Listen here!
Graduates in Action
William Mutch
I was raised in a family who practiced urban homesteading, although they probably would not have called it that. When I moved out on my own, I kept trying to garden and compost, but wasn't able to actually put that in practice until I ended up in rental house with an indulgent landlord and housemates. I kept feeling that just practicing organic gardening was leaving out a lot, and some exploring led me to Gaia's Garden, Toby Hemenway's book.
I started up my own organic gardening business, which led quickly to taking 4 Seasons 1 at RDI. After that, I was hungry for more depth work in permaculture, and started shifting my business over to following the permaculture ethics and principles. It already was headed that way, but they gave me a language to use when talking to clients.
Other courses I’ve taken at RDI include the water harvesting and food forest design courses with Geoff Lawton (separate courses); two keyline design and soil building courses with Darren Doherty; the Water Wizards workshop that Penny did with Art Ludwig and Brock Dolman; and an advanced permaculture design course with Robyn Frances. I also took Ecology of Leadership 1, in 2006, and was very active in its leadership circle for a while after graduating.
Through a desire to read landscapes more effectively, I participated in the Integral Awareness Training Series for four years, and have worked very hard to bring nature awareness and permaculture together. I think they are inseparable, greatly enhancing and deepening each other. I have also taken the advanced bird language training a couple of times, maybe more, and have been acorning in the 4-seasons courses for years.
Currently, I work as the chief steward at Arastradero Preserve, doing, among other things, perennial grassland and oak woodland restoration, water harvesting, and soil conservation. I freelance doing permaculture design and consultation, volunteer in the transition movement, and do some environmental education on the side. I have recently become involved with the transition movement, and am part of the steering committees for both Transition Palo Alto and Transition Silicon Valley. I am also on staff for the Santa Cruz 4 Seasons course, starting later in the spring.
In the future, I plan to continue practicing and teaching permaculture design, and I hope to see it incorporated into the broadacre restoration work being done throughout this state and the rest of the world. I think incorporating permaculture ethics and principles into everything we do is critical, going into this next phase of our relationship with the world outside of our species. 
That is probably a lot of what is drawing me into the Transition movement. That and reskilling. I want to see permaculture practice become financially sustainable for a wider audience, and to see a web of transition towns and permaculture communities creating a resilient network that will help heal the world and its peoples.
Before, during, and after that, I'll be dancing, singing, playing music, eating fresh fruit, listening to birds, and watching creatures, wind and water moving on the landscape.
I am always looking for clients and collaborators, and am best reached via e-mail at: permifree@yahoo.com, or by phone at 650-380-7030. Both are intermittently reliable, so it's best to try both and to follow up if you don't hear back right away, as I might not have received the message!
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Clarissa Marshall
Download the magazine from Greensboro Day School, with an article about Clarissa in it!
I just finished my third year teaching seventh grade life science at Greensboro Day School in Greensboro, NC. I have my M.Ed. from the University of North Carolina in Greensboro (UNCG) in middle grades education. I have also taught outdoor education, which is what brought me to teaching.
My interest in permaculture came through my encounters with Dr. Charlie Headington at UNCG. He has been integral to bringing permaculture to Greensboro through his courses at UNCG gardening program, the Greensboro Montessori School, and designing gardens around town (including the garden I use at Greensboro Day School). Charlie has been newly appointed to be the director of the Edible Schoolyard at the Greensboro Children's Museum.
In June 2009, inspired by Charlie, I was fortunate enough to receive a grant from the Parents' Association at my school to attend took the summer intensive Permaculture Certification Course at Commonweal Garden.
As I returned to the 2009-2010 school year I made it a goal to elevate the 7th grade garden to new levels. I had a goal to achieve higher yields while using the garden in more meaningful ways in my curriculum. I also have been working the lower school science teacher to develop a more complete gardening curriculum for our school.
Some of the things I have focused on upon returning:
- Making functionality a priority as a way of improving how I ask students to work in the garden.
- Making efforts to organize the students, materials and resources has greatly improved the student personal interest and investment in the garden.
- Organized shed and made it so student know where things are
- Added a water line (city water, unfortunately) to the annual beds to improve accessibly
- Hosted a family pruning day to help with our old, unkempt food forest
- Built new annual beds
- Worked with our school cafeteria and come up with a plan for growing for the cafeteria
- Exposed my students to new foods
- Offered students the opportunity to connect with the natural world on a daily basis
If you would like to contact Clarissa, you can reach her at clarissa.marshall@greensboroday.org.
