The GROW BIOINTENSIVE method works to stabilize both current and future food systems by producing a complete diet and growing soil fertility 60x faster than nature with 90% fewer inputs, organic methodology, and appropriate technology. In doing so, we are able to inspire and empower communities to regain their food security; managing a strategy to grow more food in their Zone 1. This workshop will provide participants with the eight principles which guide immediate garden planning and implementation, as well as long-term sustainable food raising techniques. Through the use of our eight principles as presented in both a presentation and a hands-on activity, we hope to empower participants with the tools to create abundant, low-cost, low-tech, self-sustaining farm designs which feed both people and soil.

Presented By: Matt Drewno

Learn More About Matt Drewno

Participants will learn collaborative design through modeling and voicing crucial elements and principles involved in creating an intensive garden in minimal space.

Participatory learning around a basic common denominator of permaculture (the intensive front-door garden) with the power of collaborative design in real space

Presented By: Rick Valley

John will explain how to choose from thousands of possible plant selections for use in our regenerative landscapes, and where to find them. Learn how to source from back yard plant swaps to commercial nurseries and international germplasm repositories, including legalities, precautions, ethics, and building local community resilience.

Presented By: John Valenzuela

Friday, September 16th | 10:00 – 11:00 AM | Zocalo

One of the most important skills of a trained Permaculture designer is observation. Over the last 11 years, Weaving Earth has been focusing heavily on the practice of Bird Language – listening and watching what the birds are telling us about the eco-system. To truly understand what the birds are telling us requires an acute level of observation, which has ultimately served us well as designers. This experiential workshop will be an introduction to Bird Language basics, and a conversation about how it has served us as Permaculture designers. And possibly most important, Bird Language is also a lot of fun!

Presented By: David Hage and the Weaving Earth Team

Brennan Blazer Bird is an ecological educator, natural builder, and solutioncrafter who has led a diverse array of artistic and ecological projects around the world. For the past 5 years Brennan has taught youth and community members to transform plastic waste into an artistic community-gathering place (www.earthbench.org). Brennan is also starting a fossil-fuel-free ecological kitchen classroom called SolutionCraft (www.solutioncraft.org). Currently Brennan lives at an ecological collective in Oakland, CA and is a full-time Garden and Sustainability Educator at Alta Vista School in San Francisco.

2016 Convergence Workshop: Appropriate Cooking Technology – The Fossil-Fuel-Free Meal!

Learn hands-on with Miguel “Sir Cobalot” Elliott during two workshops:

1) Miguel will be sharing the process of building a small hut built out of pallets, insulated with straw, covered in an earthen cob plaster, called a “Palletable Cobin”. This structure is very easy to build, affordable, super well insulated, non-toxic, and is a great solution for low cost housing.

2) For anyone who wants to learn cob and adobe building hands-on, Miguel will also be building a cob & adobe bench in the children’s play area between the oven and cob play structure. Covered in the Workshop will be building a sturdy foundation, earthen sculpting, setting Adobe bricks and plastering.

Presented By: Miguel “Sir Cobalot” Elliott

Transition Streets is a neighbor-led project to reduce household energy and water use, build resilient local food systems, and build community resilience and increase social cohesion on your street. It takes the systemic thinking of Transition & Permaculture and breaks it down into a simple curriculum with actionable steps that add up to real change. If you’ve been looking for ways to engage your neighbors and launch resilience-building on your street, you will want to take in this workshop!

Transition Streets is a relatively new and very successful project of Transition US which has been used in dozens of communities across the country. It combines a number of strategies: saving money on household bills; getting to know your neighbors; leadership and facilitation development; community dialogue; as well as reducing energy/water/waste. It is definitely a “building bridges” project, particularly between near neighbors. The workshop will provide participants with a taste of the curriculum as well as tips on how to implement it (for example, outreach to neighbors & local media, running a successful meeting) and other takeaways/lessons learned from the project. Presenters will include TUS staff (Carolyne Stayton and Joshua Shepherd) as well as local Transition leaders who have implemented Transition Streets in their own neighborhoods. This workshop will be primarily informational although there will be a number of participatory exercises to really relay the flavor of the project and its potential for greater systemic change.

Presented By: Tina Clark

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

Cara Saunders became an herbalist after a degree in Forestry and Environmental Science and many years as a community organizer working for human rights and environmental justice. Her passion is help people connect with nature and empower people to take care of their own health naturally. Cara grows many herbs and sustainably wild harvests plants to create handmade herbal products for Bear Wallow Herbs. She sells online at www.bearwallowherbs.com and in Mt. Shasta at the local tea shop Sereni-tea.

