The 37th Annual CRMPI PDC

July 17th – 24th, 2023 in Paonia, Colorado

When you join us for CRMPI’s Permaculture Design intensive, the internationally-accredited syllabus and certificate are just the beginning of all you’ll receive.

So is the expertise of longtime permaculture veterans in nine days of personal interaction.

So is your gateway into the growing, worldwide network of permaculture designers, educators, entrepreneurs and activists who are creating a new environmental and social vision for the world.

All that is just the beginning…

We will talk about the principles and practices of creating lush, sustainable living systems in diverse climates and bioregions from coastal to arid. We talk about how you can apply these principles in designing and building your garden and home, creating and using renewable energy systems, and co-creating social and economic systems that are healthy for both the planet and its human and nonhuman beings. And we look at ways in which you can create a sustainable livelihood based on these principles.

Paonia, Colorado PDC

Registration Open

While you will spend most of your time in Paonia, you will get to visit CRMPI one or two days…
At CRMPI you don’t just get the vision of what’s possible in a permaculture future. You will learn on a campus-homestead where permaculture has been practiced for the past 30 years. We are one of the oldest established demonstration sites in the United State, with new developments continually being added!

Not only are you learning the essential concepts and practices of permaculture from a world renowned team of master teachers who imbue their work with rich depths of life wisdom…

Not only are you gaining the concepts and tools to design and engineer sustainable systems, such as forest gardens, renewable energy systems, water conservation systems, and other eco-technologies…

But you’re putting your learning to use, hands-on!

passive and active solar greenhouses…
mature indoor and outdoor forest gardens, tropical and Mediterranean…
rain water catchment and greywater systems…

You’ll not only be learning the theories…you’ll be learning the skills needed to implement them…and seeing the fertility and abundance that result from decades of applied permaculture.

When you spend just a day touring CRMPI, you walk away understanding the potential of permaculture to restore the land, heal human communities, end hunger – and transform the world.

This years Instructors!

Jerome Osentowski, Kareen Erbe, Stephanie Syson, Wind Clearwater, Elizabeth Agee, and more

**See Bios Below!

Tuition

Tuition: $1,875 – includes meals, camping (bring your own gear), and all curriculum materials.

To reserve your spot in the course please fill out the registration form and send a non-refundable $600 deposit by check (mail to CRMPI; PO Box 631; Basalt, CO 81621). We also accept payment by PayPal (to jerome@crmpi.org) with an additional fee to cover processing surcharges. For PayPal deposit, send $617.40.

Tuition paid in full before February 15th, 2023 will receive a $100 discount. Bring a friend or partner and receive $50 off each individual tuition cost.
Please note: tuition must be paid in full by July 4st 2023.

Please plan to arrive on the afternoon of July 16th to get oriented and to set up camp. Classes will run from 9am to 6pm daily. We will have a day of rest on July 21st. We encourage you to take the opportunity to explore the beautiful North Fork Valley!

Tuition also includes a copy of Jerome’s book, Forest Garden Greenhouse, which we encourage you to read before arrival. A copy of the book will be mailed to you.

Please feel free to direct any inquires or questions to jerome@crmpi.org.

To secure your spot in the course please….

>>> fill out this form <<<

*Please note: your registration in the course is not confirmed until you have sent in a deposit

and then send us cash or check, or pay online below!!

(for online payment, deposit and tuition prices include a 2.9% fee for the PayPal charge)

Puerto Rico P.D.C. February 2024

Registration Open

Thank you to everyone who made the 2022 Puerto Rico PDC such a huge success! We look forward to doing another in 2024. … join us!!

Learn to design a sustainable lifestyle + eat healthy + immerse yourself with hands-on experience in a tropical jungle, edible garden, medicinal healing herb gardens and young tropical food forest while earning your Permaculture Design Certification. This is a FAMILY FRIENDLY course.

The accommodation is BYO tenting, the food is from our farm and other local organic farmers. While the information serves as a general education in permaculture, this course offers an in-depth examination of the function of the homestead and farm and is designed to inform students who will gain the skills and design thinking to implement and manage a system. This is a very hands-on course. Mornings are usually devoted to practical applications and afternoons are dedicated to course lectures.

