Permaculture Roots 4 – Living Closer to Earth

Hillsborough, NC

For information on the whole Permaculture Roots workshop series, please see this page.

We are grateful to be putting on this workshop in collaboration with Living Arts Collective and in the lovingly tended space of Jubilee Healing Farm.

Each workshop in this series will include opportunities to connect with nature and our senses, learn Permaculture design, answer your questions, and meet other amazing humans interested in Permaculture.

Our workshops will also have an optional evening portion around a fire to connect and share in each other’s stories, songs, and plant and animal knowledge. 

This Workshop:

Home is the center of our lives. In Permaculture, it’s the heart of the design. Our love and our care extends outwards from our home.

Modern homes offer comfort and convenience that we pay for in triple: with severe rent, mortgage, maintenance, and utility costs; with the accumulation of so much stuff and so much space to clean; and most of all, with our disconnection from nature: the rhythms of the day and the season, the peace of night, the breath of a cross-breeze, the dawn of birdsong.

Most modern homes are tremendously wasteful of energy. They aren’t built to last and the materials that make them up end up in landfills.

From the beginning, Permaculture has taught ways to build earth and climate-wise homes and to harvest our own energy and water from what the land gives. It’s more than possible: after all, most people on earth still live this way – and somewhere in our bones, we remember the beauty of it.

Our fourth workshop in this series teaches accessible and deep ways to live more simply.

We help you sort through the complexity of options for affordable, simple shelters, what to know about going off-grid fully or in part, and a lot of what Matt wishes he knew when he decided to move to land with no buildings and not much money in the woods almost 10 years ago!

You don’t have to have attended any of our other workshops to participate in this one.

Main topics:

• Main Things to Know When You Move to Live On Land
• The Pleasures and Perils of Tiny Living and Going Off-Grid
• Affordable, Ecological Shelter Options in 2025
• Fun Off-Grid Things – Outdoor Kitchens, Rocket Stoves, and So On!
• Living Well on Small-Scale Solar
• Permitting, Loans, and Other Uncomfortable Stuff
• Catching Water and Living in the “Rain Budget”
• Designing for Wildfire and Heavy Rain
• Answering Your Land Buying / Home / Off-Grid Questions

Venue and Workshop Details:

This 5-part series is held at Jubilee Healing Farm – a beautifully tended small farm located on 10 acres in Hillsborough, NC that supports volunteer and community-building activities and workshops for people seeking healing.

We’ll have the workshop part inside and part outside unless the weather disagrees!  Please wear comfortable clothing for the day. If it’s going to rain a little, bring rain gear. A little rain is very helpful for Permaculture design!

We’ll likely do a little forest walking.  Good to wear compatible footwear.  If you’re concerned about ticks or other itchy expressions of the local ecology, please bring non-toxic insect deterrent.

What to Bring:

• Journal and pen – while digital is OK, we strongly suggest using paper!
• Your own lunch and any snacks you need (kitchen available to heat up food)
• Water bottle
• Seeds to swap if you’ve got ’em!  Also fine just to receive.
• If you want to stay for the evening portion:
  • Your own dinner  (kitchen available to heat up food)
  • Optional Musical instrument, story, or poem if you’d like to share something around the fire
  • If we have a guest artist, small donation (~$20) suggested, but not required

Also:

• Openness to new (and ancient) ways of seeing and living
• Kindness towards the plants, animals, soil, water, and other people here
• Inclusivity and welcoming spirit towards the people in the workshop
• Willingness to put your phones away and tune into your senses
• Curiosity about life and what each other and the land has to say

Sign-Up

We offer our tickets at a rate that allows us to continue doing this work. Thank you for supporting it.

We offer discounted rates if you sign up for 3 or more workshops. If you have any questions, please reach out to workshops@silverbranchpermaculture.org.

About the Facilitator

Matthew “Watersong” Tracy started practicing Permaculture in 2011 and received his design certificate from Wild Abundance in 2015. He has been consulting and teaching as a Permaculture Designer since 2018.

Along the way, he learned from numerous Permaculture teachers, tended land with minimal inputs, worked with around 50 clients on their land, lived off-grid for nearly a decade, and made (… and still makes!) a whole lot of humbling and valuable mistakes on his way back to life in harmony with the earth. 

With all that experience, Matt is ever a beginner and student of the land. Nature is infinite. What can we do but listen and try?

Matt is honored to be a Permaculture guide to anyone interested in coming a little closer to the earth. Becoming a father in 2023 has made passing down these teachings that always consider future generations more important than ever.

Read the rest of Matt’s bio here.