Source: Ecohouse.co.nz

Research Credit: Cryptogon

There is a lot of great information and inspiring quotes in the Indigene Community web site. Their premise is that there is no need to re-invent the wheel in terms of re-learning how to live sustainably.

They argue that Indigenous Knowledge (IK) provides many blueprints for a post-post sustainable world. This organization was inspired by Stewart Brand’s Long Now project.

Source: Challenge Your World

Built in 1955 by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, LASALLE-GARDENS was inspired by Frederick Law Olmstead’s ‘garden-city’ concept. It currently has 2000 people living in 700 apartments & 50 town-houses on a 33 acre property. Peripheral roads require 1/3rd the number of streets in similar population density as in the rest of Montreal. Park-lands surround most buildings where residents are commonly seen playing, walking and interacting. Some members planted over one hundred maples and pines over 45 years ago which currently reach 50 foot heights providing natural beauty, shade and clean air.

Source: Indigene Community

Blueprints for sustainable development and humaine society are still held by indigenous societies and indeed our own indigenous heritages worldwide.   ‘Indigenous’ is not a function of race but of openess, involvement and inclusion for everyone.  Around the world ethno-historical (indigenous worldview) efforts are being made to compile Indigenous Knowledge IK from thousands of First Nation societies and fragments held by all of us in order to reintegrate this into inclusive living-ecology-economy, abundance and connected cultures today for everyone….

Human culture has perverted its original kind and sustainable operating system due to a pervasive colonial (empire) ‘virus’ by which, we are destroying the planet’s ecological capacities and productivity.  Analogy:  When a computer has a ‘virus’, we reboot it back at a time when the Operating System was integrated, whole and vibrant.  Indigene Community website compiles and attempts to describe the indigenous period, principles and practices, which cover hundreds of thousands and millions of years of human life on earth.  Humanity can find abundance and guidance from indigenous roots.  We won’t reinvent our way out of problems using the same understandings which create them.

Filmmakers Donna Read and Starhawk will be at the screening of the film Permaculture: The Growing Edge on June 22 at the Crowley Arts Centre, 5325 Crowley Ave. It is a fundraiser to celebrate the NDG Food Depot’s 25th anniversary. Tickets are $20 and available only at the door.

Starhawk is doing a two-week workshop on permaculture called Earth Activist Training in Audet, Que., from June 25 to July 9. For more information, go to www.earthactivisttraining.org

Source: Montreal Gazette

Beyond agriculture, permaculture is also a way of dealing with environmental and social problems, Starhawk said.

The film documents an oil-spill cleanup that used human hair to absorb the oil, which then became a planting medium to grow oyster mushrooms that convert the oil to sugar for their growth – a way to dispose of toxic waste without creating any waste products.

Permaculture can be an answer to problems like climate change, Starhawk said. Farms can sequester excess carbon dioxide in the soil, reducing the amount in the atmosphere, which leads to climate change, while urban agriculture reduces the amount of fossil fuels needed to produce food on a large-scale and transport it to cities, she said.

“Putting solutions in place doesn’t have to be grim and awful, it’s joyful and fun and it actually enriches your life,” she said. “It’s joyful, wonderful work to plant things and tend plants and it builds community at the same time when you’re gardening together.”

2011 Vermont Permaculture Design Course

Utilizing the incomparable Whole Systems Research Farm permaculture site in Vermont’s Mad River Valley, our design studio resources, and a team of leading facilitators, Whole Systems Design, Keith Morris and Lisa DePiano present the first of many permaculture design courses to be offered in the coming decades.  This certification course will be held July 31st to August 12th, 2011 at the Whole Systems Design Studio and Research Farm site. 

This course offers an unparalleled opportunity to gain hands-on applied permaculture skills immersed within one of North America’s most diverse and intensive permaculture research sites.  Participants will engage with high-performance home and community resource systems that will be more resilient in the face of problems posed by peak oil, climate change, environmental toxicity, and the inability of existing economic and social systems to deal with such challenges.

This course includes the standard certificate curriculum but goes way beyond the typical Designer’s Certification Course by utilizing the background of skills-based trainings offered in Whole Systems Skills, and information-based study.  Students in this course will not walk and is filled with practice-based, learning-by-doing experiences, not only concept away from the experience without basic post-peak oil resiliency literacy including: how to plant a tree, fell a tree, split firewood, harvest biomass with a sycthe and sharpen it, sharpen and maintain other basic tools, perform earthworks, plumb basic waterworks and harvest water, inoculate mushroom logs and spread mushroom patches and innumerable other hard skills available to us via our working homestead, farm and practitioner-teachers.

