This weekend the whole Growcology team is traveling out to downtown LA to learn from Larry Santoyo and Scott Pittman of the Permaculture Institute. Larry's company, Earthflow, is teaching their Permaculture Design Course at Project Butterfly, an awesome workshop space in the warehouse district.
So far, we've learned alot about the design principles and ethics that make permaculture such a versatile approach to problem solving. Both the instructors have great senses of humor, and they were keen on conveying to the students not to go out and preach before they've implemented aspects of the class into their lives. The last thing the environmental movement needs is half-informed, in-experienced, yet still preachy hippies.
Personally, I really respect it when people are opinionated, but not dogmatic. Larry Santoyo has been presenting the information in a very accessible way, but doesn't insist that we do things like he does. He and Scott Pittman both backed up their ideas with stories from their combined 50 or so years of experience, but they refused to give any "one size fits all" solutions. I can't wait until we implement permaculture design principles at our workshop location, and hope that we're able to bring these instructors out to teach a full certification course in the fall...
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To echo Nick's sentiments,
ReplyDeleteI have to say Larry and Scott impressed me more than I have been in a long time. It is very easy to tell when someone teaches out of school versus when someone teaches with years of experience in a field. These two exude unmistakable experience in a field that may be one of the more important fields of study for our time.