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Harvest McCampbell grew up in the garden; pulling weeds and planting seeds alongside her mother, aunties, and her grandmother. When she was all of eight years old, she planted her first market garden. She sold her vegetables and flowers at a small roadside stand in rural Napa California (all grown without chemicals of any kinds). Harvest went on to work at Saint Vincent’s School for Special Children as a young adult, where she was inspired by the organic gardens, orchards, and animal husbandry programs. While living in Santa Barbara in the early 70’s, she managed a community kitchen, an organic market garden, and helped care for an organic avocado orchard. In the mid 70’s she moved to the Sacramento region, where she lived and worked on an organic chicken farm that boasted a two acre garden and worked part time as a breakfast cook and baker for a popular natural food restaurant, “The Chef.”
Beginning in the late 70’s and continuing through the late 90’s she contracted with a number of educational and non-profit organizations , primarily in central California and Nevada, providing programs on gardening, alternative health, herbs, and the natural environment. At this time she also began writing on the same subjects, and was widely published in the local and alternative press. She wrote and published a quarterly newsletter, “Finding Your Way with Herbs,” and tended the herb section of Rusch Botanical Garden. Additionally, she taught yoga classes and maintained a practice in clinical herbology, iridology, and massage; first through The Village Sauna Healing Arts Center and later through the Sacramento Wellness Center.
The first edition of her classic Native herb book, Sacred Smoke, came out in the early 90’s, and she was also active in a public Native American Demonstration Garden, the annual Traditional Indian Health Conference, San Juan Unified School Districts Indian Education Program, and at DQ University. The latter was California’s only tribal college; where she helped design and teach a full semester course on ethno-botany.
In the late 90’s she moved to the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation, where she continued her work in the field of Indian Education. The current edition of Sacred Smoke was completed there, as was her newest book, Food Security & Sustainability for the Times Ahead. Harvest wrote for the Hoopa People News, sporadically--for a number of years, until she began her weekly organic gardening column “Digging the Dirt.” The last two years the column ran (08-09) it became a monthly feature where she shared her experience, research, and the teachings she received from some very special people.
Most important to all of Harvest’s work is the original training she received from her “Gram,” who she often mentions in her writing. Gram’s garden, where Harvest played and learned as a child, was a bio diverse oasis. Gram grew many kinds of vegetables, unusual fruits, and medicinal plants. She depended on toads and frogs as well as other beneficial organisms to control pests. She championed sustainable principals long before sustainability had become a major movement. Harvest also studied with a number of other gardeners and herbalist over the years. While their names may not be familiar, Bonnie Coleman, Jim Kaneko, and Josephine Peters are among some of her most influential mentors.
The programs you will find described on these pages are the result of many years of gardening and gathering, the nurturing of wise teachers, and a deep relationship with the living soil. “It is soil, after all, that gives us all of our substance and sustenance; through living soil we are truly connected to earth and all living things.”
Information on Harvest’s Programs can be found here:
http://www.biodiversegardens.com/Programs.html
Please visit Harvest’s home page to find links to more information about her writing:
http://www.HarvestMcCampbell.com
Harvest also has a profile on facebook where she advocates about environmental concerns, visits with friends, and welcomes questions about gardening:
http://www.facebook.com/harvest.mccampbell
"Harvest McCampbell inspires us to relearn connectivity to the Earth, which may be our best hope of reclaiming our planet. Connectivity to a place makes people feel responsible for protecting it. Encouraging Harvest's brand of self-sufficiency seems like a great way to distract us from mass consumerism and get back to really taking care of ourselves."
Laurie Bornstein, MS, CCC/A
http://www.WaveAudiology.com/
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Text, Graphics, and Design Copyright 2010, Harvest McCampbell, All Rights Reserved.
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