- Design 8: Iso Potkästi
Design 8: Iso Potkästi (podcast) / READY 2025-02-24 LINK to Iso-Potkästi
- Design 7: Kannuksen valmistuminen – The Drum
I started the Drum design on winter solstice 21.12.2023 when I lit the first fire at our ’megalithic circle’ and decided to make a drum and create it as a design in my Diploma portfolio. This was while many others were rushing around shopping malls preparing to celebrate a strange concoction of christianity and americanised consumerism and a twisted understanding of “gift economy”. I always had difficulty to connect to what our […]
- Design 6: Ducks
Diploma apprentice’s name Erkki Pöytäniemi Date Apprentice started Diploma May 2021 Project Title Design 6 – Ducks Design Number 6/10 Date Design Started 2024-08-12 Date Design Completed 2024-10-21 / 2024-11-12 Has the Design been implemented? yes Online Link to Design (if available) https://iso-orvokkiniitty.fi/dpaerkki/2024/09/03/design-8-ducks/ Type of Design Land Based Design Framework VOEDIMET Design Category Land & Nature Stewardship, Building, Tools & Technology Tools used Ethics to state vision, Zones, Sectors, Elements […]
- Design 5 – Mushroom cultivation at Iso-orvokkiniitty
Diploma apprentice’s name Erkki Pöytäniemi Date Apprentice started Diploma 2017 / May 2021 in NPA Project Title Design 5 – Mushroom cultivation at Iso-orvokkiniitty Design Number 5/10 Date Design Started 2024-03-15 (2015) Date Design Completed 2024-10-17 / 2025-03-17 after 2nd mentor assessment Has the Design been implemented? yes Online Link to Design (if available) Type of Design Land Based Design Framework CEAP Design Category Land & Nature Stewardship, Tools and […]
- Design 4.2: Forest Garden
Diploma apprentice’s name Erkki Pöytäniemi Date Apprentice started Diploma May 2021 Project Title Design 4 – Forest Garden Design Number 4/10 Date Design Started 2015 Date Design Completed 2024-03-31 Has the Design been implemented? yes Online Link to Design (if available) Design 4.2: Forest Garden – Erkki ‘s Permaculture Diploma Type of Design Land Based Design Framework GoSADIMET Design Category Land & Nature Stewardship. Tools used Ethics to state vision, […]
- Our Needs
I originally wrote this chapter as a part of Design 2: Energy at Iso-orvokkiniitty, which originally was broader than just energy. Therefore the Needs chapter was broader than what is necessary for just looking at the Energy. So not loose that text I am putting it here as a separate background article. Our Needs The house where one lives relates obviously to ones needs, some of them basic. An article […]
- Design 1: Ponds at Iso-orvokkiniitty
Approved 16.9.2023 – No editing after that. 15.3.2025 – Tweaks after 2nd mentors assessment: Brief, Contour map, Reflection on Learnings. This design was started in June 2021 as “Water and Making Ponds”. After reviewing it in June 2023 I decided that the design is too big and should be divided in smaller bits that are easier to manage. The largest part of the design is the Ponds at Iso-orvokkiniitty (this […]
- Design 3: Caring for Bees
This is the third design in my Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design Portfolio. I started writing it in early 2022 and first published it 3.5.2022. The second version was published in spring 2023 and the final in October 2023. APPROVED 16.11.2023 (no edits after that) Index My path from Beekeeping to Caring for Bees I had bees for a couple of years in the late 1970’s when I was in […]
- Design 2: Energy at Iso-orvokkiniitty
I first published this article on 10.2.2022 but as usual it was not final. I had written the Vision, Needs and Observations of the current situation, evaluated how it works and possibilities to tweak. I came back to the design in September 2023. Now I decided I need to narrow down the scope from "Buildings and Energy systems" to "Energy at Iso-orvokkiniitty". Possible spin-offs (i.e. other designs) are "Water and […]
- House
I published this article first in Finnish on iso-orvokkiniitty.fi on 4.1.2021. Here I used Google Translate for translation which worked surprisingly well (you could actually use Google translate to read our Finnish articles and mostly make sense of them). I have corrected obvious translation errors and done small updates but basically the text is as the original text. In the summer and autumn of 2013, the decision matured for us […]
- Water and making ponds