We will talk about the principles and practices of creating lush, sustainable living systems in climates and bioregions ranging from coastal to arid, tropical to temperate. We talk about how you can apply these principles in designing and building your garden and home, creating and using renewable energy systems, and co-creating social and economic systems that are healthy for both the planet and its human and nonhuman beings. Additionally we look at ways in which you can create a sustainable livelihood based on these principles.

You will be learning the essential concepts and practices of permaculture from a world renowned team of master teachers who imbue their work with rich depths of life wisdom.

Instructor include but not limited too…

Jerome Osentowski, CRMPI ~ Stephanie Syson, Biodynamic Botanicals ~ Michael Judd, Ecologia Design, Adrian Fielder, Colorado Mountain College.

TUITION

Tuition: $1, 800– includes meals, camping (bring your own gear), and all curriculum materials. Couples Discounts, Scholarships and more. Link Below.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO REGISTER NOW. LIMITED SPACE.

Photos from our 2021 PDC

Instructor Bios

JEROME OSENTOWSKI

A forager and permaculturist with roots in rural Nebraska, Jerome Osentowski lives in a passive solar home he built at 7200 feet above Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley. Director and founder of Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute and a permaculture designer for thirty years, he has built five greenhouses for himself and scores of others for private clients and public schools in the Rockies and beyond. He makes his living from an intensively cultivated one acre of indoor and outdoor forest garden and plant nursery, which he uses as a backdrop for intensive permaculture and greenhouse design courses.

Among his accomplishments is hosting the longest-running Permaculture Design Course in the world, now at twenty-nine years running. Jerome and Michael have also been instrumental in identifying, conserving, and propagating heritage fruit trees that have survived and borne crops for over a century in the harsh environment of the Roaring Fork Valley. Jerome’s explorations of sustainable systems and his travels for development projects have taken him to Baja, Nicaragua, Patagonia, Finland, Australia, and the Caribbean.

STEPHANIE SYSON

StephanieSyson, co-founder and Director of The Caribbean Agroforestry Institute, spends the days with her hands in the soil and her heart with the plants. She started down her Permaculture path in 2001 with an internship at Punta Mona in Costa Rica. After visiting and living at multiple Permaculture communities in Latin America she was hooked! Stephanie lived within and managed the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute for 4 years, and continues to serve on the Board of Directors as well as teaching for many of CRMPI,s courses. In that time she started the Basalt Seed Library and the Basalt Community Food Park as well as opening an herbal Product line called Dynamic Roots. After many years of farming and running her herbal product business, she decided to devote herself fully to farming medicinal herbs. Stephanie partnered with Sustainable Settings Ranch in Carbondale Colorado and opened Biodynamic Botanicals in 2015. She is a full-time farmer and educator. She has recently started 35 acre farm in Puerto Rico that combines her love of medicinal herbs, agroforestry, subsistence farming, tropical climates and ocean life with teaching and rural, large scale Permaculture Design. Stephanie is a Certified Permaculture Designer, an educator in the fields of Greenhouse Management, Seed Saving, Food Forests, Biodynamics, Herbalism and more. She has presented at conferences such as the Boulder Bioneers, the North American Permaculture Convergence, the American Herbalists Guild and the Biodynamic Association. She works with groups of all ages to further their knowledge of these topics through regular public workshops such as CRMPI, Colorado Mountain College, The Grow Network, and the Denver Permaculture Guild as well as co-hosting the Living Permaculture Show, a monthly radio show on public radio KDNK. Stephanie is committed to community service through education and demonstration of herbal self-care and sustainable farming practices.

KAREEN ERBE

Kareen Erbe is a certified permaculture designer and has been teaching permaculture and gardening workshops through her business, Broken Ground, for 9 years. She and her husband live on a suburban cold climate permaculture homestead in Bozeman, Montana. She has a BSc. in Environmental Science and completed an advanced permaculture program taught by Geoff Lawton, at the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia. Kareen has also trained with Rosemary Morrow, author of the Earth User’s Guide to Permaculture. Additional studies include Master Gardener and Master Composter Certifications, training in Ecology Action’s Grow Biointensive methods, and participation in a Food Forest Design Charrette with author, teacher and designer, Dave Jacke. She has also worked as a permaculture consultant for the sustainability organization, GoodtoChina, in Shanghai, China, and is currently the permaculture advisor for Bodhi Farms in Bozeman.

