The Resilience Hub is seeking proposals for projects to build community-scale resilience:

•Are you part of a community group that could benefit from increased access to your own fruits and vegetables? From reduced water or electricity bills?

•Are you an organization doing community organizing or direct support work that has an idea for the way that small-scale energy or food/medicine production could support your work?

•Are you a tenant or a renter in an urban area wanting to increase your access to fruits and vegetables, decrease water or electric bills, and learn about and demonstrate urban gardening techniques?

•Are you a property owner in a rural, urban, or suburban area looking to build your household’s resilience and also committed to building equity in your community by leveraging your property towards community benefit? (This could look like land sharing agreements, building a community gathering space, creating a neighborhood food distribution network with surplus, running a community research project on soil remediation, etc.)

The Portland Permablitz Network organizes work parties to build projects that increase resilience through backyard or neighborhood food production, energy generation, water catchment, and community-building. We take a permaculture approach – a way of designing that mimics nature’s patterns. Together, we can accomplish in a day what it might take an individual or small group a whole season to complete. We will convene 5-6 permablitz work parties from June through November this year.

If you would like to apply, please fill out the Permablitz Host Form by April 3.

To learn more about permablitzes, visit https://resiliencehub.org/projects/maine-permablitz/

The Resilience Hub is offering a 13-part Garden School Series starting in mid-February. The series is a collaboration between the Hub, Rooted in Resilience, the Cumberland County Cooperative Extension, Fedco Seeds, and Edgewood Nursery.

This “seed to storage” series will be a chance for beginning gardeners to connect with more experienced growers and learn the basics of growing food at home. We believe that gardening is a life-long pursuit and there is always more to learn.

These hands-on, participatory workshops will be held from 6:00 to 8:00pm at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension unless otherwise noted – see below for a full list of the series workshops. The gardens at Tidewater Farm will provide an opportunity to follow the progress of a garden tended by Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners. Participants will come away with practical knowledge that can be applied in the home garden, and there will be time to check in with questions during every class.

Cost is $10 – $25 sliding scale.  The true cost of this workshop is $20 per person. Our aim is to have this series accessible to all people, contact us about scholarship opportunities. To sign up, become a member of our Meetup group: https://www.meetup.com/maine-permaculture/.

February 18: Garden Design and Planning with Mary Wicklund from Rooted in Resilience

March 10: Seed Starting with Heron Breen and Buddy Thomas from Fedco Seeds

April 14: Overview of Soil – Soil Biology and Sheet Mulching with Mary Wicklund from Rooted in Resilience and Aaron Parker from Edgewood Nursery

May 12:  Composting and Vermicomposting Made Easy with Mary Wicklund from Rooted in Resilience

June 9 : Water Systems: Drip Irrigation and Rain Barrels with Mary Wicklund from Rooted in Resilience

June 30: What’s Possible with Guilds/Companion Planting & Forest Gardening with Aaron Parker from Edgewood Nursery

July 14: Problems and Pests: Summer Garden Status for Success with Heron Breen from Fedco Seeds

July 28: Freezing Green Beans and Canning Dilly Beans with Mary Wicklund from Rooted in Resilience

August 25: Taste Trials – Summer Bounty of Tomato and Melon Varieties with Heron Breen from Fedco Seeds

September 1: Season Extension Techniques with Mary Wicklund from Rooted in Resilience and Heron Breen from Fedco Seeds

September 22: Root Cellaring with Jason Lilley from Cumberland County Cooperative Extension

October 13: Fermentation Techniques with Kate Wallace of the Resilience Hub

October 27: Planting Garlic and Season Review with Mary Wicklund of Rooted in Resilience

Join us on December 6 at Root Wild Kombuchery from 6:30 – 9:00 pm to celebrate another year of permaculture design courses, workshops, and permablitzes!

Highlights include a photo booth and silent action with some great stuff from our friends and neighbors around the state. Proceeds from the silent auction will benefit another year of Resilience Hub programs. We’ll release a list of auction items before the event, so stay tuned.

Winter Celebration and Silent Auction

Friday, Dec 6, 2019, 6:30 PM

Root Wild Kombucha
135 Washington Ave Portland, ME

13 Permies Attending

Join the Resilience Hub at Root Wild Kombuchery to celebrate another year of permaculture design courses, workshops, and permablitzes. Highlights include a photo booth and silent action with some great stuff from our friends and neighbors around the state. Proceeds from the silent auction will benefit another year of Resilience Hub programs. We’ll …

Check out this Meetup →

We’ll have music and activities as well as small bites to snack on – if you’d like to bring something to share, please do! Root Wild kombucha and beer will be available to purchase. Kids are welcome!

Join in the fun — stop in for a few minutes or stay the whole time. We will be telling stories from the past year and sharing the goals we have set for the year to come. We hope to see you there!

It’s hard to think spring when the snow hasn’t even started to fly, but it’s that time of year again! We’re excited to bring back the Resilience Hub’s Fedco Tree group order. Their website has been up and taking orders for a couple of weeks now.

Why participate this time around? Get a discount, order great stuff, have your plants delivered to Portland (you won’t have to drive 90 minutes north and back to get your order!), and support the work of permaculture education here in Maine.

Here are the details:

1. For all inquiries regarding orders, email kate@resiliencehub.org.
2. You can use the paper Fedco Trees catalog if you have one or the online catalog to put together your wish list. Order early, as popular items tend to sell out.
3. Log into Fedco Trees using your email address and follow the directions given here. When you review your order prior to checking out, click the “Part of a Group” button as your shipping option. Then go to “Checkout Securely” and type in our group order number: 49808.
4. You will not pay on the Fedco site, but you will click here to send your total amount to The Resilience Hub. We collect the money and make one big payment to Fedco in order to qualify for the discount.
5. You need to place your order with Fedco and make your payment to us by the ORDER DEADLINE OF JANUARY 17, 2020.
6. PIckup up your order in Portland at the end of April. Depending on how much of a discount we receive, we will process a refund* back to you via PayPal.

We will be organizing 2 or 3 members with trucks to drive up and get all our stuff on Friday May 1. Your order will be available for pickup in Portland on the afternoon of May 1 and over the course of the following Saturday and Sunday (May 2 and 3). More details about the specific location and time for pickup will be shared closer to the date.

We will also be available to help out with any order problems or shortages after the fact.  

Here’s to more perennial food in the landscape!

* Depending on the size of our order, Fedco will issue a discount of between 10% and 20%. Then sales tax will be added back in, we will put a bit of money toward fuel for the volunteers who drive to Fedco and bring the order back down to Portland, and a bit of money toward a stipend for the order coordinator. You will likely get at least 10% back, support the Hub and contribute to a reduced number of vehicles driving up and back for pickup!

The Resilience Hub and Midcoast Permaculture Design graduated its 20th cohort this summer from the internationally recognized Permaculture Design Course. Participants met five times over four months at the MOFGA fairgrounds in Unity. In that time we visited multiple permaculture sites, and learned hands-on techniques like plant propagation, sheet mulching, scything, and water-harvesting earthworks. We did a deep dive into the permaculture design process, which culminated in a three-day, start-to-finish, small-group design of our sample client’s 5-acre site in Morrill. It was an exciting weekend, stressful at times, but each group finished the project with multiple beautiful hand-drawn maps and a written report. Congratulations to the 2019 Unity PDC grads!

Dates for the 2020 PDC will be announced very soon! To learn more, check out maine-pdc.com.