Permatours Transformative Hemp Building Experiences
Permatours History
In April, 2021, Permatours founders, Scotty Guzman and Sydney Griffith, felt a burning desire to create experiences that would teach people the skills to provide for their basic needs: food, water, shelter, and community.
Passionate about the ethics of permaculture - earth care, people care, and fair share - Scotty and Sydney launched “Permatour” (like permaculture tour), as their avenue for actualizing the aforementioned goal.
Initially viewed as a short-term project, they created the “Permatour” instagram - singular, for a one-time tour.
The 2021 crew, including Joy Massicotte, Anna Marden, Galia Traub, and many others traveled throughout the Northeast of the U.S.. We constructed a tiny home, geodesic-dome, a wheelchair accessible sensory garden and pathway, among other permaculture projects.
After a successful and transformational year 1 for many of the participants, the crew updated the instagram and org name to Permatours, plural with an “s” to reflect their commitment to keeping the tour going. Plans unfolded quickly for continuing the vision, including the choice to strive towards building a culture of shared ownership and responsibility amongst those actualizing Permatours educational experiences.
The org gained 501(c)(3) status in 2022 and now, 4 years since our start, we’ve hosted 50+ learn-by-doing events, including 40+ in-person workshops, 8+ online workshops / courses, several 200+-person educational, family-friendly festivals, and even larger gatherings where Permatours served as a production partner. Shoutout to the incredible team of organizers on board today, including Citrine, Buttons, Riana, Blaize, Meg, Wind, Lynney, Brian, Ariana, Helene, Scotty, and Syd. Many thanks also to the hosts, located throughout the Northesat and beyond, who have invited Permatours onto their land to co-create life-changing experiences.
Our bread and butter includes building cob ovens and hugelkultur gardens, hosting plant identification walks, and creating containers for peer-to-peer support, as well as gift, knowledge, and resources-sharing. Connection with self, earth, and community, as well as holistic healing practices, are major themes that arise in these emergent containers we love so much. Speaking of connection, we’ve also connected a plethora of educators with eager students, land stewards, and land-based community centers - weaving a network of people and places committed to planetary regeneration, and the common good of all. We make a point for all of our gatherings to include time for wholesome community connections, individual activation experiences, drumming, singing, shared meals, and deepening of the co-creative nature of Permatours.
Permatours Connection with Hemp Building Educator, John Patterson:
Permatours co-founder, Sydney, and Board Member, Blaize Green, lived at LaLa Gardens in Fort Collins, Colorado, to support the land-based permaculture community with its operations and membership expansion efforts. While living in CO, Sydney and Blaze attended a hemp building experience at Quonset Hut Hemp Cooperative and met John Patterson, the lead educator of the experience. Syd and Blaize excitedly shared a desire to bring this building technique to the Permatours community and invited John Patterson to lead a workshop at Permatours co-founder, Scotty Guzmn’s, home - also home to Diggers Cooperative, a commercial compost operation, located in Acton, MA. This property is somewhat of an HQ for Permatours - with hugelkultur gardens, a tiny house, and a cob oven, all built at our learn-by-doing events.
John and Scotty hit it off and immediately began co-creating plans for a hemp building workshop centered around the construction of a Solviva Hemp House. Permatours decided to host a multi-day family-friendly festival right after the hemp building experience, featuring artists, wellness practitioners, local vendors, sponsors, and more, with 200+ participants! We dream big at Permatours!
What is “Solviva”?
According to brilliant innovator, author, farmer, and designer, Anna Edey, who wrote Solviva Greenlight, Solviva is “the art of living well without causing harm to our planet and ourselves.” Her book, a comprehensive how-to guide, highlights the Aquaponics plus design of Solviva Greenhouses - a combination greenhouse growing space and living space which incorporates multiple innovative heating solutions, including chicken and bunny heat, solar thermal heating, a thermal mass water wall, ground air heat transfer system (GAHT), hot tub, fish tanks, and food production.
Our favorite design in the book includes greenhouse space on the south facing side, which takes up more than half the total area in the building, with a native plant nursery, hot tub, and food production via fish and veggies. On the north side there is a 2-story structure with a studio apartment and community space on the top floor and chickens on bottom floor (to help heat the space, provide nutrients for the soil, and food). The ground floor level is 4 ft below grade, sunken into a hillside, with a dry stack stone foundation and a cinder block cap.
Still in process of completing the Solviva Greenhouse at Scotty’s, our version will include tropical fruit trees and Compost Heating - relevant for Diggers Cooperative’s compost operation. The compost piles remain 140+ degrees F consistently with new material added weekly.
Our system at Scotty’s includes charging up a bed of crushed stones by circulating hot air and hot water 2 feet below the earthen cob floor. Through a system of fans and ducts, the sun-charged air at the top of the greenhouse is directed underground in order to warm up the ground air heat transfer system and store the day’s heat (so it can be used during cooler nights).
