We are a design team

In 1978, I was born in Germany. I’m a world traveler who came from a military family. Between my father’s service and my own in the US military we’ve moved around quite a bit. I’ve lived in Germany, Florida, Nebraska, Japan, Hawaii, California, Louisiana, and now Mississippi. Before recently rooting down, I was boxing up every possession I owned and unpacking it in a new home every 2.5 years.

I joined the military straight out of high school and served 8 years as an aviation electronics technician in the Navy.

I am a disabled veteran who has recently had to reinvent myself while recovering from a spinal fusion. I have a long technological background.

After exiting the Navy in 2006, I wanted to use my background in electronics and apply it towards the emerging smart home technology field. I enrolled into Indian River State College’s carpentry program to help bridge the gap in construction knowledge. During the 8 month training, I built 3 Habitat for Humanity homes as well as helped build the world’s largest chimpanzee rescue. Save the Chimps rescues chimps that were used for experimentation, including the ones retired from NASA’s space program. It’s located in central Florida on 500 acres. I completed the carpentry program JUST in time for the 2008 market crash… The construction boom was OVER.

So, I used my GI BILL to jump into college. I decided to enroll in Indian River State College’s Electronics Engineering Technology Program to bolster my military training with a degree. I went to college during the day and worked on campus in the evenings as a janitor. While the degree program was more focused on automation for industry, I took several semesters of CAD and extra courses in Photovoltaic and Solar hot water heating systems. I wanted to automate heating and cooling systems to help regulate temperatures and watering for grow operations. Or something to that effect.

The market crash of ‘08 was rather alarming. I became extremely worried about the bubbles, debts, unsustainable systems that we were reliant upon. I was deeply concerned about the state of the environment and world. I have a retirement to plan for and a legacy I want to leave my daughter. Things looked rather challenging. It was in that mindset and worry, through a quest to gain a calming sense of self reliance that I found PERMACULTURE.

I graduated Summa Cum Laude and am a member of the Phi Theta Kappa honor society.

We left Florida shortly after completion of my degree. The state’s renewable incentives were non-existent. So we moved back to Louisiana, where my wife’s family is from. Although I had a killer background in electronics and training on the systems, I was unable to find work in renewables. I eventually was hired on to work for Sperry Marine as a marine electronics technician.

There I worked as a bench technician, repairing electrical systems, calibrating them and then returning them to the fleet. This seemed to be an unsustainable route for me. They were closing up repair facilities around the world. I started to feel as valuable as a VCR repairman. I was repairing old technologies. All the new models didn’t need troubleshooting and repair as the older models did. I’d “pop and swap” circuit cards with micro miniature components vs. troubleshoot down to the component and replacing them. So I left.

I was hired by the Port of New Orleans as a crane technician. The port had six 150 feet tall gantry cranes. They ran operations 24/7 with just a handful of people. The periodic maintenance and around the clock troubleshooting had me there 3-5 days STRAIGHT at a time. Often working 60-90 hour work weeks, “sleeping” on air mattresses. Collectively, 4 hours of interrupted sleep a night, day after day was the norm. I used the money I was making to relocate my family out of the city. I acquired a 10 acre piece of land in Mississippi in 2012.

Ultimately, the physical toll and work schedule became too much. Which resulted in another spinal surgery that stemmed from my military service. This time, though, it was different - I had to have a spinal fusion. I could no longer work in that environment and was bedridden for quite some time.

It was then that I noticed Geoff Lawton had launched an online permaculture design course. Having the flexibility in time and location was the ONLY way I’d ever be able to plug into the world of permaculture. Sitting and standing was difficult. Rehabilitation was long. Laying in bed with my laptop, soaking up all of the brilliantly designed permaculture lessons was DEEPLY enriching.

We invited a childhood hometown friend from Florida and his family to come help set up a homestead and erect a permaculture paradise!

I received my permaculture certification in early 2018. During the year long course I realized a few things. First off, it was extremely difficult to acquire relative topography for my design considerations.

An overwhelming majority of designs from my peers were cast upon topography that didn’t match the landscape. In fact, when comparing drone topography vs. space acquired topography, it was 90° out of alignment. Yes, instead of designing swales on contour, everyone seemed to be designing water slides that were perpendicular to contour!

Secondly, after shopping around various visual platforms that other designers and cartographers were using, I found Adobe illustrator to reign supreme.

So I set out to learn Illustrator and incorporate accurate topography from LiDAR and drone data, as well as other useful data that satellites can provide. I’ve worked for several years with individual designers and teams of designers to service their mapping needs.

I have teamed up with Geoff Lawton as apart of his international design consultancy team. I provide him with GIS analyst support and cartography to use for his permaculture designs and consultations, thus enabling the team to offer solid advice from anywhere in the world.

I’ve since expanded my operations, scaled up my office and computing power and trained my best friend Charlie Rosselle in what I do. We enjoy making maps, homesteading with our families, and playing music together. We’d be honored to help bring clarity to you or your team’s focus on transitioning to a brighter future.