed to work in exchange for a long internship program at the farm.  We get a lot of emails like this.  This doesn’t really work out well for us for 2 main reasons.  Firstly, the income derived from our intensive long-term internships doesn’t even cover the activities we plan as learning experiences during this period (we’re designing juicy learning experiences whilst installing long term systems at the farm).  Secondly, we plan our whole year ahead of the season, and at our farm we have assembled a Core Team ahead of time who we have selected to assist us in the maintenance and hard labor at the farm as we run full time educational programs during the summer and also project manage and train folks in all aspects of what’s going on at this small but very diverse and rapidly implemented project.

For this reason we are not looking for volunteers at this point, as we have already planned effectively to know that we have the resources needed to make this place thrive.  We see from our longer term intensive Internships that it takes people several weeks just to understand the basic systems and maintenance required in this place, during which a lot of time and micro management is invested in managing the details.  Taking on people for a short time can bring a lot of benefits to folks, of that I have no doubt, but it needs people here dedicated full time to managing that.  That’s not a resource we have, and not something we are looking to invest in at this time as we see the learning benefits of our long-term internship training outshines anything else we’ve ever done or participated in.

Unskilled help is mostly useful for basic labour based tasks, and someone with the intention to swap work for learning is likely not exactly hoping to come and focus on these mundane everyday kind of chores; they’re pumped to take part in juicy tasks and learning opportunities which we have actually meticulously planned and timed to meet the objectives of our specific trainings which take place over a carefully constructed time frame.  This has been designed within a very carefully planned process where we can lead people from scratch through very broad information and exposure in a beneficial way.  Dropping into that just doesn’t yield actionable outcomes from our experience.  We meet a lot of folks who have taken short trainings, watched a lot of videos, read a lot of books but have a hard time knowing how to begin for themselves.  We have designed our trainings to facilitate this logjam and so we don’t feel so interested in investing our limited energy in folks wanting to drop in without a fully loaded sense of commitment.  The feedback from the people who show up here and experience this place is what guides us.  I’ll happily hear someone’s direct experience over indulged points of view any day…

After an18 hr day grafting hard and risking a lot financially to really live into our commitment to make this a place that stands out as somewhere that can visibly demonstrate soil & ecosystem regeneration with a viable production based on good design whist providing a very high level of focused training these kind of requests can be a little provoking at times.  We are specifically excited to support people wanting to go into professional design and people wanting to start their own regenerative enterprises (which we’re also very clear about in our website and info packs).  This is certainly only a small proportion of folks connected with the Permaculture movement, and it’s whom we are specifically willing to go out of our way for as we see opportunities are very limited for these folks in this neck of the woods (and further afield).  Sometimes some the requests we get feel a bit like, “hey, will you support me by freely offering your time, experience and financial investment so I can come learn at your super inspiring place?”  I can’t think of any day-to-day circumstances where people would go to shops or pay for services with this mindset.  Not really sure what the criteria are that makes folks think Permaculture education should be free, but feel like they may not really have a complete picture of what goes into being able to offer life changing trainings let alone shining examples of regeneration in action.

We try to benefit as many as possible with our work, sharing what we can online in articles and daily updates on our FB page.  Frankly we’re too busy to be able to give as much attention to this as we would like, and so recently have begun laying out the framework of a comprehensive book documenting our design approach through the lens of (mainly) this place.  That’s another way we can see we can be of benefit to a wider audience.

Really though you have to be here to take in the magic of this place, to see the work and preparation that goes into every single day, the sharing of the intimate “behind the scenes” aspects that we see are vital context & information for our budding interns.  This can’t be shared so easily out of context, there’s just too much wrapped up in that.  It’s a process that unfolds here over many weeks, deep & wide, and we have tailored it on many levels to prep dedicated folks with the information, strategies, decision making framework, design & planning tools (as well as a bunch of targeted hands on field experience) to go off and start their own enterprises with a wheelbarrow full of confidence and a clarified context for themselves.

I’ve been dedicated to my learning journey since leaving home and living with travelling folk who taught me a lot about pragmatic approaches to meeting my basic needs.  At 18 I studied Organic Crop Production at Ag College and have been dedicated to all aspects of regenerative design since that time (not finding many useful answers in conventional ag school).  I’ve invested a lot of money, time and sheer effort in my learning journey; with (un)institutions, travelling, experiencing, designing, building and now am investing every ounce of my energy and fiscal resources in creating the sort of place that I wished I’d found on that incredible journey.  A place doing what they’re chatting about.  A place documenting, analyzing, recording and sharing it all wide openly.  A place producing viable amounts of high quality food.  A place managed holistically & efficiently.  A place where people are empowered to be of benefit and valued for their unique strengths, gifts & talents.  To make a place like this, where the learning experiences are carefully crafted by months of meticulous planning, financial risk and lack of sleep means they ain't gonna be free.  Period.

I have made a living educating, designing, building and installing for a long time now, building up a good reputation and successful business that has taken me to a lot of interesting places and brought a lot of people a lot of tangible benefits.  This has taken extremely hard work, creativity, flexibility and patience.  After many years I have built up the resources to start this farm, which has been dedicated in a large way to helping others.  We haven’t exactly made it easy for ourselves by settling in one of the most expensive, heavily taxed & regulated countries in the world (where incredibly few young folks are moving out into the rural lands to set up small scale enterprises!) but hey, if we can make this fly then we really have a very good case to share!

And so should I offer the trainings I have put together for free?  Is that of most benefit?  Not usually.  That’s usually a one-way drain, and unsustainable frankly. I’ve been there and tried that and most often, to be frank, I’m the one losing out.  At times I’ve earnt other folks a bunch of money when I’ve done the hard graft.  Other times the work exchanges I’ve agreed on haven’t been honored in a very satisfactory manner.  I’ve even had to go to court to claim payment when I went well out of my way to help someone far beyond my contract.  I’ve also been well out of my way to help others who got stitched up, part of a longer story why Ridgedale even exists.  For a couple of years I offered people who’d write who didn’t have so much cash the choice to tell me the lowest and highest amount they were willing to pay, and we’d work out what felt comfortable.  As a very keen observer I often saw those folks turn up with new smart phones, fancy laptops and a lot of things I couldn’t afford and think… hang on a minute…  Priorities.

As it is we offer our trainings as cheaply as we know how.  Nowadays the prices for our trainings here at our farm are much higher than when I set out, mostly because of the economy of the location I find myself settled in.  Look up Swedish taxes.  Could you make it work?  My rates are higher than some and lower than others with similar level of experiences.  I feel confident of the value I can offer when I look at the relative price of our trainings to others in the region and the relative design & practical experience offered, as well as the venue offered as a training location. Sure, you can find cheaper trainings, but with what experience, at what venue, eating what food?  Consumers always have a responsibility.  Do your research.  Our trainings are cheaper than the price of backpacking in this beautiful country.  Just the food we serve would cost more than the training if you ate the same fare in town (if there were any venues that sold this kind of quality!)

We really understand that some folks just can’t afford trainings, which is why we have offered a very heavily subsidized spot on all our courses this year.  This doesn’t really even cover the whole cost, ie, it costs us a little bit, but it’s a small way in which we are willing to extend our desire to be inclusive.  When you direct someone to this option who is expressing a lack of funds and they don’t respond you start to understand patterns a little deeper.  We also direct folks to the crowdsourcing site set up by our dear friend Christian, WeTheTrees, where I act as a course provider.  Hey, why don’t YOU take responsibility and use your resources and networks creatively?   I feel clear I’m doing my bit to benefit others…

I’m not sure where this notion that Permaculture training should be free comes from, because whilst I can only speak for myself I’m sure it’s true for others too that the folks most worth learning from have spent a huge amount of money/ time (or both) in their own learning, experience and project development and are very busy so this must be reciprocated if you want that person’s time, attention and input.  Simple. 

I think it’s probably fair to say that most folks have really no idea what it costs to run a really functional project/ farm if they have not done so themselves.  For this reason I can understand where the idea of free trainings comes from.  Whilst I’m moved by that basic yearning to be of benefit I cannot support it financially myself!  All them little things add up very fast, particularly with a lot of people around and diverse enterprises like you will find on our farm.  I spent 1500 Euro on screws in 6 months last year, ever done that?  Add that up across the board and you soon find the income generated from offering incredible learning experiences doesn’t nearly cover the cost of creating them, and my time is not even factored into that.  I give it my all, as any of my past course participants would surely agree with, because I know the future I’d like to grow old in depends on a lot more folks powered up working for the benefit of all.  Sure, we benefit from the longer-term investments on our farm, and that’s the trade off, but it also isn’t as simple as that.  Giving people the freedom to take on responsibilities and make their own projects usually costs us a LOT.  Timing practical implementation with fixed training dates doesn’t always pay off our end!  Making interesting things that cost us a lot of small parts and break after a few months is far from ideal.  Broken tools, worn parts and decreased life of infrastructure.  It’s super hard to factor in the impact of a large amount of people in a place, but one thing is clear, it costs more than you’d hope.  We came to the conclusion last year that things cost around 30% more than planned for, however well they were seemingly planned.  And we’re pretty good at planning/ managing if I say so myself.  But it’s these things that need to be factored in to fulfill our specific objectives; making a thriving and profitable regenerative agriculture simultaneously alongside a rich & supportive learning habitat.

Increasingly today with online trainings, more and more books and online resources, there is so much people can take freely.  There’s nearly everything you need freely available out there already.  Use the resources at your fingertips.  These make up all the nuts and bolts, the ingredients and components in design.  The most important aspects cannot be shared in this manner.  The things that happen human to human, within clear contextual surroundings are really the impactful things.  The human sharing, the careful measured advice & mentoring, the sharing of the intimate details, the planning, the decisions, the finances.  These are the things that actually make a big difference.  Land based design is essentially the easy bit, lets face it.  Management of people/ finances/ resources, decision making, context; this is what actually makes it work and holds it all up.  This we share so openly and honestly with all that come here, and whilst its perhaps not the aspects most folks get excited by when they get engaged by Permaculture or Regenerative Agriculture, it’s the weak link in most chains I’ve ever seen.  It’s the intimate sharing that has often saved clients and participants of our trainings a lot of time, money & effort.  Anytime that happens we see big value in our work.  That makes us clear why we put in such long hours with so much care and attention in so many places.  I don’t think I’d recommend anyone setting out as farmer, project manager and educator simultaneously unless you really know what you’re in for.  I do it because I just love it and I’ve currently got the energy for it.  I see so much benefit pour forth daily, and that’s all I want for myself, and all I want for anyone.  So I’m here, showing up, ready.

For the folks that do come here and participate in our trainings (as well as when we offer trainings abroad) we have very highly consistent feedback that we offer very good value for money.  This has often been calibrated with feedback from folks that have attended other trainings beforehand and thus we see a wider picture and frame of reference for what we’re doing.

There are long established ways to learn for free; WWOOFing and the like.  People relate VERY mixed experiences, but one thing for sure is that you couldn’t get the level of intensive education we offer here if you’re not paying for it, I have never heard of anyone anywhere on the planet doing that.  You can take working Internships at incredible places but you certainly won’t get class time focused on design and your individual needs, you’ll work like a farmer.  This is invaluable and definitely a great option, but it brings me back to Context.  It totally depends what you’re looking for.  If you want me to sit with you and fast track you through using digital design software, ponder over your designs and give feedback all afternoon and teach things in a structured coherent way tailored to your learning style then it’s only going to work if the exchange is reciprocal.

So what are the current options for folks lacking financial capital who want to come and learn here with us?  Well, we have 6 month Core Team roles every year, open to anyone to apply.  We offer incredible food and your own room and a chance to take part in some of the trainings in exchange for managing particular aspects of the farm.  To see the whole “active” season in this way is a deep & rich learning experience where folks naturally get exposed to everything going on here.  You can look on the website and what we offer and what we expect and see if this is an option for you.  We may take on a couple of winter managers this season, which is a very different role, but a learning opportunity in it’s own right.  We’ll let you know…

You can also keep up to date with our blog/ facebook page where we offer a heavily subsidized spot on every training.  If you are genuinely lacking funds and really want this then take responsibility!  We’re always most likely to offer our time and energy to folks we see will benefit most from it.  We’re not into spoon feeding someone who just isn’t stepping up. 

