Becoming a Permaculture Learning Centre

Earlier this year, I put in an application to the Permaculture Association UK to become a LAND Learning Centre - an official permaculture visitor site - and I've just had some good news back through the post.

LAND Learning Centres are a network of permaculture sites across the UK. The scheme is run by the Permaculture Association, which has funding to support the set up of this network over the course of a few years. Basically the sites act as places where people interested in permaculture can go to find out how this design system works in practice and to meet and talk to people who use it.

The Permaculture Association holds information about all of the LAND Learning Centres on their website so anyone interested can take a look to find out what's going on around the UK and to find nice places to potentially go visit. And then the Permaculture Association also has funding to pay expenses for groups who want to go on a visit - this covers things like food and travel expenses. Visits might involve getting a guided tour of the site and all it's fancy features, or might also include being able to attend an on-site permaculture related course or event.

In the case of our little project, it would be totally brilliant to host or run courses - before being made redundant, that was one of my main areas of work and it's something I really enjoy doing. And with my natural lotions and potions business just starting to get off the ground, it would also be brilliant to include courses related to that - set in amongst all the wonderful wildflowers and herbs that people would be using to make into their own beauty products. I sense some lovely dovetailing potential going on here!

Other benefits of being part of this scheme are that the Permaculture Association's funding helps pay the site owners for the the time they put in while hosting these events. They also offer support in getting your site ready for visitors to come visit.

This support is what we've just been offered and I'm so pleased because it was starting to feel a bit overwhelming trying to make this project happen almost all by myself! So we're going to be assigned a permaculture tutor who will help us polish up our designs and work out an action plan for making it all happen. They're also going to help us set up work days and find ways of luring in willing volunteers, which is completely brilliant and will really start moving things forward. And then once all that is done, we'll have something really worth showing off and can start hosting visits!

So it's fingers crossed we keep on schedule with the barn conversion so we can get that concrete up this autumn and then can get started with the tree planting - that'll be volunteer day number 1! We're cutting it rather fine now though so I need all your fingers crossed too, wood to be touched, wishing wells to be visited... And a bit of a gap in our ever-busy schedule so we can boot the builders in the arse and get this conversion built!

Cooking Outdoors

We've been having a bit of fun since we cut down those nettles and have used the extra space to create a little camp out on the yard.

We dragged out an old railway sleeper from under the nettles last year and have now put it to good use as a bench. In front of that we've erected a nice little tripod from which we can hang our cooking pot or a kettle for some tea.

We've coppiced some old shrubs out on the yard a couple of years ago and this is making great firewood. We've also been growing the wild plant Rosebay Willowherb, which is great for kindling if you let its stems stand and dry out once the flowers and leaves have died back.

We had our first meal there a few nights ago and it was delicious! It's definitely about as far as you can get from haute cuisine, but there's something extra tasty about food you've cooked outside. Yum!