151: Saskia Esslinger on Teaching Gardening
Providing a curriculum resource for gardening teachers.
Saskia is a passionate gardener who believes everyone can grow some of their own food. She is trained in Permaculture, Environmental Science, and Regenerative Entrepreneurship. After turning a house in Anchorage, Alaska into an abundant urban homestead, she created a successful business teaching others how to garden. She recently turned her hands-on food gardening course into a curriculum and manual to help others teach gardening in their own communities.
In This Podcast:
Greg meets Saskia, a young woman who was motivated enough to transform her life and career to encompass the ideals of permaculture. However, she was not happy just making her own garden, Saskia has a goal of having everyone or every yard have the chance to garden. So as she started making the changes to a gardening lifestyle she was determined to find a way to make a living with this new mode of living. She has done this partly by helping others become teachers of gardening in their own areas. Here she explains how she is preparing her army of educators and how they can make a living teaching others how to garden.
Listen in and learn about:
- How she grew up in Anchorage eating directing from the garden
- Why college food made her evaluate what she was eating and they whole food system in general
- How she did some traveling and eventually found her way back to Alaska
- What happened when she took a permaculture course and what she and her husband did to their next home
- Gaia university and their structure for classes
- What regenerative entrepreneurship is and how business can have permaculture concepts applied
- Her definition of permaculture
- Solutionaries and what this means
- Her experience on a 1 year solely Alaskan food challenge
- Why she spent 6 months preparing for the challenge
- Why she had concerns about changing to a permaculture career and how she made the transition from waiting tables to garden education
- More about her curriculum and what is involved
- How she is trying to set up an army of teachers around the world to help reach a goal of a garden in every yard
- How technology is a challenge and a blessing in this adventure
- How she integrated the permaculture concepts into her business
- The concept of “stacking functions” and what that means
- How permaculture was a transformative concept for her
- What her goal and hope for the future is
- Why they sold their house and bought a trailer and went on an epic adventure with their family
- What their plans are with the sailboat they have
As well as:
- How even though she is a teacher, she is always learning
- Why she thinks her green thumb course is her biggest success
- How helping others learn how to gardening really drives her
Saskia’a Book recommendations:
By Bill Mollison – Introduction To Permaculture
How to Contact Saskia:
Gardening: Teachgardening.com
Travel: Moxietrek.com
Facebook: Saskia Esslinger
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