What has happened to Tanya and Jesse?

So here we are...over five months and not a peep on this blog from either Tanya or my self.
What have we been up to?

In short...
Teaching.
Pacific Permaculture has wrapped up a most successful first season, as a permaculture education service. Our first season of teaching services have been immediately responsible for unleashing 60 new permaculture designers into the world. I doubt a virus would be so luck as to get as many subsequent infections from one host.

Here is hoping that we have "terminally infected" some of those bright students of ours with the permaculture bug. We are now re-grouping and planning for the 2010 season. It is going to be a big one with lots of exciting twist and turns.

Before we get into that I would like to do a quick recap on the past five months...

Permaculture Design Certificate number one Part time course, Vancouver BC, March 2009
Our first full length PDC. thank you to the 15 brave souls who attend. Your support, enthusiasm and continued good work in Vancouver, Permaculture Vancouver, is truly humbling keep it up. You make a "permaculture father and mother" proud.


I really enjoyed teaching this group of people. I learned more about permaculture than I ever though possible. My only hope is that they got as much from this experience as I did. We will surely be running another course like this in the not so distant future. The part time format is a great way to make permaculture accessible to urban dweller, whom does not have two weeks to spare for a residential course out in the boonies.

This course finished the last weekend of April and we used our time to prep for...

Permaculture Design Certificate number two, Full time Residential Course, Denman Island BC, July 2009

For two weeks Tanya and I hosted 24 people including ourselves. The end result being...19 new permaculturalists out into the world. While the part-time format is a great way to run a PDC, as it allows better access for time strapped people in cities, there are certain aspects of the 2 week residential format that can't be beat. The immersion of it all as well as access to out door labs, as shown above, really help to drive key concepts home. More and more we are finding that direct experience and reflection on lessons learned are a crucial part of the active learning process.

Permaculture Design Certificate number three, Full time Residential Course, Gull Lake Alberta, August 2009

Look out Oil Sands, here comes the Alberta permaculture movement. Rob and Michelle, of Ravis Sustainable, put together a fantastic PDC with field trips and outdoor hands projects to spare. I got it easy with this course, as all I had to do was teach and drink coffee. Since this course, local permaculture community groups are starting to pop up all over the prairies. I just can't get enough of Alberta and we are going to kick off our 2010 season with several Intro to Permaculture courses this coming January.

Stay tuned for more.
I promise!