Something that has been super useful to empowering my own relationship to capital is the fluid and dynamic clarification set forth by Ethan & Gregory in their work defining Regenerative Enterprise (http://www.appleseedpermaculture.com/8-forms-of-capital/) We are all trading different forms of capital in everything we do, and we are super happy to remain flexible and open in every moment to whatever feels of most benefit.  What I have witnessed in my journey is a lot of distress around money in this movement.  How do we empower our relationship to money?  That is a much more potent question to me than how do we design a new system that may or may not take it’s place.  Money is like water in my experience.  I’m not going to get into that here, just planting the idea that we can all choose how we interact and respond to whatever arises for us moment to moment.

For those of you burning up for deep & insightful education who don’t have fiscal resources to spare, you’ll be happy to know our current aim within the next couple of years is to transition towards a 6 month long free internship here at the farm.   This will take the place of having a Core Team here supporting us and Interns coming for intensive education mixed with field experience implementing systems.  This is partly because we value being able to offer that, and partly as we will have installed the majority of the systems and be looking more at maintaining and running the various enterprises end to end.  I feel like I will always value a good amount of time in the “classroom” getting deep into the nuts and bolts of design, because I just love it, and so this time and financial investment will have to be offset with farm labour.  Real farm labour.  I imagine at that point we will have trial weeks and folks will commit their time and travel costs not knowing whether they’ll make that seasons cut.  Whilst that won’t work out so great for some, it will likely bring some mutuality in return for all we invest, and a once in a lifetime learning adventure for those that are fully committed and responsive.  If you want something “for free” you gonna have to take full responsibility.  That’s one thing that for sure needs to be reciprocal.  There is no free lunch.

Rainbows over happy hens look all great don't they?!  Our Egg Mobile 350 build went well this winter.  We had the design objectives of a portable house for a flock of up to 350 hens that would cost us Eur 2500 to build (inc. a mobile feeder & auto waterer) weighed less than 1000 kg and could be moved through our sloping Silvopasture lanes by ATV.  We came in on budget and weighing in at about 900kg.  The wettest coldest spring in decades made conditions intense for people, plants & animals and our brave May PDC participants had to endure the worst of it.  Amazing group they were, resilient, engaged & a lot of deep (un)learning to start the season with a bang.  One aspect of morning farm chores is working with the different animal systems.  We have teams that take care of Food & Hygiene, Shared Spaces, Gardening, Foraging wild foods, Cows & Sheep, Broilers and the Egg Mobile.  We like to share responsibility for each others wellbeing in this way, as well as learn & participate in the diverse things happening daily at the farm.  A LOT can happen in a week here.

Our 3 main fields have totally different characteristics, and at the time of the May PDC the Egg Mobile was in Front Field which is heavy clay (compared to pure sand/ silt in the top of Top Field)  This whole area was underwater/ ice once and we see the evidence of this in the varied terrain & soil characteristics.  With the incredible rains we have been having the hens can make a real impact in a day with so many feet working relentlessly in their classic one leg then the other scratch, scratch, peck as they search out greens and insects.  With such wet ground in this heavy clay field the affect is to bring up clay onto the vegetation and create some amount of compaction through the laying out of clay particles.

I'm able to move the Egg Mobile/ Mobile Hopper feeder/ automatic waterer & fence alone in 20- 25 mins in fair weather but during this weird May I ended up needing to enlist the help of some generous morning pushers!  One problem is the Rhino we use has too much power and not enough weight so it can dig a hole quite quickly in these conditions.  Another problem was the Egg Mobile (built on an old car chassis) only had single wheels which easily sank in the unusually wet ground.   Thankfully this happened after a bunch of folks arrived at the farm.  The first 2 weeks on the field gave me no problems and so it was quite surprising seeing how spring decided to develop.  Sure, we could add weights to the Rhino but that's not so practical as we use this for all sorts of functions regularly.  We also want to minimize impact of the ground primarily.

Thankfully, we're dedicated to finding positive solutions left, right & center.  No big problems here, only opportunities to learn, design, experiment & monitor.  And that's what it's all about after all.  Getting creative with the new Intern group having a couple of days spare before Holistic Managing training we decided to recycle my old Volvo that we crashed on sheet ice over the winter narrowly avoiding serious injury.  It was a beautiful old car and I'm super happy the wheels are now holding up the Egg Mobile.  To cut a long story short we had to engineer double wheels as we had a trailer with Ford hubs (wheels are secured with nuts not bolts)  With nifty farm hack gusto we utilized Yohanna's old Skoda brake disks to create flat plates to bolt the curved rims together using spacers and mounted the new double wheels.

It has been going SUPER smooth since we attached these double wheels.  We have had our Salmonella test back for both the layers & all broiler chickens and we're all clear (Sweden has ZERO tolerance and a positive result would mean an instant flock cull) the eggs are coming out clean (we have to have a certified Egg Packery to sell to restaurants and shops, cleaning with liquid is not allowed) the birds are happy and the Egg Mobile no longer sinks.  For comparison, the image below shows the tracks from the Egg Mobile passing through the wettest part of the field with double wheels (would have sunk 20cm deep with the single wheels here)  Nice work team!  LOVE working together on epic things...

We know some folks have been interested in the more details of the build, dimensions, considerations, choices, etc.  We will write this up in detail too, but that will be a really long post and we're super busy farming & educating double full time right now so thanks for your patience.

If you appreciate our open honest sharing and have ever considered starting a Pastured Broiler Enterprise then check out our Chickstarter Campaign.  We're offering super low cost comprehensive online training to decide if E Learning is beneficial enough to consider getting deeper into....

If you love what we do here and need to kickstart your own learning then check out our Aug- Sept 8 Week Internship, frankly there's nothing like it.  We also have an upcoming 2 Day Farm Scale Permaculture & Regenerative Ag weekend intensive at the farm end of July if you can't make it for longer.

This is the first of a new series we intend to post of things that don't go well on the farm.  Life here at Ridgedale is amazing, establishing a pioneering project in this beautiful land with incredible folks coming from around the world to contribute their unique gifts, strengths and talents in an intensive & caring learning environment.  As with any farm or project of this nature, things are not always smooth.  In todays world of image saturated social media its mostly polished images and what is going well for folks that is shared.  We're here to serve as a unique and potent learning site as well as a productive farm and so we feel it is our responsibility to share the sides often hidden from the public eye as well as all the rest.  This is where learning really happens, this is where the creative solutions swell up so naturally in everyone committed to be of benefit and frankly we need more of it.  When things die or get sick, break or cause shocking unintended consequences, this is where deep learning can occur. The challenges and failures are equally meaningful and stimulating as the frequent triumphs and amazement that goes on in this place.  We just love it.  The total openness with which we run this place, from sharing our business, decisions, perspectives and personal lives with out Interns and training participants is one very clear aspect of what makes this place so special.  We hope sharing these experiences will be of benefit to those of you who follow our activities from around the world.  We also hope it inspires more to write up and share their challenges & failures; it's a great way we can serve each other...

Today was the windiest day of the year by far.  We began the day with the Interns planting up a windbreak with alternate coppiced willow followed by Spruce on 3m centers (for winter protection) with Alder on 1m centers inside this.  Over time this will give us a dense ramp to send wind up over the pasture and tree lanes in Front Field.  Effectively organized this awesome team were blitzing it for the first day of our Perennial Cropping portion of the Internship program when the winds picked up.  Insane kind of wind that blows roofing off broiler pens and sends mini polytunnels tumbling up the neighbors field.  The last time this happened it took the canvas roof off one of the yurts, requiring a quick fix in the rain.

Normally storms pass either side of us here because of our valley setting and the lake directly below us to the south where prevailing winds hail from.  When they do hit they tend to hit real hard.  In a humbling way.

Our 9m Gers are a real treat; great spaces which we use for our dining room and another for a classroom.   Yohanna and I built them both in 2 weeks using the awesome calculators at https://simplydifferently.org/Yurt_Notes?page=1#Yurt Calculator a bit of basic carpentry and a 100 year old sewing machine (The only error I have found is the roof overlap is always 30cm too short, so check that carefully if you're building one!)  

These are big structures, we've had over 50 people in one on one of our farm open days.  That means they are also heavy, several hundred KG of wood & canvas up above your head.  After a cover being ripped off last year in a similar storm we had begun the year by adding a 30cm overhang all around, which has been working great.  We set these up in April each season and leave them up until everyone leaves in October.  However today the winds were just so intense that with a good cover the pressure started twisting the Gers centre ring on its support posts.  Naturally as it moves very slightly the length of the roof poles effectively changes and  the entire structural integrity changes.  Seeing the storm winds were increasing we decided to take off the covers, and none too soon.  The metal L brackets which pin the roof poles in place to the center ring were all bent up and given more time this would have ended in a lot more structural damage.  All hands sprung into action and tasks divvied out as people naturally saw solutions and participated in an awesomely effective overhaul of the spaces, now standing proud and stronger than ever....

Running a farm is essentially about planning a lot, remembering to carry things with you all the time and responding with a solutions focus moment to moment.  We spend a lot of time "reality checking" with our Interns, often undoing myths perpetuated from books and ideas that just aren't grounded in the reality of what it takes to work and live in this way.  It's a healthy thing, a real healthy thing, and one thing we like to demonstrate is that ever present willingness to go the extra mile and do what needs to be done to get a job done.  Thats what it takes to create a place like this.  So it was amazing to just see how naturally and skillfully the Intern group responded to this situation.  Without further thought tree planting was put aside for the day, tools away and all attention went into coming up with a clear plan and workflow to deal with the situation.  Gers down and brackets being created out of scrap to join the roof beams to the center wheel to eliminate the possibility of them revolving at the same time as upgrading the support beams and spending the the rest of the day reassembling the spaces.  I just love working effectively with groups of people.  It's incredible what people can do together when focused on how they can contribute to the whole, have a clear understanding of the task and the role they can play to support its fruition.  Effective communication.  It's one of the aspects of experiential learning we really try to instill with our Interns here.  I often reflect how design is the relatively easy bit.  It's often the concepts and strategies that folks coming to us are excited by, but it's consistently the project management, organizing work flows, organizing finances & holistic decision making that represent the log jams in places I've visited.

Thankfully the Egg Mobile 350 seems undaunted by the winds.  With a good overall shape and most of weight down low there seems to be little risk of any big problems with wind we hope.  And with the Interns farm hacked double wheels we're not even sinking despite the wettest spring in decades here....

One thing missing in the sphere of Permaculture & Regenerative Ag. is useful quantifiable documentation.  Be it financials, results of actions on the actual land; this movement suffers from the promulgation of ideas & concepts that are not necessarily tried and tested in the experience of the advocate.  It's a problem we seek to address in general by documenting & sharing all that happens at the farm, both successful & unsuccessful.  We initiated research that will grow and continue in the following years.  As a demonstration site we put pressure on ourselves to actually demonstrate the results of what we are talking about & doing and we are intent on following that up.

Below you will find some of the initial survey work began by our awesome farm manager from 2014,  Kate. This work will continue and broaden in this and following years.  We use a weather station installed at the farm to allow us to monitor and somewhat account for the circumstantial evidence that perhaps debases so many claims of "observed" results.

Congrat's to Ben & Fotini who we decided to offer subsidized spots for our August PDC and Internship program at ridgedale permaculture

Ben joins us from Australia, having been living and working at an eco village in South East Queensland, Australia, where he led up the kitchen gardens. Having been teaching Outdoor Education and Sustainability for the past 5 years in a range of school settings over in Australia, this summer Ben is planning of spending 3-4 months travelling parts of Europe, visiting eco-villages and seeing what and how people are approaching land education over there.  Happy to have you join us for the PDC Ben! 

