Tucked within the manicured grass of the Estes Park 18-Hole Golf Course — operated by the Estes Valley Recreation and Park District — lies a permaculture site hosting bees and plants overseen by project manager Kim Slininger.
Permaculture is a design system that mimics patterns found in nature to create sustainable and self-sufficient human settlements and agriculture systems. The term, a blend of the words permanent and agriculture, was coined in 1978 by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, two Austrialian ecologists, who promoted using land, resources, people and the environment in a natural closed loop system that does not produce waste.
The EVRPD program began in 2023 after Slininger secured seed funding from the Rec Center Board. By January 2024, the program’s first interns started working. All the interns are students from Estes Park High School. The program operates in collaboration with the high school through a work-study arrangement, allowing students to sign up during the winter and conduct research on topics of interest related to their work.
According to Slininger, interns can attend courses related to their work-study, with tuition covered by grants the program receives. One intern completed an online beekeeping course through Colorado State University. The EVRPD employs interns who gain hands-on experience by helping to establish and expand the site.
The research the interns completed over the winter is being put into practice.
“[The interns] were doing research on socket fusion all this winter for plumbing and all those kinds of things,” said Slininger. “It’s an integral thing with learning and then actual application in the real world-setting.”
The interns and Slininger are in full swing, preparing the site. They’ve installed a functional electric fence to protect their four beehives and all the plants they’re putting in. So far, those include 90 aspen trees and 75 raspberry plants. According to Slininger, there are four different raspberry varieties, and they hope to produce raspberry honey in the future.
When tending to the hives, interns wear beekeeping suits and often use a smoker to calm the bees.
“Generally, you smoke them, and that settles them in and pushes them into the center of the hive,” Slininger explained. “It reacts with their antennae and kind of deadens their senses, but they recover from it pretty quickly.”
As part of their work, one intern installed a honey super—a box designed to give bees extra space to store surplus honey. Slininger said the hives are doing well and expanding rapidly. Without enough room for brood and honey production, bees are likely to swarm and leave the hive in search of a new home.
One intern, who has worked on the project for a year and a half, has yet to be stung.
“She claims she’s the bee whisperer,” Slininger joked. “And she may well be.”
The program relies on grant funding, including support from a Larimer County community development grant led by Jenn Almstead.
“Without the grants, we wouldn’t have gotten the irrigation tie-in and all the plants, because between those two, that was about $6,500 worth,” said Slininger.
Looking ahead, Slininger hopes to expand the site to include 500 raspberry plants and between 10 and 20 beehives.
In addition to expanding the physical site, he also hopes to broaden the internship’s reach beyond Estes Park High School. Slininger hopes to include those living in a homeless shelter, Urban Peak, in Denver, between the ages of 14 and 24. According to Slininger, professionals at Urban Peak would ensure that interns are ready to enter the workforce, and potential grants for the internship could include access to low-income housing.
For the interns, the ability to work outside and with their hands was a big part of what drew them to apply for the permaculture internship.
“I encourage anybody and everybody to apply, because I think the more time you get to spend outside doing stuff like this, you’re going to be a little better grounded in everything else that you’re going to do in your life,” said Slininger, “It’s certainly an experience worth having.”