*** Hands-On Permaculture Curriculum Photo Essay ***

Permaculture Design is an all encompassing, positive approach to the environment that students can easily understand and relate to. *** This Permaculture curriculum is based on 5 years of teaching high school students at the Happy Valley School in the Upper Ojai Valley, Ventura County, California. This curriculum is land based, hands-on, and does not stop at the school's gates; rather it reaches into the local community through farmers' markets, adult education on the land, seminars and slide shows. To read the complete document, please CLICK HERE

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Using A-Frame levels to mark contour lines in preparation to digging swales, which help increase rainwater percolation and reduce erosion.

Planting and caring for fruit trees is a central focus for Happy Valley's Permaculture Program. We now have over 100 fruit trees planted by students around the campus.

Appropriate trees that fruit during the school year have been chosen and planted in places where they will thrive. We have had success with apples, pears, nectarines, mulberries, walnuts, Asian persimmons and citrus. Our avocados are an experiment in micro-climates, planted on our south facing, frost draining hillsides.

Building soils by mimicking natural soil production through mulching provides a key hands-on component of our class throughout the year.

Happy Valley School has links to the Evergreen College in Washington and Oberlin College in Ohio, who send students to teach and learn. This is particularly useful in January, when we prune our trees to prevent disease and damage from fruit overload.

Composting mimics the natural pattern of turning waste into food. For the science teacher, the compost pile provides many lesson plans, such as classification of soil biota. Composting completes the cycle between the kitchen and the land. Straw bales provide an easily maneuverable carbon source to balance the high nitrogen waste. Composting clean kitchen scraps is less messy than processing slops.

Happy Valley School also has a circular fifty-five foot diameter fenced garden which is currently laid out with 16 keyhole beds in a mandala pattern. Each student in the biology class has a bed for experiments.

Student progress is monitored through their journals in which they keep a record of all that goes on in the class; their homework is their journal. Many create beautiful journals filled with their own illustrations and photographs.

I use "Introduction to Permaculture" as a text. I give a practical exam based on plant identification which requires that students know the roles of various plants in the environment (pioneer, invasive, insectary, nitrogen fixer, edible, etc.), and they answer essay questions on Permaculture design in a final exam.

A basic principle of Permaculture Design is that of multiple functions from a single element. Using this template experiments on seed germination can use food plants, such as tomatoes, which can then be planted out in the garden. Companion planting and plant guild creation can also be experimented with.

Students participate in planting and harvesting in the neighboring organic farm.

We have been most successful by leasing land adjacent to the school to an organic farmer. This interface has proven to be a fertile edge at Happy Valley, with students gaining from the farmer's input and vice versa.

Producing food on site is an aspect of Permaculture design that many schools have embraced. By teaching Permaculture design we are sharing a vision of ecotopia.

*** This curriculum is land based, hands-on and does not stop at the school's gates; rather it reaches into the local community through farmers' markets, adult education on the land, seminars and slide shows.

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