Chrys is caretaker at Heartsong, a former retreat center 25 miles north of Spokane and the venue for the INPC for three years running. Heartsong occasionally hosts permaculture groups, and others, for holding educational events that revolve around permaculture, the healing of individuals, groups and the planet. At Heartsong, Chrys raises dairy goats, takes care of a flock of laying hens, maintains an 8000 sq. ft. garden and assists in the implementation of the permaculture design for the property. A resident of Washington since 1990, Chrys has been active in sustainable agriculture circles since the mid-90's. He learned to do web design twenty years ago working on the first-ever Tilth Producers of Washington website. He now provides web services for private clients and for Washington State University Extension as a part-time employee. He earned his Permaculture Design Certificate from Michael Pilarski in 2012 and enjoys teaching organic gardening, cheese-making, goat husbandry and permaculture.

Deborah Berman is the founder of Palouse Permaculture, and a cofounder of the Institute for Regenerative and Integrative Science. 

As an endurance athlete and ultra runner, Diana Duke began her journey in permaculture with an interest in nutrition.  In 2009 she embarked on an adventure, riding her bike from San Diego to San Francisco, working on organic farms along the way.  She completed her Permaculture Design Course (PDC) in Costa Rica, in 2010, under the guidance of Scott Pittman of the Permaculture Institute.  She has also studied hugelkulture under Sepp Holzer.  An intership at a dairy farm in Colorado, Sustainable Settings, fostered an interest in livestock.  It is on this dairy farm where she met her husband, Collin Duke.  In November 2012, Diana and Collin landed in Sandpoint, Idaho and purchased 20 acres of forest land in Priest River, Idaho.  Here they started a sustainable tree farm and forest products business.  In 2013 Diana completed the Idaho Master Forest Stewardship and Master Naturalist Progams, and now volunteers her time at Round Lake State Park, as a Nature Hike Leader. Diana also completed her yoga teacher certification in Cuzco, Peru, and has recently started playing the violin.  She has turned her home in Sandpoint, Idaho into an urban homestead, appliying permaculture pricipals and sustainable practices.  Her in town home is complete with ducks, meat rabbits and an uban permaculture fruit guild and orchard.  Most recently, Diana, has been voluteering her time, toward an effort through the Kinksu Land Trust to encourage community, organic gardening and community outreach to those in need.

Gabe Gaul is thrilled about Nature! Loves the outdoors. Permaculture for 10 years.

More than a decade of  permaculture experience.

Experienced designer.

Two introductory and two full-on Permaculture Design Courses (Friends of the Trees/Michael Pilarski).

Many  years on the Inland Northwest Permaculture Guild (INPG) Board of Directors.

Affiliated with Northwest Build & Guild.

Three years homesteading, cultivating and logging.

Six years commercial, ethical wildcrafting.

Mushrooms

Hunting mushrooms since six years old. Won Morel Mania contest (Illinois).

Radical Mycology Network Certification Course.

Two years teaching mushroom workshops privately and in conjunction w/ INPG.

Two years tincturing and making mushroom medicine.

Gabe offers Workshops Classes & Forays for All Ages.  Subjects include Ethics & Principals of Wildcrafting Introduction to Permaculture Home Mushroom Inoculation and more. Forays with eight to eleven people are guided excursions into natural places for the purposes of learning improving observation skills harvesting or design.

Indigo has been studying herbs for 40 years and raised a healthy family without the use of any pharmaceuticals.

Jessica Peterson of Inside Edge Design based in Helena, Montana is going to be one of INPC’s keynote speakers.  Jessica, along with Caroline Wallace, has been developing a public forest garden in Helena,  6th Ward Garden Park, since 2011. They have been assisted by David Jacke who taught a 10-day course there in 2015.  Inside Edge Design just hosted Penny Livingston-Stark for a recent workshop and are holding their first pdc (permaculture design course) in 2016.  They are on a roll and Jessica is coming to INPC to give us a taste of what they have learned.

