2023 Permaculture Technology Jamboree

Chris McClellan

Instructor

Uncle Mud (aka Chris McClellan) raises free-range, organic children in the wilds of northeast Ohio. Between building things out of mud and junk he writes for Mother Earth News Magazine and teaches simple DIY skills at workshops and fairs.

Paul Wheaton

Host/Instructor

Paul Wheaton, The Duke of Permaculture, is an author, producer, and certified advanced master gardener. He has created hundreds of youtube videos, hundreds of podcasts, multiple DVDs, and written dozens of articles and a book. As the lead mad scientist at Wheaton Labs, he's conducted experiments resulting in rocket stoves and ovens, massive earthworks, solar dehydrators and much more. 

Michael Otten

Instructor

"Michael Otten (Stoic the Dirt Hippy) is a traveling sustainable developer with a passion for earthen building and passive solar design."

Lisa Orr

Lisa Orr is a potter in Massachusetts working to create a Permaculture Pottery Paradise on her property with winter warmth supplied by two rocket mass heaters.  She is determined to create and refine a rocket kiln and spread the gospel of smokeless + low wood pottery firing throughout the land. Her pottery pieces promote ideas of nutrient cycling and other permaculture values.

James 

Juczak

James is an author/lecturer on topics such as self-reliance, true sustainability, building off-grid energy systems and mortgage-free housing. He has had numerous articles published; his book "The High Art and Subtle Science of Scrounging, 2nd ed." is currently available and he is presently writing several other books. He has been dubbed "The King of Scrounge". Jim has taught energy, solar certification and electronics as an adjunct professor at three colleges. He has also worked as a Community Energy Educator in 10 northern New York counties. He also brought skills to Kandahar, Afghanistan where he worked as a civilian contractor with the US Army's 10th Mountain Brigade teaching appropriate technologies to the US and Afghan armies as well as the local civilian population. Jim lives with his wife, Krista, in their round, cordwood and papercrete home on the property where they have established an off-grid intentional community. He is an EMT and an adjunct professor at SUNY Jefferson where he teaches the NABCEP Solar Installers course.

Opalyn Rose

Instructor

Opalyn Rose has been exploring a truly raw-material life while stewarding land and community in south-central Washington. Opalyn tends the sheep and the forest, transforming a fleece or a tree into not only yarn and lumber but clothing and snowmen too.  She brings her love of that transformation to the classroom sharing her skills while helping you develop yours.

Austin Durant

Instructor

Austin Durant has been playing with his food his whole life, and fermenting it for over ten years. In 2011, he created Fermenters Club with a mission: To improve people’s lives by teaching them why and how to make and enjoy fermented foods; and to create communities that are connected through their guts. He teaches classes (online courses and hands-on workshops) on many fermented food traditions such as sauerkraut, pickles, kimchi, kombucha, miso, as well as seasonal specialties. He writes and shares recipes, videos and other fermentation adventures on his blog, fermentersclub.com. An otherwise permie newbie, Austin tends to his small garden in zone 10a, urban/coastal San Diego, California and is greatly looking forward to attending his first PDC and instructing at the PTJ at the Lab this year!

Samantha Lewis

Instructor

Samantha grew up weaving and doing needle work with her mother and grandmother. After high school she bought 60 acres of Washington forest land and built an off grid homestead. She attended Wilderness Awareness School and taught youth programs there for many years. She apprenticed with educator, author, artist Heidi Bohan, learning baskets and medicinal and traditional uses of plants. She likes to make her own clothes and grow her own food, living the permaculture dream on 5000 acres of Washington prairie land where she raises Finn sheep and other animals.

Beau Davidson

Instructor

Beau is an audio engineer and music producer, and natural building contractor and consultant. Currently Beau resides on his multi-generational family farm in South Central Kansas, where he makes innovative, ecologically-contextualized structures, landscapes, and spaces out of the physical materials at hand. Currently they have an ecological research initiative to tend the borderland between philosophy and practice of resource-stewardship, creativity, and whole-living.

Jacob Wustner

Instructor

Jacob Wustner is a second generation beekeeper born and raised in Missoula, MT.  After graduating from Northland College in 2008 with a degree in Environmental Studies with an emphasis on public policy, he moved back to Montana.  During and after college, Jacob worked in the family business, eventually starting his own.  His passion for agriculture and beekeeping has grown and he has been involved in a few different beekeeping operations. Spending more than 10 seasons in California almond pollination, his experience with honey bees and commercial agriculture has driven him to seek new ways of beekeeping and growing food.