Fotini will be joining us for the 8 Week Internship program from Greece.  She has studied biology, organic farming and herbal medicine and I has been involved in various different projects in the fields of sustainable food production, herbal medicine and community activism, living and working in eco-communities, participating in community garden groups and grass roots initiatives related to health and food sovereignty over the past 10 years.

Fotini is the co-founder of the Nea Guinea non-profit organization (NPO) based in Athens, Greece, that has been in operation since 2009, focusing mainly on the re-appropriation of our everyday lives in terms of food, health, energy and shelter.  She has been organizing a number of projects developing different alternative practices and techniques on the above subjects and also promoting these practices as tools for increasing self-sufficiency and resilience of people and communities.

"Our projects aim to inform, educate, encourage and support people in redefining their basic everyday needs and getting actively involved in the production process in order to cover these needs, based on their own knowledge and their own resources, becoming less dependent on the goods and services of the global market."

Fortini took a PDC with Rod Everett and Mill Millichap, (my own original teachers; amazing folks!) then a Regenerative Agriculture and Land Management Course with Darren J. Doherty and a TTC with Rosemary Morrow, and is now starting a Diploma with the Permaculture Assosiation of UK.  We feel like Fotini's commitment to her pathway is obvious and feel happy to be able to flesh out & extend on her previous training experiences in a beneficial manner.

Congrat's to you both, and thanks for everyone who went in for the opportunity; something we will continue to do we think, so stay tuned.  Looking forward to an intense and engaging year.  Look forward to sharing all we can via media for those of you who won't be able to join us on the ground….

We're trying to share as much of this journey with as many people as possible through our trainings, writings, etc.  You can read more about the last season's experience in a recent article on our blog.   2015 will see us scaling up egg and broiler production, extending the gardens for a CSA and a whole bunch of exciting things. It's going to be epic.

Whilst our trainings are comparatively low priced for what we offer,  we know a lot of people who could benefit from this just can't afford our workshops.  We decided as part of our Fair Share policy to pay it forward and are offering;

• 1 spot on our next highly regarded Permaculture Design Course (1- 13th Aug) training for 2000.00 SEK (normally 10, 500 SEK).  Details for this training are found here.  
  
• We are also offering 1 spot on our unique & pioneering 8 Week Farm Scale & Professional Permaculture Internship (normally 36,000 SEK) for 9,900.00 SEK.  This 8 Week Certificate training includes;

• 90hr+ PRI (Aus) & PC Assoc (UK) certified PDC
• Introduction to Holistic Management (Savory Institute Certified) & integrated Animal Systems
• Keyline Design & Water Management
• Agroforestry & Perennial Cropping
• Annual vegetable production & Regenerating Soils

There is no other training like this we know about, so we are looking to support someone who will really utilize what they learn with us in a highly active way.  Details of this training found here.

At this point both the PDC and Internship are booking up, but spots are available on both.  If you have already signed up you can still apply.  We shall select the lucky 2 people after 25th March.  You will need to pay the fee within 10 days of receipt of the news or you forfeit the gift (which will go to someone else).  To be in for a chance you need to;

• Share this blog post publicly on your Facebook Feed (You can "like" us too if you want to keep updated with the farm)
  
• Write a response here on this blog about how you would benefit from & utilize this training

Ultimately we know our future depends on a LOT more people expressing their uniques gifts, strengths & talents in regenerative enterprises.  Please note the intention of this is to support folks who simply cannot afford trainings of this nature rather than people who prioritize spending money in other areas.

Best wishes for 2015, thank you so much for all the support that has come in from around the globe.  It is such an honor to share these journeys together...

We can think of at least 180 great forest garden & perennial crops for cold climate Sweden.  Want to hear about them  Perennial plants and crops offer a low energy, oil & resource input based foundation for future-proof agricultures. By default if an agriculture is to be called regenerative the bottom line is that it must be soil building, not soil depleting.  Relentless deep tillage & poor soinagement contributes to the majority of the 10 tons of topsoil per person lost every year on planet water. 

It is a large shrub or small tree growing to 8 m tall. The leaves are arranged alternately, 12–30 cm long, and are pinnate, with 9–17 leaflets, the leaflets 3–6 cm long, with a sharply serrated margin. The flowers are 2–3 cm diameter, with five white petals, and are produced in erect panicles 10–20 cm long in mid spring. The fruit is an oval leathery capsule 5–6 cm diameter, which splits into three sections at maturity to release the 6–18 seeds; the seeds are black, 1.5 cm diameter, resembling a small horse chestnut seed.

Flowers can be eaten cooked. They are usually boiled. Leaves can also be cook the same manner. The seed is about the size of a pea, it is quite sweet, with a taste like a sweet chestnut. The seed is husked and then ground into a powder and boiled.



Dormant plants are hardy to about -20°c and it will need careful placement to survive winter in our location.  Worth a try, anyone else growing it?

2014 was an incredible year for us at Ridgedale Permaculture.  We hit the ground running and with an awesome Core Team from around the world and all the amazing people who came through the farm we achieved so much both on the land and in education, and gained support of over 10,000 followers to our Fb page  Thanks so much to all of you who contribute to this amazing place.  We have so much to be grateful for, and it is such a joy and pleasure to be able to share our experience and learning with some of the brightest minds and kindest hearts we've ever met.  We have always valued making our Educational activities as accessible as possible; one of our main objectives is supporting as many people as possible into farming & land based enterprises and professional regenerative design.  We've been doing pretty good with it; yet settled at our Swedish home base where we have to operate in this economy (not exactly set up to support small, local regenerative enterprises!) we realize many around the world just can't afford to make it to our trainings.  So we've been considering how we can support low income folks who have the passion and commitment, who are dedicating their lives to regenerating their soils and communities.  So Yohanna & Richard have decided to offer super low cost placement's for both our next Permaculture Design Course and our pioneering training; 8 Week Farm Scale & Professional Permaculture Internship.

We searched around all corners of Sweden to find a place to set up our farm project, with a list of around 50 goals we were trying to meet.   We found it, and with our incredible Core Team and Intern's laid out the skeleton of the farm in our first 6 month season as you can see in the brief recap of the year below;

We're trying to share as much of this journey with as many people as possible through our trainings, writings, etc.  You can read more about the last season's experience in a recent article on our blog.   2015 will see us scaling up egg and broiler production, introducing forest pigs, extending the gardens for a CSA, earthworking and more reforestation work.  It's going to be epic.

Whilst our trainings are comparatively low priced for what we offer,  we know a lot of people who could benefit from this just can't afford our workshops.  We decided as part of our Fair Share policy to pay it forward and offer 1 spot on our next highly regarded Permaculture Design Course (9-23rd May 2015) training for 2000.00 SEK (normally 10, 500 SEK).  Details for this training are found here.  

We are also offering 1 spot on our unique & pioneering 8 Week Farm Scale & Professional Permaculture Internship (normally 36,000 SEK) for 9,500 SEK.  This 8 Week Certificate training includes;

• 90hr+ PRI (Aus) & PC Assoc (UK) certified PDC
• Introduction to Holistic Management (Savory Institute Certified) & integrated Animal Systems
• Keyline Design & Water Management
• Agroforestry & Perennial Cropping
• Annual vegetable production & Regenerating Soils

There is no other training like this we know about, so we are looking to support someone who will really utilize what they learn with us in a highly active way.  Details of this training are found here.

At this point both the PDC and Internship are booking up, but spots are available on both.  If you have already signed up you can still apply.  We shall select the lucky 2 people early in the New Year.  You will need to pay the fee within 10 days of receipt of the news or you forfeit the gift (which will go to someone else).  To be in for a chance you need to;

• Share this post on your Facebook Feed (Possibly invite others to check it out)
  
• Write a response here on this blog about how you would benefit from & utilize this training

Ultimately we know our future depends on a LOT more people expressing their uniques gifts, strengths & talents in regenerative enterprises.  Please note the intention of this is to support folks who simply cannot afford trainings of this nature rather than people who prioritize spending money in other areas.

Best wishes for 2015, thank you so much for all the support that has come in from around the globe.  It is such an honor to share these journeys together...

This is a brief reflection on our recent trip to Veracruz, Mexico.  We went over to run a 10 day Regenerative Ag workshop at the incredible Rancho San Ricardo in tandem with working on design for the 134 Ha ranch Granja Nut, both of which are connected to La Margarita Sugar Mill which services approximately 110,000 Ha of plantation.  With the future of the sugar industry in uncertainty and with regional soils & waters in bad shape, the pioneering owner is molding a vision to demonstrate diversification that meets local needs in terms of food, fiber and energy in a way that fosters and benefits the multitude of people inherently connected to the mill and the surrounding economies.

Slides above from my first visit to the mill, showing the whole process at the other end of your sugar spoon...

The initial design work was conducted by MasHumus and Jesus Ruiz, working on installing the initial access and hydrological layers at the San Ricardo site.  With the main access running along the main ridge, the primary ridge & valleys formations make for a highly visual demonstration of Keyline Design.  Thanks to Pablo & Tere's efforts (along with the team at the farm) the site is really coming along, with a lot more planting, maturing and introduction of animals since I first visited.  Sugarcane is still produced on the ranch and will obviously be highly important for the wider area until the industry declines.  However, one of the objectives of this project is to start meeting more needs locally whilst restoring the carbon and hydrological cycles.  Somehow the future feels closer here, a little raw and a little exposed.

There is a long dry season that stalls the sub tropical growth, so effective management of soil and water resources is vital.  The evidence of past abuse is close to hand.  There is pedestalling of over 600mm at the base of the tree you see in both pictures below, at the southern end of the San Ricardo site.  Intensive plow agriculture takes its toll even faster in these climes, probably the majority of this was lost in 40- 50 yrs; the result of plowing up and down hills and exposing bare soil to tropical rains.

Two of my past students, Rodrigo & Antoninio live and work at the site, both having taken part in a PDC, and Rodrigo in a Dryland Water Management & 10 Week Farm Scale Permaculture Internship; so we have a solid platform & connection for coherent design work together.  Rodrigo is passionate about Holistic Management and is dealing with the dairy herd whilst Antoninio works with the Tree Nursery and educational outreach.  They;re both doing great work.  When I first arrived and looked for mapping we heard there were quotes for $10K for 50cm topo's for the farm.  One of our aims was to develop a highly affordable, highly practical & productive approach to taking the farm into a more resilient and diversified future.  After some gleaning of the resources on site we found an old 50cm topo from the 1980's for part of the ranch (where the lagoons lie) and I decided to combine this with another digital map of the pastures which I could reference with other mappage lying around and digitize the whole thing.  An evenings work later (overlaying maps and tracing topography) and we now have a 50cm topo map of the whole farm.  Perfect!

Unusually the paddocks are divided up by permanent fencing running on contour around the ranch.  This might have been done because contour ditches have been used to utilize some of the mills waste water for irrigation in the dry season.  We're not sure.  I always like to see if we can work with what we already have.  Whilst my mind can quickly jump into "what is the optimal design for this landscape?" cost, practicality & resources (context) need to be carefully factored in.  More and more in design work I am asking myself "what don't we need to do here; how simple can we keep it?"  I like this approach; we have saved people a bunch of money and possibly unintended consequences when it comes to strategies such as extensive earth-working that may not be necessary or even optimal.

