As a Beaver Technician for Beavers Northwest, I learned how to mitigate human-wildlife conflict and thus how to flow with the meandering nature of a healthy wetland. At Beavers Northwest, we came up with creative solutions for how a wetland can be maintained despite the impact beavers have on a built infrastructure. We embraced the full cycles of life by letting water pool, letting dams be built and facilitating the growth that comes from decay.
By studying Permaculture Design and Sustainable Design at Hava and Adam Eco-Educational Farm, I learned that the closer we are to our waste, the closer connection we have to the cycles of life. Helping to design gray water systems, human manure composting systems, composting powered water heating, I invested myself in how to turn waste products into an opportunity for more life.
Through community scale composting at Food2Soil , I learned the process of harnessing energy from the immensity of food waste to create rich compost. Instead of mindlessly tossing out food without consideration for where it goes, I flipped compost piles and studied the science of decay.
My time as a part of the Harvest Field Crew at Adaptive Seeds made me fall in love with seed farming. There is nothing quite like sitting in a pile of rotting vegetables to teach you about the pungency of decay. Allowing fruits and flowers to go past what we would normally recognize to harvest seeds and then sifting, sorting, processing taught me the intricacies of decomposition in order for the life cycle to begin again
