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2008, Living Mandala
creative services by: 360 Degrees

The Seed Academy

With Don Tipping, Bill McDorman & Special Guests

Sept 10 -14, 2014

Seven Seeds Farm

Williams, Oregon




CLICK HERE TO REGISTER


Registration & Tuition


Registration includes instruction, camping on site, 3 organic meals per day, bathing access, and all materials and hand outs. Beautifully prepared meals will be suited towards omnivores featuring vegetables, eggs and lamb raised on the farm.


Regular Tuition: $775 (Includes all meals & onsite camping)


Local Discount (Jefferson & Josephine County Residents):  $650 (includes lunch & dinner - does not include camping or breakfast)


We are only accepting 25 participants so we encourage you to sign up soon.


To Register Click Here.


When?

The 5 day Event begins Wednesday, September 10 and runs through September 14 at 4pm.  The event is 9:30am through 6pm with dinner to follow and a more open, salon type format after dinner in the evenings


What?

We invite you to join us for a 5 day intensive training in seed saving, basic botany, reproductive biology in plants, understanding selection, planting seeds, soil mixes, seed germination, isolation, crossing, seed libraries, seed storage, germination tests and much more.  Don Tipping is the lead instructor who brings 20 years experience in organic farming, seeds, permaculture and enthusiastic on-farm education. In this training you will learn everything than you thought possible and more about the art, science, and revolutionary practice of saving seeds and leave empowered to start your own seed saving business.


Who’s Coming?

Gardeners, farmers, permaculturalists , those interested in starting a neighborhood seed library or seed bank, those interested in stewarding and preserving heirloom varieties, and all who see growing and saving seed as a wonderful way to grow a positive future. No prior experience is necessary, however, some gardening familiarity will be helpful.


Course Vision - From Seed to Seed Cooperatives

The journey with connecting more deeply with seeds as a source point of life begins with seed saving, then progresses to seed growing on a farm or garden preservation scale.  The master level is seed stewardship, cultivating a deep relationship with the species and all of its potential for bioregional adaptation to climate, pests, disease and agronomic & culinary preferences.


We visualize interconnected seed production hubs that are capable of doing breeding, selection, and improvement that work with bioregional centers that can do finish cleaning, climate controlled storage, marketing and distribution of high quality, open-pollinated organic seeds.  In this way we can co-create a sustainable seed system that will support organic food production for local markets and resilient local food systems.  Seven Seeds Farm is home to the Family Farmers Seed Cooperative which is a farmer owned and operated organic seed production, breeding and distribution enterprise.


Click HERE to register and reserve your space in this watershed event.  We expect this training fill to capacity, so reserve your space soon!




About the Seed Academy

The name Academy traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 385 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of   Athena, the goddess of wisdom and skill, north of Athens, Greece.  We invite you to join us for a 5 day intensive training in seed saving.  We will focus on the hands on tools and techniques of wet and dry seed harvesting and cleaning.  We will also cover basic botany, reproductive plant biology, selection, isolation, crossing, seed libraries, seed storage, germination tests and much more. Our evenings will focus on the the big picture, context and potential of seed saving at this time in history, networking amongst peers, and supporting you to discover and engage your personal vision and contribution to the seed world.  This is part of a two part, annual series of intensives at our diverse Permaculture Farm in SW Oregon.  The Spring section focuses on planting seeds, while the fall session focuses on harvesting.


Hosting Site Details - About Seven Seeds Farm & Sisikyou Seeds

Siskiyou Seeds operates at our family farm, Seven Seeds Farm. We have been growing certified organic seed for many national scale mail order seed companies for the past 17 years. We are fairly unique within the world of seed companies in that we actually produce much of the seed ourselves, as opposed to most companies that buy most (or all) of their seed from multinational corporate seed houses, many of whom also produce genetically engineered vegetable seeds.


