Learn Permaculture on a self sufficient farm!

Permaculture courses, workshops and training taught by PRI accredited teacher Tom Kendall at our Permaculture Education and Demonstration site “Maungaraeeda” (place of food).

Tom has been a farmer for over 40 years and has come from a conventional and later bio-dynamic farming background. He has applied himself to Permaculture for over 15 years, did his PDC with Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton and has regularly co-taught with Geoff Lawton over the past few years. He is a consultant for Geoff Lawton’s Permaculture Sustainable Consulting team and teaches without any spiritual, religious, dietary or other prejudices. Click here for Tom’s full CV.

We live permaculture…

Permaculture is what we do and how we live. It is much more than just gardening, it is a sustainable design system for living your life. For more than 13 years we have been living and breathing permaculture in the Sunshine Coast hinterland town of Kin Kin. We are active in the community by helping in community gardens and contributing to local Permaculture groups. We also help local people implement Permaculture designs on their property. Zaia is also active in community music and donates a lot of her time to improving people’s wellbeing by performing and running music workshops. We also offer farm stays, farm tours and events at Maungaraeeda, and offer permaculture consultations and implementation on your property.

The fabulous Kin Kin store and cafe

We prepared the beds outside the Kin Kin store kitchen and planted them out

Retaining wall built and seedlings planted at the Kin Kin store kitchen

Swales and stone pathway implemented in an urban location

Retaining wall built and beds prepared and planted out, urban location

Banana circle and pathway laid, urban location

Swale with cell grazing / holistic management on contour

Our food forest chopped and dropped

Tom feeding our homemade biogas bio-digester

Self sufficiency

We are close to self sufficiency on our farm and we love sharing with people how we have been able to achieve this on a low budget with little outside inputs. As we work on a very low budget, we are unable to outsource anything or buy much so:

We currently produce on our farm:
100% cooking fuel (biogas)
100% water
100% fertiliser/compost
90-95% our food
75% electricity
65% animal feed

Plus we also:
Do most of the work on our farm, with the help of volunteers
Create our own websites
Do our own marketing
Write our copy
Film and edit our videos
Take our own photos of the property to use for promotion
Do our own social media posts and advertising (when we can 🙂 )
Support the running costs of the farm by doing permaculture consultations and implementation, selling produce and teaching courses.

Watch the video below to see why we do what we do:

[wpedon id=6587]

Permaculture Design Certificate course / PDC course

We involve our Permaculture Design Certificate course students in the running of our farm and include a lot of hands on activities. As a PDC student you will be involved in the daily routines that come with running a Permaculture farm. This is why we limit our course intake to 15 people per PDC only. Learn to milk a cow, separate cream, make butter, cheese and yoghurt, feed our biogas bio-digester, look after chickens and goats, make compost, survey the land for earth works, eat healthy food produced on the farm and much, much more! Click here for more info and to book.

Not for profit

The not for profit organisation Permaculture Research Institute Sunshine Coast Inc. runs our courses, workshops and events. For more about PRI Sunshine Coast, visit the website permeco.org.

Music

Zaia is a percussionist and runs percussion and marimba workshops. She has been the percussion leader of Woodford Folk Festival’s People’s Orchestra for the past several years and is involved in a number of different music projects. See zaia-music.com for more info or you can stream or buy her CD here.