Permaculture Intensive: End of Week 1

As we get ready to start our final week of the Merritt Permaculture Intensive, I wanted to share some highlights from the last few days. We had some great speakers and ended with a workshop at Christopher Shein's urban permaculture site in Berkeley.
I was very impressed with the work of Chantelise Pells, a local landscape designer who did her Master's research on the sophisticated terracing systems of Peru. She lectured on these farming techniques, the way that the people once worked organically with the mountain watersheds and cultivated plants that were adapted to a variety of altitudes, including countless varieties of potatoes, many of which are now lost. A lot of local landscaping projects involve hillsides, and Chantelise incorporates unique stonework and terracing into her native and edibles gardens here in the Bay Area.
On Friday at Christopher's place, Debbie Collins of Water Assets taught us how to calculate the yearly rainfall on a property and how much could be caught on existing roofs and other surfaces. Very enlightening.
We took a walking tour of Fort Awesome and Fort Radical - a local cooperative housing community. These two houses have 32 people total, an impressive rainwater catchment and a greywater system and a shared backyard that includes mature fruit trees and a lush permaculture garden. They also have a nonprofit, Cooperative Roots, that advises others on how to form low-cost cooperative housing situations.
Below are a few photos from the last few days, including my favorite moment - Christopher showing us his urban humanure system!

Permaculture Intensive: The first 2 days

On Monday I began a two-week Permaculture Intensive at Merritt College, led as always by the amazing Christopher Shein. We got a lot done in our first days and I was pleased to see so many familiar faces. The first day we had a delivery of raw materials to add to the Permaculture garden: compost, manure, mulch and logs. We were able to spend some time weeding the hillside and creating a new compost pile beneath a tree.
We lined the compost bed with logs, as we've done with the raised beds throughout the garden, and then filled it in with mulch, manure and a combination of green and brown clippings. This pile should get quite hot and break down fast - and it's right next to a bunch of fruit trees and beds that will benefit from having a source of nutrients so close by.
Today we began by building a stack of haybales, after a delivery truck dropped by with about 100 or so of them. Soon after we broke up into groups and dispersed throughout the hillside to create small versions of the compost bed we created the day before. We used a different model: we found clear spaces on the hill, in the upper orchard part of the permaculture garden, and dug some shallow trenches to fit the hay bales into. Then the haybales became a barrier behind which to dump horse manure - a sort of retaining wall, or compost bed. You can check out the photos of the finished version. These beds will create a local source of compost for the fruit trees and other edibles on the hills - and are located much closer to these plants than the former compost pile.
Here's some pictures of the last couple of days, including some images of the already established garden bounty . . .

Villa Sobrante Day 2: Cob

Today we came together to work on a small cob structure at Villa Sobrante. The group of apprentices is great and we had a fun time mixing away and chatting. Sasha was leading and overseeing the work. The rest of the group includes Sonya (white tank), Ron (green stripes), Marcello (green long sleeve), Jill (not here today) and myself. Villa Sobrante's other housemate Trilby was constructing a beautiful bike trailer made of bamboo - check out the picture of it. She had the idea of using this material to weave a strong bed frame as well.
Cob is an earthen building material made of clay, sand and straw mixed together, and then used to make walls and other structures. This little building is coming along fast, and soon we will have the chance to learn about installing a roof and windows. More to come!

Villa Sobrante Day 1: Adobe and Foundations

This weekend was the beginning of an apprenticeship I am doing with Villa Sobrante. They are retrofitting their house in El Sobrante with natural building techniques and today we worked on making adobe bricks. We combined a clay slip (clay soil mixed with water until it resembles the consistency of a melted milkshake), sawdust and straw to make lightweight adobe bricks that will provide insulation in the floor of a small structure on site. Jill and I began the day by chipping straw. After we all worked on getting to know the consistency of our adobe mix, I spent a good couple of hours pick-axing and digging away to carve a place for the foundation.