Saturday, June 13, 2015

PDC

Permaculture Design Course

This showed up in my in-box last night:


YES!!!  This course has been life-changing.  I know folks say that about a PDC, and now I know why, having been through one - even a virtual one.  I really do believe that what I have learned in this course will enable me to "restore land to its natural abundance". I feel confident that I could do this on a small scale, and would be up for the challenge of designing for a larger area. 

Of course, nothing can substitute for practical experience.  Apart from applying at our home what I have learned in this course, I hope the folks for whom I designed their property as my design exercise will implement all or part of the design, and that I can help them in that process in order to gain more on-the-ground understanding.

Next I'd like to design more properties for folks in my congregation, and for other congregations' properties.  If you currently water and mow your church lawn, why not transform it into a more sustainable, productive landscape that provides food for a local feeding ministry?  Why not create space for animals and increase biodiversity?  How about moderating heat and cooling bills through thoughtful design and planting?  I'll design it for free, just for the experience and to help in the restoration of the planet, one congregation at a time.

In the mean time, I will periodically review the lessons of the course over the next year (all the material will be available for that time) and continue to learn what I can.  I will also continue to discern the connections between the systems thinking espoused in the PDC, and congregation systems.  They are there, I can feel it, and have already begun to tease them out.

Thanks for reading this blog.  Now get out there and grow something.

Galen Gallimore, PDC Graduate!