24.8.2023: I decided that the “Water and Making Ponds” is too wide in scope and therefore difficult to structure in a sensible way. I am making a revised design just about the ponds: Design 1: Ponds at Iso-orvokkiniitty. That opens the possibility to make separate designs about I am moving this to Background articles. I am starting to write this on 8.6.2021 as the first actual design in my Diploma […]
- (Design 4): Forest Garden
Forest Garden with focus on PA-8 UNDER HEAVY CONSTRUCTION (2023-11-05) I started this design on 11.7.2021. The main reason was that some decisions about maintaining and developing our forest garden needed to be made. The general ideas of agroforestry, forest garden and experimenting with different fruit and nut trees was an important part of our thinking from the very beginning. We planted trees already the first summer we were here […]
- My Permaculture Design Pathway
My path to the Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design (DPA) Content Background I have done my PDC course in France at Le Ferme du Bec Hellouine in August and September 2014. I have reported about the course in Finnish in our blog at that time (pre-course, 1st week, 2nd week). My reasons to take the PDC course at Bec Hellouine were two-fold: to take the course on a professional permaculture oriented […]
- Vision and Purpose 1.
Family meeting in 2014 (post first written 11.6.2021) In March 2014 we gathered together at our home in Espoo with our kids. We had found Iso-orvokkiniitty in February and had decided to buy it if possible. We wanted to know what our children thought about it and what ideas or wishes they might have. We made a mind-map together which you can see on the right. The mind-map consists mainly […]
- EVALUATION AND SITE ANALYSIS 4: THE MAIN ELEMENTS AND SYSTEMS
Prelude This article will be a little different because I think I need to tell what I planned to do and started doing but didn’t finalise. Maybe this chapter is not really a part of the design but it is a part of my design path. Anyway I am publishing it now on 5.5.2021 but I am pretty sure I will come back to it for editing. In the previous […]
- EVALUATION AND SITE ANALYSIS 3: PLANNING AREAS
If you have read through the previous 3 articles about the site (see above) and 60 DEGREES NORTH, 23 EAST you should have a pretty good picture of where we are and what has happened so far (until January 2021). In this article I will analyse the site from one more perspective: what are the different planning areas we should look at either as a part of the master design […]
- Evaluation and site analysis 2: Zones
In most cases you will see that zones come before sectors in permaculture design. I felt more comfortable doing it the other way round as sectors are purely observations and zones already include an element of design and they relate directly to what we are doing in our site rather than what natural forces are at play. Still describing zones in a site is in the first stage about observation […]
- Evaluation and site analysis 1: Sectors
In my first PD article I described our natural geographic situation so it would be easier for the reader to understand where we are, from a natural, geographic and climatic point of view. In the second article I tried to describe ”where we came from” i.e. the historical background of the place and region. In this third article I am still in observation mode with sectors and after that will follow zones. […]
- Iso-orvokkiniitty: the site
This article is part of Erkki’s Permaculture Diploma Portfolio. Part of it was written already in 2015 when I first started writing our permaculture design. Of course a lot has happened after that and I have updated it to today’s situation. In my first PD article I described our natural geographic situation so it would be easier for the reader to understand where we are from a natural, geographic and […]
- Diploma Diary
I am keeping this diary – which I started on 12.1.2020 – as a web-site page instead of a blog posting. It is open for anyone to read if interested in my Permaculture Diploma path. As such it is an appendix to my DPA Mainpage and quite “deep” in the web-site. No need for it to jump up on social media. I am writing it backwards so if you want […]
- Karjalohja: the location and connecting to history
Karjalohja Karjalohja, where Iso-orvokkiniitty is located, is situated in the western Uusimaa region 85 km west of Helsinki, south of the main E18 motorway between Helsinki and Turku. From Iso-orvokkiniitty it is 70 minutes drive to Helsinki. The closest town and the municipality to which Karjalohja belongs is Lohja to the east which has a population of 47000. The former Karjalohja municipality (merged to Lohja in 2013) has roughly 1500 inhabitants […]