Shawn Berry
My name is Shawn Berry and I participated in the 2009 PDC at RDI. It was my first in-depth encounter with permaculture.
Well, let’s back up a bit. Actually I had quite an introduction to working with the land when I was a kid. And I hated it. Launching and maintaining the ¼ acre, family vegetable garden my large family put in every spring was a total bust on summer break fun for us kids. Of course back then no one had ever heard the word permaculture and we certainly were guilty of accosting the land and bending it to our will as opposed to “listening to the land.” But we also inadvertently harmonized in some ways simply because nature will also bend us to her will as well.
In most ways for me, and I suspect for anyone who comes into an awareness with the ideas of permaculture, it’s less about learning something new and more about a process of deep remembering and even a deeper knowing that there is something true about acknowledging our individual and communal relationship with nature and the earth. Indeed, as much as many of us are immersed in our modern metropolis with a growing number of electronic devices that give us up-to-the-minute abundant information about the world around us—yet shield us from the actual world that it is all happening in—it’s difficult to really stop and think about how and where our food comes from and the incredible magic that this earth creates with plant life. 
Think about it. Drop a seed in the dirt. Add water. Make sure there’s enough sun so you can see what is happening. And what is happening? A miracle is happening. If you didn’t know the potential an apple seed had, do you think your imagination would be big and wild enough to imagine that this lone tiny, dry object could transform into a massive structure that would have it’s own micro ecosystem and provide food and materials for three generations or more? Not only that, it cost nothing, it can operate efficiently with no maintenance and it can proliferate itself 100 times over with virtually no effort. It’s a miracle.
I digress. What excites me most is that there are communities out there like RDI who have been pioneering the forums to expose others to the miracle that is our earth. Creating a space for a community of curious and courageous minds to gather and explore our truest expressions together; remembering the ways of harmony and becoming re-awestruck at the miracle of this world as we peel off our facades one at a time until our innocence of naked humanness cowers before the revealed face of nature. What a gift!
In the permaculture design course at RDI, we created a community with 30 complete strangers for 2 weeks straight; eating, sleeping, working, laughing, learning, questioning, angering, crying. Ultimately, it demonstrated to me the immense capacity we as humans have to do this thing called “connect.” The capacity to know and understand, to communicate and share experience with another amazing glorious fascinating, complex and complicated being! I mean, we are these conscious beings walking around on this planet! We can SEE INSIDE each other and have the miraculous ability to consciously acknowledge each others existence of self through a myriad of emotive expressions capable of bringing us into a space of such intimate contact that it can be downright, gloriously terrifying!
How is it then th
at we often move through our days in monotone thoughts and muted expressions, feeling more alone that connected? Interacting with perhaps dozens of other conscious beautiful wonderous beings a day with out realization of the miracle of their existence? Seeing them only as obstacles or objects to be manipulated or handled? How is it that we wolf down a meal without even thinking about the absolute miracle of the vegetal world and that without the magic or miracle of seeds and photosynthesis, we would cease to exist? How did we become so recently concerned about the fragility of this planet without having been intimately and consciously acquainted with it?
My permaculture experience was one of the final gentle shakes that have brought me into being fully awake. I think it is gently shaking a lot of people awake. We are realizing that we’re dreaming if we think we can continue to live, thrive and evolve the way we have been living; particularly in first world economies - the dream is over!
So what to do with this wakefulness? Take action! How? By taking the initiative! That is to say, by becoming initiated to move forward in a direction with affirmation, blessing and expectancy by a group of ones peers and mentors. Many people become concerned with how to keep the fire alive that was experienced in a transformative experience and bring it back into their day-to-day life. It is difficult to carry a passion alone by yourself. The support and anticipation of a community who is present to your journey and is ready to welcome the gifts that comes through building and living your vision that was sparked by a personal transformation is an invaluable asset to that same community. 
Ancient tribal peoples, and even healthy modern ones, address this issue through “initiating.” That is to say, they would watch for when a youth starts to become inspired by something apart from the games and frivolity of their adolescent peers and was ready for the challenge and adventure of living as an adult. The premise involves creating a space for the adolescent to have a transformative experience in which they become present to their inspired vision, which is both unique and fragile, apart from the support of a community.
