Dear Readers:
Norman Vincent Peale, the author best known for popularizing the concept of positive thinking
through his book The Power of Positive Thinking, is famously quoted as saying “Shoot for the moon.
Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” I am pleased to say that this is exactly what CCPP has
recently done. Please let me explain.
If you have read previous blogs, you know that the Climate Change Permaculture Project (CCPP) is a
newly formed, private operating foundation. The mission of the foundation is to create a critical
mass of farmers who will adopt regenerative farming practices to reverse the effects of climate
change and help to address food insecurity.
CCPP’s main activity is the Permaculture Incubator Programme (PIP)—like a small business
incubator, only for regenerative agriculture. The plan was to give five gender and ethnically diverse,
young farmers training in regenerative agriculture and then send them out on to two-acre plots,
provided by Russon Family Farms, where they could put their training into practice.
We wanted PIP to be a residential program, so we planned to provide low-rent housing to the
trainees. The plan was to rebuild a dilapidated barn and turn it into a barndominium. It would have
combined ancient technology, like a Roman heating system called a hypocaust, with state-of-the-art
technologies, like solar and wind power.
Unfortunately, our plans hit a snag. The estimated cost of building the barndominium came in at
$1,685,000. We want to help save the planet from climate change, but we don’t want to go
bankrupt doing it. Providence presented us with an alternative that we could afford, and we took
swift action. We have now purchased a house with four bedrooms sitting on 2.5 acres. Below are
some pictures.
Now, the plan is to house four PIP trainees (instead of five) in the lake house and subdivide the two
acres, across the street, into four, half-acre plots (instead of five, two-acre plots) which will be
assigned to the trainees. The trainees will still receive instruction in regenerative agriculture from
world-class permaculture experts, and they will still put what they learn in the classroom into
practice on their plots.
We will need to do some crowdfunding for deer fencing, to drill a well, and to build a climate battery
greenhouse. We are going to need your help with this. However, the acquisition of the lake house
property means that CCPP is on target to launch the Permaculture Incubator Programme in 2024, as
was originally planned. We will start recruiting PIP trainees in the fall of 2023. We hope you will
consider applying.
So, we missed the moon with the bardominium, but with the lake house, we think that we landed
among the stars.