I grew up in the midst of the corn and soybean fields of Iowa, often touted as the best farmland in the world. So good we keep it bare soil for nine months out of the year, apparently. Spurred by the advice of my farming family and friends, I went to college since that what smart kids do; working with your hands is a sucker's game they said. Afterwards I moved to the Big City and found out they don't have any stars there, and that I'm not a city people.
Remembering my time spent in my aunt's veg garden, canning and drying the surplus and eating green beans without even picking them first, I realized what I liked most. I got myself a job on an organic veg farm in the suburbs (in the middle of a subdivision) and met a couple people who told me to look into permaculture. Even though the farm was doing what it could to be the Good Guys, they still relied on excessive tilling, monoculture, and sprays of organically-certified poisons.
I came back to the city, where I am Asst Horticulturist at a nature museum. I'm creating a prairie (and a half-dozen other types of garden) in the middle of a major metropolitan area, and it's great fun and terribly instructive, but I'm still not a city people. I'm lucky to have learned so much from my farmer, biologist, and educator mentors, and I would consider myself lucky to be able to teach what I know to others. Wherever I go, I'd like to spread the ideas of permaculture, even if I don't call it that so folks like my Grampa back in Iowa think it's not "hippy baloney," but good horse sense, traditional American values, and return to community like he had when he was a boy.