Being an adult meant that you were committed to pursuing your vision and enacting it on the earth for the people to see. It was a gift in return to the people that had cared for you since the day you were born. A gift that is essential and necessary to the health and wealth of the community. In these tribal cultures, rites of passage, community and regenerative, respectful living on the land were absolutely inseparable. They were born out of one another and the failure to uphold the integrity and importance of any of these components would result in the demise of the people.
Looking back I can map the process of this discovery and passion for this direction in my life within these three concepts. I remember when I first had fleeting thoughts of interest in organic farming and living off the land. I entered the initiating threshold space when I chose to participate in the permaculture certification course at RDI. This was my transformative experience and when I returned to my regular life and struggled with how to apply this newfound enthusiasm, I realized I would need the support of a specific community to fully realize the potential of the vision that I was beginning to see.
I am now preparing to enter into the 9 month RDNA course also offered by RDI. I consider these new experiences as a trial run, or “R&D”—research and development for how to begin giving and living my true gift.
Carl Shuller
Growing up, it turns out my parents practiced many tenets of permaculture: organic gardening, seed saving, raising bees and rabbits, composting, food preservation, people care, and sharing the surplus (it seems like we supplied the whole county with rhubarb).
Despite the example set for me by my parents I soon found myself chasing the elusive “American Dream,” forgetting this slower more resilient way of being. The wonderful thing about forgetting is that we still have the ability to remember. A series of synchronistic events led me to RDI in June of 2007 where “re-membering” seems to be the name of the game.
It seemed odd at the time, telling my co-workers that I was going to spend my annual 2-week vacation sleeping in a tent and learning about “organic farming” (aka, Permaculture Design Certification or PDC). The PDC not only opened my eyes to a new way of being and gave me a renewed sense of hope; it also introduced me to a community where I felt completely safe. It was within the safety of this new found container that I was able to begin processing the tremendous grief that came up for me around chasing such an unsustainable, unfulfilling dream for so many years.
RDI played a significant role in helping me to open my heart and see the possibilities that lie far beyond what a consumer-based society had always expected of me. Six months later, I made the commitment to participate in the Ecology of Leadership (EOL) program. Again, I had little idea what I was getting into! What EOL continues to be is another amazingly safe container in which I can continue to heal. I was given a set of tools and a new “operating manual” for creating a life vision that empowers me to take my gifts back out into my community. During the second month of EOL, I resigned from my 17+ year corporate career with the clear intention of pursing a livelihood that was more meaningful to me.
While the PDC held space for grieving, and EOL for healing, the Art of Mentoring (AOM) was a living example of how 150 loving and lovable human beings can truly “be” in community. AOM was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. It was a strong call to action for me: a reminder to follow my heart, pursue my passions, and live a more authentic life.
In the short time I have been involved with RDI, I have become active as an Awakening the Dreamer (ATD) facilitator and embrace the vision that “together we can bring forth an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling and socially just human presence on this planet as a guiding principle of our times." I am also serving on the Steering Committee for the 2010 Sustainable Enterprise Conference which is held in Sonoma County each May.
Last but not least, I am excited to be on staff at Transition US where we are supporting the growing number of Transition Initiatives that are sprouting up across the country. My work within the Transition Movement allows me to take an active role in what Joanna Macy calls the ‘Great Turning’ and to begin helping others to “re-member.” It is all part of an “ideal scene” that began at RDI, and continues to unfold. I have it on good authority that we are alive at a time like no other in human history and I am eternally grateful for RDI helping me realize the profound responsibility that goes with it. Please visit my website if you would like to contact me for any reason.
RDI Courses Completed
Permaculture Design Course - June 2007
Ecology of Leadership – 2008 & 2009
Art of Mentoring - 2008
Kambria (my partner) and I enjoying the benefits of a new earthen clay oven we created along with Allan Hogle in Sebastopol this past summer.
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Jessy Servi
In August 2006, I landed at the Regenerative Design Institute as a work trader. With a background in design and a burning desire to live in a more connected way with the land, I was curious about what solutions permaculture had to offer. After a long journey traveling and living abroad, I was tired of moving. When I landed at RDI, I knew I had found a unique place - but I did not know how transformational the next three years of my life would be.
