Pathway mini evaluation

Now that I’ve passed my IPA and reached the halfway point in my diploma design, I thought it would be useful to look back at the major permaculture related activity that I was involved in and to do a mini evaluation of each year.

Post updated in late feb 2018 to include all ten designs and activity up until my final evaluation in March 2018

2012

• Did my PDC (Permaculture design certificate)
• Designed and implemented the design for the Diploma design 1 –  Community allotment education space
• Began leading Muddy Boots allotment playgroup with my sister who was employed there at the time my TCV
• Taught basic gardening skills for adults course at a local allotment
• Began planning my garden design
• Pregnant with my son

• POSITIVE – Doing the PDC was excellent. Setting up the community allotment education space was a fantastic opportunity and I didn’t realise so at the time, but it set me onto a new career path. I was very happy to be expected another baby. I enjoyed teaching gardening to adults. 
• NEGATIVE – Not very negatives this year really, it was an amazingly exciting year for me and the start of lots of new cycles. 
• INTERESTING – My energy levels and physical capabilities were restricted towards the end of the year as I was as pregnant. I found this quite hard to accept as i was full of ideas that I was excited to try out. 

2013

• My son was born in February 2013
• Signed up for the Diploma in late 2013
• Came up with initial ideas for 10 designs and did some preparatory work
• Started this blog
• Some work began on my garden design – re-structuring where the garden beds were located and taking down the polytunnel etc.
• Worked at Muddy Boots allotment playgroup with my sister.

• POSITIVE – New baby! Blog started. I still managed to do some Muddy Boots work albeit with baby Ren strapped to my chest. Started the diploma. 
• NEGATIVE – Lack of time and energy to do much permaculture work this year. 
• INTERESTING – New networks to explore within the Permaculture work and with a new baby. 

2014

• Began my ’12 principles for 12 months’ blog post series by looking at Holmgrens principles.
• Assisted on a PDC
• Monthly garden updates on the blog – photos, stats, foods harvested etc
• Started work on Diploma design 2 – Food from my garden. 
• Began planning a veg box share scheme – ‘homegrown harvest’ with a few veg growing neighbours.
• Considered doing a design for a friends garden
• Took on Muddy Boots as my own business when my sister’s role with TCV ended and all funding for the group stopped. 1 session every 2 weeks
• Started work on Diploma design 3 – Muddy Boots allotment playgroup. 
• Started work on a design to retro-fit the cabin in a local woodland that we had a part share in.
• Attended the Permaculture convergence
• Stared work on Diploma design 4 – My health and wellbeing

• POSITIVE Probably my most productive year to date with Diploma work. I finally had time set aside each week to work on it. I enjoyed being involved in the PDC. I learnt lots by writing my blog. The designs 2,3,4 that I started this year went on to be useful and successful. 
• NEGATIVE – I started and abandoned lots of designs this year, my friends garden, the cabin and homegrown harvest. Design write ups took a very long time and felt quite laborious. 
• INTERESTING -Felt like I’d wasted time by deciding not to pursue various design ideas, but was probably a good learning experience and taught me to focus in on the own life for the diploma. 

2015

• Pathway planning
• Assisted on a PDC
• Continued my ’12 principles for 12 months’ blog post series by looking at Mollison’s principles.
• Garden updates continued but this year do at dates in the pagan calendar – ie Llamas, summer solstice etc
• Considered doing a design for my front garden
• Considered doing a design for my husbands business – Soft touch for their new building’s front garden
• Continued to lead Muddy Boots allotment playgroup – changed to 1 session each week
• Began updating and tweaking my garden design
• Lots of work on Health and wellbeing design
• Began work on Diploma design 6 – South Leicester food group 
• Forest school leader training
• Considered writing a design about how I used permaculture to help my achieve my Forest school leadership.
• Began leading Forest school sessions in a local woodland

• POSITIVE – I loved doing my Forest school training. Muddy Boots grew from strength to strength. I began teaching Forest school. I did some quick designs rather than the very long drawn out ones I’d previous completed. 
• NEGATIVE – Lack of time for permaculture diploma work this year and I had to postpone all my meetings with my tutor. 
• INTERESTING – Its been a really interesting journey to see how my permaculture and Forest school work have become so inter linked. 

