Blog

Greetings!

We hope you and yours are well and are able to creatively respond to the numerous changes in our midst!

This spring, a global pandemic is inviting us to live out our permaculture principles from a deeper place as never before. It feels as if we are all being drawn inwards to uncover Earth’s infinite wisdom to guide this journey. Hopefully we can pull out what we need to balance ourselves and strengthen social and economic cohesiveness. Let’s work together to learn new skills and nurture new networks.

While some are sharing necessary permaculture techniques, we want to support the exchange of permaculture ideas for our Northeast region. PAN wants to refresh our communities with online forums that move us out of anxiety and engage the unique conversations that face us at this moment in history. Be on the lookout for more information about these in the near future!

We are also spending this time creating a new membership website and database that allows members to more easily connect with each other and share resources. We believe this is essential moving forward to ensure our network remains strong and resilient into the future.

We believe we will get through this together by strengthening our collaborations and finding the solutions waiting for us in the challenges we are currently facing. We look forward to you joining our online forums to dialogue about how we can apply that wisdom in a way that nourishes our planet as well as our personal and professional well being. 

Sincerely,
The PAN Board of Directors

Want access? Email us for payment instructions or…psst, they’re free for members!

Wednesday, April 1st, 2020 12:30-1:30 PM USA ET

Join us to hear Matthew discuss his research on permaculture convergences, the focus of his Ph.D. studies in Environmental Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center. Matthew has traveled widely throughout the US attending convergences, fueled by both his research and his own practice and love of ecological design and permaculture. He will share from both his research and his own perspective.

Register today and receive a 30% discount code to Chelsea Green Publishing in your confirmation email!

Register here: http://northeastpermaculture.org/webinar/

PAN has recently affiliated with PINA, the Permaculture Institute of North America, to become the official northeastern hub representing our region.  PINA is a professional association of regional hubs working across North America and Hawaiʻi to:

    •    Elevate the status and impact of Permaculture by influencing public policy and private development to improve the quality of life for all

    •    Bring permaculture solutions to bear on the challenges of social justice, land regeneration, and climate cooling

    •    Promote permaculture pathways to professional development

    •    Grant diplomas

    •    Preserve the integrity and quality of the Permaculture Design Course

    •    Facilitate networking among permaculturists

PINA is a continental-scale organization focused on building a coalition of permaculture designers, teachers, builders, activists and organizations all across North America.  PDC graduates in North America are estimated at 50,000 people and PINA is an effort to connect us all across the continent in our new lives after the PDC in whatever professions we have evolved into.  Not all PDC graduates wind up in land care, design or teaching professions. Many PDC graduates find themselves in other professional domains like community-focused projects, non-profit work, finance, construction, public education, political advocacy and so much more.  You can read all about PINA’s goals and strategies at https://pina.in/about_pina/

PINA is trying to recognize symbols and representatives of quality work in the different domains of permaculture work.  Pursuant to this effort, PINA offers further educational opportunities with their permaculture diploma program to help certify those who desire a professional credential in a permaculture specialty like design, construction, education and community organizing.   (Read about it here https://pina.in/diplomas/)

Permaculture has a lot to offer the dominant society of North America in terms of design-based solutions to many seemingly intractable problems like ecosystem degradation and climate change.  With our legion numbering somewhere around 50,000 people continent-wide, PINA is trying to organize a membership of individuals and collectives into something that can exert greater force on the important decisions being made in our society.  With this membership of individuals, businesses and regional hubs; PINA has an intention to leverage its size and status as a “professional umbrella organization” to gain access to funding aimed at solving the climate crisis. One goal of this funding is to help with facilitating the construction of “on the ground” projects.  PINA has so far held design contests two years in a row with cash prizes going toward the implementation of the contest winners’ projects.   

Climate crisis monies seem to be flowing from many philanthropic organizations and PINA thinks of this coalition not as an end in an of itself, but rather as a strategy for amplifying the voice of the permaculture community and promoting/demonstrating the next iteration of solutions at a scale commensurate with the challenges we face as a society and species.  Part of the value in affiliating our regional network with a continental one revolves around establishing the credibility of land management strategies associated with permaculture and elevating these strategies on a continental stage with case studies and funding. We know we have been busy at work making resilient ecosystems that produce yields for our human needs while increasing ecosystem health.  We know we have been doing this all across our region with very little funding, and it’s time to make our vision and solutions known to a larger audience.  

PAN, as a regional network-stewarding organization, has existed since 2005 and we have much to offer younger regional hubs through the vehicle of PINA (http://northeastpermaculture.org/p-i-n-e-history/).  We can help younger organizations by sharing our patterns of success, and it is helpful to have an umbrella group like PINA to focus and facilitate those flows of information from where they are abundant to where they are scarce all throughout the continent.  

PAN and PINA will co-host a caucus at this summer’s 2020 Northeast Permaculture Convergence (http://northeastpermaculture.org/buy-convergence-tickets/) July 24-26 to talk about our collective work and the value of building regional and continental coalitions.  PINA will host a North American Leadership Summit in Loveland, CO August 20-23, 2020. We look forward to seeing you there!

-Jesse Labbe-Watson, Midcoast Permaculture Design.  Former board member, PAN. 

“Will we have the wisdom to survive climate chaos and planetary destruction?” This film offers four stories that answer this question, and invite its viewers to ask themselves, what am I doing and what are we doing, together, to put the destructive giant back to sleep? Produced by BALE – Building A Local Economy, based in Royalton, VT. The film follows the work and inspiration of people whose recognition of this destruction has put them on a path of radical change.  We hear from Leah Penniman of Soul Fire Farm in Petersburg, VT, committed to ending racism and injustice in the food system by raising life-giving food that is primarily cultivated by, and grown for those most marginalized by our current system of food apartheid. 

Chris Paina of Fable Farm and Fermentory, a working farm, winery, and culinary enterprise, hosts events to bring people together to celebrate rural life, arts, and culture, cultivating community so that relationship and people are valued over profits. Climbing Poetree, the soulful, truth-telling, musical creation of Alixa Garcia and Naima Penniman – two artists for whom spoken word and music have the power to transform, uplift, and rebuild. And the group of inspired young women at Metta Earth Institute of Lincoln Vermont, a center for contemplative ecology that focuses on education through a wide array of trainings, retreats, intensive programs, workshops, and consultations.

Narrated by Penobscot elder, Sherri Mitchell (Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset), we are introduced to the Penobscot mythology of the cannibal giant: a creature awakened by the destruction of mother earth. 

Find it in the theatre Thursday, April 2 in Montpelier, Vermont at the  Vermont Center for Integrative Health at 6-8 PM.

Visit https://www.dancingwiththecannibalgiant.com/screenings1 for future screenings, or watch the trailer and/or purchase film here:

https://vimeo.com/288565530

PAN Listening Session on March 16 at 4:00 PM!

An informal opportunity to join PAN’s Board Treasurer, Patty Love, to ask questions, share information, and connect on topics related to PAN’s mission to increase the resilience of the Northeast region by strengthening the regional permaculture network and increasing access to relevant education and resources. We can explore:

• What’s working for me about PAN is…
• What I hope PAN will do is…
• How I can help is…

Join whenever you can, leave whenever you need to. This feedback will be carried to PAN’s Board Meeting at DAcres on January 31st. (All members are welcome and must register. Contact us at info@northeastpermaculture.org for more info)

Join Zoom Meeting: https://zoom.us/j/294315865?pwd=L1EzNU1jR01QTTIrWXJER3Jsc1lsZz09

Meeting ID: 294 315 865

Password: 798491

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