Focus
The 3-Epochs of the Human Experience including many primitive skills
Includes
The Full Permaculture Course Curriculum
with Certification
Size Limit 20 Students for full 12-day training... Will take an additional 10 for the first 5-days of primitive skills training only
Meals
All meals provided from mostly organically raised foods, including some local sources.
Lodging
Free Camping Rooms available in Stelle during second part for modest rates ($150/week)
Certification Students who complete this design course will receive a 'Certificate of Completion' which permits them to use the copyrighted word 'permaculture' in the promotion of their work or business. Graduates may offer workshops, lectures and design services. Click here for more on certification.
A 12-day Training
Tues. June 22 - Sat. July 3, 2010 -- Stelle, IL
Permaculture Design Certification Course Featuring Wayne Weiseman on the Three Epochs of Humanity
Optional: Take the first 5-days only (June 22-26, Primitive/Wilderness Skills)
Training is Complete
The Three Epochs of the Human Experience - Hunting and Gathering - Living off the land - Primitive Skills - Pastoralism & Agriculture - The domestication of animals & grain - Simple to Modern Technology - The domestication of humans
It all begins with...
In this Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) Course, we hope students will not only learn but will experience how we as humans have moved from a quiet connection to the earth to a vibrant but often times destructive relationship to
our planet.
Through this understanding we can move ourselves and our culture toward a creative and caring relationship to each other and the earth.
Pictured: Wayne Weiseman Certifying Instructor
Permaculture Institute of Australia
About Wayne:
Raised in New Jersey, Wayne spent a large part of his youth exploring the back woods learning about plants and animals and came to a deep appreciation of the intrinsic value of all life. Early in his career he lead groups on month long survival trainings into the mountains of Utah and in New York and has even taught inner city youth how to forage for edible plants while tracking wildlife in Central Park.
Wayne has been planning for years to tie together a training that includes indigenous skills with the brilliance of permaculture design.
The First Five Days (We have 10 spots for those desiring this training only.) Hunter/Gatherer - Pastoralism - Early Agriculture Dates: Tuesday, June 22, 1:00pm -to- Saturday, June 26, 1:00pm Price: $575 Optional Foundations of Permaculture Webinar Series: $195
Taking the First 5 Days Only: The first 5 days of this training can be enjoyed as a stand along experience for up to 10 more people. Besides the 20 places we have for the majority of students who are taking the entire 12-day training, we have opened up 10 extra places for students who only wish only to learn the wilderness skills.
Some key points of the Permaculture Curriculum will be covered in the first 5 days but the focus will be on hunting, gathering, domestication of animals and the growing of basic crops.
To deepen ones understanding of permaculture as it relates to the early stages of the human experience we recommend that students take the Foundations of Permaculture webinar series beforehand...but it is not essential to participating in these first 5 days.
Logistics: The entire 5 days takes place out-of-doors on the outskirts of the Stelle community consisting of the pond, meadows, creek & woods, orchard and garden areas. Students bring their own tents and bedding for sleeping comfort but all meals and classroom time will be spent in the outdoors with just a bit of shelter (unless we have very unusual weather conditions).
Food: Basic food stuffs will be provided as part of the training but students will do all of their own cooking in these 5 days and can include those foods which they have foraged from around the area.
Curriculum: The first order of business will be to learn how to make fire...! Until the group learns to make fire, there will be no cooking of food. The balance of these 5-days will include exploring in some detail the following:
-Foraging of food
Plant identification
Medicine -Tracking & trap lines
Harvesting animals -Primitive shelters -Primitive tools
Flint knapping
Digging stick
Rabbit stick
Atlatl
Making string and rope -Purifying water -Basic bowls and spoons -Night walking
Moon reading (if clear) -Hygiene on little -and more.
Near the end of the 5 days, the focus of the training begins to transition into the domestication of grains, fruits and vegetables.
A good part of the curriculum might also depend upon weather, available plants and other resources, unexpected events, and group dynamics.
This is not a static curriculum. It will flow with what is happening on the land in the moment.
Participants will be encouraged to slow down, become familiar with the land, open more deeply to their senses and improve their observational skills..
Omnivores Experience: The harvesting of animals has been a large part of the human experience and the training will include this aspect. It is a keen part of understanding pastoralism. If meat is to be a part of ones diet during these 5 days then the student will be involved in the harvesting of one's animal food. Chickens, rabbits and mutton (and possibly a wild creature or two) are on the menu. Any animals that are harvested will be treated with care and respect. (Note: Vegetarians or vegans are certainly welcome to be in this training but may select to deepen their knowledge of wild plants during the times of animal harvesting.)
