Author Archives: Kristin

Front Range Bioneers Sessions: Patterns for Peoplecare, Adam Brock, 11/8/14

Notes from this engaging session:

Front Range Bioneers, November 7-9, 2014

Patterns and Peoplecare, Adam Brock, Saturday, 11/8, 3:10-4:30pm

 

A topic Adam has been passionate about since he learned permaculture, but it just starting to put into words. As he applies names to patterns he’s interested in—the more helpful he finds it—and it has now become a focus. Similar themes to resiliency talk; in order to effectively be our best selves in the world that we’re in, we need to be in a state of personal resilience.

There are many more aspects to permaculture/permanent culture than just permanent agriculture. What does permaculture look like when applied to education/economy/justice? It cannot be applied only to food system without looking at these other elements—otherwise you run the risk of a solution that is not robust.

Pattern languages are a way of cataloging solutions, and linking them to one another. Building blocks that can be applied modularly. Example: yoga, pattern language of movement. Every asana a different pattern that affects our bodies differently, fine tuned over generations.

Pattern language of invisible structures: cannot see consensus the way you can see a straw bale house.

This site lists 150 patterns from the largest and most comprehensive to more specific: http://www.peoplepattern.org/patterns/

Patterns discussed:

  1. Healing by Design
    1. we can use design to heal our communities—economy, justice, decision making
  2. Interdependent Communities
    1. What does community mean? A real community is a group of people that need each other. Not just like to hangout with each other, but actually need each other to meet basic needs.
    2. Intentionally engage with each other in a way that we need each other. Takes trust, time, re-skilling.
  3. Knowledge of Self
    1. If we don’t have a deep understanding of who we are, and what we’re skilled at, level of energy, we will not be effective as healers in broader community.
      1. Almost impossible to do if we’re spending 40 hours a week doing one specific thing.
      2. Make it past personal/intergenerational traumas
    2. Understanding systems of oppression in community
  4. Going Home
    1. Wendell Barry, “wisdom accumulates in a community the way fertility accumulates in soil” over time, with care, love
      1. takes a long time to understand a community, ecosystems, watersheds, its people
  5. Restoring Capital
    1. Traditionally, capital=wealth. This is a narrow view. Stored wealth of any kind, that can be used over time.
      1. Natural capital: tinder, water, air
      2. Social capital: interdependent communities-wealth through network
      3. Cultural capital: stored accumulation of generations of rituals, recipes
      4. Many of these getting subsumed by one form of capital—financial
        1. Rebuilding in ways that are circumventing the dollar—dollars flow toward scarcity that way water flows downhill. Need other media of exchange for a regenerative economy.
  6. Scale
    1. Today, “bigger is better”
      1. Ask, what is the right size for this—how can I design in self-regulation?
  7. Networks/Hierarchies
    1. Two fundamental ways of working together as people
      1. Hierarchies often destructive. Networks consensus based groups. One is not better than the other. Find both in nature. Examples: dendritic patterns in trees, circulatory systems.
      2. Networks more equitable, innovative, but take a lot more energy (example: dendrites in brain-less than 4% of mass, but—take 10% of bloodstream to keep going).
      3. Hybrid models—best use of each of their properties

 

Group Exercise: What are some areas in your life where you feel like you are at a place of struggle or challenge?

“The map is not the territory.”

Use pattern language as tool, to shortcut this problem and get to the solution. Start to think in terms of pattern, come up with your own patterns—what is my language that is going to help me solve my problems?

Front Range Bioneers Sessions: Local Plenary: Jason Gerhardt, Permaculture Design for Drought and Flood, 11/8/14

Notes from a brief presentation with excellent examples of design for drought and flood:

 

Front Range Bioneers, November 7-9, 2014

Local Plenary: Jason Gerhardt, Permaculture Design for Drought and Flood, Saturday, 11/8, 11-11:15am

 

Look at problems in terms of how I can integrate ecologies and communities.

Can we design water systems that improve ecology? Focus on infiltration. State of Colorado water laws based on certain amount of water flowing downstream. 2007 study in Boulder County: 3% of water makes it to the stream, other 97% evaporates. Perennial state of drought. Growing population. Overtaxed system, over appropriated rivers. 50% of water coming from other side of Continental Divide. Drought/flood dichotomy.

