This course marries together a beautiful and small but productive, successful and regenerative small farm working in a UK context with Richards world-class farm design and business planning workshop that has been attended by thousands of farmers around the globe. Last year was a incedibly successful course and we have plans to make this years even better.

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We have adapted this world-renowned program to allow participants to only take 1 working week from their lives. Want to learn how to design, install and manage profitable farm scale permaculture systems?  Join us for this nine intensive days carefully crafted for those ready to learn with an internationally regarded expert and teacher in permaculture and regenerative agricultural design. This design course training is a no-nonsense approach to pragmatic and effective systems design. Richard farms and design properties for a living from one of the northern and most productive regenerative ag farms on the planet, so if you want to learn how to make it all work for yourself, you've come to the right place.

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WHAT MAKES OUR TRAINING UNIQUE?

 

Besides Richards' broad and intensive experience working as a professional designer and educator in this field for 20 years, Richard has demonstrated and documented how to make a good living from a small diverse farm.  Whilst there are many trainings of this nature out there around the world, there are very few professional educators with such rounded experience who actually make a living from production. Richard is focused on the transmission of field-based knowledge and insight, not the sharing of ideas and concepts.  He is dedicated to supporting others into farming and producing for themselves in a way that restores soils and habitats, community and local economy. His experience shows that it is clearly the 'back end', the decision-making and planning, the economics and monitoring that makes it all work. 

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This training being at Henbant Permaculture gives two strong and different models through the course and introduces elements of really meeting all the needs of a modern regenerative farm, making a profit, building soil, building biodiversity, building social capitol and enjoying it all at the same time. 

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KEY THEMES IN OUR APPROACH

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Managing Holistically 

Defining your Context is the very basis of Managing Holistically.  It is the very foundation in all our design work, as well as how we manage our farm and lives.  Farm Scale Permaculture offers principles and attitudes for designing success, but we always integrate Managing Holistically to deal with the complexity of making decisions regarding human relationships, ecology and economy.

Keyline Design 

The Scale of Permanence offers us an organisational framework for the design of larger landscapes, which we have used for many years in our work.  Our whole training program follows the same order of prioritisation with which we approach landscapes, to leave you with a coherent and intelligent approach to whole systems design. Topics include climate and biome considerations, landform and mapping, reading the landscape, understanding water in the landscape, water systems and management, trees and woody crops, access, infrastructure, integrated animal systems, soils and closed loop fertility management.

Tree and woody crops 

Agroforestry is a vital component in the future of broadacre land regeneration.  By understanding the functions of woody systems in different parts of our landscapes we can clarify the agroforestry assemblies suited to our land base.  Virtually every farm on the planet could benefit from more woody crops, and so we look at design considerations, planting and management strategies and all the additional yields woody ag offers.  

Low Cost Infrastructure development 

With an ageing farmer/ landowner population, most farmers cannot afford to get out of farming as their capital is locked up in assets.  Consequently young people wanting access to land have a hard time getting in the game.  Due to the educational aspect of our work, we specialise in low cost, scalable and modular enterprises that could run on rented land and small properties alike.  We delve into the mobile and modular infrastructure, fencing and appropriate technologies, etc,  that help make small farms work.

Integrated Animal systems 

Pasture based production is so vital to farms of the future, as there are no shorter chains of production than converting sunlight to flesh via grasses. Yet so little emphasis and understanding has been placed on grass physiology and ecology.  Diving deep into this fascinating subject, we will also gain insight into Holistic Planned Grazing and monitoring your grassland using different survey techniques.  We will also look at Pastured Egg Mobiles, Broilers and turkeys; fantastic profitable small farm enterprises that play a very important role in rekindling tired pastures and that can easily be scaled up and down accordingly.  Operating one of Europe’s lowest cost approved slaughter facilities from Ridgedale, you will also be involved with on- farm slaughter, processing and nutrient cycling.

A No-Dig approach to Market Gardening 

No-Dig represents the very best soil building approach to growing annual vegetables, and combined with BioIntensive spacings and good crop planning this makes for a fantastic small scale economically profitable enterprise.  We use innovative approaches to composting, growing microbiology as well as harvesting, storing and planning.  We will get into the back end of the planning and design considerations that reduce the workload of this intensive enterprise.  Besides a diverse variety of vegetables you'll also learn all about microgreens and intensive tunnel cultivation of tomato and cucumbers.

Closed-loop fertility

Soils are the basis of everything we are looking to create.  For us, the basic premise of regenerative agriculture is that it must be soil building.  There are many ways to capture carbon back into increasingly productive agricultures, which we cover as a theme in all the topics.  We will also explore approaches to closing fertility loops on the farm as far as possible, including topics like making your own composts, bio-fertilisers, compost teas, biochar, growing microbiology, etc.

Regenerative Enterprise 

Ultimately it is effective decision making, diligent planning and monitoring that make it all work.  In Farm Scale Permaculture we aim to observe and understand natural patterns to be able to design more effective and resilient systems.  Economic considerations are no different.  We can design enterprises that benefit all involved and marketing local food systems presents opportunities and leverage points that give us an upper edge.  Selling what you produce is half the work and so we explore CSA’s, buying clubs, farm currencies and other innovative ways to reduce the work and risk whilst building community.

 

Example structure and session breakdown.  Subject to flex according to weather/ group needs, etc

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