Permaculture Course - Free from OSU

As of late, I've had an interest in growing vegetables and having chickens and all sorts of things. 
There are, luckily, a ton of resources available to learn about this (online, of course), a lot of them for free. There are blogs run by homesteaders, books and ebooks about such living, and I've even had a perusal around a local farm supply type store (which had 6 week old bunnies, and they were so cute!), which had a million different kinds of feed for chickens, which was all very confusing!

Something else I found, and quite timely, was a one-month course put out through Oregon State University (the Beavers one; the Ducks are University of Oregon - which was quite a difficult thing to learn growing up, seeing as I had no interest in sports to have the easy way of keeping them straight!).
The course is called Intro to Permaculture Design, and I had no idea what that meant. But, it was recommended on Reddit, through the rabbit hole of the Internet that started on r/Homestead. The course description, however, says that "Permaculture design is a method of landscape planning that can be applied to anything" and that the principles "take into account such things as how indigenous people used the land," and can be used "from a home garden or a farm to a city block or entire village." Which, let's be honest, that sounds pretty darn cool, right?!

The course is free! And available to anyone, so long as you sign up! Enrollment is open still, even!
There are videos to watch, with tons of links for extended reading. The only real "work" you have to do is do some discussion questions, and then complete a basic plan of a selected location that uses the permaculture principles (I've not gotten that far yet, so I don't know exactly how that will work, but it will be guided via video).

Obviously, being a free course, and only one month long, there's not going to be many details. However, after completing the first week's work, I can say that it is quite interesting.

The idea of using what you have, information that you can gather, and putting it all together to create a space that will work in harmony and successfully is quite enticing. Knowing how the land and environment wants to be as it is, taking that into account, and using it as best as you can - that sounds brilliant, really.
In one of the videos, it mentioned about city planning - they showed one city that is circular, with the people living in the middle, the jobs on the next-out ring, and then land for agriculture on the outskirts all around the city. That's quite smart, really. Or planning your housing locations so that it can be warmed in the winter, yet not scorching in the summer. I mean, really, that's just common sense - yet, I think a lot of city planning is more about how best to fit as much in as possible (at least that's how it looks most of the time!).

It also has the idea of making regenerative investments (a term straight from the course). It's compared to planting a fruit tree. You plant the tree, and you care for it, sure, but past that first large work investment and basic care, it will grow fruit for you each year, and as the tree grows it will produce more and more fruit each year.
This is in comparison against a generative investment (also straight from the course), which is compared to growing corn. You plant, you put in the work, you get your corn and you're done. If you want it again the next year, you have to put in all that work again.

But there's also a focus on making sure that whatever it is that you are doing isn't hurting your environment - you need that environment functioning as well as it can for it to work for you, after all. To not take more than your need, and if you do, return it, compost it, share it with others, whatever.

All in all, the course is promising to be interesting. And maybe will even help me better plan my dream garden. Because that's fun, right? And, of course, if you are interested in taking the course, I would suggest it (it's free!). It suggests 2 - 4 hours of work put into it each week, but all the resources are available at the start, so you could work it at your own timeline, and it's not graded or anything, so you aren't required to do the discussion questions if you don't want to (there's a badge-thing you get at the end if you do them, but I've no idea what that is).

Plus, all things considered, doesn't it make sense, anyway, to plant and build and grow in the ways that would give you the best results? Makes sense to me.

~ Havok

P.S. We've had birds living in our dryer vent. These birds had babies. We thought they were only in our one vent. But now there's a little baby on the ground hanging out in a different vent. I'm not sure if it fell out, but I've seen adult birds hanging out on the ground near that area, so hopefully they won't forget about the baby!
And, here's a photo, because cute little baby birds! It's all nestled in with the leaves, but you can see it's little beak open and it's little eyes! It's very skittish, as it should be, but I'm hopeful that it's parents will care for it and that it won't die from cold being on the ground. Or, that it can fly away soon!

P.P.S. And a video, because it's an awfully loud little bugger. It has since been found by adult birds, has been fed and everything, so now just hope it doesn't get lost again!

P.P.P.S. So, all of the above commotion for baby birds? This was Thursday afternoon of this week. I take a nap later in the afternoon Thursday, wake up, and the Mister tells me that the nonsense about the baby bird is sorted...he saw it out wandering around and he tried to feed it some bread but it wouldn't get close to him. Later, it was out wandering, was sitting like it was sleeping or something, only to have a larger bird swoop down and take it away. He says it was a hawk-like thing (though where these hawks are hanging out, I've no idea). So, this little baby bird may be no more.

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