We are really excited to host Ben Murray, a skilled permaculture teacher who specialized in watershed restoration here at Elkstone!
Have you ever wondered how you can make a real palpable difference in the fight against climate change? The answer might be closer than you think; flowing through our streams and rivers. Pool and riffle restoration is a powerful way for individuals to stabilize the climate, and revitalize local ecosystems.
Why Pool and Riffle Restoration Matters
Water is the foundation of all life, and by restoring these natural water systems, we can ensure that our ecosystems can regain and remain the vibrant and life-sustaining keystones to abundance for all.
Healthy Streams naturally form sequences of pools (deep, slow-moving water) and riffles (shallow, fast-moving water). Unfortunately, it is hard to find undisturbed and truly healthy formations that are crucial for healthy aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. By restoring pools and riffles, we can recharge ground water and turn ephemeral flows into forgotten babbling streams and brooks. We can bring life back to areas that only see water seasonally and by improving water retention we can reduce floods and droughts, creating a more stable thermal environment for aquatic and terrestrial life.
Through sediment and soil capture, the subsequent abundance that sprouts from hydrated soils stores far more elemental and living carbon, helping to mitigating climate change.
Revive Seasonal Streams, improve water quality, increase biodiversity and Abundance, and Capture Carbon
You Can Lead the Flow!
You can make a difference with simple, impactful actions:
Learn with Us at Elkstone Farm: Join us at Elkstone Farm to learn hands-on techniques for pool and riffle restoration. Empower yourself with the knowledge and skills to take effective action in your community.
Learn and Share, Get Involved Locally, Volunteer, Advocate, and Adopt a watershed!
By getting involved, you’re contributing to a global effort to combat climate change and protect life. Each restored pool sends ripples of palpable positive change, proving that individual actions can make a significant difference.
Join us for an immersive three-day course that will revolutionize your approach to watershed restoration! Our focus is on restoring the upper ephemeral flow, pool and riffle systems, using hands-on techniques that will have you feeling like a restoration expert in no time.
Our course will give you practical, hands-on activities that will teach you the skills you need to make a real difference in the health of our waterways. You'll learn how read water courses and implement restoration projects that restore natural flow patterns and promote the growth of healthy aquatic ecosystems.
We will guide you through every step of the process, from site assessment and planning to planting and monitoring. You'll learn about the latest techniques and technologies for restoring stream channels, creating aquatic habitat, and stabilizing banks and slopes.
But this is no ordinary course! We believe that restoration should be fun, engaging, and exciting, and our program reflects that. You'll get to work in the field with other restoration enthusiasts, enjoying the beauty of nature on Elkstone farm and learn practical skills that will last a lifetime.
Join us for an unforgettable three-day journey into the heart of watershed restoration. You'll come away feeling inspired, empowered, nourished , and equipped to make a real difference in the health of our rivers and streams. Sign up today and be a part of the restoration revolution!
About Ben:
Ben Murray is passionately committed to guiding radical restoration of our parched lands. Through restoring damaged and degraded natural systems from the top down and the seed up so that we may live in a truly resilient vibrant and nourishing world. He feels that right relationship to healthy ecosystems is the foundation of physical mental and spiritual wellbeing.
His path to watershed restoration started at a very earl age playing with streams in the forests of England awakening a profound relationship to water, later coming upon the work of Victor Schauberger setting him on a deeper path of understanding the circulatory system of our earth the streams and rivers. He has done watershed restoration in Brazil, Ecuador, Canada and the USA. He had the privilege to do a seed to seed apprenticeship in the permaculture market gardens of the oldest agroforestry operation in North America, Windhorse Farm. At 175 years of continual management, Windhorse Farm has more standing timber than the day they started. The deep feeling of old growth forest coexists while being actively managed as a woodlot. This gave him the visceral knowing that another way is possible. It was on Windhorse that he first actively started restoring waterways and a deep love of water turned into the seeds of a new skill. He was lit up by this work more than anything in how humbling and awe inspiring it is to to participate with nature in such a way that streams that were once dr, return to flowing and all the subsequent life that burgeons forth from such simple actions. It has showed him that water is the fulcrum point of all ecological design and restoration, and our deepest teacher about life.
Over the years, his hands-on experience of success and failure and happy accidents in restoration have illuminated a simple yet profound path to watershed restoration. He has taught and been taught by the rural people in Ecuador and trained Peace Corps volunteers where he co-owns a regenerative cacao farm. In Brazil, he built a permaculture center around empowering locals to thrive in community cooperation, championing their local skills, ancestral natural building skills and helping them to restore their ancestral water courses and lands. He has consulted and worked in Mexico and the Caribbean on regenerative farm design. He currently resides in rural Boulder, Colorado, where he lives with his wife and 6 year old twins, developing a a homestead at the foot of the mountains.
Your health and the well-being of our community are important to us. We encourage all participants to be vaccinated before they visit the farm or wear a mask and practice social distancing if they have not yet been vaccinated. We have upgraded sanitation protocols in place, and require that guests follow our policies, which are in compliance with all CDC and county guidelines.
