IMPA - The Meso-American Institute of Permaculture

Field trip! We checked out IMAP - the Meso-American Institute of Permaculture located on Lake Atitlan (yes we are still on the lake, it's addictive).

IMAP was founded in 2000 and started development in 2005. It is the locally run permaculture institute of Guatemala. They are big into community outreach, making school and public gardens, promoting native food products, seed saving and giving value to their natural and surrounding resources. Their goal in everything they do and design is to show how it can be replicated by the public and local community. 

All great civilizations were founded by stabilizing agriculture. At IMAP, they devote a lot of effort to studying the Mayan agricultural calendar. They also know that good coffee is grown in the shade ;)  

We saw a good deal of neat little permaculture inspired systems.

Here are some keyhole gardens raised up with a system of stakes, chicken wire and black bags. This could be a decent idea to use over problematic land although one needs to consider where the soil comes from to fill those beds. I didn't love the black bag idea but looks like these beds are growing very well.

This was a neat idea. Below you can see a leafy green barrel sized bag and chicken wire grow system. In the centre of the soil there is a porous pipe running all the way down for even water distribution.

I'm writing from a place up the hill in San Marcos and there isn't an oven here. We are all just kinda standing around looking at pictures of this solar oven and imagining all the wonderful things we could cook with the power of the sun. It's simply just a reflective surface aimed onto glass covering an insulated box with a door on the front. Brilliant. 

In here we have a whole bunch of dried herbs and aromatics. The solar dryer is another boxed in structure painted black on one side ideally with a flat lower area as well which heats up and sends hot air up through the drying trays and out a small vent at the top.





The whole place is beautifully designed with natural and recycled materials. And most of them indeed look like they could be recreated by almost anybody.

IMAP is dedicate to spreading indigenous plants by saving, trading and selling seeds. They changed the name of their storage house from 'Seed Bank' to 'Seed Home' because of war inducing international bank interventions in Guatemala's bloody history.

The institute offers PDC courses, natural building courses and special focus studies on Mayan calendar farming practices. Their volunteer program is also alive and vibrant and applicants can refer to their website for more details.

And yes, they do have a herb spiral. 

I said I'm writing from the hills of San Marcos remember? I'm now at the Fungi Academy and learning to cultivate mycelium ... and it is like a Neverland of mushroom enthusiast who crash landed here on a bus. Coming up next.