A Big Hello!!!

Hi, everyone! Happy mid-spring. :) 

I know it's been a while since I've touched base with anyone. I met most of you at the Etna Sustainability Fair (woo!) and a few others I know from other classes. I just wanted to hop on here and share a bit about myself (Lexy Baird) and the business I've created ~ Cultivate & Create Co.

Firstly, I am: neurodivergent, queer, and love food and the way it connects people. As someone who strives to understand the way my identity shapes my relationship with the planet, plants, and other people, I also hope to bring that curiosity to others. At the end of the day, we all eat. We all are connected to farming in different capacities. And eating can be hard! Expensive! Boring! AND Collaborative! Novel! Tactile! among a million other things.

Just a bit of background: My Master's Thesis from Chatham University focused on the ways social cooking and kitchen collaboration impacts our lives. My learned love of farm work and food preservation is also my full-time job. Each of these things impacts nearly everything I do and led to making this business to provide hands-on education about food to Pittsburgh.

This leads to now:

Cultivate & Create Co. is here to tie you to your local food. I design home gardens and make plans that are curated around budgets and goals. This is something that can be daunting. Where do you start? Why do animals keep eating my dang plants? I get it. It's rough. But as growers, you're never alone! Growing things is a community effort and there are resources that can help you. While the season is a bit on the way already, growing food can be on your horizon at any point. A flyer is attached for the services I offer.

I also teach food-based educational workshops that always have a sensory component to them. Some examples include: easy meals from your garden with a walk-through tasting of your abundance, canning pickles with coworkers and trying different vinegars, and more! Mainly, I want to create a fun and easy way to connect you to growing food and/or putting it on your plate. A very popular class I teach, Canning Essentials: Jams, is at Phipps' Conservatory Botany Hall Kitchen. While this class frequently sells out, the lovely component of my business is that I can host this class in a small format in the comfort of your own home. This not only helps you figure out the flow and dynamics of your own space, but also makes the class more personal for you and a couple friends or family members! You can look at my page here to learn more.

That's about it for now! Hope this helped you learn a bit more about what I do. Feel free to reach out to me if you are curious about anything, and please follow my Instagram and Facebook pages to stay updated on events and musings!

I look forward to doing more and can't wait to share things with you all!!

With warmth,

Lexy

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