Talk on How to Grow All Your Own Produce April 9, 2009

Marisha Auerbach will give a talk on How to Grow All Your Own Produce in 2 1/2 Years: An (r)Evolution Disguised as Organic Gardening. In the Maritime Northwest, it is possible to grow all our own food year-round with limited time to establish a system and limited effort. Alternatively, the current food system is facing increased costs and decreased nutrition due to the distance that it is transported. Auerbach specializes in converting properties to a perennial forage systems, where we can be meet our needs on site. This system functions much like a natural ecological system, and produces year-round yields with minimal work. Marisha provides most of her diet and income from her garden and has surplus produce, herbal products, and crafts to give away and trade for other supplies. This presentation is an invitation for you to visit some of Marisha’s gardening projects through slides and philosophy. She will be discussing how you can work towards self-reliance in produce if you have property to work with as well as guerrilla tactics to grow more food and flowers in your greater area. The workshop has a sliding-scale charge of $10 - $7.

Marisha Auerbach has been practicing, studying, and teaching permaculture in the Pacific Northwest for the past decade. As an itinerant permaculture designer, Marisha calls the greater Olympia area home, especially the Wild Thyme Farm, a 150 acre permaculture demonstration farm and FSC certified forest in the northern Willapa Hills. Marisha encourages sustainable futures through sharing knowledge with others on a variety of topics including: permaculture, polyculture gardening, seed saving, flower and gem essences, local economics, community building, ethnobotany, herbalism, edible landscape design, and organic gardening among others. Marisha's interest in local economics and creating useful items using her resources has manifested as several projects: past work on local community marketplaces in Olympia, Queen Bee Flower and Gem Essences, Herb'n Wisdom for permaculture consulting and herbal products, and Growing Greetings which produces plantable greeting cards and other products. Marisha has a small plant nursery which focuses on edible flowers and other gourmet specialty food items. Marisha graduated from the Evergreen State College in 1998 where she focused on ethnobotany, ecological agriculture, and sustainability studies.

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