This is a pre-conference day long workshop of the Organic Growers School’s 26th Spring Conference. Pre-conference registration is discounted with full conference registration, but weekend attendance is not required to attend/register.
How do you read the potential of a piece of property? Learn what the realtors, developers, and sellers won’t tell you. In this all-day workshop, we will develop land literacy through a permaculture lens, learning a sophisticated set of tools for assessment and design. Invaluable whether you are planning to you buy land or want to assess and learn how to work land you already own. We come at this from three directions:
Finding the Land: What’s valuable now and over the long-term? What factors are immutable and what can you change, and with how much effort? What’s on the site and what’s not but still matters? We’ll look at slope, aspect, sun, altitude, climate (rain, temps, wind, frost dates, microclimates), tree cover and other vegetation, wildlife, water, market value, location, road access, neighbors, ease of development, soil, and structures.
Buying the Land: How much land do you need and how much can you actually manage? What things are important to know and what’s hidden in land contracts? We’ll discuss your highest intentions for the land and your financial situation, ownership options such as fee simple or collective title, and development potential. We will explore other creative land access choices including leasing and sharing, and the steps in buying.
Loving Your Land: What are the observation skills you must have as you approach and learn to live on your land? We will discuss how to engage with what you find while moving toward your goals. No matter how well you evaluate land in advance of purchase, some things can only be discerned after you spend time working on the site. Specifically you’ll learn to create a list of priorities, discern existing patterns and set others that will help you live and work harmoniously, decide on housing options and temporary structures, make the most efficient steps first, and discover the must-start soil fertility and forest management strategies for getting earliest returns.
Stewarding land is like a marriage: there is only so much you will be able to change about your land partner. It will have its own values and ideas! Learn the myriad considerations that go into meeting your land-based goals. As we move towards regenerative management, this skillset is the foundation of all our future endeavors.