---Permaculture Design Course---

Here is a quick look at the courses and workshops we hosted at MMRF during dry season this year (January - May 2007) A few other noteworthy events are included too.

Our first course of 2007 was a 3-day Earthen Oven Building Workshop. Here you can see the leveling of the oven floor and plastering of the walls.

The earthen oven is nearly complete in this picture. White sand (dolomite) was used as a form to shape the inside of the oven. When the earthen walls had dried for a few more days the sand was taken out. This course was put on by MMRF and Seven Generations Natural Builders.

MAYA MOUNTAIN
RESEARCH FARM
San Pedro Columbia
P.O. Box 153
Punta Gorda
Belize, C.A.
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left: Sierra Institute gets a soap-making demonstration.

below: Students for the Permaculture Design Course are loading up in dories to come up river to MMRF.

Here is a shot of Doni Kiffmeyer, who led the Earth Bag Building Course with Kaki Hunter, and Larry Santoyo and Toby Hemenway, who taught the Permaculture Design Course.

Now for some photos of the Earth Bag Building Course, where we built a structure. In a nutshell, you fill these white plastic woven bags with dirt, whack them down, then stack more bags on top and whack them down. When you have a whole house shape, you plaster it. This being the humid tropics a careful roof design to keep rain off the resulting edifice is a must.

See how fun it is to build with earth bags?

During the Earth Bag Course we took some time off to do a booth at the Toledo Food Fair, which is put on annually by Plenty Belize. Anne-Sophie Tardif is teaching some children about raising maggots for chicken food, and Jocelyn Darou is demonstrating the merits of the rocket stove, which boils water with only a handful of twigs.

Artist Benjamin Higbee painted a mural on one of our dorms during the Earthbag Course, and we harvested an acre of this local, open-pollinated purple corn variety .

Here are some snapshots of the Solar Design & Installation Course we held in the end of May. The 8 students installed a solar system in our new classroom, which now has an array of five 125 watt panels equalling 625 watts of power. These panels were donated to MMRF by BP Solar. The students also installed a charge controller, inverter and hardware donated by Outback Power. The course was taught by Mark Miller of Plenty Belize, and Christopher Nesbitt of MMRF, in cooperation with Solar Energy International (SEI) who provided curriculum and text books.

Participants at the Vanilla Cultivation and Information Workshop discuss plans over morning coffee flavored with vanilla beans from Papantla, Veracruz, Mexico.

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