Wed 29 Apr 2009
Permaculture Designer Recruited
Posted by Marcin
Ben de Vries, Sustainable Agriculture Systems Designer, with a background in conservation from Kent State, will be joining the core Factor e Farm team on Monday. This is a potent addition to the on-site team, such that we now have Marcin as Director of Research and Development, Jeremy as Design Support, and Ben as Permaculture Designer.
Ben’s skill set is not limited to permaculture, integrated farming systems research, or his specialty of edible forest design and installation. Ben has also been a gourmet cook, machine operator, project manager, technical writer, consultant, event promoter, freelance writer, and according to Mark Roest, he “has dozens (if not hundreds, depending on how you count) of other skills.”
It seems that Ben will help propel the project forward to new heights. We’re asking Ben to lead the gene bank development for edible forests – as discussed previously in the Distillation on the Local Food Systems. This includes an open business model for related enterprise incubation, and it combines for significant potential impact. This holds true especially if you add an appropriate, advanced equipment base to the package, as we are doing with LifeTrac and other agricultural technology. Welcome to post-scarcity – once the package and some other details – are done.
15 Responses to “ Permaculture Designer Recruited ”
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Pingback from May 1 Walkthrough | Open Source Ecology
June 15th, 2009 at 9:10 am[...] Here is the natural history of Factor e Farm just at the beginning of plantlife leafing out – May 1 prior to my Austria trip. We go through the wild areas, garden, orchard, and greenhouse. This is a major contrast to what the place looks like right now. I will blog about that in my next post – showing both the full greenness of the place and the permacultural developments that happened in the last month since Ben arrived. [...]
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Pingback from June 15 Walthrough at Factor e Farm | Open Source Ecology
June 19th, 2009 at 9:28 pm[...] Ben de Vries, permaculture designer, has been with us for over one month. See some of his work in the video. We are workng on drainage issues and further plantout in the garden and orchard. Compare this to the May 1 Walkthrough shown two posts ago, for comparison of the changes in the land as it turns fully green. This video is about 30 minutes, the longest one to date. [...]
April 29th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
now this is great news! If you can get the food established this will aid greatly in the ability to keep working hands at the farm. Good job fellas!
April 29th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Exciting! Can’t wait to see what he can do!
April 29th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
p.s. Is he certified in permaculture to do a certification class?
April 30th, 2009 at 7:35 am
Lost Chief: I am not certified to teach a class, that is the next step in my certification(s). I sometimes wish I had my letters after my name, but I have often been too busy living and doing. You may also notice that academic semesters are directly against seasonal planting cycle… When it is time to be getting the spring garden ready, are mid term tests. When it is time for the summer garden, you have finals. I had a real problem with that, but did a very nice food forest despite that.
So I will write up the papaer necessary to get my DP next. When the job is done… which is why I haven’t gotten around to it yet…
April 30th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Cood beans:+) I was thinking i could probably roud up a class of people in the area to bring you and the farm some extra income. Im planning on taking the classes myself so i can certify people as designers and teachers this summer. I just havent chosen if im going to do it first or do some on the ground projects this summer instead then tackle that once summer is ending.
I guess the next 7 days will be some serious big time thinking and making a solid decision as soon as im done with this leg of travel.
Man have i missed the sun. Havent been in CA for 7 years and i forget how much i love it. Oh and playing around in venice beach i found quite a few renegade gardens. They make me very happy for some odd reason. One fellow had a garden on the roof of his RV. Now thats permaculture hahahaha
Peace
for pics of my travels or all the Permaculture/off the grid videos you have time to see check my myspace profile..
http://www.myspace.com/lostchief
April 30th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
thats cool beans hahaha i was using my ipod touch so this time it wasnt my poor spelling hahaha
May 7th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Welcome to Factor E, Ben.
‘Doing’ rather than ‘getting certified’ is a much nobler accomplishment. The first step toward ‘certification’ is learning the art of observation and interaction…it certainly sounds as though you are well along that path. Abbreviations and labels mean very little if your intention and motivation is driven toward a higher purpose.
You may not be able to instruct ‘certification’ courses, but you can certainly still teach permaculture courses – i.e. installments or modular courses. Either way, I believe an open source permaculture design course for Factor E could really benefit the site layout as well as attract more attention and ‘people power’ to the site.
Peace,
Joseph
May 7th, 2009 at 5:48 pm
The only dirrerence a permaculture certification makes is the ability to make larger sums of money by training others who are looking to be certified. Permaculture workshops do not bring in anything near what a cert class can.
I have done so much research reading and watching videos that i wont be learning much taking a certification class it just gives me the ability to make money teaching others and or make more money on the jobs you find.
Its all about the extra needed income i the only difference. If your not looking to train others or advertise to find outside work out of your location there is no need.
I will be getting certified this summer. At some point i could do a training cours for OSE at a huge discount. But like BEN its not my immediate focus but its up there.
Again BEN is just what OSE needed..