On my first visit I had the great privilege to visit the remaining Chinampas systems in the south of Mexico City, the wondrous remains of what was once arguably the most resilient of farming systems (see slideshow below)  Driving around the ranch I began to wonder how we could use the bamboo and timber on site, along with the 40,000 tons of cachasa (pressed cane waste) that comes out of the factory annually to build chinampas that make the water travel through the lagoons in a long slow motion to aid cooling, and find the right plant assemblies to clean some of the organics out at the same time as producing a useful yield of biomass, etc.  Wouldn't that be something, so appropriate to the region.  John Todd's approach at a Tyson chicken processing plant in Maryland had to deal with over double the volume of water (which I don't think was hot) that contained a lot higher levels of residues and subsequent BOD levels.  The way these lagoons are set up gives scope for the system to function totally by gravity with irrigation water being taken from the last pool.  The option to divert water around the entire canal system direct onto the pasture (at the highest point) still remains.  Obviously there would be some substantial investment, mainly a lot of labour, but I would envisage the cost to be totally appropriate for a serious industrial unit to take full responsibility for a substantial amount of water.  Looking forward to future developments on this front!

Slides from my visit to the Chinamapas with my wonderful biologist friend Ignacio

Utilizing the water for flood flow irrigation seems totally viable, and has been done with trenches made with a butterfly plow attachment and tractor annually.  This seemed to work to some degree, but on inspecting the paddocks I found some of the lines went up and down slope and seemingly had not been surveyed.  This will obviously not work optimally, so I began studying the map and looking for options.  Wanting to see if we could work around the existing fencing we started sketching out layout ideas.  One aspect that played into this was that farm access was poor, in times of wet ground there were numerous dips where even 4x4 vehicles had trouble.  I sat down with Rodrigo to start laying out flood flow irrigation ideas, alongside farm access and tree lanes.

Talking with Pablo about tree planting at San Ricardo, I learnt that trees had been either planted by hand or with a tractor powered augur.  Given the efficacy of our tree planting rig on our farm I started thinking how we could use what was lying around to create a more optimal set up.  The problem I could foresee using the augur, besides it being very slow work, was that it could compact up the edges of the hole and create a strange planting hole.  I figured if we were going to create permanent flood flow (on contour) then we could use existing fencing to protect it from trampling.  Multiple "tiers" of irrigation ditches could be connected by pipe and gate valve down the centre of the ridge that falls from the canal outlet point.  In this circumstance dams are just not worthwhile, water is in such great abundance!  That means roads, even just graded earthen roads, are simply not an appropriate strategy.  Water & unnecessary investment is not needed here in my mind.   There is no need for permanent access, but it is always beneficial to delineate vehicle land use patterns to avoid unnecessary compaction on the pasture.  We can do that with tree plantings.  Starting to sketch ideas I liked the idea of single timber trees on perhaps 4-6m spacings on the downhill side of each berm, protected by the existing fence and still allowing unimpeded flood flow over the berm wall.  On the upside of the irrigation ditch I started thinking around the sort of mounded beds we made at Ridgedale on Keyline geometry.  As continuous beds these are much quicker to plant, give a much better quality of ground preparation, allow for planting with no tools as well as cover cropping.  They would act as a final physical barrier to the flood flow, which should aid vehicle access where that is combined; a pattern that could be repeated across the whole ranch.   Paddocks are then individually marked up for Keyline pattern subsoiling and in this case a 10m headland left around any field tree crops for efficient movement of machinery.   With year round grass production the only machinery anticipated on the land is tractors pulling subsoilers and mulch mowers, since animal numbers are approximately at 0.5 the potential and there is a clear desire not to bring more large livestock in the foreseeable future.  Mulch cutting acts as a fertilizer too, so managing grazing along side this tool can certainly work for now.

Another benefit from having permanent fences running along both sides of the pasture strips is the potential to use a tumble wheel paddock wire for quick and efficient moving of the herd with a single person.  Naturally a complimentary egg laying enterprise could benefit & extend this set up reaping benefits for the land as well as bringing another source of income as a by-product of their pasture sanitization services.  Some of the existing fencing is not necessarily in the optimal place, eg, if we want to put access down ridge lines, etc, but if tracks are not graded and avenue plantings allow full access then it's not really a big deal.  Not really worth the cost of moving any of it at this point.  Our goal is how simply, how cheaply, can we add layers of production and ecosystem services whilst optimizing what is already there?  Keyline patterned subsoiling and planned grazing regime is already going to have an impact, tree crops will bring all manner of benefits and complimentary enterprises can be added as we go...

During the workshop we looked at different options for mechanizing tree planting and wanting to create solutions at super low cost I remembered the keyline plow they had at San Ricardo which had been modelled for injecting Cachasa into the subsoil.  In this region putting organic matter straight onto the ground is somewhat futile (certainly at this scale)  It is oxidized so quickly.  This machine turned out not so effective.  Injected into the subsoil, Cachasa is needed at a rate of 2-3 tons Ha.  The mill alone serves 100,000 Ha, the machinery and resources are just not available to make this work at scale.  It also seems to only work with a specific moisture content otherwise it clogs, so it's been sat in the barn.  I asked the engineers to remove the hopper and leave a single central shanks and see if they could take 2 disks from a cane tiller and mount them on to start experimenting with raised bed creation.  Over the next days through various means of translation; people, scribbles, etc, we developed a prototype for deep ripped mounded tree beds to radically speed up and improve tree planting for both the farms.  The slides below capture a few of the moments.

Celebrating abundance; farm scale BioFerts, abundant harvests and worm composting.  Great work here...

I loved this bamboo bicycle prototype I found at the ranch, pictured below.  These folks are certainly creative, and I think this is key to making regenerative enterprises that are good for the land, people and maintain a healthy livelihood.  Owning a mill that so many people rely on is a huge responsibility, and I deeply admire the courage and clarity that is driving and pioneering this project.  The foundation for everything here is to create nurturing & stimulating livelihoods for all the people here who haven given so much and rely so much on this whole economy.  It's off my scale, I guess off most peoples scale, but I admire it wholeheartedly.

Antoninio and the Nursery team are churning out thousands of trees of a wide array of great fruit, support & fiber species.  With a bit of creative machinery and plants generated on site the overall development can be kept to a very reasonable investment.  The benefits will be many.  So much great work is happening on the ground here, and it's a real pleasure to engage with dedicated and thoughtful folks to connect dots and see how we can optimally connect and integrate systems to future- proof this incredible place.  One aspect of the perennial layer of the design is to plant/ exclude areas of the ranches to create a corridor through the estate to connect primary forest to the west with forest on the NE.  Agriculture has taken it's toll and the people here are very aware of that.  One of the participants on the workshop is very experienced with endemic ecosystem restoration; presenting her amazing work to the group.  It seems like all the necessary resources are falling into place for this ambitious project.  What happens here is not limited to the property boundaries by any means.  Besides sitting in the heart of over 500,000 Ha of cane production that will inevitably have to shift at some point, I think this place is already one of the prime hubs for Farm Scale regeneration in this part of the world.  Its got a bit of everything, and amazing people to boot.

This really represents a design sketch; far from a polished master plan with accurate bill of quantities, etc, but what I appreciate about the process so far is the proposition for extremely low cost development leading to long term resilience.  The biggest cost in this ranch overhaul would be the addition of the 2nd line of permanent fencing; not a huge cost really.  A bit of infrastructure is needed to control the canal flow and allow for distribution (in the way of piping and gate valves) to the various irrigation ditches, which can be installed at low cost.  With trees produced abundantly on site, machinery, livestock & tools already existing, much is just about management.  I often reflect how the most stable, resilient, low cost & low risk approaches I have been exposed to are based on biological processes, meaning they can be wealth creating.  This thought hearkens me back to Allan Savory's words, "you can't solve complex problems with technology."

I'm excited to watch the development of this project.  HUGE potential and already amazing things accomplished. With my own farm to manage it's becoming less and less possible or desirable to travel far, but this is one place I am excited for our next training event...

It is impossible to capture the incredibly diverse & rich experiences that have taken place here this year.  It has been such a pleasure to share this unique time and learning opportunity with so many bright and dedicated folks committed to being of benefit through their actions, enterprises and work.  Part of our vision is to be able to offer people experiences that can really empower the design approach and practical skills we see as necessary for farming, managing projects, etc.  We ran three PDC trainings and two 10 Week Internships this season, rather intense by any standards, but laden with such rich learning possibilities as we designed & installed systems from scratch.

A thrifty couple that raised pigs and farmed horse drawn until 20 years ago previously owned the land.  The land had not been worked since and degrading pasture stood testimony to the lack of animals on the landscape.  We designed Ridgedale as a pasture and perennial crop based system to maximize photosynthetic capture whilst ensuring low input management for the future, valuing our most renewable source of energy; the sun.  We have used Keyline Design as a framework for prioritization in most of our design work over the last few years and this also frames the pattern of land use.  We have strips of pasture with multiple complimentary animal species grazing through Agroforestry strips of fruit, nut and berry production.   At 59 °N light is a limiting factor and so we stack layers of cropping quite intensively to make the most of the short season.

Ridgedale is set on 10 Ha with pasture, forest, streams and sloping land with good solar orientation we have a great platform to begin regenerating the soils mineral and water cycles and build increasingly diverse habitat whilst producing very high quality food for the local community.  One unusual aspect to the farm is that we aim to meet the majority of our own food needs first, and then produce a surplus to sell.  Farming economically at this scale requires low initial debt, utilizing local waste streams, producing our own needs and focusing on high quality value added products.  When we say our “own” food that includes a bustling average population of 25- 30 folks who come to participate in trainings at the farm for half the year.  This year we established 600m2 of annual vegetables in our contoured No Dig Beds and Polytunnels, and in 2015 we will be experimenting with innovative ATV cultivation, and look into extending annual production for a CSA.  We plan to start this slowly and "feel into" the demand, partly as we have so many other commitments.  

We ran a successful fund raising campaign through the Permaculture Crowdsourcing site WeTheTrees and imported an American machine than can till, seed & pack anything from grass to beans using a simple quad bike.  They are used widely for planting feed plots for deer hunting in the US, but caught our attention when we considered how to plant grains for our chickens and field scale crops to feed the hundreds of hungry mouths that pass through the farm each year.  As we all know, most of our industrially grown food today is usually bathed in Diesel.  We figured if we could grow field scale crops with a simple Quad bike then we could supply our own grains, oil crops and staples with relative ease.  It has been shown than soil organic carbon can be sustained in some annual cultivated agroforestry systems, but to be sure we minimize our impact we will be working on very long rotations through the conveniently parceled rows between our tree crops and companion planting field crops.  The tillage is also very shallow compared to typical agricultural practice, and we will never cut through the first soil horizon with this set up.  We use compost teas, home made bio- fertilisers & cover crops to maintain soil health.

Designing at a farm scale involves a little more complexity, more systems to functionally interconnect, finances are usually stretched and there’s generally just a lot going on.  That’s especially true in a Swedish spring when growth is explosive, and in autumn when harvesting and storing nutrient dense food and medicinal crops to keep up vitality through the long dark winter. 

When working with a tight budget building multi- use infrastructure, intercepting waste streams and designing everything to work with the landscape is vital.  Running a project or farm of this nature is about responding to whatever needs attention whenever it needs attention.  Responsibility.  We’ve been using this initial and unique year setting up the farm from scratch to educate a lot of folks from around the world in how to design, organize and implement such systems.  The response has been amazing with hundreds of folks from 25 different countries coming through the farm in 2014.  We have been so privileged to host such incredible folks at the farm this year, and blessed to have such an amazing Core Team who support the running of all aspects of the farm.

We began the season by laying out the No Dig vegetable beds, converting barns, creating a workshop, building a polytunnel, installing a RAM pump to supply fresh water that reticulates around the farm ready for mobile animal grazing then got busy planting thousands of fruit and nut trees and berry crops planted to maximize solar gain amidst the strips of pasture.  