Kareen is currently on the faculty of the Online Women’s Permaculture Design Course and the Green Path Herb School. She has been a regular contributor to Rocky Mountain Gardening Magazine, Permaculture Women Magazine, and was featured in The New Pioneer. Learn more about Kareen at brokengroundpermaculture.com or through her youtube channel here.

Wind Clearwater has been involved in the world of permaculture since 1994 when he was first introduced to the methodology at The Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, where he also studied organic farming. Wind has been involved in many aspects of horticulture from farming, to landscaping, to nursery work since 1989. With over 30 years of landscape installation and design experience, he brings forth the knowledge of an experienced eye to the observation of landscapes and site design. For the past 20 years Wind has lived and learned on his 75 acre home, The Oasis, outside of Paonia, Colorado planting forest gardens, building with natural materials and living off grid. He has been sharing his knowledge for over 15 years, teaching PDC’s and other classes on natural building, forest gardening and horticulture.

Elizabeth Agee is a regenerative agriculture consultant, holistic management and permaculture educator, dairy and berry farmer based out of Paonia, CO. She took her PDC back in 2015 and is a CRMPI alumni. Originally inspired by her great grandmother and the resilience of the Appalachian homesteaders, she took up roots in Georgia and moved to Colorado to study permaculture and apprentice sustainable landscaping on the Front Range. After several years of installing and maintaining edible and pollinator landscapes, she met her partner and moved to Paonia to pursue a lifelong dream of farming with ecologically informed design. She also works as the Just Good Food Manager for Colorado Farm and Food Alliance where she hosts workshops and helps farmers with funding and implementation of regenerative agriculture practices on their operations. She consults locally in permaculture and holistic management through llc Backyard Farmstead.

Hi! I’m Vanessa Harmony. I am a treehugger, horticulturist, arborist, edible plant enthusiast, and mulch fanatic. My parents are from Texas but I grew up in Jakarta, Indonesia, and I spent summer breaks in Colorado hiking with my dad, and backpacking with National Wildlife Federation’s Wildlife Camp and Teen Adventure programs. I earned my Bachelors degree in Environmental Studies from University of Colorado at Boulder in 2004, but upon graduation I had not discerned my career path. I followed my brother to Philadelphia where I accepted a position at a small company in the pharmaceutical industry, and I spent seven years honing my project management, business, and technology skills. Meanwhile, on weekends and time off, I began studying permaculture design and forest gardening, and came to realize my passion for edible, perennial plants. There was one problem – I had zero experience working with plants. I quit my cubicle job in 2013 and went to work as a forest garden apprentice at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture – studying, tending, and harvesting edible, perennial plants, and solidifying my new identity as a plant nerd under Laura Perkins’ inspiring and encouraging mentorship. I spent two more years on the East Coast, working at a tree care company in New York, and later a tree nursery in Pennsylvania, before deciding it was time to transplant myself, for good, to the Rocky Mountains. As of 2016 I own and operate Colorado Edible Forest LLC, a nursery in Glenwood Springs specializing in edible, perennial plants that grow well in Colorado including fruit trees, fruit bushes, and food-bearing vines, groundcovers, and potherbs. I also offer consulting in design, planting, and management. My past projects have included rejuvenating an orchard at the historic Emma Townsite in Pitkin County Open Space, planting an acre orchard with windbreak above Ruedi, and backyard-scale food forest plantings.

Michael Thompson

Michael is a Colorado-licensed architect, with 30 years of experience designing buildings in the high Rocky Mountains. His passion for design is focused on land planning in concert with Nature, and on energy productive buildings, including greenhouses for growing food year-round in cold climates, as well as passive and active solar buildings. Michael is also passionate about the arts of home brewing, cooking, gardening and fruit tree management.

If you’ve been watching the headlines and wondering – What can I do? – this is your answer!

Permaculturists see it time and again: by restoring the land, you shift the dance of earth, air and water, shifting local weather patterns…and ultimately, climate. Food forests, greenhouses, and water conservation systems offer food security and safety to your family and community in uncertain times. Simple steps add up to a groundswell of change!

This is the time to embrace hope…embrace possibility…and empower yourself to help in creating a different world. Don’t wait. Dare to change your future.

Questions? Call Jerome directly at (970) 456-3480, or email admin@crmpi.org