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.

Day 13 at the current PDC, Daniel McGough is journalling the experience...

Day 12, the course is approaching it's end, a massive amount of creative outpourings as we go deeper into design projects, explore Regenerative Enterprises and make the most of this glorious Swedish weather....

Each day of this PDC has been journalled here on the blog by Daniel McGough.  Deep into design projects we delve deeper into cleaning waste and cycling nutrients as we draw closer to the end of this awesome training...

Day 10 of the PDC and the final and main design exercise begins today.  Sweltering heat and feverish plans...

DAY 9  

“Don’t forget the one and only (No) Talent Show”. Richard reminds the students that they are expected to share some type of skit or performance this coming Friday evening as part of our final night celebrations. These are always a treat and as Richard explains, also a way of demonstrating community. “The idea is how do we entertain ourselves here in the middle of a field without having to go and buy stuff or go to events, we just make an event.”

“C’mon let’s play a game”. One of the best ways to incite spontaneous reaction and get the blood flowing in the morning is to surprise people and this is one of the best games I know of getting some very, very strange sounds out of people. The Super Hero game begins. Basically there are three super hero powers that come with specific actions or moves and an accompanying sound, which is not so important and usually ends up being invented the split second before the action anyway. 

DAY 7

I fair run to class after breakfast because today is soils day, this is one of my favourites. Richard points out the absolute importance of understanding soils when considering patterns, ecology, and life. 

DAY 6

I cannot believe it is Day 6 already. The PDC here at Ridgedale Permaculture is zipping by with mountains of knowledge being scaled, some incredible insights discovered and droves of dynamic learning opportunities happening at each stage. Since I’ve been writing this blog my creative self has been trying to discover the most efficient way to communicate everything that is going on here it Ridgedale. I guess what is coming out is a kind of stream of consciousness, experiential, data recording… so I just hope it’s nothing too all over the place and somewhat digestible. But hey, as we learned yesterday, lumpy is good so…. perhaps I should have called the blog ‘PDC porridge’.

Our morning review session reminds us that the most productive forest gardens are called mid-succession ecologies due to the fact that this is where we see all layers displayed. At least this is the stage of a forest system that we should be aiming to recreate if we want to factor more cropping into the vertical spaces of our site in the cool and temperate climates.

As PDC#2 rolls at Ridgdale Permaculture, we publishing a daily blog to detail the experience for those who may be interested in what takes place at one of our trainings as we establish Scandinavia's first Keyline Designed farm & dedicated Regenerative Ag/ Permaculture Edu hub at a working farm.  Daniel McGough, one of our pioneer Farm Managers joining us from Australia shares his experience of the (Un)Learning journey over the next 2 weeks.  Here's Day 5...

Beak deep in raked out cow patties, the broiler hens are busily hunting for breakfast… I’m not even sure they went to bed. Expressing their chickeness and scouring for fly larvae, some days after the cows have been through the same field, they look very busy, rather plump and quite happy.  We've split the broilers into 3 groups now to finish them on different feed rations to compile data for running a gross profit analysis before upscaling next year.

Day 5, I can’t believe we’re here already. There is so much tangible information renting space in my brain at this moment having spent the previous four days in a yurt in a field with Richard Perkins and representatives from 15 other nations, learning the complexities and simplicities of totally doable strategies related to Permaculture and Keyline Design.

Today we took what we learned the day before and started to develop a set of Water Layer Design skills. We are set the task of developing a water catchment design for the farm, adopting the catchment calculations for structures, which we learnt and practiced yesterday. Working out drinking water necessary for the summer period, to which we can add any other elements (laundry, animals, showers, etc) if and when we need to.

On the farm we have a Green & Carter ram pump installed that will drive all the irrigation and animal supply for Ridgedale Permaculture. The beauty of this system is that a) it’s living water, coming from an active natural system, and b) it will eventually re-enter the same system, charged from the life in the soil and other flowing elements on the farm. 

We are building the basic skill set required to start identifying key elements on a map, visualising our land shape and then applying strategies at a very comprehensive level. From using selected stationary to concisely convey strategies on plan, to the collection of integral data resulting in the implementation of actionable, multi-functioning elements

We start playing around with keyline design as Richard explains that there is no automated way of doing this. The inputting of the data into a computer aided design program is totally secondary to the initial hand design stage. Good design starts on paper.  Our goal: to create a plow pattern across a complicated terrain that will become a long term Savannah nut planting. The magic of Keyline is in it’s efficiency and gentle interaction, it’s cost effectiveness and it’s stacking of functions: exploding heavily compacted sub-soils, allowing oxygen and water flow, creating life thriving environments for micro-organisms, aiding large scale design in the sensible and beneficial placement of essential elements… I could go on and on but they’re just words. The best way to learn is to do, and to do is to be here at Ridgedale alongside the guidance of Richard. (see - http://www.ridgedalepermaculture.com/k­­­eyline-design-18th--22nd-aug.html)

We’ve now wandered away from what many people would classify strictly as Permaculture,­ which is fine, because the techniques we are learning about here are completely complimentary and practically mirror each others’ intentions (or principles) directly.