May 18th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Hey, what a wonderful addition to the team: a permiculturalist! YES FOOD will keep em happy at the farm, absolutely. Shelter, Stove, Sink, Shower or bathing of some kind, friends & food = a good home! Food Forestry is mos-def needed all across this country, in my opinion.
Nate and I see some good examples as we travel. Over here at RoundRightFarm in West Virginia we have plastic film hoop houses, big double-layered greenhouse, hilled fields with interesting micro-climates, and some wild forest at the base of the 43 acres. Lots of water is key – seven springs we think! Lots of rainfall in Garret county.
RRFarm has ome raspberrys and apples already but they havent got to planting their orchard as they would like yet, as this year they tripled from 1 to 3 acres in current cultivation & are doing 2 year rotation cover-cropping (buckwheat, rye, wheat for grain) That wheat requires some form of Combine, and they have none so they will probibly borrow from a neighbor –
*if you have a small &easily replicable Grain Combine and Grain Mill system, you will save a lot of small farmers a ton of RENTAL, PURCHASE, OR BORROWING-TIME* – and a mill can be used to make flour from all manner of wild grain, seeds and dried root sources as well, yes?
Food Forestry/Organic Farmer-Gathering:
In mid-eastern CA at Mamma Earth Farm they grow a variety of crops, keep milk goats foraging under huge live oaks and madrone, gather buckeyes to smash and water-leach for goat fodder and toasted buckeye meal for chickens or for humans. They raise very healthy egg and meat chickens, using sprouted wheatberrys as supplimental lil chick food, and cuttings of bucket-sprouted organic grainmix to feed their goats and orchard-ranging chickens. Mamma Earth Farm vision is a food forest w top middle and understory crops, use of perennial tubers (I dug 80 pounds of sunchokes/ Jeruselum artichokes in October!), berry bushes, and the yummy Bolete mushrooms native to the region.
Are you guys going to do any Mushroom Logs in your Factor-E Forest? Nate and I recently worked at Backbone Farm in Oakland Maryland stuffing spawn into holes drilled into hardwood logs 2 inches deep in 6 inch intervals all round the log. Spawn is bought all grown in bags of sawdust. The “plugs” that many sell doesnt work as well, so get the cake spawn or innoculate and grow your own bags!
The white spawn growth in the sawdust is broken up and inserted into the drilled holes. We used melted wax on small brushes to seal the spawn into the logs. The team did a total of 400 logs in two sessions, with a great food table to draw these local helpers. The logs stack up in the forest for a year till the spawn spreads enougth that you can see the thready mushroom mycillium growing all over the ends. Then you soak logs in soaker stream, restack dry, await the bloom of the mushrooms, harvest them, let logs rest, re-soak em, restack, harvest again… the same set of logs lasts a few years, and *new logs* innoculated with spawn each year make sure that your mushroom harvest is very consistant.
BEST LOGS: Logs that will produce the highest yields (of shiitake mushrooms)are oak, chestnut and ironwood. Many other species produce yields that are not quite as high, such as sweetgum, bitternut hickory, alder, aspen, hard maple (sugar and black), black willow, yellow birch and river birch…
BEST WATER SOAK: chlorinated water can kill the mushroom mycelium! Distilled or heavily filtered waters lack the nutrients that mushrooms need to grow. Spring, Rain or Well water works best (although boiled tap water will also work well)
This can be a good Income Source for the Factor-E villagers, too. You can buy Shitaki, Maitake, pink oyster, white oyster, Lions Mane, Bear’s head, etc via
Fungi Perfecti (by Paul Stamets, author of Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms)
http://www.fungi.com/cultures/index.html
“..Fungi Perfecti is dedicated to preserving the fungal genome and actively searches for new strains from old growth forests..”
Everything Mushrooms
http://everythingmushrooms.com/shop/grow-your-own-mushrooms-c-2.html
Anyhoo,
I hope that this is useful or of interest.
One Love – we miss and care about you gloriously mad scientists, and we’ll be back!
Ama & Nate
May 19th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Hi Ama!! Great ideas! Ben has been talking about the mushrooms idea too, we can make a pond out of the stream through the goat pen and soak the logs in it. Thanks for the links!
We miss you, take care!
Jeremy
May 20th, 2009 at 12:06 am
Thats some great input Ama/Nate.. Mushrooms go for good money and are a great source of food easily grown in small places.
You can also grow them in a greenhouse thats blacked out. You can make large trays stackes in layers and put spawn in sawdust and each layer will begin producing mushrooms soon after and if you harvest regularly they will produce for months on end before you have to re-do the spawn. In the end you have some good broken down wood for potting soil mix ect.
I know many people in Seattle who grow Magic mushrooms hahahah They can harvest many pounds steadily from very small spaces like a closet. Enough to pay all the bills and go to all the great festivals hahahahah
Again thanks for the great info..
August 10th, 2009 at 1:14 am
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September 9th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Good blog.