We bought a large supply of our trees in the UK, partly due to supply but a lot to do with cost.  Sweden is extremely expensive with some of the plants we bought being 5 times the price locally.  With European plant passports opening up we decided it would serve us best to go with the high quality nurseries we already had relationships with.  When buying pot grown trees it is worth considering how trees get their nutrition in nature.  Organic compost may be fine for a vegetable that is going out in the ground within a few weeks, however a poor start for a perennial means permanent compromise.  We like root trainers and pre-inoculated trees fed by slow release fertiliser if going for potted plants.  Whilst this may be controversial for some, you really want to consider pattern here.  Nearly everything we bought was bare root, making them cheaper and suited for transport in their dormant stage.  First job was timing the arrival of the plants to the UK the day I got back from a teaching & consulting jaunt in SE Asia and Mexico so I could be there to deal with vulnerable plants immediately.  This went like clockwork and I booked a van with a friend and we drove the 24 hrs through 7 countries to get the plants to the farm and move into our new home, saving in the region of $80- 100,000 in the process!    

The front and back fields on the farm schematic make up the intensive perennial cropping zones of the farm. They are patterned according to our overall Keyline layout, allowing for continued pasture development between the tree lanes over the subsequent years.  

Pasture is not the optimum starting point for establishing trees. Grasslands are bacterially dominated through to balanced fungal: bacterial ratios in the late successional grasses.  Shrubs and vines tend to thrive in F:B ratios of 2-5:1; whereas with our tree crops we are talking F:B ratios of 5-100:1 or more (up to 1000:1 with conifers and old growth forests). Cultivation of soil selects for bacteria.     

In addition, the cultivation will lead to a profusion of grasses. It does, however, give us opportunity to sow a diverse cover crop and plant trees and shrubs into well-prepared ground whilst dealing with the overall water considerations of the site. Our job as engineers of this designed process is to help steer everything possible towards the set of chain reactions (the succession) that we desire.

The mounded tree lanes were seeded immediately to kick start succession with plant assemblies we would actually like, timing being critical in this whole process.  Once the tree mounds settled the tree and shrub crops were planted as bare roots / modules at regular spacing’s. In the back field there are two rows of crops planted according to their height to maximize solar collection due to the general E to W row orientation. In the front field the main tree crops are planted over a central rip with shrub crops on either side, due to their N to S orientation: The trees and shrubs are of high value, and longer-lived perennials deserve a good start in life. Bare roots are dipped in diluted molasses & kelp mix during planting out then watered in with 20l of the same to help kick start fungal symbiosis.   We used recommended doses of commercial fungal inoculants and will be continuing compost tea applications throughout the season. (Kelp and fish products can also be useful in boosting initial tree growth.) We also added rock dust around each tree/ shrub.  It is worth considering the relative placement of any amendments.  Adding everything to a planting hole can possibly limit the organisms desire to root outwards in search of goodies.  We also have compacted land that has not been grazed effectively (or utilized otherwise) for many years, with a consistent plow pan at 20- 25cm depth.  We needed to prepare the ground for planting, lift compaction, deal with water and establish a multitude of support plants simultaneously.

This is where innovative use of equipment and allowing the geometry of our topography to pattern our farm can serve us very well.  Below you see a quick sketch of the process of establishing our perennial lanes to this beautiful Keyline geometry. There are many ways to establish trees, with more or less technology. The scale we are working on, whilst not particularly large, suits the machinery we have at hand for an efficient and multi-functional result.  We imported a Keyline Plow from Australia last year for consultancy/ development gigs as well as a resource for the wider region.  We also imported an old French Simon Bedformer (typically used for vegetable bed formation on ploughed & weathered land)  This model is a 1.8m twin rotor 90hp job capable of burying stones with it's 2nd rotor, giving a better planting surface.  We wanted this machine due to it's ability to create "swale" like mounds on the sides of the beds (2.2m at bottom of the cut, see video below).  It also worked well for us in terms of the planned plant spacing.  Anticipating this would not easily run through pasture we also bought a vintage Lely power harrow.  Modern harrows are usually really wide, and this was the only model we could find that matched up with out bed width. 

Effectively planning the workflow for farm work is essential for motivation, efficiency & generally getting the job done right. Adapting existing infrastructure for multiple functions & utilizing local waste streams is a key factor in Ridgedale existing.  With a farm purchase/ development budget lower than the average cost of a small house in Europe we are creative with resource management and always seeking to stack functions. (The Bison 1.0 having served it's purpose has morphed into version 2.0, a mobile egg-laying house rotating around the pasture strips sanitizing the cows.  In winter the box is unbolted & jacked up and Layers moved to the polytunnel.  The Wagon morphs to version 3.0 for winter logging work with the option 4.0 being a charcoal wagon utilizing an old wicker basket that overhangs the whole wagon)

Our first job was to subsoil the paddocks on the Keyline patterning explained in this previous article. The tree lanes were marked out on the 12m spacings we are working on in the front field with 18m on the top fields.  10m headlands allow easeful turning of machines, which in our case is likely to be Keyline subsoiling over the next years, small hay cutting rigs and quad bike harvesting in the future.  One of the benefits of the systems we are establishing here is that we will not need anything larger than an old 2nd hand machine after this initial work is complete.

After deep ripping with the Yeoman's plow we tested the Simon bedformer and to our surprise it cut through our fairly dense sod with no problems.  We took 2 or 3 passes to get the finish we wanted, the 3rd pass necessary only in the front field which has a higher clay content.    

Tillage was necessary to meet our goal of broadcasting a diverse range of perennial support species which includes perennial salad crops, Dynamic Accumulators, Nitrogen fixers and Nectary plants.  Tillage naturally selects for bacteria in the soil food web, and so amendments were made to help begin the rapid spread of mycorrhizal fungi in the tree lanes.  We used recommended doses of the mycorrhizal  fungi; 25g for bare root trees, 10g bare root small shrubs @30cm and 5g for bare root canes.  Each tree had 2 cups of rock dust 50cm outside the centre stem.  3.5ml of concentrated kelp extract per plant and diluted sugarcane molasses root dip/ watering in solution. This was then topped with cardboard for the trees/ newspapers for the berries and 1 wheelbarrow of wood chip for each tree, 0.5 barrows for fruit canes.

During 2014 we introduced dairy cows and goats for the farm, raised several batches of Broiler Chickens and Layers as well as sheep.  Having moved to the farm in winter we planned all our grazing before we began using Holistic Management Grazing methodologies at the same time as conducting various field surveys to learn more about exactly what was growing and happening in our pasture.  Our amazing Farm Manager Kate conducted Sward and Invertebrate Studies to allow us to better plan the grazing and understand the species we are working with and how to manage the animals and landscape optimally.  This led to the observation and understanding of how after 96 hrs the number of dung beetles in the cowpats had declined massively whilst the number of fly larvae was at its peak.  Cue the layers! 

By timing the movement of the Layers after the cows we can optimize the beneficial interaction of these different species in a mutually beneficial manner.  The Layers are diesel free muck spreaders that love the Omega rich maggots and save the flies bothering the cows, and we get eggs as a by- product of all this healthy interaction.  To make a future- proof and economic enterprise we have to mimic ecosystem processes.

We also brought in sheep which we will be breeding up to a larger flock.  At present we feel like sheep, broilers & eggs will be our primary enterprises and in a couple of years berry & tree fruit production will begin to trickle in.  With so many hungry mouths to feed coming through the farm during the year it will take a while to over- produce!

We run our production appropriately with the seasons to minimize wastage of non- renewable energy.   That means we have a lovely cycle of 6 months of intensive long days and 6 months down time to rest and recuperate as well as catch up with work abroad; a nice cycle that allows us to be somewhat flexible in our lifestyle.  The winter is all about reviewing and designing; with plans to scale up our productions commercially utilizing the careful research conducted this year.

The second group of Interns also built a beautiful cob oven and herb bed for planting up next spring, made some great composts, BioFert’s and teas to build up populations of beneficial micro- organisms and ensure nutrient cycling in the intensive gardens remains stable.

We also managed to fit in time to design a dozen other farms and properties, including taking the Intern’s to Norway to design one of the sweetest small farms, spring fed reticulation system for mobile animals with 80m head pressure available.  Magical places and magical people,  this will be a great place to keep an eye on.  It’s been an action packed 6 months to say the least!

It’s clear to us that there is nothing a group of hard working folks cannot do when committed to be of benefit.  Whilst we have never worked so hard in our lives it has strangely felt almost effortless this season.  Whatever the future of farming will look like, it is sure to involve biomimicry and people, that’s for sure! 

Plans for 2015 involve a lot more tree planting, introducing pigs into forest pastures, scaling up layer & broiler production commercially as well as creating several water features in the landscape.  We’ll also be working on passive solar heating, pond building and continuing our experiments with Jean Pain composting plus a whole bunch more.  We are using the down period to build new portable and multi- functional animal shelters and working on processing and marketing locally.  Plan, plan and plan!  We will also be running intensive trainings again throughout the summer with a focus on supporting more folks to step into professional design as well as encouraging even more people to start land based enterprises of their own.   You can follow us via the website or our Facebook page if you’d like to stay in touch, we post a lot of regular updates and insights and document our process so it can benefit others who can’t be here!

The Earlybird rates for the next scheduled trainings at Ridgedale are open until Dec 22nd.  If you're interested in taking part in our pioneering trainings check out the details below;

90 hr+ Permaculture Design Course May 2015

8 Week Internship (FARM SCALE & PROFESSIONAL PERMACULTURE DESIGN) MAY - JULY 2015

Want help with your Site Design?  We offer dynamic design services tailored to your personal needs, as well as offering aerial film/ photography

We've been using these Eco Fans for many years, a great example of appropriate tech.  If you use wood to heat spaces or cook, these simple devices are super effective at spreading the heat more evenly, from our experience even able to blow heat up stairs and along 20m long canal boats.

The Eco fan generates it's own electricity through the difference in temperature of the stove and the fan. The base must make contact with the heat source of at least 65°C and the top and the bottom of the fan must remain cool. The actual rotation of the blade as well as the cooler air and the heat source are the essential elements needed for the Eco fan to operate.  In the photos below you can see the base of the fan reads over 50°C difference from the cooling fins.

The fan should be placed on a smooth flat surface on your stovetop near the side or the back of the stove where cooler air can be drawn from behind and over the cooling fins.  It should not be placed in the center of the stove or in front of the stovepipe or at the front of your stove.  Optimally give it the draft of cool air from behind the stove.

The Eco fan will start to rotate once the base of the fan has reached a temperature of 65°C.  The optimal running temperature of the Eco fan is the same as the recommended safe operating temperatures of wood stoves, between  205°C - 345°C

It is well worth using a stove top thermometer to ensure good stove safety, but also to build up a more intimate relationship with your stove. 

There is a gap between the lower stand of the fan and the upper cooling fins where you find a thermoelectric device; it uses the Seebeck or Peltier effect to convert a temperature difference into an electric potential difference. You can also think of it as converting a flow of heat into a flow of electrons.  The screws that hold the halves together are a source of thermal bridging: they move heat from the bottom to the top without it passing through the thermoelectric device. The heat that passes through the screws is thus not converted to electricity, which serves as an inefficiency. 

We have a few Eco fans, and highly recommend them.  We bought ours in the UK, where you can pick them up for half the price you find them in Sweden.  Either way, they make for a very practical and comfortable addition to future- proof wood based heating & cooking.  We're into everything performing as many functions as possible, and this is one solid piece of appropriate tech. that makes every piece of wood go as far as possible.  Lo

There's nothing quite so rewarding as home made cheese from a hand milked cow out over the yard.  It's quite easy to make small amounts of cheese at home, we've experimented with various soft & hard cheeses and even if you don't happen to have a cow it's very easy to make with good milk from a farmer or store.

The process is simple, if a little more time consuming than other cheeses.   We are using a Mesophillic bacterial culture to both acidify the milk and influence flavour.  This culture has 4 bacteria friends — 2 which seem to primarily drive the acidification (Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis, Lactococcus lactis subsp. cremoris) and 2 which drive the flavor production (Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis biovar diacetylactis, Leuconostoc mesenteroides subsp. cremoris).  For Brie & Camembert you also need the white mould which flavours & protects the cheese, in this case Penicillium candidum neige.

