Eighth of an Acre Bounty

Yesterday, I received the Tilth email newsletter and in it, about halfway down the page there was a quick blurb for a 6 month Permaculture Design class put on by Seattle Tilth and taught by Toby Hemenway (author of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture). The class is from 9-5:30, Saturday and Sunday every second weekend of the month from May through October. Total cost is $900. I waffled, I whined, I instant messaged Gary about how I need a rich benefactor for all my gardening, animal husbandry and land desires, I slept on it. This morning I decided to do it.

$900 isn’t chump change. A lot could be done with that money, that is a whole months mortgage payment for me*. But as I sat there spinning on the possibility, I realized that I haven’t really taken any intensive classes since I got out of school. In addition this is something I am really interested in, and aside from one real-world friend who shares my interest in gardening- I mainly rely on all of you out in the blogosphere to function as my plant growing, chicken raising, beekeeping buddies.

And then I did the actual math. 12 full days of instruction breaks down to $75 per day, or less than $10 per hour. I paid more than that for a two day intro to welding class that totaled 4 hours a few years ago. There is no doubt that Toby Hemenway is the go-to guy in the area of permaculture and I might very well meet some people in the class with similar interests while learning a bunch and having the experts at my side to question.

Excuse all of the rationalizing above. I’m a bit of a tightwad when it comes to money I have traded my limited time on earth for – so I think I just had to lay it all out there. But this post also has an ulterior motive to see if any of you PNW bloggers may be interested in the class as well.

*My half of the mortgage payment, that is. Oh how I wish our whole mortgage was just $900!