Nationally Recognized Author Ben Falk to Speak

Free Earth Day Presentation on Permaculture and Resilient Farm Design

April 9, 2014

Ben Falk is the founder of Whole System Design, a Vermont-based landscape consulting firm that offers permaculture design courses and other “reskill” trainings to equip people with the capacity to grow their own food, medicine, and fuel. Falk’s permaculture Whole Systems Research Farm has drawn national attention for its wide array of fruit trees, rice paddies (relatively unheard of in the Northeast), ducks, nuts, and earth-inspired buildings. He is the author of The Resilient Farm and Homestead: An Innovative Permaculture and Whole Systems Design Approach.

Falk will lecture at Lyndon State College as part of the college’s Earth Day activities, Tuesday, April 22 at 11 a.m.

Falk will discuss how to develop durable, beautiful, and highly functional human habitat systems fit to handle an age of rapid transition. According to Falk, “The core of the challenge is how to live adaptably because it’s easier and more enjoyable to learn to start doing these things now before we’re forced to.”

Falk and his team have been testing strategies at the Whole Systems Research Farm over the past decade, as well as experimenting on other sites Falk has designed through his off-farm consulting business.

By imitating natural systems, Falk hopes to inspire would-be homesteaders-especially those who find themselves with unlikely farming land-to make the most of what they have by re-imagining what’s possible. His demonstration of combustion-free hot water can be seen at youtube.com/watch?v=Z3Z003uBn9Q

Falk will speak at 11 a.m. in the Moore Community Room, Academic and Student Activity Center (ASAC) Room 100. The lecture is free and open to the public and is sponsored by LSC’s Social Science Department.

Lyndon State College’s Lecture and Arts Series is sponsored by Hayes Ford and Vermont Broadcast Associates. It is made possible in part by the Harriet M. Sherman Lecture Fund.