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Elfin Permaculture Announces
15th Annual Permaculture Design Course Online
 
After a one-year sabbatical, Elfin Permaculture's Annual Permaculture Design Course Online resumes, beginning Jan. 9, 2012. The course benefits from experience gleaned during a decade and a half of Elfin Permaculture online courses, and about 30 years of permaculture teaching by the lead instructor, Dan Hemenway.
 
The certificate course runs six months and includes the following learning approaches:
 
• Extensive reading in books, papers, both in print and on the course CD-ROM;
• 21 modules of at least one week, mainly presented on the CD, representing the formal presentations of course instructors;
•  At least four reports from each student, including a full permaculture design report[1];
•  Class discussion, via email, of readings and reports, as well as questions and issues raised by students or instructors;
•  The opportunity to participate in student study groups where interested students can pursue any agreed-upon topic for as long as they wish (independently of the course schedule);
• Support for students by three instructors: Dan Hemenway, course designer leader; Cynthia Hemenway CNM, designer and discussion leader for a special week on Design for Health, and Robert Waldrop, founder of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative and leader of several online discussion groups, our course moderator and discussion leader. You may read further background of our instructors on our web site.  In practice, Robert will lead most discussion groups and review early design work and Dan will review more complete design drafts and provide deep backup throughout, as needed.  Cynthia focuses mainly on the Design for Health module and serves as further deep back up for Dan.
 
The online course consists of three consecutive sections, plus work on a permaculture design which students undertake throughout the cycle in which they are registered. Samples of student design work are included in the course CD. We offer several registration options to accommodate people in varied circumstances including a non-certificate track, certificate training in one six-month cycle, and a two year ‘deliberate track’ that enables a student to participate in two consecutive course cycles and take ample time to prepare the design report for certification.
 
Registration is limited because of the time required to review and critique individual designs. (See below for registration limits.) Because students may enroll in a fast track or deliberate track, each with different design report deadlines, we can accommodate more students.
 
Content of the course sections follow[2]:
 
    Section 1:  Introduction and Basic Principles
          a) World ecological problems and interrelationships.
          b)  Basics.Principles of natural design. Sustainability and appropriate scale as concepts and principles in permaculture.
          c)  Permaculture design concepts.
          d)  Classical landscapes.
          e)  Patterning, edges, edge effects.
          f)  The Permaculture Design Report.
           g)  Principles of transformation (Unique to Elfin Permaculture courses). Succession, logarithmic change, exponential change, chaos, modulation, etc.
 
    Section 2: Appropriate Technologies in Permaculture Design
          a)  Energy--solar, wind, hydro, biomass, etc.
          b)  Nutrient cycles (3 modules)--soil, microclimates, gardening methods, perennials, tree crops, food parks, composting toilets, livestock, "pest" management, food storage, seed saving, cultivated systems, forests,  etc.
          c)   Water--impoundments, aquaculture, conservation, etc.
          d)   Shelter/buildings and access.
          e)   Design for Health.
 
    Section 3:  Social permaculture.  Design Report.
          a)  Design for catastrophe.
          b)  Urban permaculture.
          c)  Bioregionalism.
          d)  Alternative economics.
          e)  Village development.
          f)   Final design reports and critiques.
          g)  Final evaluation.
 
Online course participants have come from every inhabited continent and a number of island countries, from latitudes spanning the equatorial tropics to sub-arctic, and a comparable range of elevations, climates, etc. The course is suited to beginning permaculture design students, people seeking deep support in producing a permaculture design for their own homes, and, by special arrangement, people with some permaculture training and experience who wish to undertake advanced work[3]. Successful students receive certification as entry-level permaculturists. Advanced students pay no extra, but are expected to serve as additional resources to the beginning students.
 
To review information about the course methodology, content, certification requirements, tuition & fees, registration process, scholarship policies, reading list & cost, and assignment schedule, download the free course preregistration package from our web site, www.barkingfrogspermaculture.org
 
To download only the package without visiting our site, go to http://www.barkingfrogspermaculture.org/preregistration.pdf
 
Enrollment
 
Because we put many hours into reviewing drafts of each student design report, we limit enrollment of certificate students to five who report in the current year and five who report in the next course cycle. Up to ten additional students not submitting design reports may enroll.
 