Runoff from cities: overland flow, soil erosion, losing organic matter and ability of landscape to store water. Pollution. Downstream flooding. Runoff leaves dehydrated landscape. All the water of the flood did not do any ecological good. Pre-development, it was able to infiltrate the landscape.

Design for drought: we manage water sources, conservatively. We also look at the sink, how we get the water off the surfaces as soon as possible. We don’t have a runoff problem. We have an infiltration deficiency.

Design examples:

Residential landscapes. Street runoff. Every street is water conveyance surface. Capture in street-side gardens. Capture as close to where it falls as possible.

Parking Lot Green Infrastructure.

Contour Log Felling. Apply to wild spaces, especially in burn scars. Lay logs perpendicular to slope, and water, soil, seeds will collect behind that log. Forest will regenerate.

Check dams. Rock dams that slow water and allow it to back up and soak in.

Water Runoff & Water needs. Seven houses on Boulder cul-de-sac, Quarry Court. Client on the block asked, can you calculate surface area of all these roofs streets and homes? Can all homes be taken off irrigation?  Result: More water falling on that landscape than all those houses use in a year. Drought proof landscape and flood preventing by changing the way we design landscapes. Trees planted in basins.

Front Range Bioneers Sessions: Urban Evolution–How Does Natural Building Fit Into City Living?, 11/7/14

Read on for notes from this informative presentation!

 

Front Range Bioneers, November 7-9, 2014

Urban Evolution—How does Natural Building fit into City Living?  Friday, 11/7, 4-5:15pm

Introduction by: Robin Eden

Facilitated by: Ben Waldman

Panelists: Mike Wird, Alisha Black-Mallon, Brian Fuentes, Ian Smith, Avery Ellis

 

Question to panel: What does natural building mean to you and how does it fit into your daily life?

Mike Wird: Practical and Social Implications: Utilizing materials available to you in the place where you reside, including solar, wind, soil, water, reducing toxic load. Social: organizing people around natural building projects, handling non-toxic building materials, and working together is transformational for people.

Alicia: PDC in Denver. Started Natural Genius, natural building with children. Teach kids how to use pattern language: focus on pattern #73 “adventure playground”. Kids designed their own playscape at Stapleton Urban Farm. Design build camps. Also a teacher.

Brian Fuentes: Grew up in Lakewood. Went to school for architecture. Participated in first straw bale house build at University of Oregon. Austria: 4 story apartments out of straw bale. Straw bale house in South Boulder. Works to build by energy and passive house standard, implement net zero buildings (40% of greenhouse gases caused by buildings).

Ian Smith: Structural engineer, graduated CU 12 years ago. Engineers Without Borders, worked in Haiti. Studied design of masonry arches, vaults, and domes in Auroville, India. Practical: using traditional, local materials in contemporary buildings. Social: Community building using local resources.

Avery Ellis: Ecological designer. Auroville, India semester. Working with CO government on greywater law. Efficiency, practicality, building structures appropriate to site (after observation). Energy of projects: example, geodesic dome build in Denver.

 

Question to panel: What do natural building projects in the URBAN setting look like?

Avery: re-using waste products to build homes. Materials that would otherwise go to landfill. Tires, bottles.

Brian: reclaimed is trend in architecture right now. Example, Etsy: reclaimed bar stools built by grad student. Use urban resources like Craigslist (especially for finish work). No more “plastic fantastic”. Reclaimed.

Alisha: DIY. Good starting point for people who feel powerless. “Palletfest” in Denver. “We’re the community we’ve all been looking for.” In next 15 years: rather than dumpster diving: design smart systems for reuse. Also change in laws that allow us to build out of re-purposed materials.

Mike: Systems. Natural building is already upon us as a necessity in urban environments. Resources (water, plumbing, electrical grid) are strained. Build closed loop systems. Like nature: no waste.

Brian: Systems already exist with LED lighting, solar panels, etc., for neighborhood blocks to support themselves. Codes need to change so we can do these things. Everyday question for natural builders, “Can we get it past the inspector?”

Avery: Greywater re-use so we don’t need to pass fresh water. Demand of local counties and cities that they maintain minimum standards when greywater law passes in 2015. Boulder owns watershed. Denver pumps all from Dillon Reservoir. Water re-use, “you’ve already paid for it, re-use 4-5 times.” Use homes as if living systems.

