Hey there!
It's hard to look back of this screenshot from when I was knocking on death's door. You see back in 2012 I nearly died. I spent 7 days in Bryn Mawr Hospital in Pennsylvania suffering and watching Doctor after Doctor scratch their head. (I checked the sheets and they charge about $400 everytime they "scratch their head" at you). I was told a lot of maybes and uncertainties, pumped full of Antibiotics and finally released in a semi-stable state in my body. This "visit" to death's doorstep left me with $50,000 in debt and an even bigger hunger to learn.
Lets backup a little ways.. You see I have always been passionate about helping others. When I was in Middle school and highschool I did missions trips in the summer to Mexico where I helped lead community service projects. During the school year, If I wasn't in school or competing athletically, I would be on AOL Instant Messenger talking with friends and giving them advice. After Highschool I attended Bible college to become a counselor but quickly realized it wasn't where I belonged. This lead me to seek out more life experiences and really find what I wanted to do. I ended up running a small store and raised money to become a missionary with some contacts I had in Ecuador. It was during that time in my life where I first started to think about where food came from and how the world really worked. I had some incredible experiences but ultimately returned to the states to continue to find what I really wanted to do. I decided to go back to college, but this time for something I was really interested in, Natural Resource Sustainability. During my second semester we went on a field trip to a Draft horse powered Farm in the St. Lawrence River valley (The owner of this farm wrote a book called "The Dirty Life", I highly recommend it). This field trip totally changed my life. I'll never forget how I fell in love with farming, the food and the processes that all go into sustainable farming. I can still remember asking the farmer, how does someone get into doing this and make it work. His simple words rocked my world. "Leave school, stop going further into debt and start farming". Some field trip!
Needless to say I took his advice. I left school and started working to pay off my debt. It was during this time that I became extremely ill and nearly died. I had put my body through a lot of stress in my childhood. I was a wrestler for 12 years and practically starved myself while overworking for 6 of those years to "make weight". Years of abusing my body, poor nutrition and immense stress had caught up with me and it was kicking my A**. By the end of my stay in the hospital the Doctors came to the conclusion that I had Double Pneumonia, Lyme disease, Epstein Barr and Mononucleosis. Not to mention nutritional deficiencies, parasites and other problems.
After being released from the hospital I was invited to a chiropractor's office to start taking a look at my body from a natural perspective. They moved some things around structurally and put me on a supplement to help support my adrenals. This short visit had me recovering significantly faster than what Doctors told me. Supposedly I would not be able to work or do any sports for 6 months as my body recovered. I was working in a greenhouse and doing Taekwondo within 2 weeks of my visit to the chiropractors. Although I was feeling some better I still had some major difficulties. I had almost no energy, was dealing with depression, not sleeping and had major brain-fog. Even still I kept working and learning, pressing through the problems like so many people do. One year later, I had an opportunity arise to take over a farm in Northern Pennsylvania and I jumped at the opportunity. I had little working capital but big dreams.