My back ground consists of several occupations which are Registered Theatre Nurse, Business Owner of Bissys Permaculture Café, Business Owner Gymbaroo educational centre and teacher, Business Owner and designer for Fipa's World and mother to 8 children most are now young adults themselves.
I became involved with permaculture prior to the name being given to this type of gardening. Because we had such a large family it was normal for us to have several systems working which would allow us to eat good food from our gardens and enjoy the eggs provided by our chickens. We also dug out an old well so we could use the resources that nature provides on our food gardens. It was a cost effective and healthy way to provide food for the many mouths we had to feed.
We have now expanded what we were doing at home to our family café (Bissys café) This was done by reading articles and watching youtubes supplied by Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton. To confirm we had it right I attended the recent Permaculture design course at the Channon. There's a few things to tweek at our café but we feel we will have a positive way forward with a design for our next new project at Cargo. Our café has become a buzz of activity with many customers wanting to learn about permaculture. Our café garden set up at the café has become a good educational space with people regularly walking through to view all the components. We even have school groups asking if they can bring children in for tours to learn about permaculture. This was unexpected for us because we didn't realise when we first set up the gardens that people want to learn more. I suppose we thought everyone was already doing this but that didn't seem to be so.
We are in negotiations now to attain an earthworks team to carry out the design put to us by David Spicer (consultant on water sustainability) at our Cargo property. Our next dream is to build an Eco Retreat which is encompassed by permaculture and allows for educational learning. At the same time we would like to invite people who are interested in working with us to contact us. Additionally we will have open days to the public so we can provide revenue which will allow us to continue on with the development that needs the use of bought resources. It's a dream we believe we can achieve and our children are all supportive as are our friends.
Looking forward to sharing this experience with you all on this site and with our community. Having experienced what we could create at the Channon Educational centre with the guidance of Geoff Lawton and Paul Taylor we feel there is a positive and productive way forward to enjoying and showcasing another environmentally and healthy way forward.

Full steam ahead!