Hi I'm Brooke! Urban Farmer, Photographer, Educator, Homesteader, Herbal Medicine Maker

Hello Steem Community! My name is Brooke Porter and I’m excited to be joining you!

When pressured to write a introduction I turned to my housemates and this was their response “Brooke is the goddess incarnate. When she is not making empanadas, she is carrying a basket full of chard in her left hand and drinking from the mate gourd in her right. She is pretty much excellent at all things, but especially photography - whoa”. I don’t know about the whole goddess part but the mate is definitely on point.

(This is me hanging out with my chicken Baby Tush)

My heart dabbles and dives into many different passions; herbal medicine, permaculture, social justice, urban farming, languages, photography, backpacking, reading, swimming, and a good gourd of mate.

At a time when our planet is faced with rapid climate change, ecological degradation, and social unrest I view growing my own food and medicine as a revolutionary act. Joanna Macy really gets to the root of what drives me in this life when she states,

“Until we can grieve for our planet we cannot love it—grieving is a sign of spiritual health. But it is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes; we have to put our hands in the earth to make ourselves whole again. Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair.”

A little about my home:

My housemates and I have a pretty magical thing going on. We reside in Berkeley California on a urban homesteading project called the Queen Farm. We are a house of dreamers, activists, cuddlers, foodies, shower singers, and young late twenty somethings rooting ourselves in the world of ecology.

This is our garden

We have honey bees, six chickens (named after great queens such as; Cleopatra, Beyonce, and Richard Simons), a herbal medicine garden, a ton of fresh fruits and veggies, a greenhouse, and a small mycology project where we grow edible shitake and oyster mushrooms.

(These our adorable chickens when they were babies. Yes, I tried taking all kinds of cute baby chicken photos including a chicken riding a stuffed llama.)

The inside of our home has turned into a house plant refuge center. We nourish unwanted street plants and the plants friends abandon back to life. As you can see they have slowly began to take over our home.

My life as a teacher:

My students are often my greatest source of inspiration and joy. I teach permaculture and gardening to over 300 hundred Kindergarten-5th grade students in a public school in the Bay. Their deep fascination for the Earth and passion to engage with a wide range of materials, including things such as climate change truly gives me hope for the future (especially after this year's election).

Our garden classroom has covered a wide range of materials. My students have made natural dyes, herbal teas, saved seeds, named all the worms in the worm bin, built a cob bench, fallen in love with the baby rats found nesting in our compost pile, learned about local indigenous herbal medicine, built beehives ( who would have known that letting my students use power tools the first month of school would get me so many cool teacher points), and much more!

(Here are some of my adorable students harvesting mulberries, making recycled bottle planters, and getting slightly carried away with face painting at our Earth Day Celebration)

Baba Dioum the great Senegalese forster once said that "In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we are taught."

I can only hope that as an educator I inspire a deep love for the Earth and all her beauty.

My Life as a Photographer:

My passion for photography and approach is deeply rooted in my love for social documentary photography. As an independent photographer the images I seek to create explore visual narratives of timeless storytelling. I strive to capture the human spirit and seek to illuminate authentic moments of connection and translate them into art. I have a background in both analog and digital photography. My passion for this medium has also influenced my work life. I run a photography business where I shoot births, portraits, and weddings. You can see my work here.

http://www.brookeporterphotography.com

(This is me hanging out with my medium format camera at my favorite childhood beach. My sweet Mama took this picture)

Well, I’m going to leave it at that for now! I want to thank my dear friends @AnwenBaumeister, @ItchyKitten and my partner @JaredWood for encouraging to share my writing, art, and mutual love for the homesteading. I look forward to getting to know you Steem community!