Sustainability, Tower Gardening and serving as a Master Gardener
In 1995 I went to the Lost Valley Educational Center in Dexter, Oregon and my life has never been the same since. I served as an intern and worked 3 large gardens with 10 other interns for the 3 summer months that year, and fell in love with the concepts of earthships, growing food, herbalism, sustainability, and urban farming and forestry.
But throughout my adventures and discovery over the following 2 decades, I lost that part of myself until I went to work for the Yampa Valley Sustainability Council in Steamboat Springs, Colorado in 2010. Even then, though, this community-focused sustainability wasn't quite what filled my cup and I ventured out on my own with Tower Gardening in 2014, shortly after receiving my Master Gardener certificate from Colorado State University.
Now I get to combine the two - my continued learning as a gardener in the high tundra, and aeroponic indoor growing.
I love getting my hands dirty and growing my own plants and food, and helping others do so, but I also love the simplicity of the Tower Garden, and that when my husband and I travel (such as to Italy for 2 weeks), and we travel often!, we get to come back to an automated free-food-growing-machine.
I love helping people grow more nutrient-dense food, and I love being a part of the solution for food poverty in our small community, as well as helping our youth understand the power of growing food. I've worked with schools, food banks, and businesses and individuals and it never ceases to amaze me - the joy on someone's face when they taste their first home grown veg.
