In mid-February, our COO Graham Towerton and his permaculture farm manager, Julia Fouty, embarked on a 10-day trip to Florida to escape the Michigan winter and participate in a number of permaculture adventures across the state.

The first of these was a 5-hour permaculture introduction course and farm tour hosted by Nigel and Jaclyn Baggerley on their 9,000 square foot permaculture paradise in Vero Beach, co-hosted with the Indian River Food Policy Council. Graham and Julia had a great time presenting and listening to all of the guests describe their own regenerative journeys covering health and wellness, farming and gardening, government policy, local native plants and seeing the massive abundance that Nigel and Jaclyn are already achieving after just a few years on their property.

Graham had the opportunity to visit a customer location in Ocala, where we will be developing a 300-acre property into a regenerative paradise, starting with Graham applying his engineering skill set to the site works for water drainage, building site preparation and support on permit applications. More on this project in future editions!

A major highlight of any travel by Permaculture Canada is to reconnect with our permaculture family members. Graham caught up with Cameron James, a talented permaculture and syntropic agriculture landscaper in St. Cloud. One of the few gentle giants that is taller than Graham, with a great heart for people and permaculture! Lots of future opportunities for collaboration between us!

It's not a real trip to Florida without visiting the beach, which was done on several occasions.


Graham and Julia also had the chance meeting with Jack and Brad of Urban Abundance FL, who were at the local farmer's market in Stuart, FL. Serendipity and synchronicity rolling together!

Continue scrolling below to see more of this edition's Permaculture Canada news!

Be the change!

Lindsay Brandon, CEO
Permaculture Canada

Jesse Tack of the Permaculture Institute of North America has an infectious joy and enthusiasm. Graham was hosted by Jesse in the pre-recording of a PINA summit titled "Starting and Operating a Successful Permaculture Nursery" in which Graham presented "Starting a Permaculture Nursery from Scratch: Building Your Initial Stock and Propagation Capacity"

Any permaculture enthusiast can register for free at PINA's Permaculture Crossing to see the entire summit along with many other events that PINA hosts regionally and nationally.

Speaking of PINA - Lindsay Brandon has just been elected to the Board of Directors as the only board member from Canada! This provides Lindsay and Permaculture Canada with access to an incredible network of permaculturists and an opportunity to work with PINA in promoting regenerative agriculture policy and education.

For other events, podcasts and videos, please see our rumble channel and our YouTube channel. Please subscribe!

Lindsay continues mentoring a budding Permaculture designer on how to render digital design, and through this process creating course content to be offered in the future. Right now she is posting her tutorials for free and they are available for all for a limited time, so please do subscribe to the YouTube channel to get the benefit of those while they are free and accessible for all!

Lindsay has been working on two designs in Adrian, Michigan for customers of Graham's local landscaping business. One of these has been completed using the new Permaculture Canada design process, formats and methodology that Lindsay has been developing over the last year.

We have over 100 people in our Telegram chat group where we encourage conversations, questions, suggestions and shares~ a place to chat and connect with each other across the interwebs and our world!

We mentioned in our last newsletter the Acres USA annual conference we attended in December. Since then we've started a number of collaboration efforts with Acres under the new ownership of Taylor Henry. Watch this space as we announce specific projects towards creating a comprehensive regenerative services portfolio! One aspect is helping people to identify, shortlist and select their next property for the application of regenerative practices and creating a resilient lifestyle. We're already well down this path and will be starting a project to select a 100-acre property for a new faith-based skills training and educational community hub in Indiana.

We continued the series of monthly Live Events with Vine Permaculture and Cormac Harkin. We are sharing our knowledge of what to do each month in our own properties and giving examples for what you can do in your own gardens, farms and homes. It’s a wide-open conversation and anyone can join the chat and add to the energy and knowledge with ideas that can help people right away! Click on the images to watch the January edition with special guest Sean Stanton and the February edition with special guest Jamon Mysliewicz.

Lindsay made a visit to NuLeaf Farms with Kiley McKenna to see all of their activities in the vertical growing arena and modular growing systems. We'll be developing a strategic partnership with NuLeaf for these types of systems! One of the cool things they do is supply these systems into the schools in Canada for education! Click on the picture to watch the video!

Last, but by no means least in terms of recent happenings, Lindsay participated in February in The Good People Party hosted by Diplomat Consulting. This was a great opportunity to meet people who influence agriculture policy in Alberta and at the federal level in Canada.

In March from 4th-5th, Graham will be part of the trade show at the Indiana Small Farm Conference being held in Danville, Indiana hosted by Purdue University. Graham will be exhibiting Permaculture Canada's portfolio of designs and his Michigan installations, along side our strategic partner Steve Koontz of KeepItWatered.com with their range of indoor growing systems.

In March, from 11th-16th we will be traveling to Austin, TX, home of some great BBQ and we will be attending RegenWorld 2025. Coinciding with the annual SXSW festival, it will be a great event covering everything regenerative including an investor pitch competition. Lindsay will be a keynote speaker and Q&A panelist on the Thursday and we will be an exhibitor at the trade show.

While it's a long way off, Graham has been invited to be the keynote speaker at the Rooted and Resilient Homestead Conference hosted by Purdue University's Noble County Extension Service. We'll provide updates and registration details in future newsletters.

In this edition we are featuring Scott Howard of Earthen Hand Natural Building.

We last met with Scott during our trip to Oregon and enjoyed a wonderful Ethiopian meal and really enjoyed learning more about Scott's activities. He's an artisan in numerous different natural building methods that make use of earthen materials.

To learn more about Scott's business and capabilities you can click through to his website or click on the picture below to watch the interview with Lindsay.