Design Your Own Permaculture Home Orchard Trio
JOIN THE MASTERCLASS …
A LIVE Verge Permaculture Academy Masterclass for Building Your Resilience
Advanced Home Orcharding
Grow Resilient Fruit Crops at Home
A Verge Permaculture Masterclass featuring Stefan Sobkowiak
Starts July 26th, 2023
Wednesdays 3:30pm PT / 5:30pm ET
Fruits, Nuts, and Berries the Way They’re Meant to Taste
Tree-Ripened, Harvested Fresh from Your Own Property
One Second from Tree to Tastebuds
Stefan Sobkowiak has been described as “a man outstanding in his field” – a biologist, university lecturer and public speaker. In 2017, he founded “beyond-organic” Miracle Farms, now the largest permaculture fruit orchard in Eastern North America, which also incorporates livestock and fowl.
With advanced degrees in wildlife biology and landscape architecture, he has crafted designs to attract beneficial birds, animals and insects to clients’ properties over the past 20 years. He has taught courses including Fruit Production and Landscape Plants and Design at Montreal’s McGill University, and spoken to more than 400 groups on topics including edible gardening, landscape design, and permaculture.
Meet Your Instructor
Stefan Sobkowiak of Miracle Farms
With Stefan’s expertise, humor and optimism, he is a popular lecturer, eagerly requested by Verge students since his talk on Your Permaculture Lab at Verge’s 2021 Permaculture Summit. We’re thrilled to welcome him back!
Healthy Trees and Luscious Fruit – Naturally
Our LIVE Masterclass guides you through every step of designing your home orchard to produce abundant organic crops while naturally nourishing the soil and repelling pests.
Health for Your Family, Health for the Earth
If you’re looking to build a self-sufficient, regenerative life, an orchard is essential to your property! Give your family all the vitamins and minerals – not to mention the freshness and flavor – of just-picked fruits, berries, and nuts grown in a thriving permaculture ecosystem. With this Masterclass, you can design your system right the first time.
Here’s what past students have to say about Verge:
Fact vs Myth
If you’ve held off from starting a homestead orchard because you’ve heard stories about how hard it is – relax. In Stefan’s Masterclass, he provides years of proven results from his Miracle Farm to set you free from that disinfo! For example you can:
Sign Up and Stefan will show you how it’s possible.
ADVANCED HOME ORCHARDING
MASTERCLASS
ONLY $399 CAD
(~$290 USD)
Starting July 26th, 2023
Wednesdays
3:30 – 6:30 pm Pacific Time | 5:30 – 8:30 pm Eastern Time
6-weeks of live online lectures
No More Chemical-Laced, Well-Travelled Fruit
Whether you have space for just a half-dozen trees or an acre’s worth, you can add the beauty and biodiversity of a permaculture orchard to your property, and reap the luxury of tree-to-table treats.
With Stefan’s proven strategies, you can stagger your harvests with several cultivars for Fruit-of-the-Month variety–no more unripe picked-to-ship Gala, mealy Red Delicious, or GMO Arctic apples!
With Stefan Sobkowiak’s inspired use of permaculture principles, you can have a thriving regenerative orchard, with continual harvests to savor and share over an extended growing season, and still have time to enjoy your life!
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Plan your orchard from seed-to-succession
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Design the layout for soil fertility and maximum yield
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Prepare your property and set up your orchard nursery
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Stack functions with plant guilds and multiple-use trees
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Propagate your trees by grafting
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Increase yield by pruning and other techniques
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Protect your plants successfully with Integrated Pest Management
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Integrate bees, ducks, chickens, rabbits, and/or sheep into your system
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…and much more!
Along with Stefan’s live lectures and Q&As, you will have the opportunity to make friends and build your own local support network through real-time collaboration in break-out groups of fellow students from your bioregion.
LOOKING FOR MORE DETAILS?
