Homesteaders

Douglas Bullock
Since 1982, Douglas Bullock has lived with his extended family, friends, and interns on their permaculture site on Orcas Island. Douglas has facilitated or directly participated in comprehensive Permaculture projects and classes at their site and at sites around the world, including Australia, New Zealand, Hawai'i, Costa Rica, the Bahamas, Nicaragua, California and Washington.

Having traveled extensively collecting and studying agricultural systems, he is familiar with a wide range of climate strategies and crops. His specialties include permaculture design, tree crops, nursery practices, creating small and large-scale wetland environments, and implementing appropriate technologies. Douglas has also written articles and pamphlets on permaculture featured in the Permaculture Activist and in the International Permaculture Journal.

Douglas, it has been told, put the "cult" in Permaculture.

Maria Bullock
Maria Bullock came from Poland to study permaculture in Hawai'i in 1999. Ever since she has been living and working on the Bullock Homestead. Currently, she is raising amazing permaculture kids Kajetan and Naya, instructing at an annual permaculture intensive for single mothers in Nicaragua, and serving as a vegan chef extraordinaire.

Joseph Bullock
Joe lives on Orcas Island with his wife, Irina, and three kids, Marina, Pasha, and Vonya. He has been involved with horticulture for almost thirty years. His interests range from fruit trees to perennials, from food forests to fungi; in fact, Joe hasn't met a plant he doesn't like.

Joe's horticultural interests have taken him to Latin America and to the former Soviet Union, and as a result he speaks both Spanish and Russian fairly well. He completed a Permaculture Design Course with Bill Mollison in 1981 in California, and has taught, thought, and lived Permaculture since then.

Sam Bullock
Sam grew up squeezed under the armpits of his two enthusiastic older brothers. Always interested in the natural world (frogs, snakes, turtles, salamanders, etc.), their transition to growing plants as teenagers in the 70's led directly to growing food plants and to the awareness of a holistic, spiritual, sacred, and natural world of which we are all a part.

Sam has been professionally landscaping for the last couple decades, as well as co-developing the homestead on Orcas Island and working on the occasional tropical project. He is energized by working with plants, rocks, earth, water, wood, animals, and of course people!

Yuriko Bullock
Yuriko was raised in post-war Japan and allowed by her parents, who had lost two sons during the war, to play like a boy when young. This gave her the freedom to get dirty exploring the creeks, woods, and seacoast of her town.

She took an interest in gardening at a very young age and to this day can spend hours a day working with plants. Yuriko has spent much of her life preparing food for large numbers of people; growing up in her family's birthing clinic, meals were regularly prepared for the twenty or so patients, live-in nurses, and her family.

Yuriko has studied macrobiotic, vegetarian, and several ethnic styles of cooking, including, of course, Japanese.

Dave Boehnlein
Dave is a relatively new addition to the Homestead. He came along several years ago seeking a way to make a difference in the world and asking, "What's permaculture?" When he found out he needed look no further.

After two years as an intern, Dave is now our education director and intern coordinator. He infuses organization into every nook and cranny at the Homestead and fights entropy like a superhero!

Dave's primary interests are permaculture education, agroforestry, and whole systems design.