I lived on site, beginning a 4-Seasons Permaculture course and loving the beauty of the valley and the lifestyle. After a month, I felt a deep calling to participate in RDNA. While living in Thailand the year before, I had made a commitment to myself and to the Earth; I was going to make the necessary changes I needed in my life to be the change I wished to see in the world. My time at RDI was what gave me what I needed to make that commitment a reality; tools to design my life, the landscape, communities and cultures to be thriving and vibrant places where we all live in connection to one another and to the Earth. Some of these specific tools I gathered were: permaculture as a way of life, how to bioremediate our inner landscape and design a life you love, how to be of service to the land and to your community, a sense of true stewardship, personal and leadership development, an organizational structure rooted in peace making, and nature awareness tools to harness a deeper and more satisfying relationships.
As my personal soil began to clear, I healed deep wounds and made great strides in planting seeds within our local communities to make environmental, educational, and organization changes that aligned them with a deeper purpose.
Through my leadership project in the Ecology of Leadership with James Stark and Christopher Kuntszch, I articulated my personal life vision, deepened my skills in designing my life and found balance in my personal "core routine" practices.
A few months later I was offered an opportunity to step into my vision by becoming the assistant director for The Center for Community Empowerment, Inc., which in September 2009 moved me to Jasper, Indiana, where I now reside. The Center’s mission is to strengthen community vitality through collaboration and by sharing our skills in sustainable living, permaculture/organic gardening, personal and community growth, and healing arts. These 'before' pictures of the lower garden and below shows our 'phase one' progress. We dug contour swales, are preparing the soil for spring planting and have staked out where the greenhouse will be.
Please visit our website to find out more! We are currently taking applications for our apprenticeship program (starting March/April 2010) that focuses on permaculture, organic farming and gardening.
In addition to my work at The Center, I personally have a Holistic Life Coaching practice that aids people in deep inquiry of their personal ecology, connecting them to their deeper purpose and helping them design a life they love and deserve. I am a group leader for What’s Your Tree and do permaculture design and land use planning Consulting. If you or anyone you know may benefit from these services, or if you want to collaborate, please contact me.
RDI Courses Completed
Advanced Permaculture Design with Robyn Francis - July 2009
Ecology of Leadership - 2008-9
RNDA – Cultural Mentoring Program 2007-8
Regenerative Design & Nature Awareness (RNDA) – Essentials program 2006-7
Geoff Lawton’s Advanced Permaculture - July 2007
Natural Building Workshop- June 2007
Four Seasons Permaculture Design - 2006-07
Art of Mentoring - 2006, 2007, 2008
Andy Webster
Regenerative Design and Nature Awareness Program (RDNA) 2006-2007
RDNA Cultural Mentoring Program 2007-2008
Art of Mentoring 2006, 2007, 2008
Bird Language Weeklong Intensive 2008
Keyline Design with Darren Doherty 2007
Permaculture Design Course with Permaculture Institute of Northern California (PINC) 2003
At the end of the RDNA Cultural Mentoring Program, my second year with the RDNA program, I was faced with what I found to be the most challenging part of the program. For two years I spent a chunk of each week with all of my friends going on adventures in the coastal hills, installing elements of permaculture designs, learning the language of the birds, learning an incredibly unique set of facilitation skills from the cultural mentoring model that can be used in working in and with community, telling stories and playing music by the fire at night, and more. We had the opportunity to work with the most respected teachers in permaculture, nature awareness and cultural mentoring, and the ecology of leadership. It was a rich and fertile time for me. But the time had come for me to leave the program, and I was now faced with the challenge of how to integrate all I had learned into the life I lived outside of class.
I started Waking Water Designs to offer and to fully use the skill set I’ve gained over my whole life to my community! Waking Water Designs is an ecological design, installation, and maintenance company that believes in seeing through the lens of water as a foundation for ecological design. We call ourselves an Ecological Design company because permaculture design itself is a practice of applied ecological thinking. We believe fully in permaculture as a design system for making decisions based on earth care ethics and principles drawn from the observation of natural systems. Whether we are designing how to increase the health, vitality, beauty, and productivity of your property through harvesting water in your landscape, or working on a creative carpentry project such as the entry way in the photo, earth care ethics and the permaculture principals are at our core.
As ambassadors of regenerative design into our communities, we also believe strongly that how we carry our message is just as important as the message itself. We believe in honest, clear communication to help you determine your needs and goals so that we can design and install a system that fully meets your criteria and fits into your life.
