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.  

Fish hydrolysate is an awesome product for promoting plant growth. It’s high in Nitrogen, can be naturally produced, and is an awesome food for microbes. Fungi love it and it is easily produced at home.  We use it as straight fertiliser, animal supplement and an ingredient in compost teas (Fungi: Bacteria balanced- Fungi orientated).

Fish hydrolysate is composed of fish and glucose based sugars and uses lacto bacillus to break everything down using enzymes. Fish hydryolysate doesn’t undergo the heating and skimming process that you get with fish emulsion products.  Heating breaks down beneficial amino acid chains and this cold process also retains the fats and oils that microbes love.

It's Day 2 of our certified Holistic Management training, dipping into the 2nd half of our awesome 10 Week Internship program. The Savory Institute has been updating, clarifying and simplifying their workbooks as smaller & more concise workbooks, available cheaply via their website.  We have been running through Financial Planning and Grazing Planning today, using the farm as a model for planning for the factors, observations and circumstances we have in our situation, to ensure we create the best possible plan to move consistently towards our Holistic Context.

We see managing holistically is key to forwarding effective regenerative enterprises and regenerating degraded landscapes whilst creating resilient & socially just incomes into the future.  We plan to write some series of articles to clarify some of the common misconceptions and explain the process to support others to start managing holistically.  Stay tuned for details.

We have another 10 Week Internship running at the farm July- Sept, with a few spots open, where once again we will be training up a diverse and engaging group in the following areas;

The 10 Week internship includes over 530hrs of curriculum based learning & 5 Certificate Courses;

• 90hr+ PDC certified by PRI (Aus) & PC Assoc (UK)
• 5 day Forest Gardens & Perennial Cropping
• 5 day Regenerating Soils
• 5 day Keyline® Design
• 3 day Holistic Management Training®
• 5 day Teaching Permaculture Creatively

This article documents the major patterning of the farm at Ridgedale PERMACULTURE as we laid the Keyline tree lanes and planted thousands of long term perennial crops within our pasture lanes.  For a better introduction to the farm's context you can read an article here.  Water systems and Keyline patterning is also addressed here.  The original plan for the tree layers of the farm design is outlined in another article available here.  So now we explain & assess the actual implementation.  For context, at the time of this work we ourselves had only been on site for 6 weeks and the planning, layout, machine work and major planting all took place in Week 1 and 2 of our 10 Week Internship.  (We have another 10 Week Internship program running July- Sept)

We can think of at least 180 great forest garden & perennial crops for cold climate Sweden.  Want to hear about them? Over the course of the next year we will profile 5 a week on the blog. 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 soil husbandry (wifery?!) contributes to the majority of the 24 billion tons of topsoil lost every year on planet water.  We are going to be focused on holistic polyculture grazing and perennial production at ridgedale over most of the site as this represents the most effective way to restore our degraded landscape, produce high value produce and ensure the future resource base we are managing holistically for in our decision making. 

We can think of at least 180 great forest garden & perennial crops for cold climate Sweden.  Want to hear about them? Over the course of the next year we will profile 5 a week on the blog. 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 soil husbandry (wifery?!) contributes to the majority of the 24 billion tons of topsoil lost every year on planet water.  We are going to be focused on holistic polyculture grazing and perennial production at ridgedale over most of the site as this represents the most effective way to restore our degraded landscape, produce high value produce and ensure the future resource base we are managing holistically for in our decision making. 

We can think of at least 180 great forest garden & perennial crops for cold climate Sweden.  Want to hear about them? Over the course of the next year we will profile 5 a week on the blog. 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 soil husbandry (wifery?!) contributes to the majority of the 24 billion tons of topsoil lost every year on planet water.  We are going to be focused on holistic polyculture grazing and perennial production at ridgedale over most of the site as this represents the most effective way to restore our degraded landscape, produce high value produce and ensure the future resource base we are managing holistically for in our decision making. 

Allan Savory's work observing & managing game reserves, ranches & national parks as a biologist is only part of what he describes led him to his breakthroughs fighting desertification (and the subsequent social & economic breakdown in some of the world's most hostile environments) through holistically planned grazing.  His role as President of the opposition party against a racist government in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) eventually forced him to seek exile in the US where he observed desertification in National Parklands as bad as anything in Africa, yet with large herbivores having been absent for decades. 

As late as 1969 he was advocating culling large populations of wild animals such as elephants and hippos, when they were appearing to be destroying their habitat. He had participated in the culling of 40,000 elephants in the 1950s but he later concluded the culling did not reverse the degradation of the land, calling that project "the saddest and greatest blunder of my life" in his recent TED talk.

Savory was inspired by earlier work of French agronomist André Voisin (some works available freely at the awesome resource http://www.soilandhealth.org/) who observed that cattle tended to return to the same patch of grass after about three days. Savory saw this as a solution of the riddle of time and that it was the length of time cattle were left in the same area and not just simple overgrazing which led to problems.  Holistic planned grazing is now happening on every continent on over 15M Ha.

Peter Bane wrote a nice review for Permaculture Activist which gets deeper into different aspects of the book if you are interested.  If you are considering taking a Permaculture Design Course this year check out the listings at the farm, where we are proud to have some of the leading global practitioners & researchers join us via digital link up, as well as local expertise joining us for different trainings.  Details are getting posted on relevant course listings as they come in.

