 Josey Hastings was born and raised in a small town in rural Vermont. As a child, her parents involved her in gardening, maple sugaring, and raising animals and taught her the names of plants and trees on regular walks in the woods. These experiences, and the hours she spent playing outside, nurtured her love of nature and the outdoors.
After high school, she attended Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and majored in art and education. She moved to Baja California Sur, Mexico three months after graduation and has been there, for the most part, ever since. She initially lived in La Paz and worked as a French professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Sur. She spent one spring back in Vermont teaching French and Mexican history at a high school and began her M.A. in English Literature before realizing that her real desire was to learn, as her parents had begun to teach her, to live on the land. So, she and Edgardo moved to El Chorro with the dream of living a simpler life - growing fruits and vegetables, learning to keep bees, raising animals, and ultimately finding a way to share it all with others. They are now in the process of learning all of that and hope to share and exchange knowledge with visitors to Huerta Los Mangos.
Edgardo Cortés Nares was born in 1971 in Mexico City, the biggest city in the world. Very early on, surrounded by paved streets and concrete buildings, he felt a strong need for the beauty of the natural world. When he was 11 years old, he began to ask himself where society would end up if we continued on the path we were on, one which already seemed to him to be chaotic and unsustainable. In spite of that, he chose to study industrial engineering and systems in college, a course of study that only increased his doubts about where our economic and social systems were headed. After earning his degree in engineering, he got a job as an engineer, studied theater for two years and completed a degree in Human Development. In 2000, Edgardo quit his job without knowing what he would do next and adventured out into the unknown world of life without a weekly paycheck and health insurance. At first it was terrifying, but he learned to live with the risk and to relax. Almost by circumstance, after backpacking around Mexico, he ended up in Baja California Sur and began to work as a volunteer on low-impact kayaking trips to the Sea of Cortez islands. A year later, he was working as a lead guide on the same trips. His work as a guide was what first brought him to the Sierra de la Laguna. He loved the beauty and peacefulness of the place and moved there in 2004. Since then he has been working to establish a homesite and is now learning about bio-intensive farming.
Josey and Edgardo conduct the following EarthFoot program: |