Like I mentioned sometime earlier, once you start listening to yourself and make room for your passion, the universe conspires to make things happen in your favour. So in line with that I recently came across a workshop on Permaculture very close to home. My husband and I decided it would be a good idea to involve kids in this event and what a great thing it turned out to be! They not only enjoyed the session and farm stay, they are now an integral part of all the planning we do for our farm.
The workshop helped all the participants meet and learn from each other. It also connected us to the common thread that brought us together on that weekend – our farm development dreams. When we started sharing our stories, we understood that all of us in some stage of our lives started feeling concerned about the food safety aspect and that in turn lead us to an interest towards growing our own food and farming. Some strongly felt the need to do their bit in preserving the biodiversity and protecting our planet.
So, on that particular weekend seven strangers (families) who had signed up for the workshop came together. Some drove down from within the city, some drove for 7-8 hours straight from a neighbouring city and some flew down cutting short their family vacation abroad. All of varying age groups coming from a completely different professional and cultural background got to meet each other for the first time at our host’s farm.
After the initial introduction and ice-breaker rounds, we instantly felt at ease with one another. We met some wonderful, self-motivated people during this workshop;
A down-to-earth, simple yet highly ambitious career woman working in the field of digital marketing, who is also equally passionate about sustainable travelling; she had travelled around 70 countries and conducts workshops on travelling and runs a trust called ‘One shoe trust’;
A highly sought after self-made photographer, who quit his high paying IT job in the U.S and followed his passion. He recently won the ‘Fearless Award’ for his Photography and has authored coffee table books;
An Engineer who quit his comfortable job and ventured into start-ups based on training and education. Now running 3 businesses parallelly with the latest one on cold-pressed juices; such diversity in his business ideas with only one thing in common – Innovative idea coupled with passion.
Another Engineer turned Entrepreneur managing his own IT consultancy with like-minded people;
A freelance advertising professional who has carved a niche for himself at a young age and is truly concerned about the effects of monoculture on biodiversity;
Yet another Engineer who is pursuing organic farming passionately alongside his regular job;
An entrepreneur with an eye for current market requirement has successfully released his audio stories in regional languages, which had been on top 10 on iTunes throughout 2017.
Our inspiring host Mr. Kiruba Shankar, known to be the pioneer in social media entrepreneurship space in India, a blogger, a podcaster, a professor in digital marketing and an enthusiastic organic farmer who was instrumental in putting together this wonderful session.
What were all of us who have nothing in common doing at the Food forest workshop? Well, there was just one thing connecting all of these strangers and that was – organic farming and creating a sustainable farm.
Why were so many successful professionals looking up to learning and enhancing their knowledge of farming? Why, when you have a high paying career and a comfortable lifestyle?
I am just taking a wild guess here thinking only from my perspective and with my limited knowledge about all these new friends of mine that is at some point we all want to return to our roots and give back to nature instead of just taking and taking all the time…
We are already smack-dab in the middle of witnessing the result of all the taking…
It’s time to give back…
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