its been lightly snowing here for the past three days.  this time of year, the days are short and cold and all is quiet in the garden.  in aligning ourselves with the seasonal rhythms of the earth, we have been  focusing more on inside work of late – inside our house and inside ourselves. Resting, reading, cleaning, organizing, planning for the spring, and enjoying the warmth of our woodstove are daily activities. After experiencing the second wettest spring on record in 2011, thus far we’ve had a remarkably dry and mild winter.

Please join us this spring at the Planet Repair Institute for the first annual SOUTHEAST PORTLAND PERMACULTURE CONVERGENCE!!!

The gathering will be an intimate, micro-regional gathering of no more than 35 people meeting to present ideas, heartstorm, vision, troubleshoot designs, work on hands-on projects, socialize, and foster our connections as a community. The weekend will begin on Friday March 30th with a potluck dinner, after which we will  plan the weekend organically based on what people are interested in discussing, presenting and contributing to the weekend. The format for the weekend may include visioning circles, presentations, hands on projects, or other unknown spontaneity. We will wrap-up on Sunday afternoon after lunch. Meals will be provided over the course of the weekend, and we are asking for a $35 contribution. Please contact us if you need a place to stay.

Where: The Planet Repair Institute, Sellwood

When: Evening of March 30th through to the afternoon of April 1st

Cost: $35 (meals included)

Registration: Please Email the Planet Repair Institute (planetrepair@riseup.net) and send us your $35 fee to hold your registration.  Spaces Limited.

Instructor: Chris Reynolds of Linnaea Farm (Cortes Island, B.C.)

Date: We will be holding this workshop on Sat. January 21st and again the next day Sunday January 22nd. Please register for one of these two days.

Time: 10am – 4pm.

Place: Planet Repair Institute

Cost: $30

Registration: Register in advance (limited spaces) at the Portland Permaculture Meetup website – click here

What to Bring: Please bring your own pruning tools if you have any (pruners, loppers, pruning saws, etc.)  Please also bring a lunch.  Tea and coffee will be provided.

It’s time for fruit tree pruning!  This workshop focuses on developing observation skills and equipping participants with the basic techniques and knowledge to maintain many common types of fruit trees.  You will leave with a good grasp on foundation skills, as well as tools for continued learning, as you continue to pay close attention to trees and work to shape them to their environment and function.

We’ll start outside looking at the trees.  Noticing how they grow and heal.  Getting our senses attuned to their habits and desires.  Then in the warmth of the indoors we’ll talk about what we’re doing with pruning (reasons, theories, things to be considered).  After a short lunch break, we’ll look closely at the techniques and tools for the job.  Then it’s back outside to gain hands-on experience on neighborhood fruit trees.  We’ll look at tree structure, prune out those dead ends, and establish the direction of the growth and abundance to come.

Topics covered include:

• Observing growth habits of trees. (What is the tree’s desire?)
• Objectives of pruning. (How can we help?)
• Pruning tools (and their appropriate/safe use.)
• Proper pruning technique.
• Where to start.
• Timing and priorities for fruit tree pruning.

The city landscape is abundant with food and food growing opportunities.  Generations of residents in our neighborhood have planted  fruit and nut trees, some of which are now over 100 years old and still tremendously productive! Waves of immigrants have brought their favorite cultivars with them, many of which are heritage varieties that are difficult to find in nurseries. We can literally read the layers of cultural history of our neighborhood in the landscape!

Wine Making: A great preserving option that requires no energy

Our neighborhood is particularly plentiful with stately English Walnuts and Chestnuts that rain calories and protein down upon us each fall.  Yet, much of this abundance is left unharvested. This year, we made a concerted effort to map and harvest the fruit in our neighborhood.  We amassed hundreds of pounds of fruit, much of which we preserved or fermented.

Ginko Fruit - To be harvested for the nuts.

Some common fruit tree are less commonly known for the food they produce. These fruits from the Ginko tree that we found on Craigslist will be processed for their nuts, some of which we will eat and others of which we will plant.  Most Ginkos that are planted in the city are males because the males do not produce fruit which are thought to make a mess and smell bad.

Persimmon: A great winter fruit source in Oregon. We harvested these Fuyu persimmons in December - they're delicious!

Last month the Planet Repair Institute was visited by two officials from the City of Portland who were interested in learning more about our neighborhood’s efforts to manage our own biomass and organic matter locally and as a community. In light of massive budget cuts looming at the municipal level, city departments are at a loss to understand how they are going to continue providing existing services and maintaining municipal infrastructure.

At Planet Repair Institute, we are working with the city to answer this question by modeling ways that neighborhoods can be empowered to provide these services themselves, while building face-to-face connections between neighbors, instilling a sense of collected responsibility, reducing cost and energy expenses, keeping resources and efforts localized, not to mention keeping people fit and healthy!

Every Autumn, the trees in our neighborhood drop massive volumes of leaves onto paved surfaces that prevent nutrients from cycling back to the soil.  The leaf litter also tends to clog sewers causing all the runoff in the neighborhood to flood our streets. The city of Portland has a leaf collecting service payed for by tax-payers, however we learned that 90% the leaves that the city collects ends up in landfills anyways!  While the remaining 10% may be composed in municipal facilities, the entire process of transporting biomass to composting sites and then back to our neighborhood is energy intensive, costly and creates pollution.