In addition to commercial seed production, Seven Seeds Farm produces biodynamic fruits and vegetables that we distribute through a cooperative Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program called the Siskiyou Sustainable Cooperative (www.siskiyoucoop.com) in the Rogue Valley. We also raise ducks, chickens, turkeys, and sheep. Seven Seeds hosts numerous on-farm classes and workshops in a variety of sustainable agriculture related topics. To see a current listing of workshops at Seven Seeds and classes that Don Tipping will be teaching in southern Oregon please see our classes page.




We are located at 2,000 elevation, 43 degrees North latitude. Our average frost free season is from June 1st until October 15th. We are technically a Zone 7 site, however this can fluctuate. Summers are hot and dry with high temperatures in the upper 90′s or low 100′s not uncommon. Our evenings are cool in summer due to our arid, mountain environment. Winters are cool and rainy with periodic cold snaps down into the teens or below. Our average rainfall is 42″ per year, coming mostly between October and May.


Although we are blessed with abundant summer sun here in the banana belt of southern Oregon, the Siskiyous can be a challenging place to garden with our winter rainforest, summer desert climate of harsh extremes. The varieties that we offer in our catalog have proven themselves through years of homesteading filling countless harvest baskets and serving as the foundation for many nourishing meals.


Contact

For questions and more information regarding the course

e-mail: education(at)livingmandala.com or

call: (530) 918-8675


To Register Click Here.

 

Instructors & Facilitators


Don Tipping

Seven Seeds Farm  & Sisikyou Seeds- Founder

Don Tipping has been offering hands on, practical workshops at Seven Seeds Farm since 1997.  We are a small, organic family farm in the Siskiyou Mountains of SW Oregon, situated at 2,000 feet elevation on a 7,000 tall forested mountain with rushing spring fed creeks flowing through the land and nestled among old growth forests.


Here we produce fruits, vegetables, seeds, wool, eggs, and lamb.  The farm has been designed to function as a self-contained, life regenerating organism with waste products being recycled and feeding other elements of the system.  Lauded as one of the best examples of a small productive Biodynamic and Permaculture farms in the northwest, Seven Seeds helps to mentor new farmers through internships and workshops. We have produced certified organic vegetable, flower and herb seeds for over a dozennational scale seed companies.  Seven Seeds has also been active in USDA Western SARE, Organic Seed Alliance and other seed initiatives to advance the development of open pollinated organic seeds.   In 2009 we began Siskiyou Seeds, a bioregional organic seed company operated from the home farm.  Don helped to found the Siskiyou Sustainable Cooperative which manages a 150 share CSA, commercial seed growing, an equipment co-op and internship curriculum among 12 cooperating farms.  He also co-founded the Family Farmers Seed Cooperative, a seed grower, marketing and distribution cooperative comprised of 10 western organic farms.


Don helps people focus upon building their skill sets in sustainable life skills such as permaculture, biodynamics, organic gardening, eco-forestry, seed saving and other traditional arts that help to build regenerative culture.


Lead Instructor


Bill McDorman

Bill McDorman is a native of Ketchum/Sun Valley, Idaho.  He holds a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Montana.  He has been a professional hiking guide since 1976, and has been teaching classes in wild, edible and medicinal plants and seed saving for more than 25 years. He has consulted on more than a thousand native landscape projects and frequently speaks at native plant and seed conferences throughout the West. Bill is president of Seeds Trust which he founded in 1984. It is dedicated to genetic conservation, sells non-hybrid varieties and teaches seed saving.  The company is known for its Siberian tomato varieties and its drought-tolerant, native landscape focus. High Altitude Seeds, one of Seeds Trust's mail order departments, remains the world's only mail-order seed company specializing in non-hybrid vegetable and wildflower seeds adapted to high elevations. Seeds Trust Southwest, its latest venture, features varieties adapted to high and low deserts. The Seeds Trust color catalog and web site list seeds for more than 100 wildflowers and 200 vegetable varieties as well as native grasses and medicinal herbs.