In the afternoon we wander down to where the two streams on the property meet and settle in for a cooling lesson about forest ecology in the shade of a riparian Birch patch.  Convectional, topographic and frontal rain information spills down into our consciousness as we enter mountainside’s of depleted forests to make way for resorts. We deduce the impact that habitat loss has on both the windward and wayward sides of a mountain and how even when reforestation interventions occur below a deforested hilltop, the result is not good.

Deforestation = dropping ground water levels, diversity and habitat loss, drought, flood, erosion, compacted soils, CO2 emission, etc. So the key here is to learn; what can be learned and benefits gained from implementing systems that mimic forest systems.

Moving onto the fundamentals of forest ecology we examine stratification and it’s function with the system. Canopy and understorey trees, shrubs and bushes, herbaceous plants and root crops and potential emergent species such as Date and Coconut Palms. We grasp that a system left to it’s own devices looks very different to a ‘departmentalised’ human managed forest. A natural system is “lumpy” as Richard likes to describe it, with weird things happening across asymmetrical funny shaped edges.  Heterogenous, leading to great diversity compared to our conventional production systems.  Nothing like the “vertical deserts” we witness occupying large tracts of forestry land in places like Australia and Europe, or here in Sweden.

This leads us to succession; primary, which last for thousands of years using factors like fungi, erosion, freezing and moss. We re-educate our language to now describe weeds as friends that are fast carbon pathways, or E.P.R’s, (“earth repair mechanisms” R.P.). What is it that the plants that lead campaigns of succession really trying to communicate with us? Compaction, mineral harvesting, erosion control? All plants exist to fill a very specific function which the express through their form to benefit the entire system. Annual herbs that focus on sexual reproduction to spread seed across every square mile of the planet to ensure that when a natural event occurs and things go a little silly, they are there to recolonise the open space and protect it from rampant soil loss.  The dormant vegetative advance party if you will.

“That’s their function. They are protectors of the soil. This is the pattern of the whole system, to be of benefit to all” R.P.

We also discover that many of the longer term canopy species are also in that seed bank, but are waiting for very specific conditions before the wake up to join the conversation.

The gift of this situation, this moment, is that those species, Oak, for example, are right below our feet. As Richard reveals intimacy of this highly complex and self managed structure, I’m gazing over several hundred thousand biota through just the depths of my visual horizon to the edge of the forest. Reaching down I crumble ancient Scandinavian mulch through my fingers, littered with countless numbers of life forms… and all some 100 metres’ walk from the classroom we were in minutes before. 

As Richard points out that while Perennial plant systems are highly managed and moderate suppliers of produce, they are also resilient, de-compacting, soil creating mechanisms. “This is why we can restore thinks fast! Because we can bring all of these elements onto a site at the same time. Things respond when you put them back in their patterns… sometimes really fast”.

Before the dinner bell (tummy rumbling) we manage a quick tour of Oaxaca, Mexico to a brittle landscape (where evapo-transpiration exceeds precipitation) where Richard runs through a design of an entire property, pretty much from top to bottom. Now, he got super excited here so he started drawing and talking very quickly. From what I got though they protected the buildings from fire by hooking the existing underground tanks up to rooftop sprinkler systems and functioning rainwater collection and dispersal across the site (swales and ditches), sub-soiling, aquaculture, banana foresting in runoff ditches, nursery establishment and perennial forest systems. I may have forgotten one or two elements.

All of these strategies were actionable, doable, beneficial solutions, mostly using resources on site developed through pattern observation and interaction. And there it is...

As PDC#2 rolls at Ridgdale Permaculture, we publishing a daily blog to detail the experience for those who may be interested in what takes place at one of our trainings as we establish Scandinavia's first Keyline Designed farm & dedicated Regenerative Ag/ Permaculture Edu hub at a working farm.  Daniel McGough, one of our pioneer Farm Managers joining us from Australia shares his experience of the (Un)Learning journey over the next 2 weeks.  Here's Day 3...

As PDC#2 rolls at Ridgdale Permaculture, we publishing a daily blog to detail the experience for those who may be interested in what takes place at one of our trainings as we establish Scandinavia's first Keyline Designed farm & dedicated Regenerative Ag/ Permaculture Edu hub at a working farm.  Daniel McGough, one of our pioneer Farm Managers joining us from Australia shares his experience of the (Un)Learning journey over the next 2 weeks.  Here's Day 3...

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.

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...