Aside to running Waking Water Designs I am also passionate about patiently mentoring people of all ages into their own skill sets. In the summer you might catch me guiding youth in adventures along a local creek, watch out for mud balls! Another time you can find me working with a nature-based youth mentoring organization teaching hand skills through a knife and leather sheath making project. Or more currently you can find me partnering with a local non-profit Conexions to teach a water harvesting workshop series called Waking Waters: Guiding Your Land in Stewardship Through Responsibly Harvesting Water.
RDI has prepared me to walk humbly and firmly on a path of living and teaching earth stewardship and regenerative living practices. I am looking for more people to partner with in the stewardship of their land. Please contact me at wakingwaterdesigns@gmail.com if you see a way for us to work together in the future.
Larissa Conte and Ian MacLaird
Current RDI course:
RDNA Cultural Mentoring Program 2008-2009
Courses completed with RDI:
Regenerative Design & Nature Awareness Program (RNDA) 2007 – 2008
Art of Mentoring 2007, 2008
Bird Language Weeklong Intensive 2008
Ian MacLaird and Larissa Conte are good friends and co-creators who met in their first year of RDNA in 2007. Along with five classmates and input from the Bolinas Community Planning Board, they produced a 20-year regenerative design for the town of Bolinas that supports the current formation of a new town plan. Since then, they continue to explore their vision for a worldwide network of vibrant, self-sufficient transition towns and communities grounded in a culture of mentoring and peacemaking by creating the change they wish to see in their home community. Ian, a Bolinas native, and Larissa, a resident since 2007, weave regenerative design, nature connection, cultural mentoring, peacemaking, and fun into each of their interrelated community regeneration projects. Their main projects in Bolinas include the Regenerative Youth Project, the Bolinas-Stinson Youth Foundation, fostering intergenerational community connections, home permaculture consultations and gardening, and serving on the Bolinas Community Planning Board.
The Regenerative Youth Project (RYP) is a nature-based leadership program for 14 to 21 year olds, which the two designed and launched as a pilot youth program through RDI this past October. Ian (B.A. UC Santa Cruz) and Larissa (B.S., M.S. Stanford University) designed RYP with the goal of mentoring teens in living as a part of nature and living purposefully. During the biweekly overnights within the 8-month course, participants encounter opportunities to expand their awareness and deepen their relationships through core routines like: nature immersion & connection, storytelling, wildcrafting, survival skills, art, tracking, music, games, and one-on-one mentoring. “Walking with the young people of RYP while on their journey and witnessing the growth they are welcoming into their lives are among my greatest inspirations and sources of hope for the future,” said Larissa. By offering teens an opportunity to connect more deeply to nature, to their community, and to their true selves, Ian and Larissa are applying what they have learned at RDI to mentor and inspire the next generation of leaders.
If you would like to support the continuation of RYP this year and into the future, please send a tax-deductible donation to RDI to help fund this amazing youth program.
Also, if you are interested in learning about the design and curriculum of RYP or hosting a presentation of their community work in Bolinas, please contact Ian (pleasewriteian@hotmail.com) and Larissa (lbconte@gmail.com) about sharing their work and programs with your community.
Devin Slavin
Courses Completed: Permaculture Design Course 2003, Regenerative Design & Nature Awareness Program 2005-06/2006-07, Advanced Courses with David Holmgren and Geoff Lawton, Art of Mentoring.
Really, the benefits of my experience with RDI can’t be fully described here. They are so diverse and rich it would take much too long – reaching into every aspect of my life.
That said, through courses at RDI, I learned how to design and carry out solutions to the myriad of issues we currently face - through a process that was both empowering and transformative.
The Nature Awareness aspect of the RDNA course takes the phrase “listening to the land” and roots it in a deep and ever-growing knowledge of place – which is critical for every ecological designer. Then, through Regenerative Design, we reflect our understanding of natural systems in building the physical environments that yield abundance while rejuvenating the land. We do all this with more than just ourselves in mind: for all people and all our relations - for the generations to come.
I now own and run the permaculture design business Abundance In Balance Design (abundanceinbalance.com) and have co-founded the Grow Food Party Crew – a model for establishing local food abundance and building community in every neighborhood throughout the world. Here's a YouTube Video about how the Grow Food Party Crew works. Or you can read about it in the news right here!