Bill is a member of the Arizona Native Plant Society and the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides. He currently serves on the Arizona Humanities Council.  He served on the boards of directors of the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides, the Idaho Sustainable Agriculture Committee and was Vice-chairman of the Idaho Humanities Council. He helped found the Sawtooth Botanical Gardens in Sun Valley, Idaho, and published his first book in 1994 titled, “Basic Seed Saving”, which contains seed saving information for 29 wildflowers and 18 vegetables. Bill also founded the International Seed Saving Institute (ISSI) which ships seeds and seed saving information to projects in 15 countries.


Recently he and his wife Belle launched Project Self Reliance (PSR). Project Self Reliance is an educational, non-profit organization providing sustainably oriented social services and programs for youth-at-risk and the community-at-large. Its initial campaign is to establish a transitional living and housing program for runaway, homeless and foster kids “aging out” of the system.

In 1995, Bill and Seeds Trust moved to the Verde Valley in Northern Arizona. The company produces more than 60 varieties of seed in what Bill says is the most perfect climate in North America with a 200+ day growing season.


Lead Instructor


Samantha Sweetwater

Samantha Sweetwater is a visionary educator, soul coach and priestess.  She is the creator of Dancing Freedom, an Embodied Mystery School, and the founder of PeaceBody Ministries.  She has led transformational workshop and trainings integrating dance, yoga, soul empowerment, light work and sustainable lifestyle design nationally and in Brazil, Australia, Germany and Japan since 1995. Her guiding questions:  How do we bring peace alive as a moment-to-moment reality for all beings?  How do we co-create a culture of Embodied Oneness?


Samantha invokes the integral wisdom of body, mind, heart and spirit.  She ignites the passion of the soul’s true purpose, and reflects the Beauty Way of Evolutionary Enlightenment - the marriage of Source connection with grounded actions, whole relationships and living communities. In her travels, she has inspired thousands to embrace living tools for radiant health, authentic expression, joyous wholeness, planetary regenesis and awakened heart.  Through the Dancing Freedom Embodied Mystery School, Samantha is training a community of facilitators to spread Peace-embodied around the world.   She is constantly exploring angles through which the soul level epiphanies of the dancing experience can galvanize the WE in sustaining communities, relationships and actions.  She is currently part of the organizing team for State of the World Forum and the Global Transitions Initiative.


Facilitator



Affiliate Organizations & Sponsors


 






Become a sponsor of this course!

For details email: Sponsors@livingmandala.com


For Upcoming Courses, Workshops, & Events Click this Spring & Summer in Permaculture, Ecovillage Design, Sustainable Living Skills, & More Click Here.

 

Including

SEED HARVESTING

PLANT BREEDING & PROPAGATION

REPRODUCTIVE PLANT BIOLOGY

SOIL & SOIL MIXES

PERMACULTURE IN PRACTICE

GERMINATION, ISOLATION, & STORAGE

SEED LIBRARIES & COOPERATIVES

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE

NUTRITIOUS LOCALLY GROWN MEALS

AND MUCH MORE!


Hosted By

Seven Seeds Farm


In Association With

Siskiyou Seeds

Oregon State University Extension

Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance

Seed Trust


Instructors & Facilitators

Don Tipping

Bill McDorman

Samantha Sweetwater


“Seed is the biggest issue of democracy in food. Seed is a common resource, and we have to protect it for future generations. I would call GM [Genetic Modification] a cruelty to seeds. I will live to see the end of Monsanto.”


Vandana Shiva


“I have great faith in a seed.”


- Thomas Jefferson


Course Summary

Join the Seed Academy with master teachers Don Tipping (Siskiyou Seeds) , Bill McDorman (Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance) & Special Guests at the Permaculture Oaisis Seed Saving Haven - Seven Seeds Farm in Williams, Oregon to learn the most highly valuable and little known secrets of Saving Seed. This one -of-a-lind course is an in-depth, hands-on training for farmers, gardeners, educators, entrepreneurs, permaculturalists & anyone interested in learning how to start their own Seed Saving Business.


