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About Isabel

Isabel is a permaculture designer, teacher, urban farmer, and climate justice activist. She was the Program Director at The GrowHaus for seven years. She oversaw all of the education programs, supervised community outreach in the Elyria-Swansea 80216 Neighborhood in Denver, CO, which is the most polluted zip code in the nation. Presently she is the co-founder and curriculum builder of the CPT project, Community Led Preparedness Training for Climate Emergencies. Isabel has also been an emergency response connector “ERC” for City of Boulder’s Communication and Engagement department.

For the past thirty five years, Isabel has been a passionate advocate for self-reliance and sustainability. She organizes urban farming workshops and educational classes for adults and children that help empower sustainable and healthy lifestyle changes.

Isabel has been the President of the Mapleton Mobile Home Association in Boulder, CO for since 2011. She has served many roles in the community outreach and permaculture community. For several years she was one of the lead permaculture facilitators for the Denver Permaculture Guild and The Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute in Basalt, also known as CRMPI. She’s has been on the board of Natural Highs since 2021. She has been a guest speaker for The Boulder and Colorado Permaculture Guild and has been a board member to the Colorado Vincentian Volunteers as well as a board member of the Penn State Cooperative Extension.

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I was born into a communist Cuba in 1962. My family witnessed first hand what happened after the revolution and worked tirelessly to get my sister and I out of the country. We immigrated to New York City when I was five years old where I grew up hearing stories about life in Cuba after the revolution. When my parents refused to be a part of the communist party their food rations were taken away and they had to take food from relatives and neighbors to feed us until we were able to flee the country. Food scarcity is something that was a huge part of my developmental years and I believe contributed to why I’ve dedicated so much of my life to preventing this kind of injustice in all the communities I’ve lived and worked in.

After moving to Greenpoint, Brooklyn when I was a child I spent the next thirty years there where my love for farming, agriculture, and housing issues grew into my career. I started gardening with The Green Thumb Organization when I was 18 years old and pregnant with my first son. My love for having the power to grow my own food and the connection with the soil grew from there. It was one of the most empowering experiences I had in my life up until that point. It made a truly lasting impression.

In the late 1980s with a six year old son and three year old daughter I moved to The East Village where we squatted in one of the abandoned buildings in Alphabet city. It was here where my advocacy in housing issues was born. The building where I lived with my family was where many meetings were held where the community made important decisions on how we could support the homeless and unjust policy changes that were occurring in NYC. In 1988 NYC passed a law that homeless people could no longer reside in the parks. This brought on riots and protests from the community to recognize that the civil rights of the homeless, the poor, the mentally ill, and the addicts were being violated. As a result of the protests some of the buildings that were being squatted were able to become legal residences for those people in need. That experience showed me that when that when people are empowered to use their voice real change can happen.

After living in New York City for 30 years I began to crave space and land. By that time I was the mother of four children and I wanted to teach them to live off the land. We moved to North East Pennsylvania where we purchased a house built in the 1800’s on seven acres. It was here where I would spend the next ten years learning about animal husbandry, farming, where I gained all my experience of homesteading and where my passion for living off the land was solidified. I would go on to have two more children while living in PA. I have many fond memories of seeing my little ones run around naked in the yard with the chickens, bunnies, goats, and pigs. While my older city kids adjusted awkwardly to farm life, learning how to milk goats and delivery animal babies.

After 9/11 our property taxes went from $400 a year to over $2000 a year. So many people were trying to move to our area after the terrorist event and we were pushed out of our community. By that time farming was a huge part of my life so I wanted to find a place where I could have a longer growing season, we chose North Carolina. We made a small hobby farm on an acre and a half of land in town called Woodleaf that had a population of about 2000 people. It was here that I would have my last two children. My family and I spent five years there taking advantage of the warm weather and continuing to deepen my knowledge about homesteading. I homeschooled my children and we learned how to preserve our food, keep bees, and run a working farm.

In 2010 my family and I headed west to Colorado to join my two oldest children who had moved there for college. We moved into a small mobile home community in downtown Boulder. Our 500 sq ft home was on a 37’x84’ lot which I converted into a permaculture site. I became a member of the board where I spearheaded the community gardens and passing policy to allow chickens, rabbits, and bee keeping. At present there are many families in the community who are now growing their own food, keeping animals, and the MHA is recognized as a sustainable affordable housing mobile home community.

After hearing about my work in the community Adam Brock reached out to me and asked if I would teach at The Growhaus and that was how my journey started in the Denver 80216 neighborhood. I would spend the next seven years falling in love with the community that we serve.

Realizing that housing and food insecurities increase yearly in our society, I have a lot to offer to people facing these challenges and I have decided to continue partnering with The Growhaus but to start Roots To Sol as a way to be more mobile and teach all over the country. There is a huge movement of nomadic people due to the high cost of housing in cities and towns across the country and I feel that I want to be able to support and create solutions for people who are living on wheels and park benches. I want to offer alternative ideas to people so they can feel empowered to maintain their source to food, safety, preparedness, and wellness in a country that has not been able to figure out how to use the ethics of permaculture, which are people care, earth care, and fair share. As my Growhaus community says, healthy food is a right, not a privilege.

As way to further respond to these systemic issues and climate emergencies I co-founded the CPT project in 2021 as a direct response to the Marshall Fire in Boulder, CO. Angela Ortiz and I realized there was a great need for members of all communities to feel better prepared and empowered to respond appropriately to the inevitable climate crisis that seem to keep coming. If you would more detailed information about the CPT project, please click here.