Category Archives: Permaculture Classes

Come Join in the Fun!

Posted on April 15, 2012 | Leave a comment

There is so much goin on with This-Land and OM Valley that its a bit tough to keep up with it all. So I’m just goin to do a quick run down here. If you want to take a class please contact Wade at Info@this-Land.org by phone at 513-675-0468 or Contact Doug Crouch at TreeyoPermaculture.com. We have solidified the details of our next 3 upcoming courses and we hope you can join us for 1, 2, 3 or more of our rockin events to create a Truly Sustainable future. So here we go:

The Nursery: It is up runnin for 2012. We are vending every wednesday at Northside Farmers Market through early June. We have added 10 more varieties of Edible Perennials to our line up this year

Sat. April 21st: Cincinnati Earthday Celebration 12-5pm Sawyer Point Park, Downtown Cincy. This-Land.org will be hosting a booth selling our selection of 70 Edible Perennial plants and teaching about Permaculture.

May 4th: Ted Elsasser Speaking about his 17 years of Building Natural and Recycled Off Grid Passive Solar Homes (AKA Earthships) at SHP Leading Design Architects (4805 Montgomery Rd., Norwood, Oh. 45212) Refreshments and snacks provided. Suggested donation: 15$

May 4th-13th Sustainable Design Build with Ted Elsasser: Building a Passive Solar off Grid Green House out of Earthbag and Rammed Earth Construction.

May 19th & June 2nd: Cobb Oven Building with Suellyn Shupe & Braden Trauth at Permaganics Urban Permaculture Gardens

July 16th -July 29th: Our 7th Permaculture Design Certification. Hosted with This-Land.org, TreeYo Permauclture, Grailville Retreat Center and OM Valley Permaculture. This will be a 2 week Urban and Rural Residential PDC Intensive with Doug Crouch, Braden Trauth and the rest of our rockin Crew

Intern Opportunity: OM Valley’s site is rockin so much so that we could use a hand around here. We are currently experimenting with approximately 80-90 Perennial Edibles on site, Maintaining the nursery, Building the Earthbag Green house with Ted, and our 2nd Flock of Chickens just started layin, which we are hoping to put out to pasture here shortly. And to think we’re doin all this in the City! Please contact us at OMValleyPermaculture@gmail.com if you would like to apply.

Hope you can join us and learn how you can start or continue to build you’re self sustaining Shangri-La

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Posted in Permaculture Blogs, Permaculture Classes

This-Land’s First Natural Building Workshop with Ted Elsasser

Posted on March 11, 2012 | 2 Comments

We are pleased to announce that we will be hosting Ted Elsasser, former Earthship Builder, for a 10 day intensive starting May 4th through May 13th. Ted will be teaching how to build a small Passive Solar Earthbag & Rammed Earth Tire Greenhouse out of reused materials at OM Valley Permaculture’s site in Northside, Cincinnati Ohio. The reused building materials will be donated by Building Value. These are low-tech construction methods that accessible to most people. The workshop will consist of hands on training

One of Ted's more recent off grid creations

complimented by evening lecture to understand this type of Construction. The evening lectures will be hosted on Friday and Saturday evenings. There are 2 attendance options: – 499$ The Full course will include hands on 10 day intensive plus evening lecture on Fri & Sat.

- 299$ The Weekend option will include 4 days of intensive hands (Sat & Sun) on complimented by 4 evening lectures (Fri & Sat).Financial assistance is available.