Compost Heating will be achieved by positioning the compost pile directly outside of the Solviva Greenhouse, inside of a concrete bin (a concrete pad with blocks for sides). Water lines are built directly into the floor and walls of the concrete bin to circulate and transfer hot water into the existing water lines - connected to the ground air heat transfer system. In addition, we plan to experiment with utilizing waste heat from biochar production as supplementary heat.
Developing and Researching Charcrete as a Building Material
In collaboration with Kevin Bernard from Local Biochar, a participant of our 2024 Hemp Building Experience, Permatours has embarked on a research project for what we are calling “charcrete.” We’re exploring utilizing biochar and ash as environmentally-friendly alternatives to clay or other pozzolanic materials, and hydrated lime in hempcrete. We’ve incorporated some charcrete into the Solviva Greenhouse build to see how it performs over time.
Why Charcrete?
Hydrated Lime and pozzolan have a substantial negative environmental impact (mining, processing, trucking, etc.), hence our desire to replace these ingredients with more earth conscious, readily available resources (like waste wood). We’re currently fundraising to begin stress testing Charcrete, ideally in collaboration with Utah State University.
Why a Hemp Solviva?
Hempcrete is innovative for its insulative value, its ability to absorb and release moisture vapour from the interior air, and its aesthetic. It’s also pest proof and fire resistant.
The Solviva system allows heat to be stored inside the structure and used in multiple ways at different times. Our Solviva includes a Water Wall which, an interior wall covered in water bags ( black to absorb more heat). The wall is located in the middle of the structure, acting as the barrier between the living area and the greenhouse space, thereby providing a thermal mass for increased heat retention.
Hemp Building Experience
While John’s hemp building experiences are centered around learning to mix the hemp-based recipe and installing it to structures, he also educates on building science, foundation styles, framing systems, flooring and roofing options, permitting, zoning, the history of hemp, the benefits of eating hemp seeds and hearts for nutrition, the perks of using it for making textiles, and more.
Planning the hemp building experience in 2023 turned into a 2-year project, with John returning in 2024 to instruct the progression of the Solviva Greenhouse on Scotty’s property. We completed the Solviva Hemp House frame in year 1, thanks to the help of a community-driven team of carpenters and students eager to learn how to build with hemp.
In 2024, as a part of our second hemp building workshop, we made incredible progress with additional hemp installation, specifically, filling, tamping, and plastering the exterior walls positioned on the northern side of the structure. We shared delicious and healthy food at every meal, and we enjoyed yoga, ecstatic dance, a kombucha-making workshop, an herbal-tincture making workshop, and other offerings shared by Permatours organizers and fellow participants alike.
Our hemp building experiences have served a bridge for John Patterson to teach on the East Coast, as he is primarily based in Colorado. As an instructor, he is a well-rounded and enthusiastic hemp building educator. He creates a culture that encourages asking questions, learning while you’re doing, and making mistakes as a means of empowerment in the process of learning. His spark and excitement for hemp is palpable, and ignites attendees at his workshops. He is also lighthearted, which creates a comfortable, inclusive environment for learning and building, supporting an interactive experience for students with a range of building experience - from beginner to experienced carpenter.
John is looking forward to doing more hemp building experiences with us, just as much as we are looking forward to co-creating with him again!
More on the Format and Agenda of Our Hemp Building Experiences:
In both 2023 and 2024, the event began with an orientation and a presentation by John Patterson, including the history of hemp, its uses, the itinerary of our next several days together, and an introduction to the tools being used.
Before mixing the hemp batches, the crew got a closer look at the tools to be used, and the opportunity to create tamp tools. Next, the shuttering (form work) began, where we stripped down plywood, and used 2x4 blocking and construction lag screws to secure them to the frame.
Our shared meal times during the hemp building experience were a time for attendees to connect with each other, share ideas and speak to their experiences, go over logistics, and orient the group on the next phase of the workshop.
Accessibility to these educational experiences, similar to all our events, was a priority. We offered work trade and scholarship opportunities, where attendees who couldn’t afford to pay the full ticket price were invited to assist with tasks required to host a successful experience, including preparing the work site, meal prep and clean up, tending to the recycle and composting stations, firewood collection, and more.
For our second workshop in 2024, we created an online course to get students acquainted with hemp and hemp building before they arrived on site. Included in the course was a prompt to create a floor plan and an elevation drawing for those students who had a vision for their own hemp structure, which John reviewed before the end of the in-person gathering so that students were able to leave with a plan in mind, and in hand. We look forward to offering the online hemp course as a “standalone” learning experience in the future.
Permatours’ Big Picture Impact
The impacts of these two hemp building workshops have led to strengthened community relationships between the 65+ participants, and they’ve empowered people to build their own healthy hemp homes. In fact, two of the carpenters who took part in the workshops have begun hemp building projects of their own!
Together, as a team and greater community, we’re building momentum toward our shared cooperative, community-centered co-living dreams.
Two-thirds of the Solviva greenhouse is complete, with hemp walls and insulation packing in place. Soon it’ll be home to our very own co-founder, agroforestry teacher, clown, acro-yogi, and commercial composter, Scotty Guzman.
