I've been consuming everything I can get my hands on regarding permaculture for a few years now, waiting for an opportunity to put it all into practice. I haven't taken any official courses yet, though I intend to do so once I've finished studying the Designers' Manual on my own first.

I've always had a little bit of a self-reliant streak, and permaculture fits that bill perfectly. These days I'm less into self reliance than local reliance, but the same things apply there. I look at permaculture as a way of life, and I'm trying to both find others who are interested and build interest in people who aren't. To that end, I have a group here in southeast Missouri called permacape (http://www.permacape.com) that is oriented toward providing a way for interested people in the area to meet each other and find a little mutual support.

This spring I started my own project on 20 acres here in southeast Missouri. I'm going to be turning about 5 of those acres into a temperate forest garden. There will be a few ponds and other aquaculture systems on the property as well. My primary project at this point though is to develop some knowledge of prairie permaculture that incorporates the various animals native to grasslands as part of the living system. I'm using the ideas from Allan Savory's Holistic Management and the information from the Designers' Manual for my starting point here, and hopefully I'll be able to contribute some new stuff when it's all said and done.