Green-Ed: A Life Made by Hand

Green-Ed is more than an educational program. It’s a way of seeing, doing, growing, and making that brings us back into relationship with nature, food, craft, and consumption. It’s not about going “off-grid.” It’s about plugging back into the real grid—the one powered by soil, sunlight, seasons, and skill.

It’s about making a life by hand.

Good Food, Grown Right

At the heart of Green-Ed is a simple question: Where does our food come from?
Not in theory. Not in packaging. But really—where, how, and why was it grown?

Green-Ed starts from the ground up. Literally.
We grow food using natural farming techniques, permaculture principles, and regenerative methods that prioritize healthy soil, biodiversity, and closed-loop systems. Good soil is not just “dirt”—it’s a living world of microbes, worms, and organic matter. When we care for soil, it returns the favour in the form of nutrient-dense food.

Vegetables, herbs, fruit, and animal fodder all feed into a natural cycle. Chickens roam freely, ducks fertilize the paddies, and compost piles heat and transform scraps into black gold. The birds are hand-fed with what we grow; their manure, in turn, enriches the compost. Nothing is wasted. Everything contributes. The whole farm is alive in a network of mutual support.

We’re not trying to mimic industrial agriculture on a smaller scale. We’re trying to do something smarter: observe nature, work with it, and produce food that is clean, ethical, and full of life.

Real Preservation, Not Prolonged Shelf Life

Once food is harvested, Green-Ed continues the cycle—through traditional, natural preservation techniques. Because good food shouldn’t just taste great fresh—it should stay great without the need for chemical preservatives, refrigeration, or plastic packaging.

We teach and practise:

• Fermentation – to create rich, gut-friendly foods like kimchi, tempeh, sauerkraut, and kefir.

• Curing and drying – to preserve meats, herbs, and produce using sun, air, salt, and time.

• Pickling and vinegar making – reviving the arts of lacto-fermentation and natural acidity.

• Probiotic preparation – for drinks and condiments that nourish digestion and immunity.

• Sourdough bread, yoghurt, jams, and cultured dairy – made using heirloom methods passed down through generations.

• Vacuum-sealing and storage in glass – long-lasting, chemical-free preservation.

This isn’t nostalgia. This is wisdom. These methods don’t just preserve food—they enhance it. They make food more digestible, more flavourful, more resilient. They connect us to a lineage of makers who knew how to live well with what they had.

Making Things with Purpose

Green-Ed doesn’t stop at food. We also build. We fix. We reuse. We invent.

Our making philosophy is guided by a principle: Use what you have. Make what you need. Leave as little trace as possible. That means:

• Roads and paths built with gravel dug from our land.

• Fences constructed from recycled car tyres, woven like modern sculptures.

• Retaining walls made from salvaged stone and earth-packed bags.

• Drainage systems designed using natural gravity and water-smart layouts.

• Buildings made from reclaimed timber, mudbrick, and bamboo.

• Furniture repaired, repurposed, or built from scratch.

Every structure is a conversation with the land. Every object carries a story. And every project teaches us to look twice before buying, to consider longevity over convenience, to favour skill over speed.

This approach also keeps costs low, reduces waste, and gives us a sense of agency. When we build something ourselves—whether it’s a garden bed, a chicken coop, or a kitchen shelf—we’re reminded: we are not just consumers; we are creators.

Rethinking Consumption

Green-Ed is a quiet rebellion against thoughtless consumption.
It’s a return to mindful production, intentional eating, and slow, satisfying labour.

We live in a world that teaches us to buy fast, discard often, and never question where things come from. Green-Ed invites a different path: observe, slow down, and consider.

Nature offers everything we need—but only when we notice. Green-Ed trains our eyes to see differently: to spot what can be fixed rather than replaced, grown rather than bought, made rather than outsourced.

This is not about being perfect. It’s about being present.

The Outcome: Elegant, Enduring, and Alive

When you eat food grown in healthy soil and preserved with care, your body knows.
When you use a tool made from reclaimed wood, there’s a weight and warmth to it.
When you walk on a path you laid by hand, every step has meaning.

Green-Ed produces things that are beautiful not because they are polished, but because they are real. They are shaped by seasons, storms, stories, and effort.

This is education. This is sustainability. This is joy.

🌱 Want to Learn More?

Whether you’re a school group, a curious visitor, a passionate maker, or someone hungry for real food and real connection, Green-Ed welcomes you.

Come grow, make, preserve, and build with us—
and rediscover what it means to live well.

We take a “Hands Head Heart” approach to learning.

We combine projects with experience.

Pairing subject knowledge and project-based learning (PBLs) makes learning relevant and real.

Learning in nature by doing and thinking. Learning by making and solving. Learning through action and reflection inspires discovery, curiosity and interest.

More about Green-Ed

Learning like this captures young learners’ imaginations, enabling learners to make connections and ground understanding in skills, deeper knowledge and wisdom for life.

Discover

the natural world and explore how things really work

Gain knowledge, practise skills, and developing understanding between academic learning and life learning around essential topics that traditional schools do not usually cover.

Explore

Explore nature and have fun with the animals

Create solutions by recycling and making products from plastic waste and  help others learn how.

Capturing microorganisms, making biochar to improve soil, using green waste to make bokashi (a Japanese ferment for compost and animal feed), growing azolla and duckweed for aquaponics fish feed, preparing animal food from the banana stem, vegetable leaves, rice meal and Turmeric. These are some Green-Ed experimental gardening and farming practices we are seeking to perfect. Please join us for the journey.

Green-Ed is about what we make what we grow what we create and design using what is at hand. It is learning to harness all the power of nature in raising food and animals and integrating systems to power and generate. Green-Ed is about problem-solving and developing sustainable ways of living. We have over 100 Green-Ed projects completed or underway. Special thanks to all who have participated so far we hope the learnings you take with you will prosper your future encounters.