I think it was when I was studying music in Mexico that I first thought about opening a Trade School, where people who have low or no income just come in and exchange services for education. I feel closer every day to that project thanks to this wonderful toolbox that Permaculture has been to me.

When I was in my last year of high school I fell in love with music but I have always been surrounded by friends who are either healers or doctors, that is when I learned audio recording and vocal technique. A few years later, I started teaching vocal technique. I enhance that experience for my students with Reiki, Yoga, Music Therapy, and digital audio recording. I also studied culinary technique (Commis de Cuisine) in Ecuador in 2010 at the Asociación de Chefs de Ecuador. I worked for a Mexican Music & Catering Service in Germany and I am building a Permaculture demonstrative-educational project in Rural México. For all this, I go with one of the resilience principles: "interactive diversity", a network of diverse elements connected through positive interactions.

In December 2010, I acquired a 5ha plot in Drylands Hot-arid Guanajuato, Mexico. I started planting organic and the next thing I found myself surrounded with Permaculture and water harvesting books. Then I decided to take a PDC with Geoff Lawton in 2013. Later on, I took another PDC with Matt Powers in 2018. In the beginning, I started to draw the design on paper and implement it on the plot back in Mexico. Since then I have spent almost every summer or winter refining the design. (see a copy of my project document here: http://linkedin.com/pub/oscar-torres/a0/89b/b26)

The turning point for me was in 2013 when I got my Permaculture Design Certificate from Geoff Lawton. I learned that just by changing how we look at the landscape and climate and learning from them we can start providing solutions for the problems we see. Positivism and cooperation are the first principles of how natural systems work and evolve. Pattern understanding. Grow your knowledge of the problem, and connect the elements. Use the excess of a product as a resource. Provide the environment for the elements to deliver their work. The elements in the landscape want to serve, we observe in a meditative state so our interactions are more beneficial and efficient.

"All the problems of the world can be solved in a garden" -- Geoff Lawton
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein

Workshop - Introduction to Permaculture and Reading the Landscape

Help surveying a place near Samalayuca, Chihuahua in Mexico

Permaculture design 20ha about 52km from el Paso Texas.

Rainwater harvesting, Earthbag construction, Zone 1 designing

Volunteer in El Expejo in February 2014

Earth-bag construction, infiltration swales, Zone 1 designing.

Volunteer in February 2014 in México

Reservoir | 01.12.2012

Reservoir made on October 2012

First Organic Harvest at EL ESPEJO

Flor de Junio and Pinto Beans harvested

PESTS - CONTROL

What do you guys recommend as organic pests control?

LINKS

Here are the news of what we are doing. We are pretty happy to announce that we just planted for the first time 4 has of Frijol flor junio in El Espejo and it is doing pretty well.

Looking for advise in permaculture design?

Consultations on-line free of charge for 2013