You heat the milk up to 32°C (the target temperature throughout the process)  Once you reach the heat you stir in both sets of organisms following recommended dosages.  You have to stir really well to ensure good distribution throughout the milk.  Make sure you take the milk off the heat, it will hold it's temperature well.  You leave this for 90 mins to ripen then stir in the rennet, again ensuring you mix everything very well, 1 or 2 mins is fine.

After 1 hr you can check the curd for a "clean break" by inserting a clean finger and pulling upwards; the curds should break cleanly at the top like you see above.

At this point you cut the curds into 1 cm blocks, then continue to cut again both directions with the knife at 45° which further reduces the size of the curd.  Then you stir gently for 15 minutes and then let it all sit for another 15 mins to allow the curds to sink.

The excess whey is poured off and goes to the animals (just pour it off, no need to sieve)  The curds are then ladled into moulds.  We had to make do with what we had lying around in this case;

You can see the holes are too big so we added cheesecloth.  Works fine.  This is left for 1hr to drain at which point the cheese is flipped the other way up and left for another hour.  You repeat this 4 times.

At this point if you had proper molds the cheese would be smooth.  It is now time to salt the outside of the cheese liberally with good quality non iodized salt (who eats that anyway?!) You need to rub salt all over the surfaces.  This protects the cheese and does not inhibit the white mould growth.

Now they are popped in the fridge inside a container and we will flip them over every day for the next 10 days until the white mould covers the cheese.  Then the hard part; waiting 4- 6 weeks to taste these little beauties!

Now there are only two of us and still a lot of milk we've been making cheese.  So simple and yet so rewarding, from pasture to plate in 30 minutes for the Mozzarella we made today.  Above are some hard cheeses made with Kefir culture that we are experimenting with.

Even if you don't have your own cow you can make this delicious cheese using regular whole milk.  There are a couple of ingredients you'll need;

5L Whole Milk (Grassfed raw is best)
2 tsp Citric Acid
1.5 tsp Rennet
1- 2 tsp Salt to taste

Next step, using a slotted spoon, lift out the curds into a strainer above another bowl and add half the salt whilst gently working the curds to remove excess moisture.  The more you work out at this point the firmer the resulting cheese will be.

In the meantime heat the whey up to around 80- 85°C for the cheese stretching

This goes back into the hot whey to get conditioned and stretchy.  You begin to pull and stretch the cheese when its warm enough, a bit like kneading bread.  This process homogenizes the texture and you end up with a silky smooth ball that holds together firmly.  At this point squeeze to desired shape and transfer to cold water/ whey & remaining salt to cool down.

Super simple & tastes great.  This is REAL food!

These first 6 months at Ridgedale have been epic to say the least.  Good design, amazing people and the combined expression to be of benefit have led to the seemingly effortless unrolling of the design for this land.  Here's a brief photo stream of some of the happenings at the farm this summer.

Thank you so much to all who contributed to this first year establishing what has quickly become regarded as Scandinavia's leading example of farm-scale Permaculture, hosting several hundred people from 25 countries this summer.  2014 has been a super busy time for us, we have hosted 20 weeks of Internships and 3 PDC's from the farm as well as running trainings in Belarus, Thailand and twice in Mexico.  On top of managing our farm development we have also conducted a dozen farm/ property consultancies and are looking forward to the winter "down- time" this climate offers.

Some of the stats from this years activities;

• Served over 10,000 organic meals
• Planted several thousand trees & shrubs & over 80 species in silvopasture, savannah & riparian plantings
  
• Created a workshop
• Converted barns & magazines
• Built 2 x 9m yurt platforms
• Keyline subsoiled all paddocks
  
• Introduced Layers Broilers, Goats, Dairy Cows, Sheep, Ducks & peacocks to the farm
• Inoculated hundreds of  meters of mushroom logs with 13 species
  
• Conducted various ongoing research studies on the land
  
• Received several hundred visitors
  
• Installed reticulating RAM pump/ well water system around the farm
  
• Installed 2KM of Deer/ Elk/ Lynx/ Wolf fencing
  
• Designed enterprises for upscaling in 2015
  
• Held 2 x 10 Week Internships at the farm
  
• Held 3 x PDCs at the farm
  
• Held 2 open days
• Conducted trainings in Belarus, Thailand & twice in Mexico
• Consulted to a dozen other farms & projects
• Harvested copious amounts of wild mushrooms, fish, berries & herbs
  
• Grew several tons of vegetables
  
• Put down over 200m3 of mulch
• Saved over 1M SEK moving things around Europe & intercepting waste streams
  
• Crowd funded $8500 towards innovative ATV funding
• Spent nearly 2000 Euros on screws
• Drove half way around the planet

We learnt and shared so much this year.  We feel clear that by opening up our farm gates to those who are serious about regenerative design & enterprise we can leverage these initial stages of setting up the farm to benefit so many.  Thank you for all who have got involved, either by participating in our trainings or following our activities online.  We are doing this together to help inspire others into action regenerating their soils, land & communities.

We have always planned to share our financials, however see clearly this is not of most benefit out of context online.  We openly share all aspects of our farm & design enterprises with participants of trainings, as we see this is most useful to upcoming folks, so have decided to keep things like this.

Having a clear vision & design, effective organization and planning and getting tangible experience establishing these systems is all anyone needs to start.  We have been reflecting a lot throughout this season and will be announcing our 2015 schedule in the coming weeks.  Our Internship program will be a little different next season as we are scaling up production with the aim of generating income from the farm enterprises next year.  One of our objectives has been to generate a family income from the farm within 3 yrs and so our focus will gradually shift to running & maintaining effective local food systems.  If you're interested in the unique learning programs we offer then why not join our mailing list and we can keep you updated through the winter.  Whatever we decide to do, it's going to be awesome!

Kate, one of our awesome pioneering farm managers, has been conducting various research as we develop this farm project; both to help us make more informed management decisions in our grazing plan as well as allow us to demonstrate what impact our actions have on the land over time.  So much in the Permaculture world seems based on circumstantial evidence; and in response we aim to design, implement, monitor and refine what we do based on measurable and replicable methods.  Moving to a new land requires endless observation, recording, researching & monitoring the impact of our actions, so here's a glimpse into how we have begun doing that here at the farm.  We have around 40 species in our very varied pasture, with large variances in soil.  Whilst the research conducted so far is just the beginning, it has been incredibly beneficial in terms of really getting a good sense of what we are actually working with.  Bravo Kate, we are so happy to have had you with us here for this incredible first season.  It feels so important more folks in the alternative agriculture/ permaculture world start producing useful data for the benefit of all, thank you so much for the integrity & diligence you contribute.

Here's a little fly-by over the farm center today.  Incredible to reflect on the last 4 months where we have been joined by awesome people from all corners of the globe getting deep into education and action during this unique time establishing all systems from scratch.  Empowering other's to manage their lives holistically and design solutions to bring their dreams forth is a major part of the Holistic Context we manage towards, and something we are excited to be able to share with so many bright, intelligent & gifted folks.  It's been an epic ride so far!

With just 3 weeks left of Internship #2 and our final PDC of the season around the corner we are surely looking forward to a restful winter to recuperate and plan for next season; with more animals, new trainings and new people bringing knowledge, skills and passion to everything that happens here at Ridgedale.  We will be posting more about the opportunities for Core Team roles for 2015 (sign up to the Newsletter here) with more spaces for a bigger team to make next year even more incredible.  Stay posted, we'll be reviewing the year and blogging a lot more over the winter to inform & support others who wish to undertake a similar journey.  

It’s almost like the weather knows, the winds arrived today. As the change awaits us tomorrow we are being moved towards it with a blustery nudge from the direction of Norway. Perhaps the winds represent a much bigger change than just here on our little farm in Scandinavia, perhaps they signify something more complex, more global… Presentation Day has arrived.

Permanent markers are flying, pages flipped and functions stacked to food forests, chickens and compost loo’s. Everyone has their ‘busy brain’ face on. A few of the teams spend the morning finalizing their presentation order, some touching up SWOC charts and locations of related elements. 

Our team is first, and as their client in this instance I introduce the site location and characteristics, our limiting factor of outgoing expenditure due to, and therefore a lack of, perennial crops and grains/cereal and our desire to regenerate and build topsoils. Taking us through the design Armando (Uruguay), Ana (Columbia/France) and Samuel (Nth Carolina/India) discuss the implementation of water management using a windmill donated by our neighbor and ferro cement tanks built on site as part of a workshop. There’s some Keyline Design applications, over which alley cropping systems of grains and fruit trees will be actioned. The protection of the existing riparian habitats and the possible introduction of holistically grazed dairy cows and chickens to assist soil regeneration are all presented and well received.

A more detailed perspective sees the introduction of banana, Photinia and cacti plantings along edges prone to fire hazard, signed adventure trails to provide exciting and educational opportunities for guests, volunteers and residents, and the extension of the food forest near the main housing area in a pattern sensitive to the ancient ‘Songline’ that runs through the property.

Our group had discussed striving for a practical balance or integrative design strategy that would see all productive objectives working in harmony with the spiritual context of the community. It was during our design development that I stumbled across this:

“As Gill says, "every man is called to give love to the work of his hands. Every man is called to be an artist." The small family farm is one of the last places - they are getting rarer every day - where men and women (and girls and boys, too) can answer that call to be an artist, to learn to give love to the work of their hands. It is one of the last places where the maker - and some farmers still do talk about "making the crops" - is responsible, from start to finish, for the thing made. This certainly is a spiritual value, but it is not for that reason an impractical or uneconomic one. In fact, from the exercise of this responsibility, this giving of love to the work of the hands, the farmer, the farm, the consumer, and the nation all stand to gain in the most practical ways: They gain the means of life, the goodness of food, and the longevity and dependability of the sources of food, both natural and cultural. The proper answer to the spiritual calling becomes, in turn, the proper fulfilment of physical need.”

― Wendell Berry, Bringing it to the Table: Writings on Farming and Food

In the feedback Richard highlights existing areas of semi-dense Eucalyptus plantings that might be utilised as coppice and to grow mushroom crops.  "I'd suggest using what you've got, this looks like a great resource you can stack crops into, I'd be cautious to make major changes to such a nicely establishing system.  Whats the leverage point so you can do as little as possible to steer succession in  beneficial way?"

The team did an outstanding job of focussing on the mission statements to address all of their clients’ desires and needs. Totally doable I reckon!  Richard reflects that this is an important element he is looking for; actionable & do-able solutions worked into a good relationship with the landshape & form.  Allowing the landscape to pattern our design.

Next up is one of the neighbours farms, Patrick, a young guy from Stockholm who wants to build up productive elements of his land and to make it more attractive as a recreational destination for guests of a future event location or B’n’B. Patrick has a penchant for all things Viking and so the team blended this into their development to create Valhalla Farm.

They discuss opportunities for intensive berry growing, water treatment and possible long boat building workshops. Patrick’s good friend Jonathon, who is one of the students on the course, is very keen to see this design come to fruition and that Patrick will be very pleased and even more motivated to get the plans moving.  It's a great idea, creating a niche selling point, creating an experience that can make an enterprise of this scale viable.  Talk of traditional Torv (peat moss) low cost housing for guests to stay in a rural forest setting, old traditional food & handcraft workshops brings this idea alive, fantastic!

The crew on the urban design project in Brussels have a wonderful scheme of harvesting rainwater, accompanied by grey- water treatment and a compost toilet. They plan to use espaliered fruit trees along the warm western and southern facing walls, producing yields within the boundaries of a smart & culturally appropriate development.  Simple microclimate placements, stacking of functions; good design can be simple and elegant...

Two teams who worked on the same sight both introduce their projects and one after the other, walk us through their proposals of a large piece of gently graded land in northern Sweden. There are financially productive components of a café and fruit & vegetable stall, supported by well managed annual garden systems that use rainwater for irrigation and seed saving for future cropping. The husband of the team, Max, scores a woodwork barn to practice making useful elements for the site.

