Food Security Steph

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Food Security Steph
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Joined: Mon 03-Jan-2022, 21:21
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Hello,

My name is Steph and I am hugely passionate about the environment and our impact on it. I studied environmental sciences and through my work experiences I quickly figured out that I could have the biggest impact being in an educator role. Before having my own family, I worked with a non-profit organization in the Lower Mainland of BC where I had the pleasure of delivering a program to teach school-aged children where their food comes from through hands-on in-the-garden and in-the-greenhouse learning. In this role, I also coordinated many community gardens and really enjoyed witnessing how unique each 10 x 10 plot was and the shared comradery and sharing of knowledge (and food) between gardeners. I really believe that gardeners are the salt of the earth!

I have a huge passion for food security and lifelong learning. I joke that in some ways I was born in the wrong era as I love canning food, saving seeds, upcycling materials rather than buying new, and growing vegetables, and producing eggs and meat. I have been gardening in many spaces and sizes of gardens over the years but finally have a permanent garden space that was fully operational last year including raised garden beds (builders grade soil base so no choice but to go with raised), full sun, no irrigation or automation (yet) and amazing soil that I’ve built up through Hugelkulture, leaf molds, thermophilic composting on a large scale, vermicomposting on a small scale, cover cropping, green manure, chicken manure, and crop rotation.

In this course I am excited for the knowledge, energy and accountability buddies with very similar interests to help keep me on track. I will really benefit from intentionally planning out my garden in terms of crops, timing and planning succession so I’m looking forward to Dan’s shared knowledge. It always seems to work out for me with minimal planning but it is stressful, I create more work for myself and I could definitely improve my yields and workability by planning ahead better. Adding fruit and fruit trees, particularly espaliered (I love Monty Don), has been a goal for a long time so this is the year and I look forward to Jack’s modules. I am also hoping to take my composting skills to the next level by scaling up my vermicomposting, possibly including chicken manure composting. I have never done Bokashi composting as I thought it mostly pertained to apartment dwellers but Andrew has piqued my interest. And I intend to ask lots of questions about biochar and even Black Soldier fly frass as Andrew mentioned it during one of his soil amendments videos.

I have 3 kids (ages 6 & 4 – there are twins in there) and a husband that have healthy appetites for garden fresh veggies and they love to help out and be involved in the garden. I noticed beekeeping and chickens mentioned a few times by others and I do those as well. I really enjoy keeping chickens (hatching eggs was a pandemic project with my kids that we have continued to do) and I noticed a huge benefit from adding their manure to my garlic beds this past year so I am happy to have them adding to and diversifying the soil fertility. Before chickens and before kids, I raised meat rabbits on our quarter acre yard with moveable tractor cages after researching sustainable meat options and the benefits of rotationally grazing livestock through your growing areas. I committed to handling the whole field to table process myself. It gave me such a deep appreciation of understanding and respect for not only where and who your food comes from but how it was grown or raised. I’ve turned those efforts to chickens as collecting eggs daily is an easier task to manage with roosters heading to the freezer once per year.

That was a much longer intro than I meant to provide but I look forward to learning alongside all of you!

Steph
jack oostenbrink
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Hi Stephanie, welcome to the course and to the forum. It looks like we just met at the noxious weeds section :lol: but hi again! It looks like you'll have a lot to offer on the forum which is excellent. I am looking forward to improving my composting knowledge this year and also to get better at getting planning down pat so that we don't have famines between our feasts. We plan to do a few sessions on fruit tree culture and espalier so stay tuned!
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Andrew
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In trying to get to understand the context of each participant, I think more is better. Welcome to the course!
Food Security Steph
Posts: 8
Joined: Mon 03-Jan-2022, 21:21
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Thanks! Glad to meet you both. And Jack I'm glad our meeting over on the edible weed discussion came across as purely sharing information because tone can be tricky and I haven't mastered the emoticons on this platform yet ;) . Another screen name for me could have been Invasive Species Steph because I spent many years removing invasive species from city lands, forests and wetlands.
Michelle Dargatz
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Welcome Steph, it's great to have you join us. I am a public school educator that does the best I can to teach my 5 year olds where food comes from and how to grow their own. I'd love to chat with you about the program you ran. I also share the 'born in the wrong decade' sentiment; it's so real. We can and preserve as much as possible and I wouldn't have it any other way. I'd love to hear more about your large-scale thermophilic composting. Looking forward to learning with you.
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