BURBSTEADING: Designing your Urban Permaculture Homestead (Intensive 3-Day Course)
BURBSTEADING: Thursday, May 19th - May 21st
What: Learn the Basics of permaculture design to create your backyard homestead
Where: Elizabeth Anna's
2825 8th Ave. Fort Worth, TX 76110
When:
Thursday, May 19th (In person brown bag dinner)
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Friday, May 20th (Webinar via Zoom)
5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Saturday, May 21st (In Person)
9:00 AM - 6:00 PM (Lunch break from 12:00 PM - 1:00PM)
- Continental breakfast & light lunch will be served on Saturday
- Each student will receive a USB drive or a binder with class handouts
- Be prepared for warm weather.
>>> Class needs four students to make and is limited to 10 students <<<
There are over 43 million acres of lawn in North America - that's 42,758,000 more acres than largest owner of American farmland, Bill Gates. Combined, our own lawns are the fourth largest agricultural land holding in the US after ranching, corn and wheat industries!
This 12-hour course is designed to take you step-by-step to create your own homestead in the city. You will learn basic permaculture, natural farming, horticultural and market gardening principles that will help you develop a design plan to turn your suburban lot into a beautiful, functioning homestead, tailored to your specific needs and wants.
These principles can be scaled to work, whether you live in an apartment, HOA or have a larger suburban lot. Wherever you are, there are numerous possibilities that are available so you can provide for some of your and your communities needs. At the end of the workshop you will have a peer and instructor reviewed site design of your property, complete with plant lists, and a plan to implement your design and make it a reality!
BURBSTEADING CURRICULUM
1) Overview on the class and Sense of Place/Observation & Asset Inventory
Get to know your bio-region. Discover your sense of place within your community.
2) Permaculture 101
Learn the basic design principles and apply them to your situation whether you are in a condo or on acreage.
3) Soil
You will learn a few easy and inexpensive ways to build living soil in Teas and keep soils clean.
4) Water
How to catch and store and purify water in your landscape, with ponds, rain gardens or cheap containers, cisterns or a water matrix.
Hands-On: Bokashi Balls and Moringa Filters
5) Growing for Production in Small Spaces, Found or Borrowed.
Utilizing the cultivars work best in Texas, begin to plan for succession planting and four season harvests. Overview of a tiered system for apartments and condominiums and partnering with neighbors for their lawn usage for micro-pockets of food safety nets.
6) Perennial Food Forests & Foraged & Adaptive Plants
Learn about wild food and medicinal plants and how to design a food forest that has a combination of calorie crops, nutrient dense foods, fruits, herbs, perennial vegetables, etc.. Hand-outs: Fruit Every Month in DFW
7) Herbal Gardens
What to stock, how to use what you stock and how to treat illnesses and injuries with simple grocery store items, foraged plants, and herbs.
Make-N-Take: Comfrey Salve
8) Urban Animal Husbandry
Goats, insects, poultry, aquaponics … How to decide which animals you should raise and how to grow part or all of their feed. Handout of shelters, feed, recipes and fodder plant lists.
9) Appropriate Technology
Learn about low-tech and no-tech ways to meet some of our needs. Hands-On: Make a simple solar and rocket oven.
10) Seed Saving, Preserving Harvests
Learn when to save seeds and how to store them for the next season.
Learn how to preserve harvests inground as living cellars. Overview of canning, dehydrating and fermenting.
Week 11) Propagation of the Bland and Unusual
How to make “free” plants by seed, division, cuttings, air rooting and layering.
Week 12) Putting it all together
Using online maps, draft a design of your property/location and learn how to keep good records to create a seasonal rhythm of your work on your Burbstead.
>>>Class needs four students to make and is limited to 10 students<<<
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:
Kirsten is the owner of Good Tilth Farm and Nursery and Lorica Tea. She is a certified permaculture designer from the Australia Institute of Permaculture. In 2009 she hosted Fort Worth's first PDC course. Since then she has and been working in the urban agriculture industry, teaching at schools and as a designer and a market gardener. Her roles at Elizabeth Ann's have ranged from greenhouse management, permaculture designer and education and outreach.