Social Forestry, Advanced Permaculture Course with Tom Ward

[Melanie Mindlin]

Social Forestry, Advanced Permaculture Course

6 days in the woods with Hazel aka Tom Ward

Location: Wolf Gulch Farm, Little Applegate, Southern Oregon

Presented by Siskiyou Permaculture, siskiyoupermaculture.com

This Social Forestry course will explore reconnecting with forests through ecological knowledge, the use of hand tools and woodscrafts, seasonal festivals and work cycles, childrens’ stories, pilgrimages and stewardship covenants.  We will learn ecological assessment, carbon sequestration methods, restoration forestry and the crafts and products that can be enjoyed while we are re-establishing our heart space and wonder in the woods.  

Social Forestry connects villages and communities to their forested water catchment basin.  Here in a developed industrial empire, the forests are lonely.  We have lost our sense of living with forests as friends.  Join us for underburning, forest management, coppicing, basketry and more at this hands on course. 

Registration, information, course reviews and more are on our website or contact us at siskiyoupe...@gmail.com.

Tom Ward is a long time resident of the Southern Oregon bioregion first settling here in the early 70's, and has been advising farms and teaching Permaculture for over thirty years.  He has degrees in Forestry and Botany from Syracuse University and has taught at Laney College in Oakland CA., D-Q University in Davis CA, and at Thlolego Learning Centre in South Africa among many other institutes and communities.  For the last 12 years, he has been managing a Social Forestry experimental station in Little Wolf Gulch near Ruch, OR, where he is demonstrating natural building, fuel hazard materials utilization, multiple products woods-crafting, wildlife enhancement and desert forest water management.  

Tom Ward has taught dozens of permaculture courses over the last 30 years, primarily in Southern Oregon and northern California, as well as occasional jaunts farther afield.  These include the PDC, permaculture teachers training, and advanced courses in Optical Surveying, Social Forestry and Design.  He is a frequent guest instructor for Toby Hemenway and other instructors at PDC's offered in the Northwest.  In conjunction with Siskiyou Permaculture, he teaches a weekend PDC once a years at various locations in Southern Oregon and advanced permaculture courses at his site in the Little Applegate.  He is the author of Greenward Ho! Herbal Home Remedies: An Ecological Approach to Sustainable Health.  Tom gives talks on all aspects of Permaculture with recent topics being Social Forestry, Ecological Opportunities and Constraints of the Upper Bear Creek Basin, Permaculture for the Masses, Becoming Indigenous to the Siskiyous and Envisioning a Permanent Culture in the Rogue Valley.