I've been familiar with Paul Wheaton's Permies forum for many, many years, only ever as a stalker, it's kind of pointless engaging given that it's a mainly American thing and I'm here in the UK, where land relations are VERY different due to the much greater scarcity.

NB Paul Wheaton has his critics I know, but I'm perfectly prepared to give the guy some attention as he's always very clear that his way is just one way and there's room for more, so if you don't like the way he does something, just fucking well do it yourself! 

So fair enough.  

The general idea of Paul's model is that he's bought a hefty hectarage of land in Montana and runs Permaculture courses focussing on big scale cold climate Permaculture, he offers a lot of stuff for free (just see the forum!) but also charges a lot for courses, but personally I think it's still all good value. 

And he's not an anti-capitalist, he's basically a Permaculture entrepreneur, but still pretty generous on a personal level. 

I remember back in the day he was running a scheme where you could work an acre of his land and end up owning it, although I don't think there were many takers, that does have something of a medieval patronage feel about it, after all. 

### [SKIP AND PEP](https://permies.com/wiki/skip-pep-bb) - Interesting latest devs! 


![Screenshot 2024-06-02 at 18.04.03.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/revisesociology/23tcGhJaCX3RDzSN9yrutroWtaRDk8AxJJkfyX8fAoRS16hpeGfVUUsscGXvJUadtuWVy.png)


PEP stands for Permaculture According to Paul (there are lots of possibilities for according to whome!) and it's his own accreditation programme for little awards which stack up becoming SKIP qualified. 

There are several of these skills under several categories such as land based, crafting, survival, you know the kind of thing. 

And the way to prove them in some cases is to attend.... Permaculture courses! Run by Paul, naturally, but that's not the only way!

SKIP stands for Skills Required to Inherit Property. The general idea (hope?) is that the PEP programme links farmers with no one to leave their land to with people who have proved they have the skills to manage said land. 

It's kind of like rationalised decentralised inheritance. I kind of like it± 



Posted Using [InLeo Alpha](https://inleo.io/@revisesociology/an-interesting-and-not-entirely-patronising-permaculture-certification-course-c3b)