2016 Convergence Workshop: How to Use Local Plants for First Aid and Home Remedies

Carolyne Stayton is the Executive Director of Transition US (the national hub of the international Transition Towns Movement). She has an advanced degree in nonprofit management and her background includes serving as Director of New College’s North Bay Campus of Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community, an innovative educational institution that promoted advanced studies in leadership and community-building. Carolyne resides in Graton, California where she participates with others in building a future to live into.

2016 Convergence Workshop: Building Resilient Neighborhoods with Transition Streets

Dave Hage is a Co-Founder of the Weaving Earth Center for Relational Education, and he is a facilitator for the WE Immersion 9-month program. He brings a deep love of the earth, humanity, creativity, and possibility into everything he does. He is a dedicated leader and believes deeply that the work of reconnecting ourselves with our place, with each other, and with ourselves is of the utmost importance at this time.

2016 Convergence Workshop: Bird Language & Permaculture

How much rain can you catch?

In this hands on workshop we will work on-site to learn the tools and techniques of rain-water harvesting. We will find water storage potential of structures, discover the contours of the landscape, and identify “key-points” of catchment, storage, and sequestration.

This will be a hands on workshop using tools of the trade, bunyips, laser level for finding contours, and measuring tape to find roof catchment potentials.

Presented By: Karmendra Rossy

Many of our most common garden weeds contain highly valuable medicinal properties. These wayside weeds living all around us possess special nutritional and healing powers that often surpass cultivated plants. Traditionally these medicines were eaten as foods in cultures across the globe. In this workshop we will discuss medicinal plants that can easily be incorporated into our everyday diets for maximum health benefits as well as learn some simple recipes and methods of preparation. We will also discuss the nutritional benefits of home grown animal products and how to raise process and preserve a complete diet on a homestead.

Food as Medicine is relevant to building resilience because it is essential we have healthy bodies in order to create healthy communities! We can use permaculture methods to understand how specific plants can build and replenish soil the same way they nourish and replenish our bodies. Participants will gain a basic knowledge of plants they can identify in the wild or grow at home that are multi-functional as food, medicine, fertilizer and regenerative tools. This topic can build bridges between generations of young and old as we remember the indigenous knowledge of our ancestors, build bridges between cultures as we learn common and different uses for these plants and can build bridges between nutritional and wellness philosophies as we take our health into our own hands and empower our selves and our communities to grow much of our own medicine! Food as Medicine will be both lecture, demonstration and question/answer.

Presented By: Maya Blow

Learn how to promote the beneficial fungi called mycorrhizae to increase the health, quality, and yields of vegetables, fruits, and nuts.

Mycorrhizae can increase yields by as much as 1500%. They are an important part of the soil food web. There are ways to promote the growth of this beneficial fungi without having to buy costly inoculants. A vibrant, healthy soil food web is essential to a productive permaculture garden or farm.

There are amazing beneficial fungi that promote the healthiest roots of native and ornamental plants. Nearly all plants, especially trees, need this symbiotic relationship for superior growth. The seminar will explain what the relationship is (called mycorrhizal association), where in the roots it happens, how to promote it, how it increases yields and whether-or-not purchased inoculants are needed.

Friday Oct 6| 2pm| Yurt 

Presented By: Robert Kourik

Join herbalist Cara Saunders, founder of Bear Wallow Herbs, to explore native plants and abundant weeds in Northern California that can be used as first aid remedies to heal cuts, bruises, sprains, burns, stings, colds, flu, infections, headaches, insomnia, and many more common illnesses and injuries. Learn how to identify seven plants that can be used in first aid situations, either prepared as organic tinctures and salves or fresh from your garden or in the wild. Herbal medicine first aid is essential for communities that want to live a sustainable lifestyle and be prepared to take care of each other naturally.

This workshop will help participants build a bridge between communities and the plants in their communities and the natural environment. Participants will be inspired to look to nature to take care of their health instead of pharmaceutical companies. We will taste herbal tinctures, feel herbal massage oils and salves. We will learn to identify the plants by looking at live plants, dried plants and photographs of the plants. Participants will be asked questions about real first aid situations and how they would respond using herbs.