With this in mind, we have been working on creative solutions to keep our biomass in the neighborhood and to cycle local nutrients back to our soils, while involving our whole neighborhood in the simple but revolutionary practice of stewarding our shared landscape.  On several occasions this fall, we took to the streets as a large group to reclaim this leaf litter from the streets and sidewalks.  We used the collected biomass to mulch the garden beds from our neighborhood co-op garden patches and local fruit trees.  We also built slow decomposing “leaf mold” piles (leaves aren’t very desirable in large hot compost piles because bacteria don’t break them down very effectively, however, piling leaves in a “leaf mold” pile attract worms as well as fungi which slowly break the leaves down into beautiful humus).

We began reclaiming biomass on our own initiative simply because we understood all of the benefits of using this as a valuable resources rather than treating it as a waste product. But, as soon as these officials from the City of Portland caught wind of these efforts, they came to observed and to inquire how this model could be emulated or encouraged in other neighborhoods by providing tax breaks or other incentives.  We envision our neighbor’s efforts to steward our own biological resources as something that may begin with leaf collection, but as municipal services continue to feel the crunch, this localized and co-operative model could also be applied to the management water systems, energy systems, waste disposal, and even humanure!

This Fall, the Planet Repair Institute was very thrilled to welcome Professor Toru Terada and Professor Ameiya from the Landscape Architecture department at the University of Tokyo, as well as Mr. Koike from Tokyo’s Department of Parks and Greenspaces.  We were honored that on the first stop of their first ever visit to North America, this contingent chose spent the day with us learning about our model of sustainable urban systems.  The group observed our permaculture design course for the day, and later gave a short presentation to our class on Satoyama – the historic Japanese system for stewarding the commons.

Oliver Kellhammer recently wrote a great article on on his visit to Planet Repair in the Vancouver Observer that we enjoyed very much:

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/blogs/earthmatters/2011/12/01/discovering-portlands-organic-architecture?page=0,0

Everyone really enjoyed our visit from BC-based permaculturist and guerilla land artist Oliver Kellhammer this past November.  Over the course of a jam-packed weekend, Oliver gave a public lecture at PRI, taught a lesson to our permaculture design class, and also hosted a Portland Permaculture visioning session with local designers and activists. We look forward to his return next year!

Time: November 18th, 6:30pm

Place: Planet Repair Institute

Suggested Donation: $10

Oliver Kellhammer is a guerilla forest gardener, botanical artist, and one of the great permaculture visionaries of Canada. He has worked as a land artist and permaculture designer for over 25 years in British Columbia, and has trained a generation of permaculturalist at Linnaea Farm on Cortes Island BC.

Much of Oliver’s work is “botanical interventions” that transform underutilized or depleted urban spaces into commons space that enhance the relationships between people and nature, and remediate the urban landscape. These works of art become ‘open source’, as they become shaped and sculpted by ecological activity, succession, and human interaction.

More recently, Oliver has been researching permaculture strategies for how we might adapt to climate change. He founded the Climate Change Forest project which re-introduces ‘formerly native’ organisms (i.e.ones that existed in a given locality during past periods of geological time) as an adaptive strategy for managing climate change. Another interest is ecological hybridity – how we can we re-mix native eco-systems by adding a layer of non-native organisms without impairing habitat functionality.

This is the first time that he has visited Oregon in over a decade, and we are very fortunate to be hosting him at the Planet Repair Institute on November 18th. Please join us – this is an event that local Permies won’t want to miss! For more information about Oliver’s projects visit his website: http://www.oliverk.org/

PLEASE PRE-REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT VIA THE PORTLAND PERMACULTURE MEETUP GROUP (meetup.com)

Our friends throughout the Northwest bioregion are all gearing up for what promises to be an amazing weekend of motivating ideas, delicious food, and lots of catching up with old friends…  The Northwest Permaculture Convergence is being held in the Portland region this weekend (October 13-16), and the Planet Repair Institute is very excited to be involved!

We will kick things off here at Planet Repair Institute tomorrow (Thurs. Oct. 13th) with a tour of our block followed by an Natural Building demonstration and workparty.  Come to this free event at the Planet Repair institute to see our project and to learn about and practice Earthen plastering! Meet at Share it Square (SE 9th and Sherrett St) at 2pm. Everyone is welcome!

On Saturday, Planet Repair Institute will be giving a presentation at 2pm on Block Repair at the main convergence venue located just outside of Portland at the Columbia County Fairgrounds in St. Helens, Oregon.

There are plenty of other juicy activities being planned as well, so check out the Northwest Permaculture Convergence presentation and workshop schedule for more information.

We hope to see you there!

Planet Repair didn’t disappoint… the site was looking sharp, and in preparation for the event we put up interpretive signs explaining about the history of our site as well as other points of interest. It was also the inaugural appearance of our brand new Planet Repair poster board!

For those of you who couldn’t make it, here’s a few little snapshots of the fun…