PermaDynamics stands for our approach of integrating permaculture and Syntropic Agroforestry and has since encompassed our permanently dynamic nature. As a team, a business and a family, we are in a constant flow, like a living organism. 

Our family

Klaus and Vanessa met in Bolivia, South America. Vanessa worked for an NGO to empower indigenous women's co-operatives, while Klaus learned with Ernst Götsch, the founder of Syntropic Agroforestry, in the early 80s in Brazil. He then worked alongside local subsistence farmers, encouraging regenerative agricultural practices. 

Both Josh and Frida were born and grew up in Bolivia. In 2003 our family moved to Aotearoa and found our feet in a rural community in Te Tai Tokerau. This is where Vanessa began sharing her health expertise and Klaus taught permaculture and translated the key Syntropic Agroforestry concepts to a NZ context combining the two practices into what would soon become the 'PermaDynamics' approach. 

Fast forward to 2016, Frida and her former partner, Matt Dami, travelled South East Asia and Tasmania experiencing and researching different farming techniques, and then returned to the family land with the desire to start up a regenerative education center. And so, PermaDynamics family business was created. 

Josh later joined the business after completing his Masters in Fine Arts at Elam. His creative talents and ability to streamline systems facilitated us to expand our operations and outreach.  

In 2018 Mathilde, a passionate organic market gardener from France, joined our team. She and Josh married in 2021. With her inexhaustible enthusiasm for organic gardening she is now providing our wider community with weekly nutrient dense produce boxes. 

Most recently, Sean has brought in his Te Ao Māori culture, passion for community projects and food sovereignty. Together with Frida they install educational food forests. They are soon to be parents in Summer. 

As our family expands and develops our regenerative way of life, we are thrilled to see the momentum for dramatically regenerating landscapes grow across Aotearoa and abroad. 
 

The land

Just like most of Northland, our soils are degraded, previously deforested and then intensively grazed steep clay slopes. The dramatic transformation from this marginal non-arable land to its current fertile soils, producing a high diversity and abundance of produce, is a living example of the power of Syntropic Agroforestry.
 
Our main syntropic food forest is two acres and home to over 350 different plant species, consisting of a diversity of fruit, nut, biomass and native trees. It also harbours an orchestra of bird life that have flourished in the rich diversity.

Along our more fertile flats, we have a no-till, organic market garden interspersed with syntropic tree rows and various examples of temperate syntropic orchards. We have also applied these principles to our many riparian zones around the farm.

We have an array of permaculture systems functionally interwoven together; a massive greenhouse, workshop, animal overnight stables, compost systems, mushroom production stations, wood fired fruit dryer, various earth buildings and teaching spaces. We also have a tree nursery supplying start up food forest growing material. 

Our highly dynamic permaculture way of living with the land, leaves us all with a richness only a reciprocal relationship with nature can instil. It is the backbone of our farm, and what we hope to inspire in others, so together we can co-create a more harmonious world.