The break sees the delivery of a very special afternoon fika (tea) as Paulo celebrates his birthday. We looove birthdays here at Ridgedale and from the photo below, you can see why. 

The final team has a very unique site that is the grounds of a nunnery in Gotenberg. The team describes working on not just the on-site Permaculture designs, but also the desire to assist the nuns build a presence and work on alternative means of raising funds to ensure their needs, which are few, can be met. There is consideration of disability access and crop production to support the reduction of outgoing costs from the site. They even work on creating a path of divinity in the form of the infinity symbol.

The designs are completed, the presentations’ a success. Richard is thoroughly impressed at the breadth of elements and actionable solutions provided in all the designs.  A lot of creative outpouring has gone on these past days. He asks us how we felt about the process. “It was interesting to see how much time and work goes into doing an integrated design” says Marcus. Often this is the case in a PDC, that there is a lot of information trying to be expressed on paper and in coherent dialogue in just a few days. For me, this is the point where people get to see the difference between poor planning and sound, investigative, well thought out design. It’s good to go through all the ideas on paper, to visualise how things will look on the ground, over time, and how they will be built. Thinking through the work flow of tree plantings, natural building supplies and construction, volunteers and a really big one, the introduction of animals.  I can see that the students are all activated by this afternoons presentation’s and are totally empowered to head off and start repairing the world… one garden at a time.

The evening of course is the one and only, world famous ‘(No) Talent Show’ and I’m not sure how to describe some of the acts, but I’ll do my best. After a field size group hug for Juan, we start with the hymn of Värmland by Jonathon to really set the scene and place us on our site.  Of course it’s sung in Swedish, “What does it mean though?”, says Richard “ahhm… it says Värmland is a nice place.” Concise. 

Sylvia develops our Italian language skills using compromising conversational methods, Marcus explains some very interesting body facts and Juan recites Chaucer from the Introduction to the Canterbury Tales. Steffi gets us up and active with a game of ‘Pigs & Chickens’ and then I’m up next with an Aboriginal Dreamtime story about Maroochy, Coolum and Ninderry that explains the mythical heritage behind some of the natural landmarks of my homeland.

The Max the Amazing Dog Whisperer makes an appearance followed by a Ridgedale Beats session. Armando enchants us with incredibly powerful perma poetry and Stefan gets us syncing mental rhythm with a head bending session of the ‘count through’ game. Basically everyone sits is a circle and as a group we have to count around. The kicker is that, starting from ‘1’ each person only gets to say a number, any number, once. If you say a number at the same time as someone else though, the game resets. We get there reasonably quickly and decide to test ourselves by counting backwards. This actually works much easier and it’s very interesting to hear the group quickly develop minor adjustments and solutions to get us to our objective. Paulo serenades us with a Portugese melody and then we are teased with a fashion show inspired by the foraging team’s performances over the last two weeks…. hilarious!! Not sure if they’ll make it to Paris any time soon though.

Darren steps up to show us a ye olde dance routine from the early twentieth century, learned by steel workers who running short of precious metals due to the Kings insanity with steam robots (this is Darren’s story by the way) and had to forage for supplies from Magpie’s. Now to do this they would wear a steel helmet of sorts and perform a dance. After revealing this story to us Darren gets us to beat clap and then disappears, only to return wearing a steel bucket on his head, proceeding to then rhythmically bang the helmet with some metal spoons. Not sure of it’s historical accuracy but it was pretty bloody funny. The show concludes with a rousing number from Jon and Samuel, who took note of the missing cultural patterns from today’s youth networks, and wrote an instructive ditty on how to build 18 day compost to a tune resembling rowdy Irish folk ballads.

The night carries on into the wee hours as we share life stories and predictions for each other around the fire. It’s a celebration of two big weeks here at Ridgedale, new friends and new ideas. These are some of the kindest people I have ever met, I find that on these journey’s most people are. Strange, but in some ways not surprising how the folks on this path are so open to helping others, to being of service and benefit. Bless all my new mates.

"This has been way beyond my expectations...."

"This course is intense in a good way, with excellent & inspiring teaching..."

"The approach to fuse Permaculture, Keyline Design & Holistic Management seems fundamental for anyone wanting to steer ecosystemic regeneration..."

"This has been the best investment in my life!"

"Amazing farm, people, core team, teacher, cook & accommodation..."

DAY 13

A morning shower under the apple tree and off to the kitchen to prepare breakfast for this temporary tribe for the third last time. Soon we will be only a few, from 30 down to 14, as the second internship at Ridgedale gets underway and the intensive trainings begin, starting with Holistic Management on Wednesday.

We enjoyed a twist to Swedish porridge with the addition of Yohanna‘s sprouted buckwheat, scattered with soaked sesame seeds and raisens. You come to Ridgedale Permaculture, you’ll get fed well that is for sure. Straight into some quick discussions about design elements and then where into class for Natural Building. 

“Who’s been doing some natural building?” About six hands go up. Cool, we have some keen builders in our new family. “What sort of materials have you been using?”

“Cob.”

“Cordwood.” (which is a wonderful skill and a most beautiful end product)

“Straw bale.”

“Bamboo & plastic.”

“Plastic??” Richard says

“No, plaster!”

When the laughing dies back the discussion spurs on the story of plastic waste &  Richart Sowa who built Spiral Island out of 250000 plastic soda bottles in onion sacks and “parked it in the middle of a million dollar harbour but he dredged a way for them to get out of their boats, so they kind of appreciated it so they let him stay.” Richart used the sand to pile on the surface, plated trees and built a compost toilet on his man made land. A clip from way back in 2007 can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOqEyZfgh00 “I was going to visit him a couple of years ago but last I heard was he was going to build another one of these and sail it across the Atlantic… which may not be the best idea on one of these.” I can tell from the laughter that the class concur.

It has me thinking about utilising some of the bottles that come into our community to build a floating island in the dam. We have looked at John Todds amazing water restoration using Restorers and other simple floating platforms for allowing higher water plants to do their work.  We would have to be very careful to make sure no degradation occurred that might comprise the water, but a pretty cool way to re-use the embedded energy to make something very functional.  It would help stop evaporation to some degree perhaps.

Richard has experience with various building materials to construct modules all over the world. A straw bale conversion of a barn, reciprocal roof structures, micro- homes, ferro-cement and a beautiful small wooden house using hand cut trees from the site. “Most conventional lifestyles where I come from look like working for the rest of your life to pay of a house that’s poorly designed energy wise and built with materials that often make you sick. I’m into local, on site & super low cost stuff.” We see Richard’s friend Simon Dale who built a Hobbit House (http://www.simondale.net/hobbit.htm) who also pioneered the LAMMAS project and helped to affect massive change in building policy as a result. There Chapter 7, a team who help fight for building rights through to the European courts, “There advice is just get on with it and build relationships with your neighbours. I know a bunch of people built first and applied for permission later, but they do it respectfully and are often embedded in their communities. People need to be able to make their own decisions.”

As we discuss planning, building permits and regulations, Richard remarks “most city designers and town planners don’t have a holistic context to make decisions via”, and by gosh he’s right. I’m reminded of Ian McHarg’s comments, “the task [of design] was given to those who, by instinct and training, were especially suited to gouge and scar landscape and city without remorse—the engineers.” McHarg's quote came from Design With Nature, in which he laid forth the argument that form must follow more than just function; it must also respect the natural environment in which it is placed. "[The engineer's] competence is not the design of highways," McHarg explained, "merely of the structures that compose them—but only after they have been designed by persons more knowing of man and the land." And this guy had the cred to make such remarks!

Now I don’t mean to antagonize any engineers or town planners out there, many of my friends are brilliant civil designers. However, like the stolen generation in Australia, one can see the effect a poorly judged paradigm can have on an entire landscape. In that particular case, it was an entire generation of people.

We talk about catching and storing wind and solar energies and discussed 12V for small off grid homes .  Richard advises to “put your money in your batteries because their the things that keep you powered.”  We see a wagon he built with many functional features to run as an off grid micro- home.  It even had a sauna!

Given the structure we are all sitting in, it was inevitable that we would get to Ger’s. Anything  you want to know about Yurt’s, Ger’s, and geodesic domes is covered by the awesome site www.simplydifferently.org which has full details and step by step guides and calculators to help you be successful.

Richard takes us through the process of building a yurt and some of the terminology like a Tono (or crown) and steam bending in order to bend the Tono and build a very, very strong, super light roof centre piece to hold your yurt together. The roofing material is rot, fire and water proof 12Oz canvas and ordered from Glasgow. Not that I am planning on building a Ger in the coming 12 months, but if I ever do now I know how. In fact I’m actually pretty keen for one now.

“We’re so used to squares and edges and straight things, but to live in a circle, you use space very differently, Living in a circle influences your brain I found...” 

Low pitch reciprocal rooves with a low pitch that sends the load bearing area to the centre is discussed and the benefits of becoming proficient at some handy tools like shaving horse becomes very apparent.  So many things we can do for ourself, skills we can acquire by having a go.

Ben Law, who you may have seen on Grand Designs, builds charming, not to mention super robust round-wood timber framing structures and also did some building for the Permaculture Magazine HQ in the U.K. Among all his time being a woodsman, Ben also trains apprentices and runs courses on sustainable woodland management, eco-building and Permaculture design. Awesome Human!

We look at the local vernaculars from around the world, from adobe cities made with tiny bricks to compressed cardboard bale houses.  We look at different materials and their properties and discuss the process of building with them.  "Foundations and rooves are elements people often skimp on, they're the most important bits!" 

Next we look at how to make natural paints using glutenous flour, milk protein, clays and oxides.  The possibilities and colours are infinite.  We look at Lime and other mud based plasters, looking at some marvelous examples from the expert Japanese plasters and other works from around the world.  Whats remarkable is that these methodologies are so easy, usually so cheap and easy to modify and repair yourself. 

The rest of the day is filled with design work, groups working on an urban retrofit in Belgium, a farm design in Australia, two groups approaching the same property in Sweden; a new acquisition with the goal of establishing a healthy land based B & B to service a busy tourist route in the north.  The yurts are a hive of concentrated activity, exciting times as we draw close to the end of this extraordinary time together.

New arrivals on the farm, an old Swedish breed

Another sensational morning on the Ridgedale Farm as the zenith of the 2nd PDC for 2014 draws nearer. Richard asked me if I'd like to follow the PDC again and write about the experience as we go and each day I am reminded of not just the incredible amount of information being placed in front of the students to gobble up, but also the diversity of people and the stories that are here in this moment. It’s an incredibly rewarding experience.

Darren (Sheffield, U.K.) from the kitchen team hard at work, everyone has been awesome making this experience flow with ease and coordination

Speaking of rewards, we start the day on a positive note looking at money…yaaaay! It’s very necessary to understand if we are going to move our living standards, our emotional wellbeing and our planet forward. We've already mentioned at least a dozen micro- enterprises people could leave here and establish to create win- win- win businesses on super low start ups, from waste to mushroom production, property overhauls and complimentary farm enterprises for low risk, low capital start up.

A quick wake up call “the modern banking system is based on debt right, fractional reserve system of banking where money is lent out that doesn’t exist, private groups creating money and lending it to banks; the vehicles of the Capitalist Industrial Militarized Complex are largely unelected unaccountable groups”. We delve briefly into history to how the Meta system of economics seems to operate.

“If there was no debts we wouldn’t have money.” This might be easy to take out of context but Richard has a vast knowledge of these kinds of systems and really is quite captivating to hear him talk about it, he’s also very good at decoding it.

We consider tangible assets and how unstable fiscal systems can be, reflecting on recent events that have affected participants such as the Argentinean Government defaulting on their debts and robbing a majority of the population of their retirement investments and of a great book called ‘Shock Doctrine’ by Naomi  Klein which documents the increasing exploitation of crises to push through controversial and exploitative policies while citizens are too emotionally and physically distracted by disasters or upheavals to mount an effective resistance. “This documents the pattern of the last hundred years. History is often not how it’s portrayed to be in the public eye.”

