Garfield Community Farm is a 2.5 acre permaculture landscape where neighbors, volunteers and staff members grow food and practice ecological restoration. The farm is located on land that was bulldozed in the 1980’s, tearing down at least twenty five homes. The land was void of top soil and full of invasive plants. Since 2008 Garfield Farm has been working to restore healthy soil, to create productive gardens and return native biodiversity to these 2.5 acres. For much of the course Garfield Farm will be the “classroom” for permaculture based learning.

Lamppost Farm is a 160 acre grass-fed beef and pastured poultry farm with a large community vegetable garden and orchard where the implementation of permaculture has produced many thousands of pounds of food each year for over a decade. Through our time at Lamppost we will go deep into broad acre permaculture, social permaculture and the intersection of rural and urban food system design.

John is the founder of Garfield Community Farm and the current Executive Director. John has loved using permaculture design as a basis for community transformation and land reclamation. Along with amazing staff and volunteers John works to create a landscape of biodiversity, producing thousands of pounds of food every year and attracting native birds and wildlife. Through grassroots community activism the farm has been shaped into a hub of permaculture education for children and adults, a place where neighbors can get seasonal organic produce and people can come together. John lives with his family a mile from the farm in Stanton Heights where they practice permaculture in their 90 year old home with rainwater collection, solar power, off grid heating and a large backyard garden. In 2022 John and his wife Alyssa won a Phipps Conservatory Sustainable Gardening Award for their home’s permaculture garden. In addition to farming John and his wife Alyssa create music together as This Side of Eve.

Darrell is a Permaculture Design Consultant and Educator based in Western Pennsylvania. Darrell is among the first wave of permaculture practioners, having begun studying permaculture design in 1980. After completing a PDC with Dan Hemenway in 1986, Darrell began to develop Three Sisters Farm and Nursery and was instrumental in developing the permaculture plan for The Robert A. Macoskey Center at Slippery Rock University. Both of the projects are among the oldest continuous permaculture projects in North America. Darrell is the author of Bioshelter Market Garden: A Permaculture Farm, New Society Publishing 2011 which serves as both a case study of permaculture applied to a five acre market garden, and as a guide for designing, building and managing bioshelters and market garden farms. He is co-author of The Food Forest Handbook, New Society Publishing 2017. Darrell currently offers permaculture education and consultation through Three Sisters Permaculture.

Elizabeth currently is the Administrator of The Permaculture Institute of North America. She has managed other organic/permaculture farms, including Three Sisters Farm and FIT Farms. She has been teaching Permaculture Design and consulting in design since 2012. Permaculture Training – PDC through Living Mandala, Teaching Permaculture Creatively with Dave Jacke, Forest Garden Design Intensive with Dave Jacke.

Elizabeth grew up foraging wild edibles and gardening with her family. She holds a B.S. in Wildlife Science from the Pennsylvania State University and has worked as a wildlife researcher studying plants, birds, and fish in Pennsylvania. She has taught sustainability and environmental education since 2003 and is passionate about sharing inspiration and knowledge for us to reimagine Eden.

Her hobbies and passions include herbalism, swimming, kayaking, hiking, and spending time in her garden. Elizabeth is available for permaculture design consultation.

inner-permaculture

sociocracy

Food Preservation

Fungi

Biochar