PermaCamp 2020

Welcome to PermaCamp 2020! We’ll get started by touring your new home for the month and orient you to the school site and facilities.

In this introduction, we’ll discuss the basic principles to be covered in-depth during the course. We will also look at the challenges posed by the industrial model and make room for us to absorb new ways of thinking about and relating to the living world.

Beginning in the classroom and moving out into the field, we’ll explore how to read the landscape, along with ethical considerations and core design principles that guide us in the placement of elements, creating cultivated ecologies, and working with topology, water, and site access.

Armed with what we’ve learned so far, we tour a forest recovery zone to observe and map features of the landscape to serve as the basis for this week’s design assignment.

You’ll create a site design that addresses hydrological and topological remediation to aid in habitat restoration at the Hampton Mountain forest recovery project.

Design implementation: Techniques for maximizing healthy ground water retention and natural carbon negative soil fertility.

In this introduction we cover the foundational principles for living in integrity within our forest ecosystems, using principles of permaculture, human-ecology, and techniques of earlier societies.

We apply hands-on techniques for forest recovery and clearcut remediation such as selective thinning, species selection and beneficial harvesting. In part 1, we focus on early-stage recovery and working with catastrophic damage such as clearcut forest.

We continue our work in the field, shifting our focus to management of advanced recovery and mature forest regions.

Beginning with a silviculture site tour and demonstrations of ecologically-sound forest management techniques, you will develop a forest management plan to be implemented at the Hampton Mountain forest recovery project.

Today we play with fire! In this hands-on workshop we’ll learn about and produce biochar using cleared brush from our silviculture work, sequestering carbon and returning valuable nutrients to the soil.

Introduction to earth sheltered timber-frame building for home and farm. Building tours and theory including; materials selection, thermodynamics, passive solar, earth shelter, and integrated rainwater collection.

Overview of course project: the design, carving, and assembly of a timber-frame cafe structure on site.

Learn hands on what you need to know to construct extremely durable, locally sourced, cost-effective foundations and berm walls using concrete-reinforced stone slip forming.

Design and planning for timber frame construction; materials selection, structural constraints, ease-of-build, and building performance. Overview of tools use, maintenance, and safety.

Hands-on timber frame carving workshop. Upon completion of the finished components we will prep for frame raising day.

Frame raising has a long history of bringing communities together to make light work and celebrate the addition of new sheltered space and its occupants. We will all work together to raise the frame completed during the course, complete with a spruce bough on top.

Take part in goat dairy and cheesemaking from udder to hors d’oeuvres. Learn from an experienced cheesemaker how to prepare and enjoy fresh and aged cheeses. We will also cover the basics of keeping goats for meat and dairy.

Herbalist Lisa Blackbird takes you on a medicine walk, foraging for wild edibles and medicinals. After the hike, we prepare herbal tinctures with our foraged finds.

Forest gardening and other forms of ecosystem integrated home-scale agricultural. Techniques for natural soil fertility, pollinator support, garden bed and greenhouse construction, nutrient flows and irrigation.

We spend a delicious day creating one of  our favourite preserves at Snow Lake Keep. We will learn techniques for food preservation and canning using a wood-fired cook stove.

In this hands-on herbal remedy workshop you will make your own infusions, decoctions, and salves using local plants harvested during the week.

Deryk Eagles

Deryk studied architectural design at The International Academy of Design in Toronto and is a professional timber frame builder and market gardener. In 1990, he returned to his home-territory in Nova Scotia and began work building his first farm from the ground up. He has been active in natural building and permacultural farming ever since.

In 2004, Deryk established Eagles & Company, specializing in sustainably-sourced timber frame structures. Deryk is the founding member of Snow Lake Keep homesteading community where he currently lives and works teaching permacultural techniques for producing food, creating shelter, and living in healthy relationship to our forest ecosystem.

Lisa Blackbird

Lisa Blackbird is a folk herbalist, wild food aficionado, writer, homesteader and mama. She is passionate about mindful wild-crafting and medicine making, and has run Hobo Crow Herbs for 7 years with her partner, doing farmers markets and workshops, as well as offering Nova Scotia’s only wild food & medicine CSA (community supported apothecary).

She is grateful of the path she walks with the plants, who are her greatest teachers. Lisa resides on the North Mountain on the Bay of Fundy with her family, goats, and cat.

Alex Denicola

Alex practices and teaches at Motheroak Permaculture in West Hants, NS, and has been organically market gardening & homesteading for over thirty years. Besides a passion for resilience-building, regeneration, and personal inner work, he brings a wide range of skills, knowledge, experience and multiple integrated perspectives and practices to our collective journey of healing people and places. novascotiapermaculture.net

Paul Hoepfner-Homme

Paul is resident cheesemaker at Snow Lake Keep, making delicious cheeses – both fresh and aged – using milk from our herd of alpine goats.

Paul is also a seasoned market gardener with over 15-years experience growing organic local produce for market stalls in the Kootenay Valley BC, Southern Ontario, and here in the Annapolis Valley.

Rick Ketcheson

Rick Ketcheson was raised on a family farm in Saskatchewan and studied mechanical engineering. He has worked in Canada, the US and France. After retiring in 2012 his interests turned to food security, community gardens, permaculture, forest gardens, soil biology, and regenerative agriculture. He studied permaculture in Cuba, and food forestry and the soil food web while in British Columbia. He has been making and using biochar for enhancing soil health for more than five years. He lives in Annapolis Royal where he and his partner are currently building a small urban food forest next to their home.

Cindy MacDonald

Cindy is an experienced chef, currently cooking up local eats at The Temple on Queen. She is known for creating incredible, farm to table meals using local ingredients grown right here in the Annapolis Valley. All meals prepared during the course will celebrate local food, incorporating the best of what this region has to offer – with an extra helping of produce from the gardens at Snow Lake Keep permacultural farm.

Adam Zinzan

Adam has a background in design and brings his 20-years of experience with the design process to homesteading and natural building. He has designed and built several off-grid cabins, making use of salvaged materials and self-harvested timber. He is an experienced timber frame builder, self-taught draftsperson, homesteader, and visual artist. Adam lives and works at Snow Lake Keep homesteading community.