Old Beginnings

I was born in Pasadena, California to Cuban / Spanish immigrant parents. There is a certain PTSD component to my upbringing by a generation who lost everything - their family ties, their history, their homeland and even their most basic belongings. They "lost" them because they ultimately chose to "leave" them in a desperate move to make things better for generations to come. But with this movement came an upbringing of distrust, solitude, control, guilt and worry - but also determination, ambition, and pure grit.

I am glad that I am who I am because I grew up within these circumstances, but I am also wholeheartedly aware that the gardens in our homes provided a refuge my family could only find within the safe fences of our properties. They did not socialize much, they rarely spoke with relatives from the homeland or even those who had migrated to the new land... there was a very small circle of trust. Their focus was survival, betterment, and to regain whatever small piece they could of what they had lost.

For a young child growing up in the U.S. this all felt very out of place. By all accounts I was an American, but I also had strong rooted customs that were not. I was extremely extroverted and social at school, so I yearned to visit friends' homes, go to parties, have sleepovers, and just hang out somewhere without my parents. Unfortunately, that was not going to evolve, so my backyard became my sanctuary and the garden within it brought me great solace in my overarching loneliness.

Later on in life, without fully understanding what it was to grow my own food, a garden was just another impeccably designed aspect of my orderly home. It was just an endeavor to create a little piece of a magazine story within the world I controlled. In my home in Southern California I embarked on importing 95 rose varietals from all over the world. Our backyard grew to look like Disneyland, and when we had to move it was difficult to leave. My fondest, calmest, most comforting moments of my life happened in my gardens.

When we moved to Northern California I was drawn to the very different flora and fauna, the green hills, the manicured English gardens, the wild and beautiful cottage gardens. I experienced many a varietal that could not thrive in the unrelenting heat of the high desert where I had moved from. It was here that I realized I wanted to put down roots and create a garden of my own. It was also around that time that a client and friend asked me if I knew what BPA was as I was drinking from a plastic water bottle in my office at work. That was an hour-long conversation that would lead to vigorous Internet research and it would change the habits of my life for the next 15 years until today.

One thing researched led to another, which led to an article about other harmful things in what we eat, side effects from our meds, and even toxins in our water - a system focused on profit, not wellness as a preventative measure. I started looking up ingredients in everything from our canned and boxed foods, to my cosmetics, clothes, and beauty care products. The more I researched and read, the more I realized that we put more toxic products in and on our bodies than natural, healthy ones, and that our waste is contributing even more toxicity to our planet. It was a whole new circle of life, so to speak. This just couldn't be right, could it? Through trial and error, I alleviated many things that were ailing me and my gut for years, and I want to share this with you.

In 2019 just shy of the Covid pandemic, my healthy, fit, 23 year old son was diagnosed with Hodgins Lymphoma. The news left me spinning - we had been eating clean at that point for nearly 10 years, working out, leading active outdoor lifestyles, and it didn't seem to keep him safe. But it did help us to transition the rest of the way to a clean and healthy lifestyle, the one I am going to share with you in this blog, my vlog and in the classes and consultations we offer. Through his illness and recovery, COVID during that illness, and now our sustainable healthy life, I learned a myriad of things that led me to realize I needed to find a home and property where I could better control my environment. We knew the property had to have land, had to be near my work, had to give us the privacy we needed to grow our farm unjudged and undisturbed, and it had to be affordable - a monumental task!

It took us 2 years to find it. It is a modest 1-acre parcel on a mild south facing slope with a serene view of the mountains. It is not huge, and it is not what most people would consider a typical homestead, but our goal is to make it one anyways as best we can, and to share our journey with you.

Mount Diablo at Sunset