The Living Farm’s mission is to teach everyone the life skill of vegetable gardening, in a fun, easy, productive and completely organic gardening system. With the launch of the Abundance Garden Course our mission really reaches “everyone”. The key to a successful garden is using a high performance gardening method; The Abundance Garden is the system for everyone.
In 2007 we opened our education center and began our small scale farming program. The programs we offer create successful small organic farmers. Our courses range from a 3 year intensive Professional Small Farms course to a short 8 week Farm Stay program. It is immensely satisfying to continue the practice of organic farming by creating more sustainable farmers; but everyone needs to be able to have access to truly nutrient dense, local, organic and fresh produce.
My little sister, who lives in San Antonio, began calling me for advice for her small backyard garden. She had been gardening in her backyard for about 10 years with unpredictable results and wanted support. She asked me to teach her a better way to garden. Generally I garden in a space of 20,000 square feet so how could I switch from large scale production to such a small space? High performance gardening is high performance gardening whether it is on a large scale or small. A high performance garden was the only option that could fit in to my sister’s limited space and schedule and still produce enough to feed her family of five. After 28 years of gardening experience I had found the system that could work in any space, time constraints and planting zone.
After being my sisters gardening coach for years I wondered if I could teach other gardeners how they could have a thriving garden. One of the keys that made me a successful garden coach was my relationship with my sister. She would email me photos of bugs that were eating her produce or photos of failing plants and I could easily diagnose and give organic advice. It was enjoyable to empower her! For the local food movement to really work more people need to be empowered to garden, how could I provide the ease and enjoyment my sister was experiencing to other frustrated gardeners?
The year of 2014, my husband Tom and I created a one of a kind course that would guide anyone in creating a high performance organic garden. We filmed the 10 basic modules and followed a season of growing 12 vegetables week by week. The course was structured to support a community of gardeners at all stages and connect them with someone with the experience to answer any and all questions. The Abundance Garden Course was born in November of that year ready for the 2015 spring season.
With our goal of teaching everyone the life skill of vegetable gardening why are we selling these courses? It is important to have a value to education. When knowledge doesn’t have a value it can be misused and abused. Selling the course is our plan to create a positive change in our world through an empowerment cycle. Our educational programs here on the farm are wildly popular and very successful; so successful that we have had to turn away 100s of potential students due to not having enough space to house more than a select few. It has always been my dream to teach everyone to garden. Those who have an Abundance Garden in their backyard become a part of a community of other backyard gardeners and support the future of more small organic farmers. Our goal is to have this course fund more housing so we can teach more people to get outside and garden.
We can’t stop ourselves, even with providing so much content we wanted to share more with everyone. So we created our free webinar series that will also begin to teach you how to become a better gardener. Over the next couple of years we will continue to create more free content that will reach more and more people. Our hope is to educate as many as possible and we look forward to having you along for the ride.
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