2016

• Pathway planning and re-accessed if/how to continue with the diploma
• Wrote up my Pathway design Diploma design 5 – Pathway
• Attended Diploma gathering
• Came up with my own 12 principles
• Health and wellbeing design
• Began work on design and implementation for Diploma design 7- Muddy Boots garden re-design
• Continued to lead Muddy Boots allotment playgroup – changed to 2 sessions each week
• Began leading weekly pre-school Forest school sessions and monthly primary aged FS sessions – branded under Muddy Boots.
• Started offering Forest school parties and led my first one in December.
• Began work on Diploma design 8 – Wild roots retreat 

• POSITIVE – Design 7 was very helpful in getting me through the design process more quickly and being a real boost to where I hold MB sessions. MB growing really well and the forest school felt more established and integrated as an equal part of the business.  
• NEGATIVE – I started the year feeling very down on my diploma and unsure whether to continue or not. 
• INTERESTING – My mood changed by the end of the year about the dipoma and I began to see a why through to the end. 

2017

• Pathway planning and envisioning the remainder of the diploma pathway
• Prepared for my IPA
• Passed my IPA
• Writing up completed on Wild roots retreat
• Began work on Diploma design 9 – Planning my next steps using natural cycles.
• Began thinking about my next design and doing some initial research
• POSITIVE – Passing my IPA with hardly any changes needed was a big high point. I could see how I was going to be able to successfully complete the diploma now.  I enjoyed the process of writing up the wild roots design. I did most of this work initially in a sketchbook while I was in the early planning stages of the design. I then photographed the pages for the write up. This worked really well as I was able to document my thought processes in a way that didn’t slow down my planning. Attending accreditations for Sam and Sarah. 
• NEGATIVE – I didn’t have much time this year, so didn;t make the progress that I would have liked to. I didn’t manage to get to any permaculture get together this year other than the two accreditations mentioned above.
• INTERESTING – I felt I was getting to grips with the process more with each design that I worked on. 

2018

• I completed my natural cycles design and began acting lots of the design.
• I worked on Diploma design 10 – Wild and healthy
• I scheduled my final portfolio assessment with my tutor Hannah for 1st March and worked hard towards this.
• I wrote up all my cover sheets, evaluations, reflections, influences and my designers CV ready for assessment.
• POSITIVE My natural cycles design was an interesting design to work on and helped me a lot with my business planning for this year. I enjoyed the learning aspect of my wild and healthy design. I enjoyed working with maps and drawing again. It was good to work on a land-based design again.
• NEGATIVE – I ran out of time really, so would have liked to devote more hours to the wild and healthy design but was beaten by the deadline.
• INTERESTING – I’ve loved tweaking the design process to experiment with creating my own design processes. I think that by adapting the design process and tools to best suit me, I’ve laid some strong groundwork for using permaculture in my own life on an ongoing basis post diploma. 

 

 

IPA. Interim portfolio assessment

This week I passed my IPA, which means that five of my 10 designs for the permaculture diploma have now been assessed and have been passed by my tutor! Woo hoo. I’d been putting off this assessment for over a year, but it was totally fine, 3 of the 5 designs were fine without any changes and 2 other required just minor tweaks or additions. I’ve set myself a new deadline to compete the diploma by spring 2018 and I aim to accredit by summer 2018.  Looking through my work with my tutor makes me realise how much work I’ve done and how far my ideas have travelled in the 5 years since I began studying Permaculture.

My health and wellbeing – Tweak and update.

My health and wellbeing design has been ticking along for approaching four years now. Some of the tools I designed have been very useful in my life and are still regularly used (the weekly blackboard planner) Some are used occasionally (meal planner) and some are now obsolete as my weekly schedule changed over the years (the exercise planner) and have been replaced by other designs and systems that are more fit to purpose. My idea of what health and wellbeing means for me has changed and developed over the years too.

My health and wellbeing is still very much on the agenda, as it should be for everyone! The purpose of this blog post today is to update with where I am now and share some of the tools that are currently working well for me. Some of these tools i’ve designed myself, others are adapted from various sources and some are purchased.

Towards the end of 2016 I read a great book called ‘The desire map ‘ by Danielle LaPorte. Part of the book is a workbook and helps you to plan your year ahead around how you want to feel or your ‘core desired feelings’. I’ve found this a very helpful model to make planning really reflect what you WANT to do rather than just what you NEED to do. So much of my updated health and wellbeing work is structured by my core desired feelings for 2017 which are

CLARITY, VITALITY, BALANCE, IN TUNE AND THANKFUL.

