Caleb Gordon is the garden manager and intern coordinator at the Solar Living Institute. He has been living and working at the institute for three years where he is learning and practicing different techniques in sustainable living. His passions are teaching and learning new and innovative ways to live in harmony with the natural world. He is in charge of maintaining the large CCOF certified organic garden as well as assisting interns in site projects throughout the center. His dreams are to create strong resilient communities that provide abundance for all.

2016 Convergence Workshop: Earth Bench & Garden Tours of SLI gardens

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Is it possible that herbs are not only conscious but also intelligent? Singing Bear will share some stories about herbs that may astound you. An awareness probably awoke in you the moment that you first encountered an exotic flower or the first time you had a strong tea. From the most powerful medicinal herbs to the foods we eat every day, there is herbal intelligence all around us. We just have to listen.

Presented By: Singing Bear

Saturday, September 17th | 3:30 – 3:50 PM | Solar Panel: El Sol 

Jim Collins, Ph.D., known as “Redtail,” is a wisdom-keeper in the lineages of both the Lakota Sun Dance tradition and the Laika shamans of Peru. He is also an ecopsychologist, self-mastery coach, master gardener, sustainability activist and former psychotherapist whose extensive experience spans nearly four decades. Redtail has led numerous workshops and retreats for more than 25 years encompassing a variety of topics, including sustainable organic gardening, permaculture, seed saving, wilderness survival, epigenetic medicine, ecospirituality, self-mastery and nature awareness. In addition to his coaching practice, he is co-founder and former garden manager of the Community Teaching Garden at Shasta College in Redding, California; serves as a consultant to community garden and mini-farming projects throughout the region; and manages a quarter-acre intensive organic permaculture garden at his home in Redding where he and his life-partner Pamela have been producing most of their own food for the past decade and regularly contributing to local food banks.

2016 Convergence Workshop: Gardening:The Little-known Path of Effective Activism

Permaculture is “site specific”. Are the important characteristics of “a permaculture garden” circular lines, or things that might be more difficult to express in sound bites? We’ll take a participatory look at what are likely to be common characteristics for most permaculture gardens, no matter what the climate or resource base may be. We hope to help participants achieve clarity in how to take their garden to the next level, whether they are already gardening or planning their first.

A 20 minute intro: wild gardening defined, including ethnobotany and crop diversity, native allies, staple crops, hand tools, nitrogen and micronutrients, and compost, then ten minutes for feedback and questions, then the group will physically layout a small intensive garden using a proven fast, foolproof method. Then we’ll process the whole thing, taking the permaculture principles as a guide to review.

Presented By: Rick Valley

Don Tipping has been offering hands on, practical workshops at Seven Seeds Farm since 1997. We are a small, organic family farm in the Siskiyou Mountains of SW Oregon, situated at 2,000 feet elevation on a 7,000 tall forested mountain with rushing spring fed creeks flowing through the land and nestled among old growth forests. Here we produce fruits, vegetables, seeds, herbs, wool, eggs, and lamb. The farm has been designed to function as a self-contained, life regenerating organism with waste products being recycled and feeding other elements of the system. Lauded as one of the best examples of a small productive Biodynamic and Permaculture farms in the northwest by many, Seven Seeds helps to mentor new farmers through internships and workshops. We have produced certified organic vegetable, flower and herb seeds for over a dozen national scale seed companies. Seven Seeds has also been active in USDA Western SARE, Organic Seed Alliance and other seed initiatives to advance the development of open pollinated organic seeds. In 2009 we began Siskiyou Seeds, a bioregional organic seed company operated from the home farm.

Don helped to found the Siskiyou Sustainable Cooperative which manages a 300 share CSA, commercial seed growing, an equipment co-op and internship curriculum among 12 cooperating farms. He also co-founded the Family Farmers Seed Cooperative, a seed grower, marketing and distribution cooperative comprised of 10 western organic farms. Don helps people focus upon helping people build their skill sets in sustainable life skills such as permaculture, biodynamics, organic gardening, eco-forestry, seed saving and other traditional arts that help to build regenerative culture. He has co taught with a wide group of widely respected people in the both the seed & Permacukture movement including: Tom Ward, Larry Korn, Michael “Skeeter” Pilarski, Bill McDorman, Dennis Martinez, John Navazio, Frank Morton, Harald Hoven, Jude Hobbs, Becky Bee, Rowen White and more.

www.sevenseedsfarm.com
www.siskiyouseeds.com

2016 Convergence Workshop: What the Designers Manual Didn’t Tell You…