The main activity of the Climate Change Permaculture project (CCPP) will be the Permaculture Incubator Project (PIP).
PIP Training
A group of five (I guess a couple could count as one) gender and ethnically diverse trainees will receive training from Peter Bane, an internationally known permaculture expert.
Bane’s acclaimed book The Permaculture_Handbook: Garden Farming for Town and Country will be our guide.
The PIPs will put their training into practice on two-acre plots that will be created from the ten acres that Russon Family Farms will take out of production and donate to CCPP.
Each farmer will have up to three years to work his or her designated plot. Then, CCPP will recruit a new cohort.
PIP’s 2-acre plot design
Below is the design for the 2-acre plots (based on satellite imagery of the property):
An Incubator farm is not an idea unique to CCPP. There are a few others around the country. Most of the others give their trainees much smaller plots of land.
Our idea is to create and hold the time and the space for trainees to generate enough income so that, when they graduate, they have a nest egg.
PIP’s multiplier effect
PIPs will be able to use their savings to lease acreage to farm, make a down payment on property, or to purchase farming equipment in the future. This will create a multiplier effect.
You probably can’t tell from the image, above, but there is a stream that bisects our farm. It is actually an underground stream that only comes to the surface on our land. It runs year round.
I would like to converse with representatives of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe, located in nearby Mount Pleasant, to see if this riparian area might be suitable for the cultivation of manoomin.
Manoomin is variety of wild rice that is sacred to Native Americans. If cultivation might be possible, it would have to be done under the control and supervision of the Tribe, for the Tribe.
There are traditions, customs, and rituals, of which I am not aware, that would need to be respected.