Enrollment has begun for Cycle 15. Late enrollments are accepted, but the late-enrolling student may have trouble keeping up.  To get the most from the course, register early, obtain the course reading package, and begin reading the assignments in advance.
 
Scholarships
 
We award scholarships mainly to students working in countries lacking reasonable access to US funds.  Scholarship students should show a strong potential and disposition to become organizers or teachers of permaculture in their home region. They must be truly unable to pay tuition. Full scholarship details may be downloaded from our website.  The course protocol includes basic scholarship information. 
 
We accept scholarship applications for one month only each year.  Previously this has been August.  Because we are moving the course calendar to begin around March or April, starting in Cycle 16, January[4] will be the only month when we accept scholarship applications. Applications sent at other times will not be considered, and will prejudice subsequent applications sent at the designated time, except in remarkable and extraordinary circumstances (which occurred once in 15 years.)
 
Because of the workload added by each student, we almost invariably limit scholarships to one per cycle.  The scholarship for Cycle 15 has been awarded.
 
Monitors
 
Anyone can monitor the course (receive most course posts). Monitor tuition is free if s/he registers in the same envelope used to send the order for the course CD. (One can also monitor for a fee.) We also sometimes allow potential scholarship candidates to monitor using slightly a slightly older CD that has been returned by a student seeking an update or upgrade.  Monitors receive a special Self-Study version of the CD in any case. Inquire.
 
Course CD & Reading List
 
During our sabbatical, we conducted a comprehensive review of the course CD, with about 2-dozen major changes or new items, and hundreds (at least) updates, refinements, rewrites, etc. The course CD (all versions) nevertheless has remained at the same price for several years.  
 
The reading list and reading assignments (see Preregistration Package) have been revised reflect changes in availability of documents, newly published materials, etc.
 
 
ANNUAL LETTER – Barking Frogs Permaculture Center
 
All of the projects described in our 2010-2011 letter http://www.barkingfrogspermaculture.org/2011letter.htm continue at Barking Frogs Permaculture Center. Therefore we will tack changes to the course announcement, and avoid sending this to you separately.
 
About the only change in our programs has been an increase in emphasis on our green manure trials, which we have not previously mentioned in our annual newsletters. We have a number of legumes (Sesbania, crimson clover, cowpea, etc.) now established as encouraged nitrogen-fixing weeds in one or both of the main chinampas.  We are blessed with remarkably poor soil, which gives us an exceptional opportunity to prove-out various green manure plants, for which we have established trial areas and additional gardens. Crimson clover, cowpeas, and Mucuna (which does not self-sow in our climate) have proven themselves in the infertile-soil trial areas, and, after a slow start, we are having success this year with Crotolaria, planted this spring.  Non-legume green manures of value have in previous years included daikon radish and wheat, which grow best here in the coolest months, and castor bean for the warm seasons[5].  This year we began tests of promising warm season non-legume species: sorghum, Tithonia diversifolia, and T. rotundifolia, all fairly drought tolerant, very heat tolerant, and the latter also nutrient accumulators. (Tithonia spp. bring deep nutrients to the soil surface layers where most other plants have their feeder roots.  This is particularly helpful here, as several decades ago canals where dug across this area and infertile sand and marl spread over the rich, black, mucky marsh soils.) Next year we plant to combine sorghum with cowpeas, following this year’s Tithonia planting.
 
We will report these results in detail in a future edition of our Florida version of our Basic Gardening Data CD, which we released this year. (A Yankee Permaculture publication[6].) The basic CD includes databases and tables showing plant nutrient content of abut 400 materials commonly recovered or scrounged, tables of plant symptoms of soil nutrient deficiency, fertility and pH requirements of hundred of cultivated crops, etc.  The Florida edition also includes planting tables and other items of specific pertinence to Florida climate and soils.
 
 
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[1] Designs for certification in this course should be for a single-unit residence on no more than 2 acres of land.  We strongly caution against designing for groups, businesses, etc. (e.g., a family CSA) in this entry-level course.
[2] Student design work can begins in Section I and continues throughout, with regularly scheduled design review and discussion modules.
[3] Advanced work should be negotiated with the instructor before registering.
[4] Beginning in Jan. 2013.
[5] While a minor contributor to warm season green manure, it is an important inhibitor of root knot nematodes.
[6] You may download the Yankee Permaculture publications list/order form at http://www.barkingfrogspermaculture.org/orderform.pdf