Courses/WorkshopsVillage Development

Permaculture on the Mine Site and Next to the Railroad: A Free Two-Day Permaculture Workshop in the West Virginia Coalfields – a How-To and Lessons Learned

by the We Are All Farmers Permaculture Institute (Crystal Allene Cook, Edward Marshall; photos by PDC graduate Amanda Joy)


Participants in the We Are All Farmers free permaculture workshop
in Mingo County, West Virginia.

Why should you care about Mingo County, West Virginia?

You probably haven’t heard of Mingo County, West Virginia in the United States. And if you have recently, it may be for its new series of ATV trails named for the mythologized fighting of two local families, the Hatfields of West Virginia and the McCoys of Kentucky. In the case of the Hatfields and McCoys, land displacement, political differences, and resource extraction (timbering) fueled the disagreement between these two families; their fighting grew out of far more than any purported heritage of feuding. This is also the area of the United States famed for stuffing ballot boxes leading to John F. Kennedy’s election. Or, maybe you know of Mingo County’s Battle of Matewan, when coal miners shot it out with thugs hired to suppress the miners’ union. Family, timber, state lines, land, politics, and coal — certainly a complicated mix.

Yet, Mingo County, West Virginia is not only important for its complex history; it is also highly significant in terms of its utility in current US energy production. Mingo is one of the top coal producing counties in the Eastern United States, in a state that is the second largest coal producer in the US. In addition to its deep mine sites, Mingo County has a number of surface mine sites. With both types of sites, the US government mandates clean-up of environmental hazards and site rehabilitation.

In addition to industrial clean up and rehabilitation, as with many other extractive areas and industry, the mining sector has replaced many of its workers with technology over the years. This has left Mingo County with a dwindling population, issues of poverty and health, and urban blight such as abandoned buildings, drug-related crime, and economic imbalance. Thus, Mingo County is not exceptional in this case. The world is littered with such sites as more of the globe’s population shifts from rural or micropolitan to mega-urban.

What does all of this have to do with permaculture, you might ask?

In 2012, when West Virginia-born Crystal Allene Cook of North Carolina’s We Are All Farmers Permaculture Institute (WAAF) reached out to regional non-profits to host one of WAAF’s three free annual workshops to the community, a group in Mingo County, West Virginia reached back. Sustainable Williamson comprises of folks from both that county’s energy- and jobs-focused non-profit, the Jobs Project, and the health and wellness non-profit, the Mingo County Diabetes Coalition. The two groups had two Mingo County sites of interest for the application of permaculture: the Mingo County Orchard — planted as part of the “land rehabilitation” mandate of a surface mining site, and, the Williamson Community Garden, a community garden project started in 2011. Furthermore, according to the folks at Sustainable Williamson, their county largely qualifies as a “food desert” ("a census tract with a substantial share of residents who live in low-income areas that have low levels of access to a grocery store or healthy, affordable food retail outlet"). In addition to addressing issues of access to healthy food, Sustainable Williamson aims to increase the local production of food (Mingo County has no full time working farms) toward keeping more food dollars local.

The folks there knew something of permaculture and thought an introduction of permaculture to their community could infuse more “sustainability” into their practices. Together these groups planned a two-day We Are All Farmers led permaculture workshop for March 2013.


WAAF PDC graduate, Kirk, preps attendees for their
first activity at the Williamson Community Garden

How to Conduct a Free Two-day Permaculture Workshop: Warts and All

The remainder of this article details the steps involved in providing a free two-day permaculture workshop to the community as a means

  • of encouraging other permaculture designers and teachers to consider the same in their regions
  • to give permaculture design certificate graduates a chance to teach their new knowledge and to pay that knowledge forward
  • to build more community throughout the bioregion or region
  • to introduce community as a core permaculture practice and to live that practice
  • to introduce new folks to permaculture and a small variety of its practices.

We also describe the actual processes (triumphs, trials, and tribulations) of the two workshop days. We at the We Are All Farmers Permaculture Institute feel that it is particularly important to chronicle the stumbling blocks (we call them “perma kerplops”) we encounter as we work through permaculture principles, methods, and practices as those perma kerplops can often be as instructive as articles or videos that make this important work appear seamless.

1. Decide on what and how many free workshops would be comfortable for you timewise and financially

Part of the proceeds from our for-pay permaculture design courses go to support three free two-day permaculture workshops for non-profits, schools, churches, community gardens, or other community spaces in the regions we have committed to: the Appalachian and Piedmont regions of the Southeastern United States. When we started our permaculture institute, we knew that we wanted to also bring permaculture to unlikely suspects and to people that may live far from where they could take a design course. What with our work schedules, class schedules, and so forth and with the responsibilities of our own design site, three two-day slots a year seemed to be about right. We have given one one-day and two two-day workshops so far and find that a couple of hours or so reserved for an intro to permaculture seems about right. If you want to care for the community, take on no more than you can really do, no?

