2024 SKIP: Skills to Inherit Property
Early Bird Tickets now on sale (only until January 31, 2024)
About SKIP:
SKIP is a curriculum of experiences you can complete to prove you can do permaculture. While a PDC teaches you how to do permaculture design and analysis, SKIP is hands-on. You are making things.
When you complete several things, you earn a badge. Sixteen badges will make you PEP1 certified. After several years of progress, you can be PEP3 or PEP4 certified. At that point you are basically self-sufficient and can prove it. Many older homesteaders don't want their property to turn into a strip mall or subdivision. This program will connect qualified candidates with those landowners so you can skip the rat race and skip the debt.
Feel of the Event:
In this program, you will gain and demonstrate new skills. It isn't about training, classroom time or lengthy discussion. It's about pounding out actual projects. This event will be heavily focused on giving attendees the ability to complete badges. It's our third event like this.
There will be a guide/facilitator for all the planned work. The attendees will be focused on a given task for each time slot. If they complete it quickly, there is time to complete additional badges. If they want to take their time, that is fine, but they may not complete as many badges during the event.
Daily Schedule
This is the rough schedule. There are currently two tracks to choose from.
Day 0 (July 16th, the day before the event starts):
Arrival and Getting Settled In
Arrival: Airport pickups - 10am to 5pm. Arrival by car: 1pm to 5pm. Register and settled in. Please plan to arrive within this window of time. 5pm Dinner and Orientation
Sleep: Try to get plenty of rest. We start early and you have a full day jam-packed with information tomorrow.
Day 1-3:
Track 1- Gardening & Roundwood
hugels, 3 scoops with an excavator, mallets and coat hooks, chop and drop, dry peg project
Track 2 - Homesteading, Natural Building & Earthworks
rockjack, sealed pond test, back up a trailer, low grade cob fill between logs in a wofati, move dirt with a tractor, eliminate pot hole, whitewash a 4x8 area
On Wednesday evening there will be a presentation on Sheep to Clothing
Day 4-5
Track 1-Roundwood & Woodland
3 log bench, build junkpole fence, berm scaffold, finish stuff and make shakes
Track 2 - Natural Building & Earthworks
create 12 adobe bricks 12x6x3, add trail to berm/hugel, improve a berm/hugel, dry stack wall
On Friday evening there will be a presentation on cutting down trees.
Day 6 & 7: On Your Own!
You can work on BBs by yourself or just enjoy the great outdoors!
Day 8 & 9
Track 1-Dimensional Woodworking & Woodland
cut live and limb, wood burned sign, peel, 2 swanson projects (4 options), cut dead, limb, maybe buck
Track 2 - Animal Care, Food Prep & Foraging
Intro to Food Prep (rice 2 ways, eggs, dehydrator), canning, make seed balls, habitat and animal care
Day 10 & 11
Track 1-Woodland & Metalworking
cut dead, limb, kindling cracker, buck/split/stack
Track 2 - Tool Care & Textiles
sharpen tools, pillow, make a wedge-style handle, twine
Day 12
Track 1- Metalworking
kindline cracker, rmh scoop
Track 2 - Textiles
patch & dam, basket at the river
Badge Math:
The planned/supervised activities during the event should earn the majority of 9 badges. Pre-work and spare time activities will complete those badges. Exceptional attendees could earn up to 5 more badges in their spare time.
The SKIP Track during the Jamboree that precedes this event is aimed at completing 8 more badges. By attending both events you have the distinct possibility of achieving PEP1 certification.
Daily Schedule:
7:00am – breakfast
8:00am – summary of the day
8:30am – session 1
10:00am – session 2
noon – lunch
1:00pm – session 3
3:00pm – session 4
5:00pm – cleanup
6:00pm – dinner
7:00pm – evening presentations
9:30pm to 6:00am – quiet time
Instructors
Mike Haasl
Instructor
Mike Haasl is a mechanical engineer, woodworker, blacksmith, and permaculture homesteader in northern Wisconsin. He constructed a sweet greenhouse, builds with pallets and upcycled material, and experiments with compost heat. He is developing a demonstration site for permaculture homesteading, and is collaborating to create the SKIP program.
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.
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.
Sean Phillip
Instructor
Jae Gruenke
Instructor
Sean is a returning SKIP attendee from California on the path toward a more productive and sustainable lifestyle. Sean aspires to one day manage a homestead integrating permaculture practices, and purposely connects with others pursuing similar goals. This year he will be volunteering to assist Paul, Mike, and Opalyn to facilitate the events at SKIP 2023.
Jae Gruenke is a Feldenkrais practitioner and lifelong forager who loves permaculture for giving her a way to apply systems thinking to growing things, and to create a "garden" she can forage in. She lives in Salt Lake City, where she just completed a permaculture design course and is converting the lawn and flowerbeds of her new home into a permaculture garden and mini-food forest. She believes skills are among the most valuable things a human can have. She's a returning SKIP attendee looking forward to assisting Paul, Mike, and Opalyn this summer.
Tickets
Early Bird Tickets now on sale (only until January 31, 2024)
Regular priced tickets from February 1, 2024 ($2250)
SKIP: Skills to Inherit Property
July 15th - 26th, 2024
Paul will provide three simple meals a day at no charge, but food is not included with your ticket. If you have special dietary needs/desires, you might want to bring your own food and use our rocket cook stoves, ovens, solar ovens and other cooking contraptions.
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