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.

There's not much time to blog tonight. We've been thinking of designs and mapping our design sites almost all day, only to find out we hadn't given a thought to presentations yet!

And to make things worse, Betty isn't here anymore!

Thankfully, Klaudia has been really there for us all day, even taking on us on a short foraging expedition that proved to be hugely fun and instructive. All we did was walk some 200 meters along an small asphalt road within Saidoun, and we came across almost 20 interesting wild plant and tree species, both medicinal and edible ones! Combining the invaluable local plants savvy of Bassam Khawand and the impressive encyclopedic knowledge of Tony Chahine with Klaudia's herbal lore was quite a treat, and we had the opportunity to put some of this into practice: 4 days ago, Joey Khoury had been playing too close to some beehives and one bee had stung him in the calf and caused him a serious inflammation. A commercial treatment didn't do a thing to improve Joey's condition, but as soon as he followed Klaudia'a recommendation to chew some plantain and apply its juices on the sting area, the red swelling started subsiding!

We have to complete our designs and presentations tomorrow! So we'll talk later.

Wish us luck.

The Jlal at-Tormos organic farm proved to be a very interesting site to visit - and it gave us the chance to share a bus ride. It was an hour-long ride to Joun in the Chouf caza but it was well worth the trip.

Jlal at-Tormos is located on an arid slope that has seen extensive grazing and wildfires for a good number of years. Nestled inside a wind barrier of fir trees, Jacqueline Jreissati and Mostafa Sleiman have single-handedly regenerated the soil and planted different varieties of fruit trees and vegetables the organic way. The farm sends fruit and vegetable baskets to subscribers all year and constantly experiments with new varieties.

It was interesting for us to see some of the permaculture concepts we learned about being applied in this small spot. The famous "3 Sisters" guild of beans, corn and pumpkins was especially visible on many terraces. Betty and Mostafa traded recipes for promoting effective microorganisms as we made our way downhill to the farm's chicken coop.

After we got back to Saidoun and had a hearty lunch, we talked a little more about group dynamics and non-violent communication. We then returned to our assigned sites and continued mapping under a hot sun until dinner.

The evening was a very special one as we initiated a talking circle and really opened up to each other.

We now come to the bittersweet realization that we are three quarters into the course and we are really intent on making the best of the time we have left.

See you tomorrow.

So now we've officially embarked on the design phase of the PDC, and we couldn't wait to see the sites set up for us to design.

3 sites in Saidoun and nearby Rimat were outlined for us, including the land around the houses of Rita Khawand and Bassam Khawwand from SOILS. But before we got to go there, we talked about working in groups and understanding the dynamics of teamwork. In any group, there is a normal progression along different phases from forming to norming, storming, performing and finally, celebrating.

As the suspense mounted, Klaudia Van Gool gave us an extensive crash course in basic mapping for permaculture, refreshing in our minds lessons about geography we had learned as kids. Then we had one more practical session where our instructor Betty Khoury taught us to build an A-frame and a "Bunyip" (basically a transparent tube folded in a U-shape and filled with water to reach equal levels) to trace contours along a slope. It was quite an exciting and  challenging exercise. For Sarah Lily Yassine and Maya Karkour who are actually urban landscapists and architects, it was fun to go back to these basics in their specialization.

Finally, equipped with pen and paper, we formed 3 groups which headed for each of their designated sites with a single instruction: map, don't design. With all the possibilities that Klaudia and Betty opened for us in the past week, it was a little hard to stick to this, but we carried on.

Over the next few days, we will have more visits to our sites and gradually understand their location, soil and other specifications so we can come up with permaculture designs for them.

In the evening, several of us organized a sharing session where they demonstrated skills which could definitely be of use to us in permaculture or for recreational purposes. Bassam gave an expert presentation on grafting according to local lore, Joey El Khoury brewed some Kombucha tea with a mushroom he had brought with him from Canada, Sarah got us sketching and understanding light and shadow, then Joey and Jihad Chanehsaz got technical with photography. Then before calling it a night, Ghassam Al Salman and Salim Khalil, the "Gusleem Band", broke down playing the guitar and percussions for us. What was meant to be an hour-long session actually extended to 3 full hours of fun which we had to cut short so we'd be awake for our visit to an organic farm tomorrow.

We'll tell you all about this in our next post. For now, goodnight and good thoughts.

On Saturday we went mostly with how we were feeling, but we managed to get a lot of information and meet interesting new friends who shared their knowledge and positive energy with us.

In the morning, we were joined by Fadi Kanso, an eco-consultant and grower who only recently returned to Lebanon started growing natural food. Fadi brought with him delicious peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, tomatoes, capsicums, lettuce, thyme and mint from his garden. Together we talked about sustainable energy in an around buildings. The first step in meeting the energy requirements of a house or any other building involves a survey of its needs and available solutions in terms of feasibility, cost-effectiveness and sustainability, ideally making use of the building's placement and location, as well as locally available materials.

Klaudia then explained the inspiring ideas behind transition towns and how permaculturists, envrionment activists and other health-conscious citizens have started making the transition to more eco-friendly cities.

This brought us to talk about natural techniques of building houses, using earth, wood (even living wood!), stone, straw and even recycled materials. Our friend Nathalie Rosa Bucher also dropped in with Joseph Brakhia, a permaculturist and architect who told us about his experience in introducing people in Lebanon to permaculture. A bit further south from Saidoun, Joseph has completed a permaculture garden of 1,500 square meters with 50 different species of trees and food plants, some trees producing food. For him, seeing us hold the PDC for the first time in Lebanon - 20 years after he completed his own PDC in Australia - was an encouraging sign of hope for the growth of the movement.

For Joseph permaculture is the optimal production of food on a small piece of land, for which it is crucial to know botany, particularly local indigenous plants. “I never made a penny out of permaculture, but I made amazing friends and had great food, here in Lebanon we’re still in the preaching phase," he said.

Later in the afternoon, our PDC co-instructor Betty got all of us busy trying to produce biochar using a home-made Beaner Stove. Biochar is similar to charcoal and is an effective way to sequester carbon in the soil to enrich it. It is obtained by burning biomass in a low-oxygen environment (pyrolysis). To produce pyrolysis, we experimented with 2 soda cans in which we cut out holes and tried to burn wood using a low flame for low consumption. We met with some mitigated success but it is worth looking into the process in more detail.

Sunday was our day off where some of us took a long hike on the outskirts of the village while others joined the villagers to watch the Jezzine rallye passing through Saidoun and make new friends. It was a good opportunity to relax and slow down after an exciting first week.

Tomorrow starts the second week of the PDC and we can't wait to get started again!

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.