 

Question to Audience: Has anyone stomped cob before? (Quite a few raised their hands!)

Question to panel: How can money play a big factor in work?

Ben: Natural building is labor intensive.

Brian: labor is a good thing. We need jobs. Natural building parallel with food movement is really powerful. Stop importing materials and driving them across the country.

Alisha: mindshift is important. “free work” WE make no money, but it’s the best thing that’s happening in our lives. Real relationships develop from building. Not so much from having a beer together. Want to go build and use our bodies instead! Produced something together. Less recreation that we pay for, instead recreating together by creating together. Has enriched life in a real way. Community building. A lot of what we’re living with now can be easily dismantled. Value our life in other ways, move away from money.

Ian: you’ll probably hire local people, so it’s money that stays in your local economy. The more natural materials we use in the building, the more local they will be. “We’re not going to truck dirt from China”

Avery: if you took all the armies of the world and traded guns for shovels and tools, everyone in the world would have shelter–Michael Reynolds. Seven forms of capital. Community is one of them. We must explore other forms of capital.

 

Audience Question to Panel: Any sort of cost savings with using local natural materials?

Brian: beetle kill $0.63/sq ft. Supports local guys milling it in Granby. Tactile qualities of natural materials are huge selling point. It is more expensive than the cheapest thing you can build to code. However, natural materials are competitive when it comes to well-crafted homes.

 

Audience Question to Panel: What can an already built condo complex do to make use of our natural resources and retrofit?

Avery: Retrofits are mandatory. Solar greenhouse off the south side of a house. Food.

Brian: Retrofits in Germany. With minimal upgrades and insulation, you can meet passive standard. Much more efficient in a condo complex. Austrian house: wrap timber in bales.

 

Audience Question to Panel: Gridlock with all of the new department buildings in Boulder?

Brian: We’re in limbo land here where we don’t have the population density to support mass transport. We’re still car dependent.

 

Audience Question to Panel: How retrofit existing housing inventory?

Brian: 6th & Evergreen retrofit project straw bale. Upland retrofit. Not yet cost competitive. Fighting fossil fuels subsidies.

Ben: can choose earthen floors instead of hardwood. Themal mass. Clay plaster instead of latex paint.

 

Audience Question to Panel: How can we adapt natural building to accommodate that our society is changing much faster than the structures we live in?

Alisha: We’re not using new technologies, we’re using ancient technologies. If, we, for example, use the sun to heat our homes, we’d save so much in efficiency. There are not many people in our generation that have technological ancient wisdom.

Brian: being a designer is about asking, “what is quality”. Cities in Europe have functioned for thousands of years that are basic, but human-centric and walkable. Build with quality, integrity, using pattern language, in human scale environments.

 

Audience Question to Panel: Industrial hemp?

Mike: hempcrete.

Avery: complicated because we don’t have the robust hemp genetics here in Colorado, but it’s illegal to import the genetics.

Audience member who builds with hemp: Hemp has to come from Canada or Netherlands. Until we have a Colorado supply. Farmers have to grow it, but then someone has to process it. We have to drive the market so industrial hemp does not fail in Colorado. Working on binders. Expensive to get NHL from Netherlands. We’re 80 years behind, but it’s an exciting business to be in, and ripe for exploration.

 

Audience member comments:

We need to instill in our minds that we are the government.

Natural Disaster Resilience Competition: 1 billion dollar competition. One of the goals is institutionalizing the idea of resilience in our community. Grassroots community effort seated around this; community engagement. Bucky Fuller living building challenge has been expanded to living city challenge.

Reverting to ancient methods and materials. Synergistic intersection of natural building materials with modern technologies.

Ben: there is definitely a lot of crossover and yes, we do need help.

3-D printers for hempcrete. Look into the Maker Movement. Maker and Tech innovating intersecting.

Open Tech Collaborative in Denver.

Ben: Be more involved: code and education are huge issues. Natural City Builders Guild in Denver.

