Enjoy the stunning rocky mountains and the beautiful facilities at Clear Sky Meditation Center, while receiving a top notch education in permaculture design. This is the intensive two week PDC format following the full 72 hour PDC curiculum as laid out in “Permaculture, A Designers Manual,”(Mollison 1983). The course is taught by Jesse Lemieux of Pacific Permaculture (see below).
Food Forest Project and other On-Site Benefits
A two week residential permaculture course at Clear Sky offers significant learning benefits. Clear Sky Centre is committed to Food Forest education in Canada and has just received significant funding to develop a one acre food forest demonstration model on site. This new project will be underway during the PDC and you will have opportunity to participate in hands on food forest implementation. You may also be interested in attending the intensive food forest workshop in the spring of 2013. For those with a particular interest in green building, there is also a new annualised geo solar (AGS), near Net Zero building available for you to tour. Clear Sky’s ‘farm team’ will also be on hand to discuss organic farming as a business, and tour you through the farm’s heritage garlic plots, vegetable gardens, seabuckthorn orchard and native grasslands restoration plots.
The course dates for the 2013: October 12-27
PDC Course Content
The certificate gives students tools to think outside the box so that they can deal with any design situation. Permaculture design is a holistic system of decision making that can be applied to the development of any human system. It is not a catalog of gardening and building techniques. It is information intensive, not labor intensive.
Using a combination of classroom, field observation and hands-on activities, your PDC will cover all of the following topic areas and more:
- rain water catchment
- organic gardening
- soil biology
- sustainable energy systems
- solar passive house construction
- renewable fuel production
- waste water treatment systems
- forestry
- animal systems
- transportation
- Earthworks and moving
- disaster preparedness
- social systems
- legal systems
- business models etc
It is not possible for anyone person to be an expert in more than one or two of these fields. The role of a permaculture designer is to understand how, why, when, and where any of the above mentioned elements fit together in an integrated and self managing system. Permaculture is the connections between things, not the things themselves.
Once you have completed a PDC you will have a new way of looking at the world around you. Rather than taking a design problem at the first glance you will think laterally around the problem, this is where positive solutions are waiting to be found. Many PDC graduates move on rapidly to initiate community groups and viable green business alternatives quickly building a strong resume of advanced practical experience.
About Jesse Lemieux, Course Instructor
Jesse is a committed full time Canadian permaculture educator and designer. Born on the west coast & raised in western Canada, Jesse’s work in the field has taken him to British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Australia and the Middle East. The breadth of his working experience covers 10 years, 3 continents and everything from small sub-urban backyard projects to large scale community development planning. He brings a comprehensive understanding of Permaculture design to the classroom and sound understanding of design for the three major climate zones on the planet: Arid, Cool Humid, and Tropical/Subtropical. Jesse’s thorough training in Permaculture included two permaculture design certificates (PDC), under the instruction of both Geoff Lawton and Bill Mollison and intensive hands on practice at the Permaculture Research Institute.
An inspiring and articulate teacher, Jesse’s style is a healthy mixture of theory and practice, which utilizes picture slides, schematic diagrams and hands on activities to demonstrate design concepts. Design exercises are used often to help students integrate theory, and the classroom setting is open and comfortable to encourage discussion and exploration of permaculture design strategies and concepts.
In September 2008 Jesse his wife Tanya founded Pacific Permaculture, a permaculture design and education company. Jesse and Tanya are fully committed to the dissemination of permaculture and its ethics and divide their time between maintaining an organic apple orchard, teaching permaculture, design consulting, and establishing the “Permaculture Research Institute of Canada.”
Logistics & Schedule
Permaculture courses are always action packed! Daily classes will run from 9am until 5pm with a half hour break in the morning & afternoon, and an hour break for lunch each day.
Evenings & special events: Some evenings we may have optional /casual film screenings & other presentations related to permaculture, to be decided by the start of the course. Evenings will also be used to work on individual & group design projects.
Commuters: For non-residential students, please arrive by 8:50am each morning so we can start promptly at 9am. If you would like to stay for extra meals, these can be paid for individually: $6/breakfast, $12/dinner +HST. Lunch & refreshments are included.
Day Off: There will be one full day off during the course. We invite you to explore the area, work on your designs or simply relax and enjoy the retreat centre.
Interested? Please contact us: michelle[at]clearskycenter.org.
OPTION A: Course Fee only: $1535 (includes HST)
[Early Bird Special (dates tba): $1395]
Includes: 14 days of tuition, PDC certification on completion, lunch & refreshments.
OPTION B: Course Fee + Tenting Accomodation + Meals: $1755 (includes HST)
[Early Bird Special (dates tba): $1595]
Includes: 14 days of tuition, PDC certification on completion, tenting accomodation at Clear Sky, all meals & refreshments.
(please bring your own camping gear)
OPTION C: Course Fee + Indoor Accomodation + Meals: $1865 (includes HST)
[Early Bird Special (dates tba): $1695)
Includes: 14 days of tuition, PDC certification on completion, comfortable shared indoor accommodation at Clear Sky, all meals & refreshments.
If you have any questions about this course, please contact Michelle any time at 250-429-3929, or by email: michelle[at]clearskycenter.org
Course Survey results from Participants at the 2011 Clear Sky Permaculture Design Certificate Course:
Overall, the permaculture design course: “Exceeded my expectations” – 100% of responses
Instructor & Course Content and Networking Opportunities: “Excellent”- 100% of responses
Networking Opportunities: “Excellent” – 100% of responses