I am a retired accountant and construction business owner. My husband and I have recently become "empty nesters", with the last of our 5 children having finished their undergrad work, and all off on their own. We now have 4 grandchildren, and 1 on the way. My earliest memories are of my grandparents dairy farm in East Texas, which planted the seeds for my lifelong goal of having my own homestead.

As a child, we always grew our own vegetables, pecans and fruit on our 1/4 acre city lot, and as an adult, I always had something growing on apartment balconies, and in my home garden beds. While in my twenties, living in Houston, and doing disaster aid work with the Red Cross, I could never understand why folks in the city did not grow food to ease their burden of poverty. As I threw myself into business and married life, I continued to read my Rodale's Organic Gardening magazines, and dream of my own future homestead. In 2002, I purchased my current land, and began raising beef cattle. I quickly added chickens, pigs, turkeys, rabbits, and had goats for a short time. I have working draft horses, as well as pleasure horses. I quickly became unhappy with the conventional agriculture routines I was learning, as they in no way resembled the memories of my grandparents diverse and wonderfully productive farm, and simple lifestyle. Years passed, and as the holistic, natural, and organic movements picked up steam, more information was available for me to learn. I joined the Texas Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, visited many local fairs and farms, discovered wonderful alternative food blogs and farmers online, toured Joel Salatin's Polyface farm in Virginia - then I heard the word "Permaculture". My mind exploded with the potential of this design science, and I began in 2012 reading everything I could get my hands on, starting with all of Bill Mollison and David Holmgren's books, and watching every you-tube video I could find. This lead me to a wonderful teacher called Geoff Lawton, whose videos were such a great learning tool, I knew he was the right PDC teacher for me. I saved my pennies, and after meeting Geoff and Nadia Lawton at the Permaculture Voices One conference in California, I took the Spring, 2014 online PDC course.

I consider myself a Permaculture Student. My current homestead is my first project, as I apply the information I have learned onto the real life scenarios of our farm. I have an interest in preserving heritage livestock breeds, and have been reducing my conventional herds to accommodate a change to Milking Devon cattle, Gulf Coast native sheep, Large Black and Red Wattle hogs, and Mexican Goats. I wish to reach a point of as few inputs as possible on my farm, with everything from breeding to butchering taking place within its boundaries. I wish to continue taking additional courses, and reach a degree of proficiency that will allow me to (finally) help the poor of our area by teaching food independence through Permaculture.