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Natural Awakenings Naples and Fort Myers

Toward a Healthier, More Sustainable World

Several years ago, I had the good fortune of taking a 10-week, hands-on organic gardening course with Frank Oakes at his organic farm with other wannabe gardeners and farmers. If you haven’t heard of Frank Oakes, you haven’t been hanging out at Food & Thought, the Naples health food store and café he created.

It’s been almost three years since this local Obi-Wan Kenobi of organic gardening and sustainability walked his Oakes Farm fields on Earth, but his legacy lives on, including in the thought seeds planted.

During the class, I started a raised-bed garden in my backyard which I tended until I moved to a different house. Since then, I’ve been supporting local organically grown produce by reaping harvests from Oakes Farm and farmers’ markets around town. I applaud the backyard gardeners busy planting this time of year and admit to feeling like I should be sowing some seeds, too.

I’m excited by plans for Immokalee’s new Florida Culinary Accelerator initiative. It will provide a state-of-the-art kitchen, food processing and packing facility designed to help local organic farmers; vegan, raw and gluten-free chefs; juicers; and others take their business to the next level.

I love meeting natural health and green entrepreneurs, feeling a kinship with them. In the early 1980s, I turned my love of growing and eating fresh sprouts into a business. By the time I sold it seven years later, my garage was full of machines supplying produce companies, restaurants and health food stores in Collier and Lee counties with nutritious produce that only took three days to grow. When I was ready to change to a product with a longer shelf life, the idea for Natural Awakenings sprouted!

Editor Linda Sechrist’s October feature article, “Game Changers: Inspired to Act,” spotlights more special individuals that have turned their sights to addressing problems with creative solutions. From feeding the homeless, cleaning up cities and educating people about natural medicine and possible Alzheimer’s solutions to demonstrating for clean water as a human right, these game changers are leading grassroots movements and leaving legacies capable of creating the kind of world we want to live in.

Many of the issues that desperately need attention in today’s world cross my desk. The number and intensity of their impacts can be frightening, and even freeze us into inaction as we realize we can’t personally give the world all that it needs. Yet the world needs all the good we can give and we are always able to make some kind of difference each day. It can begin with simple acts of kindness, loving care or peacemaking.

My particular focus is supporting solutions to the awfulness of GMOs (genetically modified foods), fracking our land, fluoride in municipal water, mandated vaccines and misuse of pharmaceuticals. Where to start is a common question. My launching pad is sharing helpful information with you. What remedies are you passionate about?

Thank you always for supporting our advertisers, all of whom are hard at work making their own impacts toward a healthier and more sustainable world, one patient, product or service at a time.

To all that’s good… and getting better!

Sharon Bruckman Natural Awakenings Naples

Sharon Bruckman, Publisher