We did it! Hurray!

We've all been busy over the past couple of days, working in groups to complete the survey, analysis and design for our assigned permaculture sites.  Then we had to design a presentation to show and tell an audience about the process we went through.

Now, one day after the official closing ceremony of the first Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course in Lebanon, I am proud to present the first batch of permaculturists graduating right here in Lebanon:

1st PDC Graduates in Lebanon
Saidoun (Jezzine caza), May 18-31, 2014

• Bassam Al Khawand
  
• Ghassan Al Salman
  
• Tony Chahine
  
• Jihad Chanehsaz
  
• Joey El-Khoury
  
• Dana El-Sayyed
  
• Maya Karkour
  
• Salim Khalil
  
• Sarah-Lili Yassine
  
• and myself, Alexis Baghdadi
  

What a fantastic group! Thank you for all your energy and enthusiasm; you made this an unforgettable adventure!

And to our wonderful instructors, Klaudia and Betty, we owe you so much and we really value your knowledge and your kindness. 

The permaculture seed has been planted in Lebanon!

Now the real work begins: to put the learning of permaculture and permaculture design into practice.

A PDC is not any regular boring course; it is an organic thing that takes a life and rhythm of its own and adapts to meet the participants' needs and the challenges along the way.

Today's "program" shaped up to be an interesting melting pot of topics. First, we talked a little about the flaws in the current prevailing consumer system from production to waste in most "developed" countries. The Waste Hierarchy pyramid ranks the different ways of treating waste from the worst (dumping and landfills) to better solutions like composting, reusing and reducing consumption, up to prevention and elimination (no waste). Rita Khawand from SOILS then showed us a beautiful selection of her own hand-crafted creations made from waste, as well as the tote bags made from fabric scraps by the women of Saidoun last month in the capacity-building sewing workshop we had organized.

We then talked about trees and their many functions from an ecological standpoint (climate control, erosion prevention, habitat for birds and small creatures, windbreaks, etc.) as well as a human one, covering building materials, comfort and wellbeing, inspiration for art and many other beneficial uses - have you ever hugged a tree?

This brought us to agro forestry, which concerns growing food in forests and grazing animals while preserving the forest aspect of a land and harvesting its natural resources. This is most effective in forest edges where plant succession is apparent and needs to be accelerated and maintained. The idea is to make use of stacking (the different levels of growth) and mimic this dynamic to encourage bilateral relations between forests' productivity and agricultural yields. Guilds in nature consist of different plants (trees, shrubs, herbs) in symbiosis that can serve as model in designing a forest garden. Other strategies include alley cropping and combining animals with forests.

For the practical session today, we got a fun taste of cob building. We walked to the nearby village of Hidab where Marie, a local woman, has preserved a technique of building small stoves and ovens out of clay and straw. As soon as we got there, all mud broke loose! We thought yesterday's soil experiments were messy, but we hadn't seen anything yet! All of us dug into the wet clay and straw, and started molding individual U-shaped open stoves the old-school way. Working together, we also built a large model designed to hold the metal plaque for the traditional Lebanese saj bread. Marie said she'd let our creations dry overnight then send them over the next day. We just can't wait to start cooking on these babies!

Stay tuned for more fun in store for us tomorrow when we talk about natural building! Plus, we're having visitors over!

Learning about permaculture zones turned out to be really cool! It felt like being a child again, looking over the map of a terrain and letting your imagination run free to decide the best place for all the exciting elements we can use in permaculture: the chicken coop, fruit trees, vegetables, the compost heap, the cattle, etc.

After we got a little carried away with designing our interactive 3D map and making grandiose plans, Klaudia helped us take a step back and put things into perspective with the mind-mapping technique. This came in handy when we started thinking a little more rationally about the design for a kitchen garden (Zone 1 in permaculture) and the types of vegetables, water harvesting systems and compost location we should have close to the house (Zone 0) in this zone.

Here, we should mention that we have been eating like kings since the beginning of this PDC thanks to the cooking skills and the kindness of Hoda (Em Rabih), a lovely lady from Saidoun who has made it her mission to fill our bellies with the best she can conjure in her kitchen.

So it is with sated appetites that we once again went back to our learning discussions and the subject of the afternoon: Integrated Pest Management (IPM). When you opt for IPM, you resort to a number of strategies that replace spraying when it comes to controlling pests. The starting point is having a healthy soil and healthy plants by providing enough natural nutrients and increasing crop diversity, and, ultimately, cooking up some liquid natural pesticides.

Our friends from Saidoun and nearby Rimat joined us again for Betty's interesting demonstration of natural pesticides. Her recipe consisted of dried chili mixed with garlic or onions in water. After 24 hours of maceration, this solution should be diluted in water and sprayed over the pests attacking a plant. Afterwards, Betty explained how to start seeds in pots or planters, as well as ways of preserving seeds and labelling them.

Tomorrow we'll go into more details about water harvesting and other garden aids.

The second day of the PDC revolved around the guiding principles in permaculture and becoming familiar with some of those principles such as microclimates, growth in succession, and cooperation among plants or between plants and insects in natural ecosystems.

Permaculture principles are guidelines that define a permaculture design that is respectful of all elements of an ecosystem. For that, it is essential to understand some basic notions of climate (long-term weather patterns), weather (daily or nightly changes in temperature and humidity levels). Betty was able to make what could have been a simple geography lesson into a really interesting and interactive session.

With permaculture principles in mind, Klaudia explained that designing plant or animal systems requires a specific  approach where, ideally, all needs are satisfied and all outputs are limited to positive effects. A famous example to illustrate this is known as the "permaculture chicken", but we had a chance to experience with implementing a permaculture design of our own by building a hot compost later on.

For the practical hot compost session, we were joined by a number of farmers and growers from Saidoun and the village of Rimat below it. This made for a series of challenging and entertaining Q&As during the entire session, which also helped PDC participants understand the needs of farmers, while demonstrating to them the positive outputs of hot compost. With the combined efforts of Betty, PDC participants and the villagers, we raised a cubic meter of dry organic material mixed with kitchen scraps and other green "waste", as well as chicken manure to help speed up the process. After watering our creation, we let it rest and will check up on it in four days' time.

We are looking forward to tomorrow and the rest of the course, so stay tuned to discover permaculture with us.

Today was the first full day of permaculture for all 11 participants in the first PDC ever organized in Lebanon.

We are blessed with a particularly inspiring group of participants for this first PDC, and the village of Saidoun was bustling with new positive energy as they made their way across its small roads all day.

This first day set the foundation for a lively and productive atmosphere with the help of our lovely instructors Klaudia Van Gool and Betty Khoury.

For today, the main task was getting into the permaculture mindset. Number one on the list was getting ready to expand our perception and our understanding of the interconnectedness between different elements in nature. The afternoon was largely devoted to a practical observation of a forest plot and becoming attuned to the natural flow of energy around us.  

 The initial impression today was one of excitement at being part of something new and somewhat overwhelming. Most participants have a fairly good idea about permaculture and some are even experts in related fields like agricultural engineering and environmental consultancy, but there's no telling what the road ahead has in store.