Presented By: Cara Saunders

Saturday, September 17th | 12:00 pm-1:00 pm | Hops Tipi

Event producer, Environmental and social entrepreneur. Ivan is also facilitator of Art of Hosting and collective intelligence work; Dragon Dreaming (collaborative project design) and Nonviolent Communication. He is certified as Sustainable Human Settlements Designer by Gaia Education. Among other things Ivan has been participating in the development of different cultural exchange and indigenous knowledge preservation initiatives in different parts of North and South America for almost a decade. He currently serves as an independent consultant for various organizations such as the Innovation Factory Mexico, Four Worlds International Institute, NuMundo.org and the Council of Sustainable Settlements Latin American or C.A.S.A. He is founder and director of Dragon Dreaming Mexico dedicated to expanding this methodology in this country.

2016 RED Talk Presentation: Dragon Dreaming the Future

Sunday September 18th | 3:50 – 4:10 PM | Solar Panel: El Sol

In partnership with the NorCal Community Resilience Network:

Are you leading a grassroots organization or just new to the scene? FUTURE-READY NOW! is the Leadership Training for Powerful Co-Creators of the Planet. In this workshop, you will practice new ways to be more creative, generative, and collaborative in all that you do. You will have the opportunity to embody the capacities needed to build teams that stay creative in a rapidly changing environment. You will discover clear tools to align your purpose with your action and, when things get tough, turn the feeling of powerlessness into motivation. Join the professional guild for people working across domain to co-create a better future, together.

A great philosopher of the 20th century, Marshall McLuhan, once said, “There are no passengers on spaceship earth, only crew.” Each one of us is crew. Unfortunately, at the moment, much of humanity is either ignorant of this notion, or actively ignoring it. Our current systems are not built for a planetary future, just as the law of the land could no longer address issues adequately once we discovered and got acquainted with the sea. Building Resilient Communities and permaculture are part of the Movement to challenge just that. This workshop is to provide tools to develop capacity for leaders who have the purpose to create the future they want to see by helping leaders align their purpose with their actions. As leaders, our participants become an active force in their community and created new ways of addressing our basic needs.

Through engaging activities, and some content provided in presentations, our participants learned and experienced new ways of being leaders. Our model of leadership is not “command and control.” It is listening, discovering, encouraging others and moving ideas to action. It is not directing, as if you have all the answer, but it is also not pretending to be smaller than you really are. Our model of leadership is also about awareness of our participants’ own present experiences and even how others are experiencing them. The ability to create change comes back to the capacity for connection – the ability to be in relationship with self and others. This workshop helps people build bridges within themselves, allies, edge groups, and even enemies.

Presented By: Crystal Huang

Dr. Lee Klinger is an independent scientist living in Big Sur, California. Since 2005 he has served as director of Sudden Oak Life, a movement aimed at using ecologically-based techniques to address the problem of oak mortality in California and elsewhere.

Dr. Klinger has over 30 years of academic experience in the environmental sciences and has held scholarly appointments at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the University of Colorado, the University of Oxford, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Klinger also serves Chairman of the Board of Teleosis Institute, a non-profit organization devoted to developing effective, sustainable health care provided by professionals who serve as environmental health stewards. He is also a Fellow of the Geological Society of London.

2016 Convergence Panel: Fire Panel 

2016 Convergence Workshop: Use of Fire Mimicry in Forest Restoration

Maya Blow is an herbalist and classical homeopath practicing in the San Francisco Bay Area. She studied herbal medicine at the California School of Herbal Studies in Northern California and also completed four years of homeopathic medical school at the Institute of Classical Homoeopathy in San Francisco. After graduating Maya went on to teach materia medica at the ICH. She is also currently on the faculty of the Institute of Urban Homesteading based out of Oakland California. Maya has been studying, practicing and making herbal medicine for over fifteen years and brings to her practice an innate sensitivity, empathy and powerful intuition towards her clients. Besides her passion for holistic and alternative medicine, Maya is a wife, mother of two, permaculturist, organic farmer, artist and avid crafter. Maya teaches nature studies, gardening, herbal medicine making and many other homesteading and DIY classes. She has been making and teaching art for two decades and continues to draw her inspiration from her love of nature. Some of her hobbies include organic gardening, animal husbandry, foraging for wild food, fermenting and canning, making herbal medicine, cheese making, and dying with plants. She currently runs a handcrafted herbalism CSA from her organic farm in El Sobrante where she lives with her husband and sons, chickens, bees and jersey milk cows.

soulflowerfarm.com

soulsanctuaryhealing.com

2016 Convergence Workshop: Food As Medicine