  1. Learn with the experts.

  2. Gain the essential skills you need to harvest & process seed.

  3. Learn the fundamentals of plant breeding & propagation.

  4. Receive the step-by step tools, strategies & inspired vision required to start or upgrade a seed business.

  5. Meet & network with your bioregional neighbors to optimize results.


Seed Academy's mission is to increase network capacity, collaboration & synergy in the Seed Freedom Movement in the Rogue Bioregion & beyond.


THIS REVOLUTIONARY SEED SAVING TRAINING

IS OFFERED NO WHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD!!!


JOIN US!!!




Seed Saving - The Key to Local Resiliency

There is tremendous opportunity for the renaissance of the bioregional seedsman/woman to select and breed varieties for organic agriculture. We are committed to the notion that well-selected, open-pollinated seeds can outperform commercially available hybrids. Through focusing on this crucial work, we can cooperate with gardeners and farmers to address the agronomic challenges that we will all face as climate change shifts microclimates in North America. Population breeding with special attention to horizontal resistance will hopefully alleviate the hardships growers experience with plant diseases, pests and climatic stress.


Careful attention to plant selection for seed saving can contribute to the improvement of important traits such as disease resistance, pest tolerance, climate adaptation, flavor and nutrition. Domestication is not an endpoint. Rather it is a relationship that is ongoing and can go in different directions. We are much more concerned with breeding plants that will foster healthy food for people, rather than traits such as ship-ability and shelf life. When we consider the concept of food security I find it logical that seed security should receive equal attention especially considering the threats of genetic engineering and the corporate consolidation of the seed industry. Much of the seed currently available from the traditional seed houses is increasingly coming from overseas and every year hundreds of valuable varieties are dropped from production. Consider that in the last 13 years over 200 regional seed companies have disappeared in our country and that Monsanto is now the largest vegetable seed company in the world, having bought up other large seed companies such as Seminis and Peto. Bioregional seed banks and distribution networks will emerge as one of the more important stores of wealth in the future. Anyone want to buy futures in seeds? Let’s get planting!


Banning GMO Crops in SW Oregon!

More than 60 countries either ban or require labeling on GMO foods; the US is not one of them. As GMO regulation moves to a local level, frustrated consumers and farmers are pushing for state or county regulations, but the seed and pesticide companies are fighting back.


Recently a campaign to evict big Agri-Biz GMO/Chemical companies like Syngenta happenned in the Rouge Valley of SW Oregon.


Below is a link to some great radio interviews that happened as part of this campaign. This is 30 minute radio compilation.


Featuring:


Rebekah Wilce - Progressive and ALEC Exposed reporter

Marcia Ishii-Eiteman - Pesticide Action Network senior scientist

Don Tipping - Seven Seeds Farm owner

Chris Hardy - Rogue valley farmer

Elise Higley - Our Family Farms Coalition leader

Magdeleno Rose-Avila - Yes on 15-119 volunteer

Barry Bushue - American Farm Bureau vice president

Klayton Kubo - Kauai citizen

Gary Hooser - Kauai County Council member

Dr. Judy Shabert - Harvard Physician

Dean Okimoro - Farm Bureau Association president

David Louie - Hawaii Attorney General

Harry Stalford & Willow Coberly -Stalford Seed Farms farmers

Chris Broussard, Whinney Hee, James Masey, concerned Kauai residents


Listen to the complete 5 segment Making Contact episode, Click Link Here: http://wtfcorporations.com/2014/06/g-m-no-genetically-modified-democracy/


What is Permaculture?

Permaculture is a holistic design philosophy described as the art and science of creating community ecosystems in which plants, animals, human beings, and all forms of ecological diversity interact to produce a prolific, ecologically-sound, and regenerative system that can support itself and life indefinitely. The focus of permaculture is to design and establish societal systems that provide for humanity’s material and non-material needs including food, water, shelter, energy, and health in a way that is symbiotic and synergistic with the Earth’s natural ecosystems. More recently permaculture is incorporating an ever-growing landscape of diverse fields and skill sets and is being applied towards areas such as business, government, economics, group process, social systems, and inner work.