Permaculture Teacher Training with Sandy Cruz and Peter Bane, Nov. 9-13, 2014

From Sandy Cruz of High Altitude Permaculture:

Please join Peter Bane and me in Ann Arbor, Michigan this November for a 5-day intensive Permaculture Teacher Training Course designed to uplevel your skills, bolster your confidence, and prepare you for new endeavors.
November 9-13, 2014
Check out the flyer and registration form below:

Front Range Bioneers 2014, this weekend, Nov. 7-9, 2014

Join in for a weekend of enlightenment at the Front Range Bioneers Conference at the University of Colorado Boulder, November 7-9, 2014.

Speakers to include local permaculturists Mike Wird, Jason Gerhardt, Avery Ellis, Michelle Gabrieloff-Parish, Robin Eden, Marie Zanowick Bourgeois, Isabel Sanchez, Amanda Scott, Adam Brock, Tara Rae Kent, and Pavlos Stavropoulos, among others!

Registration information

2014 Detailed Program

2014 Summary Program

Geodesic Dome Work Party, Nov. 16th, 2014, Denver

From Regenerative Lifestyles and Denver Earthship:

GEODESIC DOME WORK PARTY:
SUNDAY, NOV 16th
10am-4pm
Eastside Growers Collective, Park Hill, Denver
We will be working on packing out the tires, bottle bricking, and cover glazing the dome.
All are welcome!
Bring: Lunch or Food to Share
           Warm Layered Clothing/ Gear
           Closed-toed Boots or Shoes
           Water Bottle
Donations are always appreciated.
dome

Advanced Landscape Design Course, January-March, 2015, Denver

DPGlogo

From The Denver Permaculture Guild:

Take your skills as a permaculture designer to the next level with this course offered by Adam Brock and Jason Gerhardt, two of Colorado’s premier professional permaculture designers.

In this 3-weekend course, we’ll be using a mix of lecture, group discussion, and hands-on activities to cover the following topics:

    • Advanced landscape techniques
    • Advanced design thinking
    • Low-tech and high-tech approaches for surveying and basemapping
    • Hand-drawn and computer-aided drafting techniques
    • In-depth site analysis
    • Strategies for working with clients
    • Budgeting
    • Developing project manuals
    • Implementation tips
WHEN:
3 Weekends, Winter 2015:
  • January 17th and 18th
  • February 21st and 22nd
  • March 21st and 22nd
HOW MUCH:
$600 for DPG members
$750 for non-members (PDC required)

Rockies Edge Permaculture Design Course, Boulder, April-October 2015

A 2015 through the seasons Permaculture Design Course is in the works for Boulder.  The class will be one weekend a month, starting in April, and ending in October.  Watch the Rockies Edge Permaculture website for updates in the coming weeks.  In the meantime, if you have any questions, email info[at]rockiesedge[dot]com.

Currently, the list of instructors includes Kelly Simmons, Avery Ellis, Tara Rae Kent, and Mike Wird, with guests.

Diploma Information from the Permaculture Institute of North America (PINA)

From Sandy Cruz of High Altitude Permaculture:

 

PINA — the Permaculture Institute of North America — officially launched its organization and began accepting members in late August at the North American Permaculture Convergence.  Much more about this new professional permaculture organization, including membership details, may be found at: http://permaculturenorthamerica.org/.
PINA is a professional organization designed to support students and experienced practitioners of permaculture in North America.  PINA’s goals are:
• To raise and maintain professional standards in permaculture design, teaching, and additional permaculture disciplines.
• To support permaculture education through a certifying process that recognizes achievement and excellence.
• To provide a structure for communication among Permaculture Design Course graduates.
The PINA Board of Directors will begin accepting applications from members for the Diploma of Permaculture Design and the Diploma of Permaculture Education on October 1st.  PINA’s professional diploma programs are open to PDC graduates as well as more experienced practitioners.  Applicants will be assigned a regional field advisor to assist them in working through the diploma process.  PINA will grant diplomas retroactively and at no cost to members who qualify as senior permaculturists, on the basis of past achievement.
I will serve as PINA’s first field advisor for the Rocky Mountain region, and additional field advisors will be added once the process has stabilized.  The first few diploma candidates will help PINA to work through any kinks in the process.
PINA is also working to establish regional permaculture organizations that span the continent, which will eventually become PINA’s governing bodies.
To learn more about PINA, the permaculture network it seeks to establish, and PINA’s professional diploma programs, please visit http://permaculturenorthamerica.org/