For more info about the Grow Food Party Crew: growfoodpartycrew@gmail.com
To contact Devin: Devin@abundanceinbalance.com
Jessy Servi
Courses completed with RDI:
- Regenerative Design & Nature Awareness (RNDA), first and second year, 2006 - 2008
- Art of Mentoring, 2006-7
- Four Seasons Permaculture Design, 2006-07
- Geoff Lawton’s Advanced Permaculture, 2007
- Natural Building Workshop, 2007
Before coming to the Regenerative Design Institute I knew little about Permaculture or Nature Awareness. With a B.S. degree in Interior Design I studied and utilized the design process, though found my creativity to be limited and my profession disconnected from earth stewardship. Feeling unfulfilled, I set out in search, traveling internationally for three years before landing at Commonweal garden in August of 2006. Through living and working in the garden and through classes at RDI, I was shown solutions to move through life engaged, connected and making positive changes to my health and happiness, to my community, and to our planet!
RDI has given me tools to step onto my life path; helping me to become an assured mentor, a leader in my community, and an advocate for the change I believe in. (As well as the follow through needed to make the change happen!) I have taken the permaculture principles and ethics as a way of life and have grown my skills as a designer and a gardener. I am now successfully building and maintaining relationships with the understanding that nature is my greatest teacher. I also now have tools to tend my own “inner garden;” and know what it feels like to be moving from creativity and walking lightly with integrity.
Presently, I live in Bolinas where I am actively building community. I am part of the Bolinas Community Planning Group, researching viable solutions to implement for building a strong and resilient community. One of my focus areas is alternative housing options and I am also working with the Bolinas Community Land Trust (BCLT), a non profit organization dedicated to creating and sustaining affordable housing in Bolinas. (http://www.bolinaslandtrust.org/) I am passionate about the cohousing model and transforming the concept of neighborhood to be a viable community environment where people are continually building relationships with each other and with their environment. In my ideal model the “neighborhood” or community would be grounded in Permaculture ethics and principles and would seek to fulfill its needs (ie, energy, food, water, economics, transportation, etc.) in the most regenerative ways possible.
In the summer of ’07, inspired by Geoff Lawton, Dustin Kahn and I called together a meeting of Marin county based “permies.” Since then the creation of Permaculture Marin was formed, a local group that is collaborating with local communities to teach and apply the principles and practices of permaculture as a means of furthering the development of regenerative ecologies, economies and communities. I am on the steering committee of Permaculture Marin and you can sign up for our news letter on our website www.permaculturemarin.org (the site is still under construction though)
I have also started a Regenerative Living Designs business, consulting and designing for home scale permaculture. I am working with West Marin Commons on a “Community Permaculture and Food Forest Garden” in the heart of Point Reyes Station and coordinate fundraising events, such as Barn Dances.
It is my dream and vision to bridge the interior world with the exterior world through applying permaculture design systems to community, creating vibrant sustainable living centers where we as a species are living harmoniously, thriving and connected to the earth, to it’s resources, to our food sources and to each other. Please feel free to contact me with any insights, inspirations or thoughts you are called to share. jessyservi@gmail.com
Doniga Markegard
Courses Completed with RDI:
- Permaculture Design Course, Skywater, 2002
- RDI year-long apprenticeship 2004
- Additional advanced permaculture courses with special guests at RDI
The Regenerative Design Institute helped me the tools necessaryto bring Permaculture into my own community. I am partnering with the non-profit Conexions and launching our first annual Permaculture Design Course this summer at Tunitas Creek Ranch in Half Moon Bay, CA. As a part of the program with RDI, I completed a Bachelors Degree in Sustainable Community Development from Prescott College, Arizona. In order to take my design to the next level, I am currently pursuing my certificate and license in Landscape Architecture at University of California Berkeley Extension 's cutting edge program which focuses on sustainability in the built environment.
You can visit the San Francisco Exploratorium listening exhibit, or the website, to see a video on some of my wildlife tracking work as well as visit the interactive listening exhibit where I lead visitors to the museum through a sensory experience of moving through nature. I currently own and operate Designs by Doniga , consulting on projects in land management, erosion control, organic gardening, Permaculture, wildlife, renewable energy, natural building and native species restoration. Most recently my husband, Erik, and I started Markegard Family Grass-Fed , a business that focuses on providing locally born, raised and processed beef for the community.
I have an immense passion for the natural world and helping others live a life of sustainability and balance with the Earth and all living things by leading a life of example where my own actions are deliberated into the health of the future generations.
