Graduates in Action

After having studied and applied Permaculture for over a decade, I decided to take the leap towards earning my design certificate through RDI's Permaculture Design Course.

Upon returning home to the Sierra Nevada foothills, I established the Sierra Permaculture Guild to provide a networking venue for individuals interested in learning about and implementing Permaculture concepts within the Sierra Nevada bioregion. The model I used for the guild was based upon those that have been used throughout Central and Southern California over the past decade. I kick-started it with an email listserv and then later added a website, sierrapermaculture.org, to help increase public visibility for the guild. The effort even got a mention in the local paper, which helped to further public awareness of Permaculture. Meetings are held monthly, and a variety of speakers on various topics are invited to share their knowledge with Guild members.

After a strong desire for local permaculture education was ascertained, guild member Cathe' Fish planned a two-day Introduction to Practical Permaculture course in early November of 2007. The course attracted 20 students and I got my first shot at teaching permaculture as a certified designer. Due to popular demand, a second course was offered in March of '08, and this class attracted even more students! Now, a two-week Permaculture Design Course is in the works and planned for the summer of 2008. Permaculture is definitely rockin' in the Sierra Nevada!

With my Permaculture Design Certificate in hand, I decided to venture out as a professional design consultant in January of 2008. I now offer my Permaculture design and consulting services to homesteaders, ranchers, farmers, and organizations under the banner of Sierra Permaculture Design. You can visit my website at SierraPermaculture.com

My current personal project is installing a food forest and main crop garden at my family's 13-acre homestead within the Yuba watershed. View photos of the progress!

Paul can be contacted at paul@sierrapermaculture.com.

Graduated from: Permaculture Design Course 1996

Ten years ago I took my first Permaculture Design Course with Penny Livingston. I was far far away from my homeland in the gorgeous Canadian prairies, but I hoped that the principles and skills I learned would be transferable to my northern bioregion. Were they ever! 

Since I have returned to Manitoba, I have helped create a small eco-village on the dynamic edge of the Boreal Forest and prairie farmland, I teach Organic Agriculture & Food Security issues at high schools around the province, I coordinate an Organic Farm Mentorship Program which runs out of a reclaimed rural school & have recently started teaching Permaculture workshops at the University of Manitoba. I co-taught the very first Permaculture Design Course in Manitoba with my friend Gregoire Lamoureux from the Kootenay Permaculture Institute. What an honor!!
I have also started to do Permaculture consultation work on farms in southern Manitoba. I constantly feel amazed that this passion & dream has become a solid reality for me!

During fall 2006 I journeyed back to the West Coast of the U.S. This time it was to take a Permaculture Teacher's Training. I look forward to continuing my education about this vast concept as well as sharing my excitement about how Permaculture Design can help to heal the prairies.

Email: prairiepermaculture@yahoo.ca
Snail mail: 711 Madeline St. Wpg, MB R2C 2S7 Canada

Listen to Bethany interview Penny Livingston-Stark on Voice America!

Voice America - Global Healing Archive :
10/2/07 - Permaculture: Regenerating Humanities Relationship to the Natural World with Penny Livingston Stark

Bethany Staffieri is a certified Western Herbalist. She is a graduate of the Regenerative Design and Nature Awareness Program. She has also trained in the fields of shamanism and energy lightbody techniques with Alberto Villaldo, Connie Grauds, Kajuyali Tasmani and others. She created 'concentric rings', an eco-travel business that introduces people to indigenous healing in Central America, South America and Hawaii. Visit Bethany's website or hear her on KSVY's radio program "Health Matters" or her program on "News for the Soul" .

“RDNA offered me the opportunity to deepen my relationship with the natural world & myself. Using sustainable living practices &native technologies I began to sense a way of being in the world that previous to RDNA I did not know existed.”
-Bethany, RDNA 2005-06

Graduated from: Four Seasons Permaculture Design Course, 2006

Our house was built in 1907 on a 6,000 square foot urban lot amongst other Victorians and Bungalows. It's just a short walk to our wonderful old downtown. Two years ago we got our friends to leave Oakland and buy the house behind us. We had looked for rural property together before coming here but the long drive to jobs and amenities seemed crazy with the coming end of oil. We wanted a small, tight community that could support itself in a crisis. We are working towards that end.

