Permaculture at Raccoon Creek

Over the past few months community members have discussed permaculture as a design principle for Raccoon Creek. (Google "permaculture" for tons of definitive information.) Wednesday night some of us traveled to Bloomington to see a set of four programs on video at the library. These were arranged by Cynthia to help spread the word about permaculture. She hopes to schedule them again so if you'd like to see them, send me a note and I'll pass your name on to her.

The programs were produced by Bill Mollison in 1991, but they are timeless. Bill is one of two Aussies who coined the term "permaculture" and first wrote about it in detail.

Each program emphasized a different habitat --desert, tropics, cold climates-- and was, understandably, different in many respects from the others. But the similarities are more obvious.

Mollison showed us implementations of permaculture practices in every corner of the world other than the polar areas. One thing that struck me was how wonderful it would be to actually teach someone permaculture principles and see them create a heathy, sustainable life for themselves where previously one seemed unlikely. Perhaps someday Raccoon Creek Community members will be qualified to travel and teach permaculture to people around the world.

But back to the present...

At the start of this summer, for the third year, a permaculture course will be taught at Lazy Black Bear near Paoli, Indiana, as an elective credit class at IU. The course will be squeezed into two full weeks plus a weekend and successful participants will earn permaculture certifications. The class is full, in fact "way" full, with over 40 students!

We have discussed sending some of our members to a permaculture course, but have decided that bringing a course to us would be preferable for numerous reasons. We would be spending class time talking about our site rather than someone esle's. We would be able to train more Raccoon Creek folks for less expense, giving us more trained people to talk through site design decisions. And, by opening the classes to others, we would enable more folks from Indiana and nearby states to be trained on property more like their own. Being trained in Califoria, Oregon, Arizona, or even North Carolina cannot give as much hands-on experience for midwestern climates as can training in Indiana.

So stay tuned right here to keep informed about our progress in scheduling classes. Current thinking would be to schedule the permaculture certification in two parts: "fundamentals" later this summer or fall, and the "design practicum" about this time next spring, close to the end of spring semesters at state colleges.

If you are interested in participating, send me a note so we can keep you posted on our progress in scheduling a course.