Unlike at many permaculture course, we will actually be practicing these techniques on the farm throughout the course.

Course Highlights

• Immersion and practice in one of the most sophisticated permaculture sites in North America.

• Living at a beautiful site in the heart of Vermont, in the Mad River Valley.  See more here.
  

• Ecological design and engineering pioneer John Todd anchors a team of guest instructors and visiting presenters.
  

• Field trips to regional sites to see models of permaculture strategies in action.

There will be a first-come-first-served opportunity for a 3 day applied permaculture practicum after the course where a small group of course students will have the opportunity to practice permaculture all day, each day, on the research farm site.

Course Instructors

Keith Morris – Propect Rock Permaculture

Lisa DePiano – Montview Neighborhood Farm

Ben Falk, M.A.L.D. - Whole Systems Design

Cornelius Murphy – Whole Systems Design

To learn more and register for a place in the course, please visit our website.

The NDG Food Depot and the Montréal Permaculture Guild invite you to a free evening with Claude William Genest, on Wednesday April 20^th at 7pm at the NDG Food Depot (2120 Oxford Ave).

Mr. Genest, permaculturalist and former Deputy Leader of the Green Party of Canada, will present a selection of episodes from his PBS produced Emmy nominated television-series “Regeneration – The Art of Sustainable Living.”  “Regeneration…” follows Mr. Genest as he explores the ways innovative people all over the world are building, growing, and living more sustainably.  The screening will be followed by a discussion led by Mr. Genest about his experiences with the project.

You can watch past TV episodes that cover topics like:

• Biological treatment systems to clean wastewater
• Local food production and the regeneration of farmers
• Permaculture to transform acres of lawn to a “multi-yielding food forest”
• Sustainable housing with straw-bale construction
• The “farm of the future,” a model for renewable energy production

Watch ReGeneration Episode #1:

Hear Professor Todd say, “The idea that you can’t have economy and ecology is complete bull!” Very inspiring stuff here. Highly recommended for anyone interested in sustainable architecture and living buildings.

Watch the full episode. See more ReGeneration.

Do you like bread?
Do you like eating bread?
Do you like making bread?
Would you like to learn how to make very easily your own delicious, healthy and inexpensive bread?

If you answered yes to at least two of the above questions then do we have the workshop for you! The Montreal Permaculture Guild is organizing a series of “re-skilling” workshops at the NDG Food Depot at 2121 Oxford Street.

Come join us there on Monday, February 7th, 2011 starting 5.30 pm and watch Montreal Permaculturalist Ed Yersh make bread with his very own bread machine.

He will show you how it’s done.
He will talk about bread.
We will watch the bread machine as it:

• mixes the ingredients
• kneads the ingredients
• bakes the ingredients
• warms the bread

You will be offered bread to eat.
You will enjoy the convivial company of fellow bread enthusiasts.

Details:
NDG Food Depot
2121 Oxford Street, corner de Maisonneuve
Montréal, Qc
Metro Vendome
Monday February 7th, 2011 starting 5.30 pm

Permaculture is about making your own stuff and using energy wisely. On Monday, come to the depot to learn how to make your own bread.

Learn how to sprout at this workshop given by the NDG Food depot. Sprouting is a surprisingly easy way to grow your own fresh veggies in the dead of winter. They are only sprouts (baby veggies), but they contain many of the vital nutrients and energies our bodies need for healthy functions.

Source: Montreal Permaculture Guild

**Monday the 24st of January at 5pm* @ the NDG Food depot,  2121 avenue d’Oxford, Montreal.

Come to learn how to make sprouting in jar or in soil, and keep greens in your plate during the winter! A soup will be prepared and served following the workshop.

This seems strange coming from Southern California, one of the most unsustainable areas in North America, but this is an offering for the richest of Orange county including Newport Beach and Huntington Beach. These folks can afford the high up-front costs of sustainable homes.

Source: Permaculture Properties

Green is great, but thinking about how the actions we make today will echo into the future is something we’re not doing nearly enough of. Worshiping resource intensive technologies instead of following nature’s path to abundance.

It’s not all that smart to ship flooring with a thin veneer of bamboo from a distant location to cover your living room floor that won’t last more than a decade instead of harvesting a much more durable, local wood or stone that will out live yourself. These are the short sided, reactionary decisions that we’re hoping to influence. We feel the ideas associated with permaculture are the most efficient and appropriate way to define the change that’s needed in our community.