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.

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.

Reflecting back on our first season on the ground establishing Agroforestry, Holistic Planned Grazing, Kitchen Gardens and various other systems from scratch.  It has been an amazing ride, so many incredible people from around the world made this possible; good team, clear design & a lot of well coordinated hard work.

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.