Scroll down for detailed course schedule & content and FAQ’s
Live webinars hosted on Wednesdays and start at 3:30pm Pacific Time | 5:30pm Eastern (convert to your time zone here).
| Week | Dates | High-Level Topics Covered |
|---|---|---|
| Week #1 | Wednesday June 7th | Session 1: Nursery Overview / Integrating a Nursery into existing systems |
| Week #2 | Wednesday June 14th | Session 2: Terms, Tools, Techniques |
| Week #3 | Wednesday June 28th | Session 3: Propagation Specifics – Hardwood, Softwood, Seed and more |
| Week #4 | Wednesday July 5th | Session 4: Actionable Steps, Resources, Making it Happen |
On average, webinars will run about two hours long, and may go shorter or longer depending on the number of student questions each week.
All webinars are recorded and posted to the student dashboard where you can watch or (re-watch) at your own pace.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
You can pay online with your credit card.
If you’d prefer to pay using another method select that option during checkout and you’ll receive instructions on how to do so. Note that we can accept cash, bank-certified cheques, email money transfer (Canadians only) or credit card over the phone.
Your spot is not saved in the course until payment is received.
We can also accept payment plans for some of our courses. The payment plan option will be displayed at checkout if that is the case.
*Please note that registrations paid by email money transfer are processed manually. Because we are not in the office everyday, be prepared to wait 24 business hours during weekdays before your registration is approved/activated. If you are registering with short notice before an event, we recommend that you pay online using a credit card so that your registration is processed and approved automatically by our system.
All On-Demand course materials (i.e. videos, recordings and associated resources) are available indefinitely (our lifetime or yours). *** Does not apply to all Permaculture Design Course packages or Verge Permaculture Academy subscriptions.
Rob Avis is a Diplomate in Education from the Permaculture Institute of North America (PINA) and PINA recognizes and endorses Verge Permaculture’s courses and curriculum.
Updated January 2023
For courses paid up-front in full:
If you need to cancel your PDC, Masterclass, or other Live course registration for any reason:
- Up to 10 days following the 1st class: we will refund your course fee but will deduct an administrative fee of $150 (plus applicable taxes), however, you will lose access to all course materials and recordings. Tuition for the PDC On-demand course is not refundable.
- More than 10 days following the 1st class: We cannot provide a refund.
For payment plans:
You can cancel your payment plan anytime (but you will lose access to all course materials and recordings). Payments made towards plans are not refundable.
We are not able to offer refund for on-demand courses and products.
Participating in our live online programs and on on our student portal is easy.
If you’ve played a video on your computer from Youtube or Vimeo before, then you’ve got all you need participate!
BUT TO BE MORE SPECIFIC, WE RECOMMEND:
- A desktop or laptop computer
- An up-to-date internet browser (Internet Explorer 8.0 or above, Firefox 2.0 or above, or Safari 3.0, or Chrome 4.0 or above)
- Speakers/headphones
- A broadband internet connection (for a reliable viewing experience at medium quality we recommend a downstream connection speed of at least 400-700 Kbps. You can test your connection speed here)
We use an online platform called Zoom for our live webinars. All you need to join (from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android) is to click on a url that we will provide to you on the Student Portal.
The full system requirements for the webinars, including operating system requirements, supported tablet /mobile devices, supported browsers, and bandwidth requirements can be found here. (Note that you only need to meet the requirements for “Webinar Attendees” – no camera is required).
Don’t have high speed internet? You can also call in via phone, but note that toll rates may apply.
To get the most out of the masterclass you should expect to commit anywhere from 2 to 3 hours a week.
The weekly live sessions will run, on average 2 hours long, but may go shorter or longer depending on student questions. There may also be some supplemental reading and/or videos provided each week to students.
If you miss a live webinar, you will be able to watch the video recording, which will be posted to our Student Portal and can be streamed online 24/7. If you are a member of the Verge Permaculture Academy, you will also be able to access audio recordings of the lectures offline on your mobile device.
The instructor may offer you optional practice exercises that are designed to hone the skills and knowledge being taught. These are not required to complete the course.
ADVANCED HOME ORCHARDING
MASTERCLASS
ONLY $399 CAD
(~$290 USD)
Starting July 26th, 2023
Wednesdays
3:30 – 6:30 pm Pacific Time | 5:30 – 8:30 pm Eastern Time
6-weeks of live online lectures