We recently connected with Nic Navarro and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Nic thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Parents play a huge role in our development as youngsters and sometimes that impact follows us into adulthood and into our lives and careers. Looking back, what’s something you think you parents did right?

Gaia Farm is rooted in family and we really couldn’t do it without each other. Myself, my Mom Tracy, Stepdad Brian, and Partner Amanda are the only employees, though our community of friends, neighbors, and supporters is ever growing. We share in all of the success together, work through every challenge together, but that’s not to say our life is all baby goats, rainbows, and fresh steaks on the grill. Patience, the value of communication, the importance of rest, are all principles we aspire towards together.

As first generation farmers, none of us had ever seen an animal give birth before 4 years ago. This year we had 4 goats give birth to 9 kids and while it wasn’t our first “rodeo”, when the labor of one of our goats started at dusk on a chilly windy night, we were a bit on edge. 2 goats were born relatively quickly and by 7 pm we thought we were done. The winds picked up further and when we went back to check on the goats at 8 we could tell that momma still had another. 2 hours of practicing patience creeped by as momma birthed another 2 kids. When my sister went into labor with her first child some months later, all those hours watching animals give birth and practicing patience really paid off.

During times of change it is our communication skills that develop and are often put to the test. Last year (2021) we experienced our first wildfire as family. In those first few moments, our ability to communicate with each other was the only thing protecting our animals, home, and our own lives. Between evacuating small animals, dousing as much water on the land as we could, and opening the gates for the larger animals to fend for themselves, efficiency required all ego to move aside. In the days that followed we grieved our losses, made light of our circumstances, gave thanks for our fortune, and processed our experience of the fire together.

It was just the other day we had our first heavy rain here on our farm. It’s difficult to rest with this lifestyle and career when there is always a project to work on, animal to tend, or poop to shovel. Often only the weather brings us down a notch with the blazing summer sun yielding siesta season and the occasional winter rains showering down cozy time. Rest is important to our family as we all come from the fast passed city life. After three days of deep soaking, movie watching, Christmas crafting, and of course putting out buckets for all the leaks, we emerged from our dwellings with muck boots. Revitalized we spent the afternoon like children playing in the mud, exploring the new seasonal streams.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to continue learning these lessons with my Mom, Stepdad and Partner as we build a business and life together. The thing we did right was deciding to work together.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

In 2018, Brian and Tracy left their respective careers in Texas to care for Tracy’s aging parents in California. With this decision, they decided to try something totally different and start farming. Tracy had an expansive career in retail and had most recently left her position as lead buyer for the San Antonio Botanic Garden, while Brian served 25 years overseas with the army and was recently retired. Neither knew much of anything about farming.

In 2021, Nic and Amanda left their nomadic lifestyles to join Brian and Tracy. Nic had spent the last 10 years mentoring young people around the world as a teacher, Peace Corps volunteer, and wilderness therapy guide, and Amanda had explored careers as a competitive barista, in the cannabis industry, and owning her own business building out camper vans. Again, neither knew much of anything about farming.

With immense gratitude, our family always felt the need to share the special land we found ourselves on and we wanted to grow our community. It wasn’t until this past year, in January of 2022 we officially started Gaia Farm and submitted our forms to incorporate as a 501c3 non-profit (still pending).

When you get to know more of our life story, our work on the farm, and our dreams for this special land, our purpose to cultivate spaces of learning, healing and growth through the wisdom of Mother Earth applies both to our business and our lives. To share this mission with our community, we fundraise by selling products from our homestead, we host workshops and farm tours, and well, you’re invited to build this farm with us and enjoy it alongside us as part of our family.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Our family, like many others, was indoctrinated by society to hold consumerism and materialism as pillars of success. In the last year, our community has grown dramatically and it is getting easier and easier to sell our homestead products. It feels great, and honestly validating to have this support, though we are hesitant.

Our purpose here isn’t to get a bar of our soap in every shower or to consistently buy only our sausage. We are working to empower our community to learn how their food is first cared for and how many products at home can be made from common ingredients. We want to share how work doesn’t have to only drain our energy, but that it can be therapeutic if approached with intention. We’re trying to grow a community and are striving to see the health of our community as a metric of our success.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

No one in our family is formally educated or trained as a farmer. Everything we know comes from our community both physically in the form of mentors and digitally by way of youtube, books, and forums.

Some standouts include:

Paula at Bella Capretta Farm
Jason and Jamie at Poe and Co
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Quail Springs (organization)
White Buffalo Land Trust (organization)
Apricot Lane Farm (organization)
Elliot Homestead (youtube)
Joel Salatin at Polyface Farm

Contact Info:

• Website: Gaiafarm.org
• Instagram: gaia.farm.santabarbara