To Register please contact Wade at Info@this-Land.org or by phone at 513-675-0468

“I had a dream… Then I took the sketch to Ted and…. We talked about how to do it and then Ted made it happen” - Mike Reynolds: Earthship Creator, from the Documentary: Garbage Warrior

A quick thumbnail concept sketch of the building

Here’s a link to a bathroom and Bathtub that Ted built for the Earthships: http://realestate.msn.com/amazing-ways-trash-can-be-used-to-build-homes#3

Ted Elsasser former Earthship expert, is a licensed residential and commercial contractor in New Mexico and an architectural intern focused on sustainable design and practices. He draws on 17 years of experience working in the planning, design and construction of off the grid buildings called Earthships in NM, across the USA and in multiple countries. Through the years he has been a construction supervisor managing a crew, interns and countless volunteers for Earthship Biotecture. For the past several years he has owned and operated a small design/build company, Southwest Sustainable Builders that specializes in off grid technologies such as passive solar heating and cooling, water harvesting, photovoltaic and wind power systems and the utilization of natural and recycled materials. Recently Ted has completed a state funded Sustainable Educational Facility Visitor Center for Northern New Mexico as the qualifying contractor.

A 1994 graduate of the University of Cincinnati, Ted has a Bachelor of Architecture professional degree. He is in the process of architectural registration in the state of NM and has been a licensed contractor in NM since 2002 operating a business named Taos Off Grid. Additionally, he serves on the board of directors for the Greater World Land Users Association where he lives off grid with his family.

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Posted in Permaculture Classes

Tagged Earthship, Earthship Permaculture, Natural Building, Permaculture

Permaculture Comes to the University of Cincinnati

Posted on December 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

We are proud to announce that we will be offering a 3 Credit Hour Introduction to Permaculture through the Horticulture Program at the College of DAAP at UC. We will teach you how to understand the shifts that Society is currently going through and how to address them to create a resilient future. We will explore the simple foundations of Energy Theory, learn how this affects every aspect of our lives and understand how we can start to design our Yards, Homes, Farms, Communities and Bioregions for Resilience and Regeneration in the face of Current Energy & Climate Change realities.

This Course will be February 10-12 (23HORT498 Special Topics in Horticulture), Friday 6-9pm, Saturday & Sunday 9am – 6pm. Some course work will be required prior to the first course meeting, and a final assignment will be required after course meeting.

Build upon this Introduction and become a Certified Permaculture Designer:

If you intend to become a Certified Permaculture Designer, taking this Introductory Course will count for a portion, and thus a discount for the 6th Permaculture Design Certification Course Hosted by This-Land.org. Please visit This-Land.org for more information about the certification course.

To Learn more please contact Braden: OMValleyPermaculture@gmail.com

For Questions or to Register please Contact Virginia Russel: virginia.russell@uc.edu

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Posted in Permaculture Classes

Introducing This-Land.org after a long Summer of silence

Posted on November 5, 2011 | Leave a comment

Well after a long summer of study, travel, work and growing, and now that the weather is starting to get a nip to it and the evenings are growing longer I’m back at it on the Futurebox. To start, I’m excited to share with you This-Land.org, Cincinnati’s (and I think Ohio’s) First Permaculture Educational Non-Profit.

It is headed up by me, Braden Trauth, and my Mentor from College and now my Mentee in Permaculture, Dale Murray. Dale is the former Dean of the Design School at University of Cincinnati’s College of DAAP. He is a Professor of Industrial Design, which was very influential in Bill Mollison’s development of the Design Processes of Permaculture, as acknowledged in Permaculture Two (in his reference of the well known Industrial Designer, Victor Papinek). As for OM Valley, this will remain as my personal Permaculture website for blogging, educational articles from my experiences and the home of my Design & Consultancy services. Anyways, back to This-Land, we are very happy to share that we will very shortly be announcing our 2012 Class line up, starting with a Winter PDC that will consolidate the 72 hours into 3 weekends, to make it more accessible for folks, and will take place around the end of February and early March. After that we will be hosting some Natural/Green Building workshops with one of the best Natural Builders I know in the world, Ted Elsasser. We will host a summer intensive PDC followed by a Food Forest workshop and Earthworks workshop. We will also sprinkle in other courses throughout the year like a Cob Oven building workshop and a Passive Solar Dehydrator workshop just to name a few. Anyways stay tuned for more developments as we really start to sink our Tap Roots here in the Ohio and Miami Valley region.