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Affinity Circles

Workshops at the Permaculture Gathering are organized into Affinity Circles.  Affinity Circle topics are proposed during the Open Space Planning on Friday.  The person who proposes these topics can be an expert on subjects or a novice seeking help.  Also these circles can be organized to facilitate collaboration or accomplishing a hands-on project at the gathering.

Open Space

Open Space is a way to format a group meeting, retreat or conference that generates communication, collaboration, innovation, and other solutions to issues, challenges, transitions and opportunities. Participants emerge from the process invigorated, refreshed, proud of their individual and collective accomplishments – and most importantly in action toward measurable results. It is a process in which every voice is heard and every issue is addressed and acted upon. It always works. Open Space is an interactive process -- participants meet in concurrent and overlapping mini-discussions around a theme or an issue, across departmental, hierarchical or historically opposite lines. The cross-pollination of moving from group to group and topic to topic in a non-linear way allows participants to jump quickly from familiar ways of thinking into innovation and action. The use of Open Space has been effective since the mid-1980's in a diversity of settings, cultures and countries. The method has been used by communities working towards peace, tribal and governmental leaders planning land use, community advocates and local government designing literacy programs, conference organizers holding conferences in this format, board members charting the future, architects designing pavilions for the Olympics, an entire town having a simultaneous discussion town meeting, and community workers helping communities rebuild and heal after times of war. This tool can be utilized by groups of 5 to over 2000 and the dynamics and the results are always the same: input from stakeholders at all levels, new ways of thinking and working, large amounts of work done rapidly, bringing perceived competitors together on issues and projects, organizational flexibility, interdepartmental or intercommunity teamwork, a sense of accomplishment and a feeling of passion and energy for the challenges ahead. Guidelines for Open Space - The rules are simple, although setting up the parameters for a meeting or conference in Open Space is based on the theories of complexity, self-organization and open systems. Open Space is designed to simulate that natural way people find each other and share ideas in all different cultures and countries. It is also based on the understanding that there is a great amount of wisdom and experience in any gathered group of people - that we are all 'experts' and can all contribute - a truly democratic process. — Steve Cochran

Teachers and Class List for SEPG 2025

Workshops

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Friday
Plant Walk

Friday 1:30-3:30

CoreyPine Shane, Marc N. Williams & Peggy Kaase Malone 

  • CoreyPine is founder of Blue Ridge School of Herbal Medicine. He is author of a new book, called Southeast Medicinal Plants.

  • Marc has over 24 years of experience teaching hundreds of classes on Plants to thousands of people. He also has an online class called Botany in a Day.

  • Peggy is a kitchen herbalist, co-owner of Bellyfull Plants, an edible & medicinal plant nursery, & farmsteader practicing permaculture with her husband, Otter.

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Permaculture 101

Friday 1:30-3:30

Allie Mason and Sedona Lewis 

  • Allie Mason has been teaching permaculture for the last 10 years across a variety of settings from university classrooms and farms to off-grid ecological education centers in Central America, passing on what she has learned from several PDC’s, her teacher training and apprenticeship with Jude Hobbs, and personal work experiences tending land and running an ecological design firm in the Carolinas. Allie is now managing a project in Leicester, NC, Long Branch Environmental Education Center, that is 1250 acres of conserved forest and 150 acres of trails and cultivated land. Nothing steals her heart like good dirt, the season’s first harvest of a crop, or tending to loved ones and community with native medicinals and folk fairy tales.

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    Sedona hails from Colorado where she spent her childhood barefoot in the garden. Permaculture first appeared in her world while studying horticultural science at university; she has gone on to work on several permaculture farms, apprentice at Rancho Mastatal, and study with Jude Hobbs. Now she is living in Appalachia, still barefoot in the garden. 

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Bio-Char

Friday 1:30-3:30

Gred Gross

  • Gred has been an early adopter in the Biochar movement and will be joined by Patryk Battle who has many years experience with growing vegetables using biochar

 

Saturday​
Mushroom Walk

Saturday 9:30-11:30 

Alan Muskat 

  • Shrooming with Philosoforager, stand-up comedian and epicure of the obscure. Alan’s company, No Taste Like Home, has been doing foraging tours for over 30 years.

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Bug Walk

Saturday 9:30-11:30 

Richard McDonald Patryk Battle & Cindy Fowler

  • Doctor McBug, Richard worked with NCDA as the bug specialist for many years and now has his own insect company.

  • Patryk Battle has been a permaculture activist most of his life, who ran Living Web Farms in Mills River, NC. Patryk has taught the Bug Walk with Richard at this Gathering for years.

  • Cindy has been a children's school teacher for over 30 years. She is also co-owner of Peaceful Valley farm with her husband, Ken.

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Compassionate Communication, Permaculture & Sustainable Relationships

Saturday 9:30-11:30

Steve Torma

  • Steve has been teaching Compassionate Communication, also known as Nonviolent Communication, for decades as an essential component of creating resilient and sustainable communities.

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The Ins & Outs of Community

Saturday 9:30-11:30

Valerie E. Naiman 

  • Valerie was a founder of Earthaven Eco-village & has taught workshops on starting communities.

 

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Affinity Circles

Many more will be created by fellow attendees (like you) during Open Space!

SATURDAY
Water

Saturday 2:30-4 

Robert A. Eidus

  • Robert is the Land steward at Eagle Feather Organic farm & nursery and has taught a class on Water for many years, which is also on his YouTube channel

 

Mushroom Walk

Saturday 4-5:30 

Ken Crouse

  • Ken is one of the region’s most knowledgeable mycologists, a Wilkes County native, naturalist, herbalist, and farmer at Peaceful Valley Gardens with his wife, Cindy.

 

Storytelling

Saturday Night 7-8

Doug Elliott 

  • Doug is well known for his story, song and lore celebrating the natural world. He is the author of a number of books and has won awards at the Storytelling contest in Tennessee.

 

SUNDAY
Intuitive Dowsing

Sunday 9:30-11

Lee R Barnes

  • Lee is an Intuitive dowser and will offer students a gift of dowsing rods to take home. He also is the Founder/Seed Saving Educator/Activist at Southeastern Seed and Plant Share.   

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Qi Gong

Sunday 9:30-11

Otter Malone

  • Otter has been teaching Qi Gong for 30 years, is a web wizard for the PermaWeb, and is co-owner of Bellyfull Plants Nursery with his wife, Peggy.

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