Category Archives: Old Class Postings

Well its been a hot one, which we all know if you reside here in the Ohio Valley. Definitely one for the record books. Here at OM Valley, we’ve been working on continuing the development of the site, primarily focusing on finishing out our natural building demonstration building. So far the roof is on, we are starting to enclose it with scrap plywood and insulate with miscellaneous insulation materials, some salvaged, some new and some repurposed, like old styrofoam. We are beginning to put on the siding as well, which is salvaged cedar fencing, which will be used for clapboard siding. It has been moving along at a snails pace when the weather abides.

Other than that we are working on finishing out This-Land.org’s non-Profit status, which will hopefully come through here shortly, writing articles for Edible Ohio Valley, keeping the nursery watered and harvesting the bounty of the third and fourth years at my two experimental sites. This years bounty includes table grapes (which have done great with the drought), Peaches, Blackberries (although the drought hit them really hard), raspberries, a few Blueberries, lots of eggs, plums, mulberries, greens, pears which will be ripe shortly, and plenty of mint tea to keep us cool.

 Its interesting experimenting with what mitigates the drought. So far letting the yard grow out has proven to be a very big success with mitigating the drought but also encouraging wildlife to return. the birds that come through here on a daily basis are spectacular, as I suspect this offers a refuge, for the birds that prefer prairie, in the middle of the city. I’ve also loved witnessing the the enormous myriad of pollenator’s that flock to the spearmint, mountain mint and other wildflowers returning. It truly is a journey back into balance, while reaping abundance with minimal work. If it wasn’t for applying these Permaculture techniques, I suspect I would find little time to manage a garden throughout this drought with the many other projects on the plate. It is quite a joy reaping the harvest after several years of implementation. I will say that there are many other experimental Edibles I will be endeavoring into with here shortly that will expand this harvest in the coming years.

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

With our website up and running again (after some technical difficulties) and a month to go before the start of our 6^th Cincinnati PDC I am polishing up on my education at the Carbon Farming Course with likes of Wes Jackson, Joel Salatin, Dr. Elaine Ingham and Dave Jacke just to name a few.

Darren Doherty, one of the top Keyline Designers/Permaculture Designers in the world reviewing a students farm and offering potential designs

We are learning many tools to assist in the later creation, be it Keyline Farm planning, Holistic Management, the role of Animals in healing the land, or working with Perennial agriculture. These are the practices, combined with many other insights from our crew of teachers and their experience of applying these principles to their varied professions.

I’m sure that these evolutionary discussions will carry into this 6^thPDC to help train the most cutting edge Regenerative designers in whatever field or interest you may have in applying this knowledge. Be it Farming, Urban Planning,

Dr. Wes Jackson teaching about how we got ourselves into the agrarian mess and more importantly this energy mess

Architecture, Landscape architecture, Rural and Urban Homesteading, you name it, the sky is the limit in applying this knowledge in the creation of a regenerative culture. We will show you how to design net yield buildings, yards, farms and communities with the tools you will learn in this course. Some of these tools and methodologies have re-greened deserts, recharged hydrological cycles and created low work agriculture systems modeled after the Garden of Eden.

If you have any questions or would like to register please contact Wade Johnston at info@This-Land.org or by phone at 513-675-0468

Well, we are pleased to announce our 6th PDC and our 4th Annual Winter PDC… we are looking to add to those 70 graduates who will be creating a regenerative future here in the Ohio/Miami Valley. This Course will kick off Friday, February 24th and continue for the next 4 weekends, concluding on Sunday, March 18th. This is our new compact course model to make it more accessible to folks living and working around the area. We will have class on friday from 6-9pm and on Saturday & Sunday from 9am to 7pm. The weekend of March 10th we will only have class on Saturday.

In this course you will learn the foundations of Permaculture Design Methods, Pattern awareness, How Ecosystems work, Food Forest design, Organic Gardening and how it fits in with a homestead, Green & Natural Building, Holistic Energy Theory (which is why Permaculture is so Important), Sustainable Energy, Regenerative Community Design, how to design regenerative homesteads, farms and communities and much much more.

The price is 675$ with a sliding scale for those who need it. If you would like to learn more or to register please contact Wade at: Info@This-land.org or by phone at 513-675-0468

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

If you would like to learn how to design your yard to get more out of it then come join us for our Intro to Permaculture Design at the Civic Garden Center, Wednesday March 30th from 6-7:30 pm. It will lay out the fundamentals of designing with Nature so that you can get more out of your yard with less work. It will be taught by Braden Trauth, a teacher who has been bringing Permaculture to the Cincinnati Bioregion over the last several years and trained with the Permaculture originators in Australia.

To learn more please visit: http://www.civicgardencenter.org/garden_files/classes.htm