I began my gardening adventures in the city of Chicago while living in a six flat that had a concrete backyard. It was so sterile, I tore the grass out of the little corner piece in the front of the building where the sidewalks met and planted bunches of flowers.

After moving out of Chicago to McHenry county I became interested in the environment and wanted to make a difference, so I got involved with the McHenry County Defenders, a local non-profit organization, and worked as assistant manager at their recycling facility.

Seeking to make a more direct contribution I moved over to the McHenry County Conservation District and worked in the natural resource management department where we restored land on a watershed scale to it’s pre-settlement structure and function. My education there was well rounded as I was able to take part in all aspects of restoration from running the cutting crew to operating light and heavy equipment to plant, fish, mussel, vertebrate and invertebrate surveys and native plant propagation.

At that time I began to study American history, with a particular focus on the migration of peoples from Pennsylvania into the Kentucky-Tennessee area during the period before the Revolutionary War and this led to a dream to learn by experience the skills that enabled the pioneers to be self-sufficient and survive in an often hostile environment.

McHenry county has beautiful fertile soil and a rich history of farming, dairy farming in particular, and was targeted by all the big developers in the Chicago area because of its proximity to the city. Land prices skyrocketed as developers pitted one small town against another in boundary wars. Open space was disappearing and once productive farmland was being paved over – purchasing or renting land in the area was out of reach.

That dream got fulfilled in Kentucky where land prices were reasonable, and for nine years along with being hired as a historical reenactor I was part owner and manager of a horse powered farm of 40 acres growing vegetables and rotationally grazing cattle, pigs, goats and free ranging chickens and selling meat and vegetables at the Glasgow farmer’s market. I trained horses and cattle to work on the farm and to work safely at events, taught farm interns and acquired many homesteading skills, preserved food and cooked most everything from scratch. The self-sufficiency skills I learned at that time are priceless.

While in Kentucky I became a practitioner of Tibetan Bon, otherwise known as Archaic Bon, studying under His Holiness Padma Gonpo Rinpoche. This unbroken lineage of over 184,000 years was the indigenous religion of Tibet and is known for its proven path to enlightenment, its magic and its strong connection to the natural world www.archaicbon.com

After moving to Napa, California I worked in hospitality, learned how to bake bagels and spent two years working at one of the last organic vegetable and egg farms in the valley, Long Meadow Ranch, on their harvest and planting crew, managing the chicken flock and selling at the farmer’s market. 

After that I ran the culinary garden and microgreens program for Cultivar Winery. 

The House of Good Tidings was created to sell nutritionally dense microgreens and to use my knowledge and experience to help people to achieve food security in these uncertain times. 

Along with my Bon studies I run a Facebook group called The Growing Gang. and am particularly interested in the intersection of natural resource management with regenerative agriculture and how they complement each other, and how ancient sciences and modern technology together will benefit humanity with the Discovery City project https://discoverycity.org/

I also co-host Karmic Woof, a podcast on Bon student experiences at Archaic Bon.