Land Access: Opening Up

I have a big list of projects that I have started that I haven't even written about, thinking that I would do the work in season and write about it in the winter when I had nothing to do. But to my surprise, I continue to be busy doing other projects that really are best suited to winter.
Part of what I am doing is researching projects and my list is fast growing. My difficulty is that I am really busy simply feeding the kids and doing laundry let alone get big projects going plus the kids are not at the age where they can do a lot of heavy work.
As if the universe was listening to my wishing, along came a local permaculturist who was looking for land access. He wanted to have access to land to run courses for local urbanites to learn how to convert their yard to a permaculture producing property. Since then another permaculturist has asked to run a course on our property for his courses.
They both proposed that they offer a class on our property and that we participate in the class by seeing the conclusion or even attending the lectures.
Our first phase is to have students come and look at the property to do planning. We come up with a list of what we would like built or planted and they figure out the best placement. Students are invited to share the plans with us when they are done and we attend the presentation.
I have an ever expanding list of projects but my first will focus on year-round food production, water catchment and maybe even housing. I would really like to have some WWOOFers who could live here, but in their own space. http://www.wwoof.ca/
Years ago I was researching how to build a tipi and wanted to build one for my yard. If we had some permaculturists here, I would pay for all the materials and the students would learn how to build it. I don't know any First Nations or Metis Permaculturists, so I may have to design a course myself.


So consider inviting a local permaculturist to run courses on your land to get more people learning about permaculture principles. I don't think it matters if your property is a small urban space as we will need to design for small spaces too.
http://www.bigskypermaculture.ca/
http://www.vergepermaculture.ca/
Check out these Calgary Permaculturists who are running courses. Check your community, you might have brilliant people in your neighbourhood.