Arriving thirty strong, equipped with cameras, notebooks and perspectives freshly shuffled by a week of holistic earth care instruction, OAEC's permaculture class toured the Energy Farm. They came a little after ten and over the next two hours engaged in a participatory dance throughout the small suburban site. President Julian Darley addressed the students as they surrounded the front "yard", now in full bloom with broccoli, millet, basil, peppers, and many other beneficial plants.

He spoke about the philosophy guiding the Energy Farm Network and the urgent need to relocalize our food and fuel production. Darley challenged the students with problems about bio fuels produced using industrial agriculture citing the huge amount of land and oil that it takes to grow and process these crops. In his brief fifteen minute intro he gave the students some context related to peak oil and the adaptation process we face in this lifetime, calling this time the "great transition."

Brought by Brock Dolman, permaculture elder and master instructor, this tour was special because it was a large group, very well informed and keen to learn about and address the deeper challenges of such an ambitious project. After Julian finished, we divided the group. Half went on tour of the grounds and the other half engaged in mini design charrettes. After forty minutes the groups switched.

We created four design charrettes aimed helping the students practice their site analysis and design skills. Each charrette focused on a zone of the property. The four charrettes were called the Fukuoka forage forest, zone one patio, sixteen square foot garden bed, and water.

The “Fukuoka Forage Forest”, named after Japanese farmer Masanobu Fukuoka, focused on the back part of the lot under the apple trees and adjacent to the fence. The students came up with several good ideas to implement in the zone furthest from the house: cob benches for seating in the gazebo, an outdoor kitchen to process food, a cob oven, an outdoor shower, more worm bins, incorporating bees, temporary fencing for chicken forage, mushroom cultivation, introduction of ducks to the system, a possible pond under the largest apple tree, birdhouses, creation of roof structure over the chicken coop for roof catchment and shelter for birds.

The zone one patio refers to the area closest to the house in the back. Currently, hot and inhospitable with crushed rock and concrete, the area is relatively neglected considering the proximity to the house. The students focusing on this area envisioned; an arbor on the porch, a trellis of kiwi and grapes, planting a fast growing shade tree, breaking up all the concrete except under the patio and doors, using broken concrete for pavers to make paths, using the fence to grow vines on, cultivate bamboo, sandbox in corner with cob walls with planter pockets, planning a soft ground cover, hanging pots from the eves, building a culinary herb bed.

The charrettes that focused on water produced an assessment of the incoming water and cited some of the future tasks for addressing the issue further. They mentioned: municipal water input, runoff from street and driveway, conservation techniques, the need to get an accurate square footage of the every roof on property to calculate water catchment capacity, a need to find the highest elevation on roof for downspout, a need to find a place for storage tanks, how to handle wastewater, and they looked at ways to “slow it, spread it, and sink it.”

We currently have six pocket gardens that are four feet by four feet. We challenged the students to create planting plans that focused on a theme. One group chose to create a plan with a medicinal focus, and the other focused on companion planting with a 60 % calorie, 30 % carbon, and 10% vitamin ratio. The group that keyed in on medicinal plants decided to sow in a spiral pattern with echinacea in the center followed by chamomile, lavender, jewelweed, nettles, mullein, ginseng, purslane, plantain, yarrow, selfheal, valerian, comfrey, ginger, garlic, and dandelion. The 60/30/10 group decided to plant in a symmetrically opposing pattern of strawberries, spinach and lettuce, calendula, pumpkin, amaranth, and scarlet runner beans on trellises.

The hour and forty five minutes was extremely productive as it exposed the students to the desire to create an energy farm network and it also provided some key input as to future improvements of the land here in Sebastopol. Everyone seemed to leave energized and motivated and it was great preparation for the community tours on Friday the 28^th and Sunday the 30^th. In closing, Julian reminded the group that in order to adjust to the coming changes we need to “reduce consumption and produce locally” and that these two things are inevitably intertwined because as we begin to produce locally we will reduce our consumption and as we reduce our consumption because of peak oil we will have to produce locally. May our net work guide the way.