In Mingo County, we did a ½ day workshop, 12 – 4 p.m. at the orchard at the reclaimed mine site followed by a full day the next day in a community center and at the Williamson Community Garden.

As Mingo County, West Virginia is about four hours from our institute, we carpooled there. With the point people in Mingo, we had arranged free accommodations. We brought sleeping bags and enough food for 12 people for 2 – 3 days. We cooked breakfast at the house where we stayed, packed bag lunches, and our institute paid for a modest dinner out (including the point people) on the first full day. The dinner out supported a local restaurant and gave us a chance to reflect on our first workshop day and to celebrate its success. It also gave a chance for students from different permaculture cohorts and for the point people to get to know each other better. The last evening there we cooked dinner back at the house where we stayed and invited the point people to join us.

Thus, part of our money from our earnings on the PDC we used to pay for some food for these three days, some transport, some materials, etc.

2. Feed the attendees

We ask that the sites that co-host the workshops also have a potluck as part of one of the two days. If we are going to get people up and doing hands-on work (which we insist the majority of the workshop be) then people need to eat before they do this. A potluck is also a great way for people to get to know each other and to discuss one of the things that often brings people to permaculture: food!

The first day in Mingo we arranged to have some water and snacks available for people at the mine site (we brought the cooler and the point people brought the snacks). The second day ended up being a marvelous feast as participants brought many foods they had gathered or grown themselves. The point people arranged the site for the potluck and provided cutlery, plates, etc.

3. Work with co-partners to decide on hands-on activities to be done and to get the word out

With each of our workshops, we have worked with the point people to make sure that the activities we suggest reflect the needs of the site, reflect the will and wishes of the people involved in the site, and can be accomplished by a group of 20 – 25 people in a couple of hours. We only take on workshops where the coordinators believe they can get 25 people to attend, will open the workshop to the public, and will also provide space for a potluck. We decided on this number of people because that seems to be about right for getting some larger practical things done in a short amount of time. Next, the wider public should be able to attend. Last but not least, people need to eat before they work.

Mingo proved to be a bit of a challenge — as our point people had not had permaculture training themselves and were also novices to orchard care, community gardens, etc. There were also a lot of people in the community with very different training when it comes to growing and we had to be careful and mindful about how we challenged some of their preconceptions.

Based on pictures sent to us and our interviewing the point people, we came up with some hands-on permaculture activities that we thought would give participants a good feel for the design possibilities of permaculture, how these may differ from traditional conceptualizations of growing or energy use, and that also could be activities for which the point people would be able to source materials cheaply and locally.

The planning phase for this was spread out over about four months. It took that long for the point people to gather enough information for us to be able to come up with manageable activities, a list of needed resources, and to get the word out about the training.

We sent out word throughout our community through our email list and through local food lists. I suggested a press release beyond just a "save-the-date". We also posted to many allied groups on Facebook and asked those allied to get the word out.


Participants find the contour at the mine site orchard

4. Get your permaculture design certificate students involved!

With Mingo, we really wanted to turn over a large portion of the running of the actual hands-on activities to our WAAF permies. Eight graduates of our permaculture design courses participated in leading the workshop. Once us two principals, Crystal and Edward, had worked with the point people on the activities, we had a couple of conference calls with our design students to gather their ideas and to sort out who among them would lead what. Crystal then followed up to get materials lists and recipes for the activities to be forwarded to the point people so they could have the materials ready prior to our group’s arrival and collate and print the recipes for attendees to keep.

Our permaculture design students then worked singly or in pairs to demonstrate hands-on activities.

Once we got to the actual sites and got to see them with our own eyes, and once we assessed the materials actually on hand, we gathered everyone together to do an impromptu re-arrange of the day’s activities. As our permaculture certificate graduates had their recent training fresh in their minds, they had stellar suggestions for activities we could do instead of those planned. We then created an agenda and wrote that up for folks to see when they arrived to the site. In addition to identifying useful plants, our graduates led attendees through hands-on practice of techniques to improve fertility and control water flow.


Workshop attendees manage for desired trees and create Hugelkultur

The orchard was about a thirty minute drive from Williamson, up a winding road, past other surface mine sites, to the top of what had been a mountaintop. Our point people let us know that despite its being out of the way, many local people did come to pick apples and grapes and that the extension service had tested the soil and the fruit for any potential toxicity. Another of our goals was to leave local people trained in some hands-on techniques that they could then teach other members of the community. We wanted people to be able to use some simple techniques to improve the orchard’s yield.


