Comments from Recent Classes

The design class has been marvelous! Dan, Debra and Jackie with Paula's and Fred's guest appearances begin to bring a process to designing your yard. This class moves the theories of permaculture from reading material to practical application -- look at the site, really look at it. There are so many surprises even though I've walked in and around it for years.

Dan practices permaculture techniques in the class set up, lectures and exercises. He very patiently went over and over what to put on the base map and what to put on the layers of bum wad (tracing paper.) The base map drawing gets the items that aren't going to change this round of design work. If you wonder whether to keep that path, tree or shrub -- put it on bum wad.

Fred emphasized the importance of knowing the soil -- type, texture and improvements. We learned how to record contour areas, sun to shade patches, water flow patterns.

The class started with the most fun piece of design work -- bubble maps. Paula discussed how to utilize the different zones to take a new perspective, and get loose in creating bubbles of where you would socialize, garden opportunities, ponds or water holding.

After some reluctance, I came to appreciate the value of using circle templates to designate plants in the different areas on my map. It really takes the pressure off to decide, I want fruit trees. How many fruit trees can I put in my orchard by looking at the spread of fruit trees and drawing in the circles? then the nitrogen fixers and on. After you've put the circles, you can look at a design and at a glance see the lay out, whether it allows flow and is workable.

I had heard of all the topics/systems that were discussed in the three classes but didn't know much about them so went to mostly find out more about them.

Attending the classes didn't inspire me to use any of the methods discussed in the course, most are too extreme or don't apply to my situation, but I did get a much better understanding of how they work and the ideas behind them. I've been vegetable gardening on small community plots for the past 15 years so was curious to know what was involved to ramp up to the urban farmer level. I found out that at this point in my life, I'm not interested in being an urban farmer!

I really like having the Uptown farmers present at the end of the first class. They gave some much needed real world experience to that night's lecture and gave a more realistic view of what to expect when you first start an urban farm enterprise. It would have been good to have some folks with similar experiences talk at the end of the third class (Grow Biointensive).

I was pleased to see that there was so much interest in these classes, especially given the minimal amount of money PRI has to spend on advertising!

I really liked the idea that it was so hands-on. People brought soil from their yards and were able to learn how to determine what kind of soil it was. Also the teacher was very knowledgeable, very qualified. I learned a lot in this class.