What to Bring: Besides basic backpacking camping gear (no fuel stoves or lamps please) bring a good, sharp pocket knife. A more complete list will be provided before the training.
What One Can Expect: This 5-day portion of the training in the 3-epochs of the human experience is intended to give students some very practical skills in living off the land while encouraging an emersion into the landscape. This is not a 'survival' training where all must 'do or die'. The community is only 300 yards away and although it is expected that everyone will stay on the land during these 5 days, it is important to us that everyone feel a sense of security. It is possible however that students might experience periods of being hungry, chilled, uncomfortable and even emotionally upset. Students may have their limits tested and stretched but they will not be alone. And Wayne, Bill, Becky and Milton will be available to assist and support. We will be looking life squarely in the face during these first 5 days.
The Full 12-Day
Permaculture Design Certificate Course Larger Scale Agriculture - Advancing Technology
- The Advent of City Cultures - 12-Days: Tuesday, June 22, 1:00pm -to- Saturday, July 3, 1:00pm Price:$1,595
Price includes meals, instruction, textbook, webinars, handouts, site tours,
camping and certification.
Logistics - A bit of time off: Following the first 5-days of the training (as described above), students get to take the rest of Saturday the 26th off before continuing on with their permaculture certification training. Maybe doing a bit of laundry, taking a long nap, going to town for a movie, or just being still will fill this time for most. Instruction continues at 10:30am on Sunday the 27th.
7 More Days - The PDC Curriculum: At this point we now proceed with the more traditional PDC curriculum consisting of 50% classroom time with hands-on permaculture projects, design work and site tours.
Description of our Full, Permaculture-Design-Certificate Courses If you landed on this page and have missed the full description of our PDC trainings, you might still be wondering what is actually covered in a
certificate course. If so, Click Here.
Instructors
Wayne resides in
Carbondale, Illinois
Wayne Weiseman
Wayne brings his years of farming, building, designing and teaching experience to this course.
Wayne is registered by Bill Mollison's Permaculture Institute of Australia (PIA) to teach the full permaculture design course (PDC)
and to grant PIA certification. Read more...
Bill Wilson
Co-Founder of Midwest Permaculture with his wife Rebecca, Bill has hosted and taught at over 15 permaculture design courses, holds two PDC Certifications and has completed Advanced Permaculture Training and Permaculture Teacher Training.
Milton Dixon
In his professional life Milton teaches Suzuki guitar to 4-5 year old children.
In his private life he is an urban permaculturist. From his apartment in the city he grows some of his own greens in a window, makes wine and beer, is experimenting with mushrooms, started a small garden project with others in his building and has drawn up a map of all of the edible foods he can find growing 'wild' in a 5-block radius of his home.
Milton completed his PDC Certification in 2009 and is Midwest Permaculture's internet and computer technical advisor.
To get a good idea of what a PDC course in Stelle is like,
click below for a picture summary of One of our previous Stelle Design Course Please Note: The above link has many pictures and may take a few minutes to download.
More Details of the Full 12-Day Course
Begin The Training Now with Pre-Training Studies
This 12-day permaculture course actually begins with registration when the student receives (within 24 hours) a welcome email that contains access to our Foundations of Permaculture webinar series, links to over 3-dozen selected handouts and the 150-Question Study Guide. Within a week or so students receive the course textbook, The Earth User's Guide to Permaculture, via US Mail.
Two Live Webinars: Included with this course will be two-live webinars, both of which will be recorded for students who might need to miss one or both. Here are the dates and times:
Wednesdays, May 26 & June 16 6:30 - 8:30pm Central Time Zone
Upon registration, students also receive full instructions on how to access the webinar classroom. Click here to learn more about how the webinars work.
If one is seriously interested in learning about permaculture but cannot commit at this time to a certification course, the webinars and self-study features of our design courses can be enjoyed now. Students will gain a solid foundation in permaculture from their own home.
It includes the text book, the 150-Study Questions and links to over 3-dozen selected handouts.
And the full $195 for this webinar series applies toward any of our design certificate courses for a period of up to three years.
I've LOVED these webinars.
