The PSI Eco-van is the perfect place for a weekend getaway in the country just 2 hours from Sydney in the Hawkesbury near Wisemans Ferry.  The van site is nestled on the Permaculture Sydney Institute farm site on the Macdonald river, Upper Macdonald. It is surrounded by national parks so privacy’s assured as the neighbours are quite a distance away.  It’s just 10 mins from the St Albans hotel and a cafe for a meal should you choose and bushwalks are a plenty.   The van has everything you need to have a perfect escape from the city. It is fully equipped with all facilities ..read more

The Permavan on the PSI Farm is nearly ready to hire! We have finally finished renovating the van and just await the installation of solar and it will be ready to go. We expect it to be fully complete and ready for bookings by March. Stay tuned for more on this in the next newsletter. What makes it an eco-van?   The Van is completely off grid and has been designed and renovated on many permaculture principles such as: “produce no waste; use biological resources over fossil fuels; energy cycling on site; fostering self-reliance and more.    Materials and products: T ..read more

Fruit Trees galore 100s of bare rooted stock now in and planted budding and flowering,  in the newly created Food Forest on the PSI Farm.  The heritage fruit tree workshop was loads of fun and learning with Pete the Permie and Silvia. Pete covered all the usual topics on how to take care of your fruit trees like pruning, planting, fertilising and so on plus other topics like espaliering fruit trees and some biodynamic preps and techniques. Participants went away full of ideas and information as well as  boot loads of fruit trees so all in all it was a productive weekend.  ..read more

The long weekend natural building Workshop was a wonderful weekend where we constructed a new small building off our existing wattle and daub hut. We built a rammed earth wall; a light straw wall and a rammed earth floor.  The building is for our wwooffers accommodation kitchen and bathroom. The water for these will be heated by a wood fired slow combustion stove that can also be used for cooking. It was built under the instruction of Sam from Viva homes and is a unique and beautiful addition to the woofers hut. We had loads of fun over 3 beautiful days and learned loads about a range o ..read more

I’m pleased to announce that our food forest tree sponsorship project has got off to a good start. A few people have sponsored trees and we have got some in the ground to commence the forest. If you haven’t caught up on the detail of this exciting new project see here for the details. Id especially like to thank Nick and Liz keen who were our first sponsors of the program and who sponsored several trees like chestnut, macadamia and native current. Nick and Liz came to the first turning of the sod at the winter Permabee to help plant the trees. Thank you for your support and encouragement&nb ..read more

Our last Earthworks and Water Workshop we held in in Feb with Doc Spicer was a smash hit. We learned about swales and terraces and constructed two terraces as earthworks for the farm food forest. Participants also had a go on the excavators, mulched and seeded the terraces and discussed lots of other earthworks techniques in the theory sessions. It was a great weekend. Stay tuned for our next one. Here’s a preview in pics. 1 of 6 ..read more

These are the newest graduates from PSI January PDC course charged to go forth and change the worlds with permaculture. And a fine bunch there were too. I have great hope and optimism from the designs they produced in the course. The course gave them their first opportunity to do a real design for a client and took them through the whole process of design from interviewing the client to presenting the design with much learning and confidence  achieved on the way.  A great course and a great time and already a great outcome! Getting into groups Spinning presentation Planting ..read more

Our beautiful valley was hit very hard by our last flood in July with the highest flood levels since 1949. In some spots, the highest ever on record. It has knocked our community very hard. No one has been unaffected, and we are all still in shock and disbelief about what has happened here. Losses have been immense. Homes, possessions, animals, paddocks, fences, riverbanks and landscape, either gone, buried or destroyed. And mountains of sand and mud now dominate the landscape and what was once green with grass is now brown and desolate. There is an enormous job to clean up and it will take ..read more

This amazing workshop with Pat Collins filled out fast and for those of you that missed out. Don’t despair,  the next one is Oct 23rd. Here’s some scenes from the event:   Stage one: Identifying, sourcing and gathering the weeds. Hunting and gathering the weeds. Learning how to identify weeds and learning about all their advantages to your health, the landscape and environment. Crossing the river and sourcing weeds Collecting from the Mandala garden Stage two: Preparing the weeds. Chopping, grinding, and cooking. Making a Cream Tea Tonic Mak ..read more

Over the past ten years, PSI has designed, constructed and now maintains 27 specific gardens at our PSI Farm and Bandusia country retreat. The gardens are based on permaculture principles and are all organic, using animal or fish fertilisers only and with no artificial fertilisers or “cides” of any sort. Plantings are mixed in a polyculture sense and contain both perennial and annual species.  The gardens comprise home kitchen gardens, a commercial market garden,  Aquaponics systems, an aquaculture garden, herb gardens, a bush tucker garden, bamboo pond gardens, two food forests an ..read more