The Birth of Earth Camp

I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Mandi Lynn and I am the first author of the Earth Camp Blog. In 2007 Nima Sherpa, Bruce and Katy Ausin, and David Porta and I developed Between the Blues Charitable Trust due to one concern: We were worried that the skills of growing your own food were being lost in the current generation of Kiwis and we wanted to do something to reverse that trend. Nima is a Sherpa and had to learn to grow his own food to survive in his village in Nepal, a 3 day walk from the nearest road. He brings a great deal of peace calm and know how to our Camp.

I think I mostly bring the silly. I like to make bugs cool, and gooshy mud great fun. I like to chase butterflies and photograph Tuis jumping from branch to branch. I am the free spirited artist, Nima is the practical sorter. Together we make a pretty cool team I think. I come up with the wild and crazy ideas and Nima helps me to make them happen.

We believe that learning should be fun. And you learn more when you are playing and doing hands on activities. So the idea of Earth Camp was born and so here we are. The Earth Camp is for both Adults and children from 1-101. We hold it on weekends during the Blueberry Season which runs from January - May.

Our farm is organic so the only way we teach is gardening naturally gently and without chemicals.

Our goal for this blog is 4 fold:

1. Create a community that shares ideas of things that can be done to help support families to learn to grow their own food and be kind to the environment

2. Post activities that you can do at home or schools.

3. Link to the pictures we have taken of people doing the activities.

4. As well as show you what exciting new things we have planned.

We are still learning to blog so please bare with us.

Cheers,

Mandi Lynn

p.s. thanks for dropping in and have a berry lovely day.

p.s.s. If you would like to learn a bit more about our families you can read about us in New Zealand Gardener.

Or be on the look out for the November December issue of New Zealand Life and Leisure as we were very blessed to have an article written about us in there. I can't wait to see it.