Backyard Permaculture
semester 1 & 2
Permaculture is about sustainable living, based on ecological principles. Growing your own food is a large part of permaculture, but it’s also about building with recycled and natural materials, energy efficiency, water capture and efficiency, and building local communities.
In Backyard Permaculture, you will help develop and run the TC farm. You’ll grow veggies for the produce trolley, the eco-café and food technology kitchens, you’ll learn to care for farm animals like chickens and ducks, sheep, goats and alpacas.
Backyard permaculture is also about learning skills you can employ in your own backyard: building chook houses, pizza ovens, and garden beds, as well as basic garden maintenance.
We will try to match tasks to your interests, but some days you’ll get hot and dirty doing real farm work.
Why take part in Permaculture?
When you go travelling around the world and Australia, you’ll have skills you can exchange for free accommodation and meals, using programs like WWOOF and HelpX!
You’ll get training in safely using line-trimmers, lawnmowers and rotary hoes and learn skills to get part-time work as gardeners.
Learn the five R’s: Refuse, Reduce, Re-use, Re-purpose and Recycle.
You’ll get to help breed chooks, ducks and miniature goats, and feed and treat them for common illnesses.
You’ll learn to install basic farm and backyard stuff like fencing, tanks and sheds.
Permaculture is also about sustainable businesses, so we’ll sell our eggs and veggies and create crafty things using our own natural products.
Growing veggies is a great skill to have when the cost of groceries goes through the roof or if you just want to eat healthy and tasty food.
We’re talking about a sustainable permaculture system here, where we grow as much animal feed as we can and produce no waste. This is very satisfying for students feeling helpless about climate change.
When we’ve worked hard on farm and market-garden chores, we’ll reward ourselves with pizza topped with garden produce and cooked in our pizza oven - and baked spuds.
