In honor of International Women’s Day 2012, we thought we’d pay tribute to just a couple of the amazing permaculture women we know. Some of them are well known, and some of them are not. But they are all fabulous, and they’re the tip of the iceberg.
It’s been a pleasure and an honor to meet you all, ladies. Go well on your many journeys… 
Michelle Avis of Verge Permaculture, helping us harvest giant forest garden pumpkins…
Chicks with digs: urban permaculture students building a herb spiral at Alexandria Park Community Garden…
Milkwood Farm intern Kade and her great pocket rocket stove…
Rose Newberry, Permaculture chef extraordinaire…
Betty in her amazing Urban food forest in Marrickville, Sydney…
Lisa Mollison, of the Permaculture Institute (plus Nick and Bill)
Tamara Gadzia, zuni bowl builder and wrangler of the Quivira Coalition…
Milkwood intern Alexe making a worm tower in Sydney
Milkwood PDC students, off to design their new worlds…
Joyce Wilkie of Allsun Farm, small farm advocate and market gardener (with Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms and Mike Plane of Allsun)
Alexia Martinez, determined and valued permaculture teacher…
Belinda, an extraordinary and generous urban Warré beekeeper in Sydney who we visit regularly as part of natural beekeeping training…
Rosemary Morrow, permaculture teacher and teacher trainer (i’ve been sworn by Rowe to not use accolade-like adjectives surrounding her name, so just put them in yourself)…
My two Mums – Sue Bradley and June Ritar (And a very pregnant me in the middle, back in 2009) – without whose considerable moral support (and cups of tea, and babysitting, and good advice, and hard labor), Milkwood Farm wouldn’t exist…
Milkwood Farm interns Sabina, Ashley + Claire (and Olive and Adam + Jurgen) rendering an earthbag dome, featuring Sabina’s preferred worksong…
Not forgetting some of our favorite ‘girls’ of other breeds, who make Milkwood Farm go round…
Milly and Sausy, who did such a great job prepping our market garden site with their pig-tractoring ways…
All the lady chickens in the rawbale chookhouse! Thanks for all the eggs…
To all our lady bees… thanks for all the honey, and the pollination, and the continuing fascination…
And to all the ladies past and present that we’ve had the honor to meet in the incredible experience of re-skilling and re-thinking our place on this planet, since we bumped into permaculture theory 5 years ago… thank you…
Please note that yes, I realize I missed out 5 trillion other amazing permaculture women that should be in here – this is but a very small sample, representative of a vast ocean of female awesomeness… feel free to add more names to the comments!
7 Comments
Beautiful Honouring <3
Thank —>> you (emphasis) <<— Kirsten. Without your awesomeness we wouldn't perhaps be awesome ourselves, Milkwood would just be wood and Nick would be running around like a headless chicken!!
You're a phenomenal person! Mutitasker, organiser, mother, wife, permaculturist extraordinaire! Thank you.
I’ll toast to that!
Inspirational women, all! Motivating others by being themselves!
Thanks for this post.
What a great tribute… women, let´s keep inspiring the world and permaculturing it up!!!!
thanks for such a beautiful post Kirsten, you rock!
and that, right there, is why I love your blog!
A big-up to Lea Harrison, one of our true permaculture elders who with Judith Turley initiated and taught PDC’s for women in the ’80′s. Lea’s been off the scene for a while, but has returned to teaching with a whole lot of experience, wisdom and reflection to share. Thanks for the wonderful post!