Jessica Peterson grew up in a natural setting within an urban environment. Her parents lived communally with family and friends in the early years and shared a large corner garden in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She remembers vividly an “earthworm immersion” class her mother taught the kids on summer evenings, getting used to handling them gently while learning of all the good those squiggly, slimy seeming things brought to the garden, the butterflies, ladybugs, and birds, and to the humans’ plates and tummies. Twenty-five years later, Jesse now lives and works as an independent consultant in Helena, Montana. She holds an MA in Social Economics and a BA in Psychology. She applies the knowledge from social economic theory, along with personal work and life experience (like serving in the Peace Corps in Madagascar), to choose the projects and the organizations to work with in her community. She uses whole systems approaches, including permaculture design and applies them toward social and environmental justice and bio-regional food sustainability.

Karie’s passion in life is about living in harmony on the planet.  As a youngster, she focused on wildlife and environmental activism to heal the planet.  Now, she sees the value of healing ourselves first.  Her own healing journey has taken her to that place of faith and trust where the great mysteries of life unfold.  She helps others restore true peace, love, and compassion within themselves.  When we can live in that place of harmony, we can begin to restore the balance of the earth and her inhabitance. She is a certified Energy Medicine Practitioner, in the modalities of Eden Energy Medicine, Light Body energy medicine using shamanic practices in the Incan tradition, plant spirit medicine, EFT, acupressure, Reiki and has a degree in Psychology.  She uses wild-crafted herbal remedies and flower essences to supplement her healing practice. She is very passionate about indigenous skills and spiritual connection with nature.  She is a skills instructor and teaches from her home and many skills gatherings, including Rabbitstick, Wintercount, the Buckeye Gathering, Saskatoon Circle and Between the Rivers gathering.  You can find her teaching braintanning (making deerskin into buckskin), buckskin sewing, beading, herbal remedies and nature awareness skills.

Kelly has been on the trail of permaculture studies for over 20 years. From the Bullock's farm, to CRMPI, Sepp Holzer, Paul Wheaton, Versaland in Iowa for large scale, and receintly the Regrarians REX10 world tour 10 day training on advanced desiging, through mapping and efficient decision making according to all factors in the scale of permanence. Kelly has a 16 year old urban site, bagan a church food forest four years ago and is in the process of seeking for funding for the large piece of land for the regenerative ag and permaculture school for northwest Montana. Kelly loves educating. She has taught skiing, spanish, yoga, trail running, infant potty training and all aspects of Permaculture, her life's passion. 

Ethnobotanist, primitive technologist, forester, trail builder, wilderness therapy counselor, writer, walker.

Michael’s educational background includes studies at the University of Montana where he did project based learning about conservation, land/resource management and human-landscape relations.  Additionally he studied agriculture, ecology and Indigenous cultures.  His independent studies have focused on acquiring practical skills and have brought him to many diverse teachers. Those studies and practices were implemented and developed from 2012-2015 while managing a 95 acre property near Flathead Lake in western Montana.  At this project he helped install and manage over 6 different ponds, 3 acres of wetlands, and 7 acres total of earthworks and a diverse Edible Ecosystem that spanned the whole complex.

The bulk of his focus now lies in farming perennial vegetables and alliums.  Additionally, he is an apprenticing seedsman working under David Ronniger.  This work has him gathering and processing a myriad of Native seeds for restoration purposes.  He partners with David Ronniger to operate ronnigersgarlic.com

Michael is a proud husband and father.  With a focus on the next generation, his life inspiration is to breed historically used native food plants into drought tolerant vegetables.  He believes that when these native vegetables are coupled with perennial food producing plants that modern agriculture will be resilient to the increasing challenges that are facing the planet today.  By learning how to steward edible ecosystems the managers are actively creating new cultures of indigeneity.

