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Classes

Composting, gardening and site operations, taught on a working urban farm in Palm Springs.

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Who this is for

Residents and home gardeners who want to stop throwing food away and start building soil in a yard that is mostly sand.

City and county staff who own an SB 1383 problem and need to understand what compliance requires.

Conservation corps and workforce trainees who need the practical skills to operate a community composting site.

Schools and teachers bringing students into the work.

A student in gloves tips food scraps into a timber compost bin during a composting class.
A student shovels discarded pears into a compost bin while another empties a crate into it.
Two students stand at a large pile of green waste being built into compost.

Guided Tour of UFO Palm Springs

Walk the farm with the person who built it. See composting, soil building, greywater, rainwater harvesting and food production working together on one residential lot, and ask whatever you want along the way.

$75 per person. Visits are by appointment. We will confirm a date with you after booking.

Prema Walker stands beside a raised bed holding a pitchfork over her shoulder, fruit trees and a block wall behind her.
People at a community composting site add vegetable trimmings to a large pile, with a pitchfork and woodchips alongside.
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Practical Gardening

How to grow food in the desert without fighting it. Soil, water, shade, timing and what actually survives here. Hands on, in the beds, not on a slide.

$100 per person. Taught at the farm or at your site. We will confirm the date and location with you after booking.

Prema Walker sets a small seedling into the soil of a raised bed, wearing gloves and working with both hands.
Prema Walker inspects scarlet runner beans flowering on a trellis above a raised bed, with mountains behind.
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Practical Composting

How composting works, the recipe, greens and browns, and what to do when a pile goes wrong. You leave able to run a pile and fix it yourself.

$100 per person. Taught at the farm or at your site. We will confirm the date and location with you after booking.

A hose wets a bin of discarded pears layered with green waste, a pitchfork resting in the material.
Water is sprayed over a bin of discarded pears to bring the material to the right moisture.
Book Practical Composting

Training for organizations

We also train teams. SB 1383 for municipal staff covers what the regulation requires, how programs are designed to meet it, and where procurement fits. Community composting site operations covers intake, the recipe, monitoring, troubleshooting and handover, for conservation corps, workforce programs and operators.

These are built around your site and your people, so we quote them rather than list a price. Tell us who you are training and what you need, and we will come back with a plan and a figure.

Prema Walker leads a hands on composting workshop indoors, students gathered around a table examining jars and trays of compost material.
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Where classes run

At the farm. UFO Palm Springs, on a residential lot in Palm Springs. Small groups, because everyone needs to get their hands in the pile.

At your site. Schools, city facilities, corps sites. Group size is set by your space rather than ours.

Tubs of green waste stand beside a compost pile at a school composting site.
A student carries a black tub of material across to a compost pile.

Taught by someone who runs it

Every class is taught by someone who built the site, made the mistakes, and runs it now. Nothing here is theory borrowed from somewhere else.

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