This blog highlights progress on these goals and inspiration from organic farmers, green schools, young people at heart, best practices in sustainable business and how to go about starting a social enterprise. I also share eco tips and reflect a lot on the simple things in life — like good local food and how working in my current “micro-farm” is good for the soul – Getting this far on my path, I’ve learned that getting to where you want to be tomorrow is all about enriching your soul today, making the most of each opportunity that seems right in the moment as it comes, and reaching out to others in the process makes it even sweeter and more enlightened. I think self-reflection forms an important base of process in wanting to work with youth who may now believe they are off track, perhaps misdirected, and being able to relate to them in that we all need to start from where we are, day by day, to begin to develop our own uniquely significant contributions to our entire green world. So, read, enjoy, contribute and use today to inspire your future accomplishments and those of young people!
A few of our prolific sunchokes!
Why “Prolific Sunchoke”?! -
Last spring we planted three pieces of sunchoke tubers in the garden and yard; by September, we had several towering, flowering plants that had rooted over twenty pounds for roasting and chowder (YUM!). We experimentally left a few pieces in the ground over winter, spread a few more around the yard, and we now have fields of sunchokes sprouting from the ground…that is my magical thinking pictures fields extending from our .25 acre mostly shaded by 100′ Tulip trees. So, these fertile tiny pieces of root give me inspiration that small actions today, in whatever place we may be, that may seem to be of little significance will lead to great harvests in the near future. Also, I’ve learned that it’s such things as admiring the growth of something you tend to daily, or just happen to do nothing to but get to witness its daily growth, that feed the soul what it needs to excel. Hence, our “micro-farm” here in Takoma Park, Maryland has been duly named “The Prolific Sunchoke”, as will be the site of our future organic farm in some place equally delightful – the soil from which so much willsprout.
I vividly recall one day as a five-year old, that would have been the summer of 1975 in Myerstown, Pennsylvania, gazing from a large picture window at an Amish farm that did extend over many fields across from my parents’ home. As my mother came into the room, I turned to her and said “I want to be a farmer when I grown up.” Repeatedly hearing reasons from adults why that wasn’t something I should aspire to be, I somehow got off track by the age of ten despite taking great pleasure in helping to harvest my own family’s gardens.
My studies (in Anthropology) much later focused on cooperative community economic development and eventually my MA thesis researched the challenges of creating culturally appropriate curriculum and job training for street children in Brazil, so I seemed far away from any idea of becoming a local farmer. While many things Brazilian were more likely to capture my attention in my cross cultural studies and travels, my discovery of the Rain Forest Crunch product developed by Cultural Survival, and then the delicious creation of Ben & Jerry’s “Rain Forest Crunch” ice cream, was one of those moments in life that deeply connected with my sense of an intangible destiny. I began to passionately explore the emerging concept of developing a business with a “triple bottom-line”, that is a mission and goals focusing simultaneously on social, economic and environmental purpose. Of course, I then wanted to establish my own sustainable business….but what and where would I get the money?! In the meantime, I worked at a national non-profit dedicated to community service and was gaining invaluable skills in fundraising, volunteer management, working with boards of directors, marketing, budgeting, event planning and program management….all of which I would further develop over the years in jobs and leadership roles to come.
At the age of 27, I was moving forward with launching The People Garden – a natural food enterprise with a triple-bottom line of developing better access to locally grown and organic foods, developing the economy and social aspects of a neglected commercial corridor, and utilizing food to better connect people to each other and the issues related to food production and the local community. I believed that I had gotten back on track of a broader version of my earliest dream; however, after seven years of constant struggle due to emerging competition, I realized it was only a path to my dream and that path ended in 2005 when I closed the business. From here, I combined my experiences in non-profit management, community outreach and business management in overseeing non-profit Operations; my last position opened my world to public charter school administration and the flexibility they present in models for academic excellence and diverse learning.
Retrospectively, I’ve come full circle in realizing that, at that young impressionable moment fixating on the farm, I had a premonition of sorts of where my path would take me, yet only a vague impression of how I would know when I got there. Somehow, without a map for getting there and taking a seemingly random route, with some mistakes acknowledged, I now find that my undirected yet unique path and the strengths and interests that have evolved along the way all enriched my capacity to conceptualize a much broader, and hopefully more significant, contribution to the issues I care about most, and I’m ready to steadily move forward! The image of Isaac farming his land now signifies for me the enjoyment of tending to things that grow with care and love, sharing good, healthy food, caring about the Earth and our neighbors – especially young people, and a having safe place to call home and work…all of the things that make this project so important. Throwing ourselves into and reflecting upon the day-to-day growth of our own “gardens” (full of sunchokes) puts everything into perspective and makes anything attainable.
Eco Studio