Michael Pilarski founded Friends of the Trees Society in 1978 to promote Earth Repair. He is the foremost permaculture teacher and networker in the Inland Northwest. He has been commercially wildcrafting medicinal plants for 21 years as well as making value-added products and collecting and selling seeds of many native plants. His main area of knowledge is the northern half of Washington state, north Idaho and Northwest Montana.  He also farms many medicinals and food plants in medicinal edible agroforestry systems. 

      I started out very early in life with a born-in passion for the great outdoors. My mother was conceived at the top of Mt. Whitney" herself an avid climber who then inspired the spirit of the wilderness into everyone she met. I spent most of those wonder years in early San Jose before artificial trees of silicon displaced cherry plum and walnut orchards of phenomenal size. Those fragrant and stately giants from another time proved to be the perfect candidates for honing climbing skills and constructing sturdy tree forts continually built inner self confidence by pushing me to new heights. My brother and I would spend all day in the woods nothing more than imagination as our friend. Year after year we spent 6 wks. in the summer exploring every last piece of wilderness we could find in 14 Western states and Canadian provinces as well. Lasting impressions solidly etched into small and flexible tree trunks eventually grew strong and wide and tall as adults. Escapades of joy into the mountains and forests are something I practice to this day. Rejuvenation in some form is nearly always the result.

     I spent almost 40 years immersed in a system of civilized chaos" where I spent a lot of time building and repairing petroleum dinosaurs as a full time mechanic. As I watched vehicle after vehicle leave the shop and go back to the world spewing noxious fumes and supporting a petroleum chokehold on our lives I knew there had to be a way to cut the cord. It took every bit of fortitude and faith I had to make the leap of abandoning the mechanical mindset and embracing the spirit of creativity I could nurture on my land in Idaho. I look back now with pride and joy on that decision. It took almost 3 years of isolation and reflection to absorb the teachings of the land"" to see the possibilities and the pleasures of working with it. The PDC course I took online in 2014 with Geoff Lawton cemented the whole process into one holistic design that included an eco-tourism cottage industry based on a living classroom format for community education and awareness.  

Ryan Herring is greatly interested in connecting with the earth through the soil and composting. He has been teaching, learning and researching about biologically active soil and compost with the Spokane Master Composters (3yrs) and the WSU Spokane Master Gardeners (2yrs). He took his PDC with Micheal Pilarski at Heartsong in spring of 2015 and has been helping with the Convergences ever since.

Graduated from SCC with an Architectural Drafting degree in 2008. And has been doing 3D modeling and design on HVAC and Plumbing systems in the local Mechanical Engineering field for about 8yrs since. Has worked on projects such as the Saranac Remodel (LEED Platinum) and Main Market Coop.

Ryan is a member of the Inland Northwest Biodynamic Association where the group practices the Biodynamic Agriculture Methods described by Rudolf Steiner. They are part of the North American Biodynamic Regional Groups. Ryan practices the Biodynamic method in his Suburban Gardening in conjuction with many Permaculture practices. He has been most intrigued with the Biodynamic way of composting and has been research it and the preparations. Most recently he has been working with Chromatography and learning how to best apply it and where it fits. He has been working with this project with a fellow Master Composter, Ken Avery, and have been making progress towards developing a website and a starting point for soil chromatographs in the local community.

Recently he has been seen in the local art scene promoting what he calls Permaculture through Art. Connecting others to the local ecological movement and their local environment.

Since my PDC in 2013, I have been on a new life path.  By the grace of nature and the universe, I have been able to make a living with a small landscaping business and organic farm.  It is my joy and pleasure to teach, learn and make beautiful (and appealing to all the good bugs and critters), the dirt around me.  I specialize in food and pollinator- attracting plant installations, light maintenance, and perennial bed revivals, in addition, of course, to feeding as many people as I can from my own dirt.  I love to work hand-in-hand with my clients (and my kids!).  I learn every day, and live for it.  I spend the cold months working in my community - organizing Free the Seeds!, and helping at school and wherever I can.