We are also excited to offer what we think is a unique learning opportunity in Europe- our 10 Week Professional Permaculture Accelerator Internship.  We might be biased, but we think it's the most exciting Permaculture event happening in Europe this year, including over 530hrs of curriculum based learning & 5 Certificate Courses with some awesome folks joining us on the ground & via teleconference as we initiate this flagship project;

• 90hr+ PDC certified by PRI (Aus) & PC Assoc (UK)
• 5 day Forest Gardens & Perennial Cropping
• 5 day Regenerating Soils
• 5 day Keyline® Design & Holistic Management®
• 5 day Teaching Permaculture Creatively

We devised this training to put you in the driving seat.  We want to support more professionals getting out there in the field.  Having observed the PC world over the past years we see that there are few defined pathways into professional design and the most efficient tools, techniques & decision making processes are often quite different from the "standard" Permaculture approach.  Ever looking to integrate what actually works from our experience we will be examining the "nuts and bolts" of how to take design out into the field; looking at effective design and how to plan, budget and implement projects in an effective and methodical way.  It is through the actual realization of designs that the true learning takes place, and so this program is formulated to offer a professional accelerator for those wishing to work in this broad and exciting field.  The insights we have gained from our work with Keyline design and Holistic Management  deeply inform how we organize Permaculture Design and how we manage effective decision making in a holistic and inclusive manner.  We are excited to be able to support anyone dedicated to regenerating their soils, communities and economy for the benefit of all through our work at ridgedale PERMACULTURE, do not hesitate to be in touch with the farm if you like.  Trainings listed in the drop down box above.

We can think of at least 180 great forest garden & perennial crops for cold climate Sweden.  Want to hear about them? Over the course of the next year we will profile 5 a week on the blog. 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 soil husbandry (wifery?!) contributes to the majority of the 24 billion tons of topsoil lost every year on planet water.  We are going to be focused on holistic polyculture grazing and perennial production at ridgedale over most of the site as this represents the most effective way to restore our degraded landscape, produce high value produce and ensure the future resource base we are managing holistically for in our decision making. 

We can think of at least 180 great forest garden & perennial crops for cold climate Sweden.  Want to hear about them? Over the course of the next year we will profile 5 a week on the blog. 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 soil husbandry (wifery?!) contributes to the majority of the 24 billion tons of topsoil lost every year on planet water.  We are going to be focused on holistic polyculture grazing and perennial production at ridgedale over most of the site as this represents the most effective way to restore our degraded landscape, produce high value produce and ensure the future resource base we are managing holistically for in our decision making. 

Ben Falk's book is a must for cold climate Permaculture designers, homesteader's and anyone keen to learn from insightful and experienced holistic decision making.  We thoroughly enjoyed the read, and most importantly from our perspective; it's a work based on raw experience, dedication and enthusiasm.  Permaculture design is learnt by doing; we need more practitioners out on the ground working professionally & implementing resilient and effective solutions restoring ecosystems, connecting people to bring about robust local economies & exchange systems and meeting our human needs holistically.  This book supports those objectives, written in a refreshing tone that sets aside theory from observed practice. Ben has a diverse and deep design experience, and we are very excited to have him join us this spring for the first PDC at the farm as a guest lecturer via conference call.

Wanting to take a Permaculture Design Course (PDC)?  Wondering what you get out of taking a course like this & how they differ around the world?  There are regular courses all over the world now and because Permaculture is decentralized there is a great variance in different courses, which we have observed on our travels working & teaching around the world.  We've compiled a list of 10 reasons why taking a training with us represents a good investment in both your own learning pathway and offers points well worth reflecting upon generally if you are considering taking a similar training...

This is the third of a series of articles looking at design considerations for our Cold Climate Permaculture site using the Keyline Scale of Permanence as a organizing framework, as well as an informative read for anyone interested. 

Having had the pleasure of visiting and researching some of the best agroforestry sites in Europe I thought some folks might enjoy this interview I filmed with Professer Martin Wolf over in Suffolk, UK.  The video is probably far too slow if you suffer a 3-minute-social-media-saturated-attention-span but personally I would happily sit and listen to Martin for hours.

The video begins with Martin recounting his work as a grain disease specialist at Cambrige University- which led to broad scale East German adoption of multi- variety grain production and subsequent huge reductions in fungicides (which quickly fell apart when the wall came down) 350,000 ha under this production system in Germany sadly fell to 20,000ha almost overnight.

Having spent the past few years on a busy international schedule Richard Perkins has purchased a farm in Sweden where he is establishing ridgedale  PERMACULTURE  This is the first of a series of 5 articles looking at design considerations for our Cold Climate Permaculture site using the Keyline Scale of Permanence as a organizing framework, as well as an informative read for anyone interested.

I see my role mostly as a nutrient.  Thats's how I can best describe what my work seems to be.  Doesn't sound too alluring does it?   I've been working somewhat relentlessly over these past years on my mission to spread regenerative design and holistic decision making around the globe.  I have constantly been considering how to refine my own (un)learning adventure and listening deeply into what participants of trainings and others working in the field reflect back as leverage points to make my work more beneficial.  That's why I have been developing what I think is quite a unique learning opportunity in Europe, our new 10 Week Project Initiator Internship training.  I'd like to know what you think...