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Author Archives: Milton Dixon
Rocket Stove Workshop
Learn to Make A Thermal Mass Rocket Stove
Students will Build and Fire-up a Thermal Mass Rocket Stove in a Single Day -
See our current list of Rocket Stove Workshops for additional courses
| Price – $95 - Includes Workshop and Lunch. | At Midwest Permaculture in Stelle, IL |
| (Limit 24 Students per Workshop) | Next Workshop: June 9, 2013 |
Standard wood stoves waste much of the heat and wood energy when they burn, with much of it going up the chimney as hot smoke. A rocket stove burns more efficiently – converting nearly all of the fuel into CO2 and water, including the smoke. It also stores it’s thermal energy in a “battery”, a bench that stores the heat from the fire and releases it slowly over the course of the day. The stove can burn both logs and scrap wood and the best part is, it can heat the same space as a regular wood stove with 1/4 of the wood! Continue reading
Rocket Stove Workshop
Learn to Make A Thermal Mass Rocket Stove
Students will Build and Fire-up a Thermal Mass Rocket Stove in a Single Day -
See our current list of Rocket Stove Workshops for additional courses
| Price – $95 - Includes Workshop and Lunch. | At Midwest Permaculture in Stelle, IL |
| (Limit 24 Students per Workshop) | April 14, 2013 |
Standard wood stoves waste much of the heat and wood energy when they burn, with much of it going up the chimney as hot smoke. A rocket stove burns more efficiently – converting nearly all of the fuel into CO2 and water, including the smoke. It also stores it’s thermal energy in a “battery”, a bench that stores the heat from the fire and releases it slowly over the course of the day. The stove can burn both logs and scrap wood and the best part is, it can heat the same space as a regular wood stove with 1/4 of the wood! Continue reading
Stelle Winter PDC
Now that we’ve wrapped up our last course in 2012, it’s time to look forward to our offerings in the coming year. Our first course of 2013 is our Stelle Winter PDC, with a focus on creating productive growing spaces from kitchen gardens to small farms.
We see this as part of an evolving pattern for our Stelle courses, one for every season.
Being in the midst of the winter season, with the short days and cold weather it brings, makes it a different experience than our other courses. At the same time this gives the students an opportunity to meet with farmers that would have less time during the rest of the year, like the folks at Spence Farm or our friends from Fox Hollow Farm.
We think this course is great for food growers, farmers that have downtime in January, students who have the month off, gardeners that want to head into the season with a new outlook, or anyone else who is otherwise occupied the rest of the year.
Also this course will have a few seats with at a discount, available to students and retirees.
For more information check out our Winter PDC course page or download the course flyer.
How To Build a Worm Tower
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We’ve gotten a lot of traffic for our worm towers so we thought we’d feature them on this page by themselves. Worm towers are one of many techniques that permaculturists might use but knowing when and where it is really appropriate requires a broader understanding that permaculture, it’s ethics, and principles provide. If you’re looking for the picture summary for our Hands-on Permaculture training you can find it here. |
Last year during our Hands-on Permaculture training we built worm towers with the class and installed one in Bill and Becky’s front yard. Once it’s installed all you have to do is add composting worms (red wigglers) and then occasionally add some table scraps. The worms feed on the food waste and in turn, fertilize the garden bed. No muss or fuss with kitchen scraps anymore, it is so incredibly easy to use. The only maintenance that’s needed is to clean out worm castings once a year to make room for more compost.
View inside the installed Worm Tower before it’s filled with worms, food, and bedding.
If you’d like to make your own we’ve made an instruction sheet to help you out.
Is taking a Permaculture Course Worth It?
Is taking a Permaculture Course Worth It? When I think back on my own experiences of taking a Permaculture Design Course (PDC) and look at the knowledge, skills and path that I am now on as a result, I would have to say that taking a permaculture course is absolutely a worthwhile experience. It has propelled me to where I am today and I would highly recommend it to most anyone.
Hugelkultured Swale Digging at Stelle PDC
First it’s useful to step back for a moment and look at the larger picture. When we take the systems that are available in the mainstream today for providing for ourselves , we can easily recognize that they are not caring for the planet, people, or the future. In fact, the situation is getting worse. These systems which manifest as the standard strategies for providing for oneself — such as going to college, getting a job, buying a house, driving a car and even shopping for necessary items — are breaking down. The price of college far outpaces inflation and for most isn’t an option without taking on crushing student debt. The economy is shedding jobs, manufacturing has followed cheap labor across the seas, government and business are paring down to the bone, and millions are unemployed and have given up looking for work. The housing market has crashed and threatens to collapse much further with the inventory of empty homes that no one can afford. The price of owning a car is climbing, with gasoline alone tripling in price in the last decade. Long supply chains, easily disrupted, bring us all the things around us, most of it is unnecessary junk or designed to fail in less than two years. The quality and safety of our food is highly doubtful. And the list goes on.
What is needed is not to trash the systems that are still providing for us, but instead to enable each person to establish other systems capable of taking up the slack, ensure that they are ethical, resilient, robust, and that most of all they meet the needs of people without being a detriment to the planet or the future. This is where the Permaculture Design Course comes in.
Pictures from our July 2012 PDC Completion Course
You can see and read more about our PDC Completion Course in an awesome blog post by one of the students in the course: These Light Footsteps – Permaculture Design Course Completion.
Wayne & Bev’s rocket stove mass heater
Pictures from our July 2012 Hands-on Permaculture Course
You can see and read more about this course in an awesome blog post by one of the students in this course: These Light Footsteps – Hands-on Permaculture.
Classroom Panorama
Picture Summary of UWRF PDC Course
Pictures and Text by Bill Wilson and Milton Dixon
Thank you to our hosts Dr. Kelly Cain and Cynthia Wells-O’Mally of the University of Wisconsin, for hosting us for a second year. The bulk of the training was held on campus. Although we had some university students, most of the people taking this training came from the general public and from 5 different states. We had a fantastic time.
PDC Course Graduates – University of Wisconsin, River Falls – June 2012
Panoramic View of Dr. Cain’s Permaculture Oriented Residence
Building a Jean Pain Style Compost Pile
This past Sunday the Chicagoland Permaculture Meetup and Living Off The Grid Meetup joined forces to build a compost pile that would provide heat for the grow beds of a greenhouse.
