Interviewer Name: Nayeli Garcia
Mentor Name: Marya Nash Location: Wild Willow Farm Date of Interview: 4/24/18 |
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Plant lady
We sat beside a huge sage plant surrounded by bright orange black-eyed susans. I asked her where her love for plants originated from, she said that as a little girl she found a little yellow booklet on plants and remedies in her house library. That she would go out into her backyard, and play with plants and weed. I asked her what she studied and she went on to tell me that she was an “unconventional student in high school,” she took a&p classes and studied Spanish. She loved biology, loved writing and loved to sing. She had a very free form relationship with high school. During her junior year she had some mental health issues and took her GED deciding to leave high school for good. She started taking college classes because that was what she wanted to do at the time. That was when she really fell in love with zoology and the studies of little tiny animals and unicellular organisms. Yet suddenly she encountered plant taxonomy and she was completely blown away. She praised the class, mainly for the teacher and the coursework, “the combination of these two things in just the right ratios was what made this class so incredible.” She spoke about how her education was all over the place because she allowed herself to just follow what she thought was interesting. That at one point she just became super interested in plant and that just became her life. Then when she found out about regenerative agriculture, she was like “ Yes at last something that acknowledges all of the microbial ecology, all of the macroeconomy and has such a wholesome overarching concept of how these things interact together.” She spoke about how regenerative agriculture is the best direction the modern world should be taking with agriculture and even with our own personal lives. Not just for the farmer but for “ abuelita who has two containers of rosemary in her backyard who wants to grow some basil,” she touched on how it’s a good way to save money. On how herbs are medicinal and on how eating food that was grown locally or right in your own backyard is way more nutritional than anything you could find in any store. On how just taking these simple steps can bring you closer to what she called food sovereignty. Whitch is when you are no longer relying on others for food, that you produce it yourself. In the end, she connected how her knowledge and studied have now help her to follow her passions.