The good news is that Richard has just as many solutions as he does lists of concerning situations.  Starting with “Are you in Debt?  Can you design your way out of that? A very practical thing that you can do…make a money log for 6 months, make a simple note of every penny you spend and what comes in and just look at the patterns.  It’s amazing to really look at where & how you use your money, money is a vote. Most of us go through life without an empowered relationship with money.  There's a lot of discussion on creating new systems, what about just empowering ourselves in what we already have.”

Nicanor Perlas, co-founder of the Global Network for Social Three-folding, is mentioned as an inspiration and someone to look up. The GN3 aims to “advance profound societal transformation towards integral sustainable development on the basis of socially-engaged spirituality and deep substantive inner change.” – Wikipedia. How do you get NGO’s organised so they can have a voice with business & Government?

There’s the International Forum on Globalisation (IFG), a research and educational institution composed of leading activists, economists, scholars, and researchers providing analysis and critiques on the cultural, social, political, and environmental impacts of economic globalization.

“Money in itself is just incredible as a communication tool, we’ve never designed a better communication tool than money…. yet we often have a very distressed relationship with it.  How can we apply patterns & principles we observe in natural systems to this energy flow?” 

We discuss and define Regenerative Enterprise. This is a topic, and a system, I can see becoming more and more relevant. Taking a look at 8 Forms of Capital by Ethan Roland, Richard guides us through the basic understanding of the methodology behind Regenerative Enterprise and as he unravels it, it just gets better and better and more and more attractive from an ethical standpoint. “We tend to think of capital as money but it’s just one form of many capitals.  Becoming fluid with how we interact with different forms of capital allows us to use capital more fluidly, and this is how money works best, an energy flow.  I see how well this merges with Holistic Management financial planning to extend that awesome planning tool even further."

Investing IN ecosystems, tangible assets like a food forest, water thats fit for drinking, materials we can build with. Investing LIKE ecosystems. “How do ecosystems create abundance? Investing in tangible assets; this is where Holistic Management context and future resource base become really important. Managing systems so that we know in a few hundred years time there will be the things that we value, like clean air, clean food and clean water.” Designing for multiple income streams, redundancy.  "If we look at ecosystems we see that organisms tend to behave intimately and locally, as well as diversely."

“One defining principle for me is it needs to be local…. This is why we don’t even need to be certified, say Organic for example, we can totally outshine that by having intimate relations with our customers, wording out how we manage; we've looked at how some of the best farms around the world are doing this very skillfully.  That kind of community embedding & support brings resiliency, and takes one away from fluctuating abstract market conditions.” Back home the most successful stall at our local farmers markets is Jim, not certified and he has no intention to be. He’s local and it’s an intimate consumer experience… winning!

We look at alternatives systems(LET systems, alternative currencies, local currencies in transition towns). How do we raise money for projects? We talk about Crowd Sourcing (kickstarter, indigogo) and investment sites like Crowd Cube, and look at what makes successful campaigns. We are seeing now that people are throwing very large amounts of money at ideas and businesses that they see as valuable and that are win-win-win. “It’s a way of doing market research while funding the business.”

We go back to Holistic Management, which assumes that successful enterprises must be Ecologically, Economically & Socially regenerative.  You can't really separate the three if you want to design something "future- proof" RP.

I always love listening to the conversations that come up, people’s responses to this topic when Richard starts, I don’t really know, ‘decoding’ it in a way. I associate it with teaching children about colours for the first time. I can vividly remember when I learnt that green is made of blue and yellow. ”Whaaaaat!?!?!” went my expanding 4 year old mind. The same is in this class at this moment. An experience they have such an intimate relationship with, now being unveiled for what it really is, or more so, how it has been constructed to appear and be used on and by… as debt.

We take a quick sidetrack reflecting on legal scenarios and talk about the hidden language of the legal system.  Richard conveys his experience in the UK and talks about Dunn & Bradshaw and their list of  corporations (which includes police forces, courts of law, members of parliament).  Corporations, by default, are designed to make money and we learn about your ‘Natural Person’ and your LEGAL FICTION. Now this is a super interesting, not to mention mind blowing topic, but it’s very difficult to explain so I’ll just point you to John Harris’ website www.tpuc.org.  Whilst a little off topic its amazing to consider how much we engage with on a daily basis without really considering the full picture.  We hear about Common Law and Statutes “Unless you form a contract you cannot have statutory law enacted on you, but we make contracts all the time every day without knowing because we often don’t know the legal language (legalese) which looks like English but it’s not.” This will look very different in different countries, but fascinating how much we assume about how this system functions.

The afternoon and evening is filled with some intense design sessions as the students start to work through their concepts and analyze the appropriateness of their strategies. Water volumes are being calculated, plant species’ considered, virtual paper animals (cut to scale) being moved across tracts of Holistically grazed base maps. Tomorrow the groups will present their final designs and take us through their understanding of Permaculture, Keyline and Holistic management, at varying scales and contexts. The farm is alive with design dreams and idea management.  

Day 11

A flick of the curtain shows a clear sky, the sun has returned. Another stunning Scandinavian morning! As we enter this second week of the our PDC here at Ridgedale Permaculture, the students’ design imaginations have been activated to start applying the skills they have learned over the last 11 days. 

One of the questions that has arrived on the ‘Parking’ board is “How does a compost toilet work?” Perfect timing. Day 11 starts with running through ways of dealing with human wastes. First up are Compost Toilets (or as we call them in Australia, a thunderbox), and an ideal carbon source to sprinkle on your waste is sawdust or rice husks, as we used last year on a project I worked on in Thailand. Separating and collecting urine is also super important, as you want to keep the solid waste dry and it can be used as a fertiliser. Here at Ridgedale we separate the urine and pour it into the rice terraces to add nitrogen, and spray it around the edges of the fields to deter elk and deer. “Urine is sterile when it comes into the body and if it goes into soil it just gets ‘pfffth’…. synthesised.  Good to dilute it, say, 1:10, 1:20...” The aim of this is to manage human waste without flushing expensive treated drinking water down the toilet if not necessary. 

The next are water and plant based methods using banana and papaya circles where the waste matter and continuously added vegetative matter just gets munched. These are also very appropriate ways of utilising grey-water outside a kitchen or laundry window.

Some beautiful designs come forth from the WET (wetland ecosysytem treatment) systems pioneered by Jay Abrahams’ work in the U.K. (www.biologicdesign.co.uk ) that use plant life and soil organisms to treat grey and black systems.  Richard describes a visit to the Permaculture Magazine's offices where they had recently replace a decommissioned sewage system with a fairly extensive WET system; “The water coming out of this system was cleaner than the water coming out of the taps in Portsmouth City.” These applications have been used on both a home scale and industrial.

“In 1993 we created a WET System for Weston's Cider - a large family owned cider mill in Herefordshire and in 2001 we created a WET System for The Otter Brewery - an expanding family owned ‘micro-brewery’ in Devon. Then in 2007 another cider mill WET System was created; this one was for Sheppy's Cider Farm in Somerset.” http://www.biologicdesign.co.uk/page.php?pageid=wetsystemsestablished

In 2013 I met a pretty amazing fella called Chakra Widia in Bali, Indonesia in 2012, who had set up one of the best home scale treatment systems I have ever seen (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsV7NXe8r5o). The only thing is that it uses a reed bed as the second stage so will require increased maintenance but hey, this guy is cleaning every drop of water that leaves his super cool house, growing fish and aquatics and sending cleaned water back into his system.  We discuss embodied energy issues and turn to other solutions.

Bio-gas digesters are also introduced as we learn how such systems are used in India to provide fuel for 5 million people.  Important – “you need some kind of flashback collar or airlock…. otherwise you might die.” Good advice! Tom Kendall has built one at the Maungaraeeda at the PRI Sunshine Coast and you can check out the build here - http://permaculturesunshinecoast.org/2013/02/24/biogas-project-at-pri-sunshine-coast/

Morning tea over we head to Andalucía, Spain to take a look at Armando’s project. It’s a drylands landscape with arroyo’s scouring down the highlands and into a large flat, dry river bed that would have once been a flowing waterway. Richard starts sketching placement estimates of roads, "there’s potential to store water all over the place that you would then want to start connecting up with your roads, all these little valley shapes could be filled by boundary roads.  Better maps, terrain mapping and catchment calculations would be essential here.  A lot of potential, but you'd have to plan and sequence it very well.  I mean, this place is super dry and super degraded” 

We’re watching a very simple and accuracy oriented process to start building the characteristics of the landform to allow its shapes to speak to any design, incorporating access for machinery, water storage, starting points and workable bits and pieces. “Divide it up with Water lines & roads and look; paddocks & subdivisions of this land start becoming more obvious when we work to the lands shape… roads need replacing here with the bulldozer they have on site, and there's some very good places for storing water.  You can see from the photos some gross erosion caused from misplaced infrastructure.  This place is gnarly, you would have to get this right.”

Heading back to Australia I’m going to be able to look at all of our access roads and perhaps re-model them to act as water suspension and collection systems, rather than delivering water to the natural flow that leaves our site directly. The water will eventually end up assisting the regeneration of these systems, we’re just keen to avoid supporting any erosion we may inadvertently be creating with the current placement of our roads.

A cool book to note is “Let Water do the Work” by Bill Zeedyk and Van Clothier, but it’s currently out of print and you’ll have to place an order (or pay $1000 2nd hand!)

Briefly looking at energy efficiency we discuss the benefits of catching solar energy to run 12v appliances and discover replacements for fridges in the way of unglazed ceramic pots or a standing shelved structure placed in a cool room with a pipe coming in from under the house to keep fruit and vegetables at the optimum 6-8deg, as well as adaptations planned for the root cellar during the Internship. That’ll be happening back home where we have three fridges at the moment and most of our vegetables aren’t in the fridge for that long.

In the afternoon we get right into the design process developing the team’s Vision and Mission statements. For this design the client will be my home community of Bellbunya and I just so excited to have a team of fresh minded, considerate, brave and energised imaginations working in our favour to achieve our goals.

The Vision is outlined as ‘the establishment of resilient perennial crop systems to support the development of a stable, off-grid community’. The mission statement reads: ‘The restoration of soils and reduced erosion and water loss by implementing Keyline Design and Holistic Management techniques to work towards abundance by increasing production and establishment of perennial crop, grains and animal systems’.

Armando asks if the spiritual context of the community needs to be considered in the design. This gets me thinking. I reckon that the community’s spiritual endeavour will exist whether the project is applied or not, however it raises a very poignant design element. Can there be a partnering of practical and effective methods of food production and the representation of the character or essence of a place… hopefully so. 

Building priority into our goals in the simple categories of‘Must, Should, Could’ list we see that we have lots of ‘musts’, all surrounding our limiting factor of food production (which + outgoing costs). All the other needs kind of stem from that while supporting them as well. For example the ‘must’ of establishing perennial fruits and nut systems relies on the ‘must’ of looking at Keyline Design and setting up a practical, efficient irrigation system, which in turn supports the must of catching and/or storing water high in the landscape. By delivering these objectives according to the shape of the land, the design should speak to us and guide the placement of elements on that land.

The evening involves mostly continued work on design, some students head to the lake, while Lars, Richard and Thoma head out on the new row boat to score some more predator protein from the deep. The sauna calls once again before settling in to a wonderful TEDx presentation by Alf Orpen in Byron Bay about regenerative enterprise. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzkAkyMu5Kw) 

Say you wanted to study Permaculture or Regenerative design and you really wanted to understand how to design your own farm or project; they'd be all these books you should read, maybe some films on the internet, or maybe you download information from the internet, and all that may avail no action. All that could avail is a basic understanding of principles & elements of design, in a way similar to an artist's palette. You could have all the colors and brushes but unless you know how to paint you're going to end up with a big mess. That's where we got to in today's society, a big mess. 

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