WAAF PDC graduate, Racquel (red sweater), facilitating
the hands-on sheet mulching activity

5. Be flexible

The second workshop day started indoors with our presenting to folks about what permaculture is and engaging and learning from attendees what brought them to the workshop. Then, we headed outside to practice hands-on activities. The Williamson Community Garden is located directly next to the railroad and wedged between that and a main thoroughfare. We decided to focus on activities that allowed us to build soil up (rather than take it from the potentially contaminated ground) and that improve rain water usage.

For the first outdoor activity, our permaculture design graduates led small groups of attendees on a walk through the site, prompting the attendees to observe the site through the lens of some of the permaculture principles to which they had just been exposed. For this activity, we sorted attendees into people from common areas so they could also get a chance to meet. We followed up later by taking email addresses so those people in a common region could have contact info for each other to potentially continue their permaculture learning together. This was where we explained the concept of “nodes of permanence” and emphasized how important community is in this work. We also broke folks into these smaller groups because we also wanted to give attendees and our graduates a chance to discuss concerns attendees had about the site or their own needs that brought them to a permaculture workshop.

After the potluck, we got a chance to engage with some local people involved in the community garden, and encountered a few bumps in the road of the vision and plans of primary stakeholders in the garden versus what had been communicated to us. Layered into this were the needs communicated onsite to us that day by the garden’s direct caretakers. In short, it looked like the day might deteriorate into problems of local politics.



WAAF PDC graduate, Brian, leads how to create a vermiculture bin

To keep the integrity of the day’s workshop going and to adhere to the agreed upon goals for attendees, we modified the day’s planned activities into creating things that could be moved. Although there ended up being on site contention about where our PDC graduates were to facilitate the group creation of a sheet mulch bed, we pointed out that once the sheet mulch began to break down, it could be shoveled and moved relatively easily. After this group activity, for lack of time, we broke the day’s attendees by interest into two remaining activities: portable compost bins and vermiculture bins. We wrapped up with discussion of what could be done for water catchment rather than actually building the water catchment.


WAAF PDC graduate, Nathan, teaches the basics of how
to build a compost bin from pallets

6. Leave something useful and practical behind. Leave some local people trained and interested in further training.

We insist that our free workshops be open to the community at large, so this was also the case in Mingo County. About twenty-two folks from Appalachia attended, with a couple of folks driving six hours to gain this knowledge and exposure. Through this workshop, some folks from Mingo County made some new contacts to continue the permaculture conversation with and to help each other with their newly-learned practices. A strong presence of people from the state’s capitol region (two hours away) also attended. One follow-up was immediate interest by people from that region for a similar free workshop (We Are All Farmers Permaculture Institute is now in the planning phase with them on that) and two of the attendees from that area are seeking to earn their permaculture design certificates (one as a work exchange with us in the fall and another, closer to his home in Appalachian Ohio).

The point people for this workshop also came away with some new perspectives and techniques for improving the fertility, water harvesting, and community involvement at these two sites. Additionally, three local experts (one master gardener from the local community college, another the new agriculture teacher in the brand new agricultural program at the local high school, and an older farmer in need of ways to get more labor done more efficiently on his farm) became exposed to some practices that opened up new possibilities for them, such as planting without tilling, using key hole designs, incorporating vermiculture, incorporating animals for short duration (such as with Holistic Management, which we discussed briefly with folks during the site walk), and sourcing labor through work exchange (also part of our presentation about creating community and opportunities for people to learn more food and energy security practices).


WAAF PDC graduate, Seneca, explains water catchment on hoop houses

7. Thank everyone! Then, thank them again!

After your workshop, be sure to follow up with attendees, point people, PDC graduates and anyone else involved and thank them for their participation. Often we take for granted that people should just show up to whatever permaculture activity we plan, but people taking time out of their busy lives should be respected and honored. We believe that that saying thank you often and a lot is a key practice of “care of people.”

8. Get and receive feedback

Follow up and ask for feedback from attendees, point people, PDC graduates, etc. Though it may be hard to hear, getting constructive feedback is part of the permaculture process. We need it in order to grow as facilitators and as permaculture practitioners.

Now, give us feedback!

We hope these directives and our experience help you plan your own free workshops in your own regions. We would love to hear about them and to also get feedback on what we have outlined in this article!

~~~~~

Edward Marshall and Crystal Allene Cook Marshall are the co-founders of the We Are All Farmers Permaculture Institute. A registered North Carolina non-profit, the We Are All Farmers Permaculture Institute is committed to increasing food and energy responsibility and resilience in the Appalachian and Piedmont regions of the United States through permaculture. We are glad to be of service to the Appalachian-Piedmont!

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