Subject: Annual Permaculture Letter
From: permacltur@aol.com (Permacltur)
Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com
Date: Sat, 30 Aug 1997 11:50:50 -0400
Message-ID: <MOD$970830.340@rec.gardens.ecosystems>


The following letter is our annual Permaculture report. Send SASE or
international return mail coupons and address label for the hard copy,
which includes drawings and additional information.

Dan Hemenway
***

Barking Frogs Farm
Home of Yankee Permaculture and Elfin Permaculture
P.O. Box 52, Sparr FL 32192 USA Email: Permacltur@aol.com
Dear Brothers and Sisters:
Greetings from our new permaculture center, Barking Frogs Farm.
Our new place is on good-old Florida wetland, real alligator and
cotton-mouth snake country. We were just looking for a temporary
residence, to avoid paying rent, when we found this place. It is so
beautiful we both immediately wanted to settle here, despite the fact that
anything one does in the state of Florida is fouled with regulations and
red tape.
So here we are, under giant oaks, huge water hickories and
gorgeous sabal palms, polishing up our design for the place and trying to
get our various permaculture programs under way. We have acquired two
adjacent homesteads, one house for a permaculture center with room for
guests and the other for our private residence.
Since 1981, we subsidized our permaculture work, particularly the
publications, with other earnings. Now we intend to make permaculture pay
for itself. Permaculture outreach does not pay. But our land-based
projects have profit potential, so that they can help retire the mortgage
on the permaculture center.
So what’s new. The most exciting new event, after our new home,
is Dan’s development of a Permaculture Design Correspondence Course for the
internet. The course combines the practicality of good old fashioned book
study with the dynamic of an email classroom. Dan appears to be the last
hold-out for the three-week live course, preferring the longer formats, and
the new course fits the bill. It runs between 20 and 26 weeks, depending
on the needs of the particular group. Students in the course have gained
a good grasp of the design principles and we are sure that the longer
course duration makes it easier to integrate them into daily life. For
more about the course, email us at . Ask for a course
protocol and reading list.
Tuition is $1,000, of which half covers individual assistance on
the student’s personal design project. Monitors pay $100. The course may
be taken in segments--it has three parts plus the design project. We do
not charge extra for permaculture course graduates who wish to do advanced
work in any of our programs.
The next email course begins in October 1997. Enrollment is
limited to 20. We also offer a similar program as a conventional
correspondence course, but because the program is one-on-one, tuition is
higher. We feel that the new email format enables people in remote areas
to attend as well as folks who cannot take off 3+ weeks to attend our
conventional course.
Here at Barking Frogs Farm, we now can accept residential students
in our APT (Advanced Permaculture Training) program. (APT also allows for
advanced students to work at home or in the field.) By the time you get
this, we will have room for a total of two APT students and interns.
Interns have the opportunity to work on our publications, help in
documenting our permaculture design, and assist in such projects as our
aquaculture, agroforestry and chinampas systems, all, obviously, in the
early stages of development. APT students design their own programs,
which include producing a design, implementing it, and participating in
some form of research and outreach.
Not all was progress. After four different residences in 1996,
our publications program slowed considerably. We continue to upgrade some
publications, most recently with an improved rendering of John Fargher’s
The Oaks (Yankee Permaculture Paper #12.) We issued no new publications.
Pending publications are listed on the reverse of this sheet. We are
hopeful that we will get a publications intern interested in benefiting
from Dan’s 40 years of editorial experience.
Our involvement in the Kenya project is now minimal, as the local
organizers have identified a suitable permaculture expert right over the
border in Uganda. This is much more practical. We may offer a program in
Paraguay. Contact us in three months if you want details. Otherwise, we
have done little in the way of marketing workshops and courses. Dan likes
staying at home.
Plans include development of two poultry forage systems: a movable
chicken coop that we can haul to places where we want weeds or insects
cleaned up and a hexagonal array of fenced forage areas so that we can
move chickens around to harvest or glean in various rotation schemes.
(Well, there are two other poultry systems in the works, but we will limit
this report to one sheet of paper.) We hope to acquire a few Asian water
buffalo as draft and meat animals that can pasture in part on the weeds
that clog our waterways. One of our main thrusts is developing a system of
chinampas. Dan has a grant proposal out seeking funds to document
chinampas still operating near Mexico city. He has a few other grant
prospects in mind. Suggestions are welcome. Meanwhile, the first prototype
Barking Frogs Farm chinampa is nearly finished and promises to be as high
yielding as reputed.
Cynthia has taken the next step as a Certified Nurse Midwife, and
is teaching at the nearby University of Florida. She is very interested in
identifying medicinal herb crops suited for our place, particularly those
that we can process with value added steps. Wetland species of hawthorns,
including mayhaws, fit the bill perfectly. We have started planting them.
We have also found that the old standby, echinacea, does well on our sandy
land where moisture hungry sabal palms create arid conditions, regardless
of rainfall.
We invite you to pass the word about our email course and
internships. This is a good time to be thinking about getting presents for
the Solstice season holidays. Please check out our order form to see if
there is something you would like to give, maybe to yourself. We are still
willing to do a limited amount of away-from-home teaching and consulting.
We know that most of you are also working hard for Mother Earth in
many ways. We thank you for your efforts and look to join forces when
appropriate.
For Mother Earth

Dan Hemenway
Cynthia Hemenway