Thank you so much for offering the webinar-only option. I plan to take a certification class within the next couple of years, but these webinars allowed me to really bring together the self-study and in-the-dirt projects I've been working on. THANKS!" Leigh W. (5-13-09) Arkansas http://ozarksalive.org/larrapin/
Course Textbook Included with the price of Registration 'Earth User's Guide to Permaculture'
by Rosemary Morrow
This gem of a text, shipped to students upon registration, is written by Rosemary Morrow, an Australian, that has taught permaculture around the world for decades.
The book is straightforward and loaded with illustrations and substance. It covers theory and also focuses on the practical aspects of how to create and implement a permaculture design.
This book is a must read for the serious permaculturist and is a requirement for students of our design certification courses.
150-Question Study Guide
To complement the text we have created a study guide with 150-questions that will assist the student in anchoring the information contained in the book. If a student can answer these questions, they can be assured that they have grasped the foundations of the permaculture design certification course.
Additional Handout for This Training The 3-Epochs of Humanity - An Outline by Wayne Weiseman
To get the most out of this training, Wayne is providing each student a copy of his detailed outline on hunter/gatherer skills that includes many pictures and descriptions. This is accessible immediately upon registration as a downloadable .PDF from our website.
Additional Reading
If the student has the interest and wants to dig deeper into the hunter/gatherer and other wilderness skills, Wayne highly recommends these 3 titles.
"This is the McPherson's comprehensive book on surviving in the wilderness. It is incredibly detailed with tons of photos. It covers everything: how and where to make your shelter, (long-term or short-term) how to capture and prepare food, building weapons, baskets and cordage, even avoiding illness. There are probably few others living in the Western world that still have these skills."
From an Amazon.com customer review
These other two titles below from David Wescott are the ultimate on primitive technology. "If students are really into these life skills... they should get these books too." Wayne Weiseman
We have linked the above book titles to Amazon.com so that you can read
the customer reviews for yourselves. Neither Wayne or Midwest Permaculture get a kick-back from Amazon on these books. We are just providing you with our best recommendations. Wayne has many other titles he would like to share with students and will do so during the training. He typically brings a stack of books to show students and to let them thumb through.
Logistics
Very Full Days Even though students will have already completed up to 20-hours of certification studies through the webinars and self-study, there are still 52+ hours of training ahead. Everyday will be a full day with class time spilling over into several evenings. Please come prepared to work, to learn and to have fun.
Group and Personal Design projects
For all PDC trainings, students work on one or more designs in small groups. This is a requirement of certification and the project selected will be determined by the instructors.
Personal Invitation: If one of the reasons you as a student might be taking this training is to learn the skills necessary to create a permaculture design for your own home or property, we invite you to bring your own information about your site to the training. For example, bring a sketch of your property in fairly accurate proportions and/or an aerial view photo or map, a plant list of what is on your property now (does not have to be exhaustive – what are the dominant species – place them on the sketch), note the sunny and shady parts of the property and what direction is south. You should also be as clear as you can be about what your current dreams or visions are for the property. There will be some time in the latter part of the course where individual's projects can be explored.
Meals & Lodging for the Second Part of Training:
All meals during the remaining 7-day period will be prepared for students. The first prepared meal will be dinner on Saturday June 26th, the last meal being lunch on July 3rd. Meals will be prepared from mostly organic and locally raised foods and will include vegetarian and meat options. We will even do our best to accommodate vegans or those on special diets. Students should let Becky Wilson know about unique dietary considerations when they register for the course. Camping is included with the price of tuition. During the second part of the training students will have access to showers and traditional bathrooms. Some of our fellow residents and friends in Stelle are delighted to rent out their guest rooms for a modest fee of about $150 for the whole week if that is of interest. All are a short walking distance from the classroom. Students can reserve a room when they register for the training directly on our E-Commerce site. Please email Becky (or call 815-256-2215) if you have questions.
What to Pack & Other Details
About 4 weeks before the on-site training begins, students will receive more information concerning what to pack, when and where to arrive, maps to Stelle and of the community and more.
Certification
Students who complete this design course will receive a 'Certificate of Completion' which permits them to use the copyrighted word 'permaculture' in the promotion of their work or business. Graduates may offer workshops, lectures and design services. Click here for more on certification.
Graduates of our 2010 Winter Permaculture Design Course in Stelle, IL
This includes the Foundations of Permaculture Webinar Series,
all instruction over 12 days, textbook, handouts, site tours, meals, camping and your PDC Certificate upon completion.
