Thanks to the dilligence of videographer Byron Palmer, we have a new permculture video! Enjoy the video, and pass it along to anyone you think would wants to see what's happening at the Regenerative Design Institute.

The Regenerative Design Institute is hosting a carbon economy series this fall that will bring carbon sequestration, permaculture, soil/compost, water conservation, and holistic management masters from around the world to Commonweal Garden in Bolinas.

The series will launch the nation’s first holistic curriculum for carbon negative agriculture, part of a national campaign to spread this cutting edge curriculum throughout the United States. This professional training course will encompass all of the design elements needed to create a carbon sequestering agricultural system—returning carbon to the soil while increasing food production.

The audience for the upcoming course series will include farmers, permaculturists, biologists, policy makers, grounds keepers, and land-owners interested in regenerating thriving local ecosystems throughout the world.

RDI will bring part of the series to the Salinas Valley, a three-day Soil Building and Water Management course.

Along with our own Penny Livingston-Stark and many other master instructors, the course series features:

• Darren Doherty, a third generation Australian farmer who has designed more than 1,000 permaculture properties and taught hundreds of classes around the world, many with permaculture founders Bill Mollison and David Holmgren.
• Elaine Ingham, author of The Compost Tea Brewing Manual, and one of the world’s leading soil microbiologists with 30 years of experience researching and teaching.
• Brad Lancaster, author of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, with more than 15 years as a successful permaculture consultant, designer, and teacher.
• Joel Salatin, featured in Michael Pollan’s book, Omnivore’s Dilemma, a passionate and outspoken voice supporting sustainable agriculture and owner of the successful Polyface farm — one of the most productive and influential alternative farms in America.

May Day has passed and the days are stretching out toward summer solstice. The onions respond to the longer days of light by fattening up into red and yellow bulbs. The fruit trees continue to burst out with flowers and the wild mustards and hemlock are reaching sky high. We have had a dry, sunny and very windy spring followed by a blessing of abundant rains.

While enjoying lunch recently, we heard a loud buzzing and looked to the sky to see a black cloud of bees hovering over the citrus orchard. Once they landed, our crew caught the bee swarm that had settled on a rosemary bush and offered them a place in our hive box. So far they seem to be making themselves at home, and hopefully making more honey to share!

The garden crew has been busy as bees planting starts we raised from seed in our greenhouse. We are putting out loads of spinach, lettuce, dino and red russian kale, cauliflower, broccoli, orach, basil, cilantro and in the greenhouse, hot and sweet peppers, basil, tomatillos and tomatoes. Thanks to the fantastic Americorp workers who helped helped prepare garden beds for planting and with a forest restoration project at Commonweal.

We sailed through our first big on-site course of the season, Bird Language, with our favorite caterer, Carin McCay. She provides fabulous meals with many ingredients from the land. We were able to provide lettuce and cooking greens, rhubarb, goat milk and cheese, eggs, and lots of cooking herbs from the farm for our guests.

The new chicks are growing up into fluffy adolescents and able to hold their own with the older ladies of the house. One day, when searching the barn for some tool, we came upon the hidden nest of a renegade chicken who flies over the fence everyday to lay her eggs in the barn!

To an inspired and abundant summer,
Penny, James, Tammy, and the RDI crew

After several years of service, Matt Berry is leaving his position as Garden Manager at RDI. He has been a mainstay in the garden, managing the seasonal work crew, fixing what needs repair, and adding his passion for native plants and wildcrafting to the garden.  Though Matt, Rachel and our dearest little Amara will be deeply missed, we are excited for the dream they are pursuing in Grass Valley -- a family homestead. Matt will continue teach his wild crafting classes at RDI.