Alaska’s first ever permablitz – in Anchorage!
Meet the clients, Marilyn and Mateo Fennel. They had just moved up from Tennessee and were eager to know and understand permaculture in Alaska, but had no formal training. They live in a rental house, but the owner was happy to have anything done to the property.
Two designers stepped up to the plate to attempt a design for the design contest.
When presented with the 2 designs, the clients chose to use parts of both designs so that the final turned out like this
On the morning of the blitz in June, ten people showed up to volunteer. We had a morning meeting to talk about the design and about permaculture in general and we lined out the jobs. I had thought that we would rotate through each section of the design: hugel bed, the key hole bed, and the food forest sheet mulch bed. It didn’t work that way. We all worked at laying out the sheet mulching and moving the cardboard, manure, and woodchips in the curvy design the clients wanted for the forest garden. After lunch we moved to the key hole bed and finally the hugel bed. It worked well that way.
The result was great! The clients were happy. The workers were happy. The two designers were happy with what was accomplished. At any rate, we did a fantastic job the first time around. Here are some pictures.
Hooray for the first Alaskan Permablitz – the first of many!
The original article by Cindee Karns was published on alaskapermaculture.com
Thanks to Mateo Fennel, Larissa Wright-Elson, and Cindee Karns for the pictures – you can see a bunch more here!