Note: It is not an option to skip the first 5 days of this training and just take the 7-days and to receive your PDC Certificate. Some of the curriculum is covered in the first 5 days and not repeated later on. We have 4 other 8-day Certificate Courses we are offering this year. Students of this training however are receiving an additional 4-5 days of training, in wilderness skills, for only $300.
Group Registrations - Save $100 2 or more may register as a group and receive a $100 discount each. We've had friends, family members or couples register together and in the weeks before the course, end up bringing in several more friends, everyone saving $100 each.
Call Becky for either more information or to set up a group (815-256-2215).
Registration Process
Option 1 Click here to register on-line.. We take MasterCard, Visa and Discover.
Option 2
Call Becky to register over the phone at 815-256-2215 with credit card or to mail in a personal check.
Down-Payment / Course Reservation
Our simple e-commerce page is not set-up to handle partial or down-payments. If making a partial payment is an important factor to your ability to participate, please call Becky at 815-256-2215 to work out these arrangements. We are happy to do it if it is helpful to you.
Low Risk Cancellation and Refund Policy for the full 12-day PDC
If a student cancels their registration 30-days before the on-site portion a course begins they receive a full refund less $250. The student retains access to all of the webinars, keeps the course handouts and text book, and receives a full $195 credit toward any future Midwest Permaculture design certification course, good for up to 3-years..
If a student cancels their registration in the 30-days before the course there will be a full refund less $350 and the student still receives a $195 credit towards our design courses. The credit is good for up to three years.
There are no refunds for cancellations or for withdrawals once the course begins. However, in certain circumstances, we may extend partial credit towards a future design course.
a
Continuing Support Following Graduation
Students who have completed a Midwest Permaculture design course are then invited to become part of our growing network of graduates. There are three ways we work to support our students:
We have a separate website where all Midwest Permaculture graduates can connect, share ideas and look for some assistance from each other.
We host occasional permaculture reunions for our graduates and their families.
Graduates may audit any future 72-hour certificate course at half price (provided space is available).
Our objective is to support our students for as long as they need it or want it, and to encourage them to support each other.
Already A Permaculture Design Course Graduate?
We offer a 33% discount to students who have already graduated from another recognized course (from anywhere in the world) who wish to take a Midwest Permaculture course as a refresher. Please email for details.
Still Have Questions?
You are welcome to email us or call Becky at 815-256-2215.
First 5-Days Only - Hunter/Gatherer Skills Portion
Group Registrations - Save $50 2 or more may register as a group and receive a $50 discount each. We've had friends, family members or couples register together and in the weeks before the course, end up bringing in several more friends, everyone saving $50 each.
Call Becky for either more information or to set up a group (815-256-2215).
Handout/Text for This 5-Day Training The 3-Epochs of Humanity - An Outline by Wayne Weiseman
To get the most out of this training, Wayne is providing each student with a copy of his detailed outline on hunter/gatherer skills that includes many pictures and descriptive text.. This outline is in PDF format and is available immediately upon registration as a downloadable file from our website.
Two Live Webinars
Students of this training will also be invited in to the two live webinars provided to the students taking the full PDC course. You will be given access into the webinar room the week before the first webinar scheduled for May 26th.
Credit Toward PDC Certification? Sorry ...no. Although the skills learned over these 5 days are ultimately useful towards a more 'permanent' way of living they have little overlap with the PDC curriculum that is required for certification.
Registration Process
Option 1 Click here to register on-line. We take MasterCard, Visa and Discover.
Option 2
Call Becky to register over the phone at 815-256-2215 with credit card or to mail in a personal check.
Down-Payment / Course Reservation
Our simple e-commerce page is not set-up to handle partial or down-payments. If making a partial payment is an important factor in a student's ability to participate, they may call Becky at 815-256-2215 to work out these arrangements. We are happy to do this if it is helpful..
Cancellation and Refund Policy
Should a student have to cancel their enrollment in the training up to 30-days before it begins, there is a full refund less $75.
If a student cancels in the 30-day period before the training there will be a full refund less $150.
In both cases, the student keeps access to The Three Epochs of Humanity handout.
There are no refunds for cancellations or withdrawals once the training begins. However, in certain circumstances we may extend partial credit towards a future training.
a
Continuing Support Following Graduation
There will be a separate and private website where all students of this 5-day training can connect, share ideas and look for some assistance from each other. As more of these trainings are offered the number of students joining this website will increase so that all who share this common experience my connect with on another.
Our objective is to support students for as long as they need it or want it, and to encourage them to support each other.
Still Have Questions?
You are welcome to email us or call Becky at 815-256-2215.
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