permaculture

[Paul Wheaton <paul@richsoil.com>]

I bought a small farm and moved onto the farm on June 1, 2001.  I took lots 
of pics the
first year:  http://www.javaranch.com/farm/ 

In the first year, a project that I thought would take two hours, ended up 
taking about
two weeks.  Now two hour projects are taking only two days.  Progress!   
We've been doing
pastured poultry with pretty good success.  We have some raised bed gardens 
built.  We've
raised many pigs and are expeanding the pig operations.  We've done a few 
beef cattle in
the past and are trying that again.  We've done quite a lot with dairy goats 
and goat
cheese and hope to have our first milk cow in a few weeks.  We have lots of 
forest land
that needs thinning and a new portable sawmill should arrive in a few weeks.  
We tried
aquaculture once and failed miserably, and hope to do it right in 2006.

I want to make the move into permaculture and I want it faster.  I've taken a 
city job to
work through the winter and have these ideas of being able to hire folks to 
help me get
to where I want to be.

I plan on renting a track hoe in April to build some terraces/swales and 
ponds where the
land is generally bone dry.  Then rent it again in August (the dry season) to 
add/expand
ponds where things are wet.

There is a lot of need of seeding, building projects, planting trees 
(complete with a
deer cage), soil testing, plus general animal care to be done.  

I guess I could hire local high school and college students for helping out 
over the
summer, but it seems that it would be far better to hire people that are as 
passionate
about permaculture as I am!  A college student might just see it as a bunch 
of work for a
guy with weird ideas.  I would have to make lists of things to do and check 
up on them
all the time.  A permaculture enthusiast would not only understand what I'm 
talking
about, but would probably teach me a mountain of stuff along the way.

So far, the idea I have is to hire two to four students for the summer at $8 
per hour,
plus organic eats and a tipi to live in over the summer.   Is this 
reasonable?  Is this
sort of thing normal?  Might I be able to find permaculture enthusiasts 
instead of
college students that just want any job?  Any advice?

Should I consider hosting a PDC?