I spent a long time deciding on these words, they are very meaningful to me and link to elements, directions and spirituality. I’m not going to go into much detail here about them, but feel its important to share the following.

In Tune – Feeling connected and grounded – Earth – North

Vitality – Feeling uplifted and positive – Air – East

Clarity – Looking forward, making plans, making things happen – Fire – South

Thankful – Looking back, feeling in the flow of life – Water – West

Balanced – The centre of everything, holding it all together – Spirit/ self

I thought I’d make a list of all the tools that I am using and look at how interconnected they all are across the 5 core desired feelings.

To gain clarity about how I use the tools I have laid out how I weave health and wellbeing work into my life at various levels, daily, weekly and monthly.

Here is an example of my daily and weekly planning. I try to make this about all the CDF, so it’s not just work but also exercise, where I am in my cycle, seeing friends etc – thus keeping me balanced.

This is a monthly check in page from my planner. The focus notes are from my Oracle card pulls and the big goals are work and life related, giving me clarity and keeping me focussed. 

This is a planner that I created and trialled for January. It brings a lot of my other tools together into one place so its easy to quickly glance at and keep sight of what I should be doing and why. I’ve laminated this so that it can be used over and over again and adapted as needed.

This is part of a monthly reflection sheet I fill in for the balance club, an online group I am a member of. I like this as its simple and pretty quick to compete. I keep all of these reflections in a folder so that its easy to refer back to and see myself making progress on various areas of my health and wellbeing over the months.

So you can see, my health and wellbeing designs have evolved and changed, taking on influences and inspiration from other sources outside of Permaculture over the years.

I thought at this stage I should check back in on the ethics and principles of permaculture to ensure that this is still a permaculture design, not only for the purpose of passing my diploma, but also as a way of refocusing myself on permaculture and pulling it back into my life. So here we go; 

EARTH CARE – I try to consider earth care around how I purchase my food i.e local produce, grow my own, bulk deliveries to cut own on pollution. I try to care for and connect with the earth by walking, exercising and spending time outdoors everyday. I work outdoors teaching others all about earth care. I notice and tune into the cycles of nature, the moon and cycles with my own body. I use natural skin care products and essential oils that honor the earth rather than deplete it.

PEOPLE CARE – This is very much about self-care for me in the design and I’m not feeling guilty about that! My H&W design has self care and self-love at the core of it. I try to care for others too, by taking care of myself it makes me a better mum, wife, relative and friend to everyone around me. I am setting a good example for my children.

FAIR SHARES – I often share details with friends and family of things I’ve learnt from doing this design. I am a member of numerous online forums where we help each other, sharing advise, support and ideas. I share my skills and experience in my business. One of the primary reasons for beginning this design was that as a mum of 3, I’d put my needs last for many years to the point when I felt depleted, unhealthy and resentful. So my H&W design helped to re-address this balance and ensure I had a fair share of time and energy  directed towards myself.

I thought I’d pull 3 principles at random and reflect on how my health and wellbeing designs link in with them.

INTEGRATE RATHER THAN SEGREGATE – The designs and tools that I use to ensure my H&W stays on a good path are fully integrated into my life and the are integrated with each other also.

OBTAIN A YIELD – My H&W does give me lots of yields, better health, a fitter body, fantastic foods, more mindfulness, more peace, guilt free time for myself, new learning, clarity in my business, better work/life balance.

DESIGN FROM PATTERN TO DETAIL – MY H&W design does this really well I think. I have broad overarching patterns like ‘set 3 most important tasks each morning’ and ‘set monthly goals’  and ‘exercise 3 times each week’ I then fill in the detail effectively. For example today my 3 MIT’s were 1. Do my H&W update on the blog. 2. Take the kids to swimming and climbing’ 3. respond to MB booking enquiries. I add detail each Sunday about how I will fulfil my exercise 3 times each week goal, This week it was 1. swimming with the kids. 2. yoga classes. 3. Gym session and induction on the new machines

So in concluion, yes this is still a design that is in line with permaculture and it is working well for me right now. I’m very open to keep on adapting and tweaking the tools that I use to benefit my H&W over the years. I now feel I have tools on hand to help me keep my life in balance and heading in a healthy direction.