So my neighbor Betty Li and I decided to take the Four Seasons Permaculture Design Course this past year to re-design our two adjoining urban lots into a Permaculture food forest. We aim for "an overabundance of abundance" as Permaculture teacher Penny Livingston-Stark says. That's the plan. We'll post our progress at www.petalumaurbanhomestead.blogspot.com so you can learn with us as we make mistakes, jump for joy, and hopefully live more lightly on the planet.

Courses Completed: Permaculture Design Course 2003, Regenerative Design & Nature Awareness Program 2005-06, Advanced Permaculture Training with David Holmgren 2005, Art of Mentoring 2006.

Really, the benefits of my experience with RDI can’t be fully described here. They are so diverse and rich it would take much too long.

That said, through courses at RDI, I learned how to design and carry out solutions to the myriad of issues we currently face - through a process that was both empowering and healing.

The Nature Awareness aspect of the RDNA course takes the phrase “listening to the land” and roots it in a deep and ever-growing knowledge of place – which is critical for every ecological designer. Then, through Regenerative Design, we reflect our understanding of natural systems in building the physical environments that yield abundance while rejuvenating the land. We do all this with more than just ourselves in mind: for all people and all our relations; for the generations to come.

After I graduated from the RDNA Program in 2006, I started my own permaculture design and consulting business in West Marin, CA. In this work, I help people to go beyond landscaping into more holistic land use patterns that reconnect them to their food and build a healthy relationship to place. Most of my work has been residential, and I have recently expanded to include business and farm consultations as well (Yes I’m open to design opportunities outside of this region too.)

Aside from that, I’m a full-time apprentice with the RDNA 2006-2007 Program to further develop my abilities as an educator. Through this work, I am digging into the experience and skills I’ve learned over my life and applying them on a whole new level.

In addition to my work at RDI, I have earned a BA in Culture, Ecology, and Sustainable Community with emphasis in Ecological Agriculture through New College of California. I have also interned on various permaculture farms including Seven Seeds Farm of southern Oregon.

You can contact Devin at: devinfromheaven@riseup.net

Graduate of: Permaculture Design Course at Skywater Center, 2003

In June of 2003 my then best friend, now brother-in-law (thats a totally different story) and I cruised down form Washington to Skywater Center to take a Permaculture design course. I had no idea what I was getting into. All I knew is that I was unhappy. I had just come back from working with Seattle and was completely disenchanted with society, industry, and humanity in general.

When we arrived at Skywater Center, a man with a glowing smile crawled out of the bushes and intoduced himself as James. Then he promptly asked for our registration money. I thought, "Oh great, here is this filthy medium again, I thought this was going to be different." I asked the man named James as I handed him the cash "Is this going to be worth it?" He just grinned and said "ask me again in two weeks."

Keep in mind that this is the first experience that I had ever had dealing with earthy people. I come from a very conservative family and had always been warned about folks like these. Boy did I have my bubble popped.

After two weeks of the Northern California sun, a moon that was continued to increase in size and proximity, and six hours of class a day sitting next to naked hippies smeared with green clay under some of the most beautiful oak trees on this earth, I was a changed person. I knew what connectivity was and understood how it effected everything that I could possibly imagine. I had new skills and the understanding to use them in a benevolent way. I was a Permaculturist.

At the graduation ceremony/ talent show I sat in front of fifty people with tears streaming down my face and thanked them for helping me grow. I thanked them all for what they taught me individually and as a community and I am still grateful more than any of them will ever know. From the hands of one of the most beautiful people alive, Penny Livingston-Stark, I received a small certificate with my name on it that will forever remain one of my most prized posesions. And from James, the man who crawled out of the bushes my first morning there, a handshake and a smile of recognition. We exchanged no words, but he knew that I knew that the course was absolutely worth it.

The next day we recieved on last lecture from James on how to be an activist. I don't remember much of that speech other than the words, "You cannot be afraid of what you are capable of." That one sentence still rings in my ears to this day and will forever be the most powerful statement that I have ever witnessed.

I am now a kayak guide on the lower Columbia river. I use my Permaculture skills to teach people how to reconnect with their surrounding environment and we do it in a way that is totally benign. By using human power to paddle ourselves around the estuary we not only make ourselves healthier, but we become aware of our cultures effect on this environment, and how we can change to be a part of it instead of apart from it.