Hi! I’m Esperanza Pallana. Thank you for reading my blog. I live in Oakland, CA where I’ve been keeping an urban farm for the past six years. I started my farm because I missed my grandparents, Lupe and Frank. By example, they instilled basic values in connection to the earth, respect for food and a proud, courageous, and artful approach to making your own way in life. By growing food for my family and preparing it with my own hands, I feel my ancestors, their knowledge and their love close to me.

When not tending my menagerie of chickens, turkeys, ducks, rabbits, bees, cats…and the occasional dog, I am learning better ways to improve soil health; learning to prepare the miraculous food that comes from it; and sharing my knowledge with others.

That’s all by day. By night, I am an artist and a professional in Nonprofit Administration. I studied biology and urban studies in college and received my masters in nonprofit administration. I have over ten years of experience in research, program development and grant management. My passion is to strengthen communities through the preservation of food heritage and supporting local agriculture and regional food economies.

For me, home is where I creatively tinker to develop a sustainable living experiment. This blog is a chronicle of my practical (or sometimes not so practical) experiences. I live in an unusual household with my curious, forgiving and devilishly handsome husband, my eccentric actor father-in-law, an awesome housemate, and two very special cats. Its fun…most of the time.