We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Boris Kerzner. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Boris below.
Boris, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?
It was a long and winding journey. I graduated in 2004 and began work as a software engineer. Although it was a great profession, I was looking for more. In 2014 I enrolled in an herbal medicine course, even though I didn’t know what it was. I had no background in gardening and could barely identify plants. Once the course was complete, I thought “what next?” This landed me in an online herbal immersion program run by the Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine. The focus of this program was not only how to use plants for medicine, but also how to grow them. Organic vegetable gardening in my home backyard was a natural outgrowth of the program – I’ve been gardening ever since. The program also introduced me to the ideas of permaculture for the first time in my life – hopeful, pragmatic ideas centered on treating the land properly. Subsequently I earned my Permaculture Design Certificate and returned to school to earn a M.S. in Ecological Landscape Design & Planning. (I remember sitting in class while earning my Permaculture Design Certificate and thinking – finally, these are my kinds of people – idealistic AND pragmatic.) Then in 2022 I started my foodscaping business.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I own and operate Grow Our Food, a full-service foodscaping company servicing the Greater Philadelphia area. Our goal is to empower people to put their properties, yards, even balconies to work as a local and sustainable food resource. Services we offer include: vegetable garden setup, fruit tree & berry installations, native and pollinator planting, garden coaching, expert consultations, full site design, and more. I started the business in 2022 and we’ve been growing steadily ever since.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
1. Paying attention to my inner voices, even when it was uncomfortable. Since software engineering was a comfortable profession that did indeed suit my temperament and abilities, I could’ve thrown up my hands and said – “Well, this is pretty good, even if it doesn’t fully satisfy me. Whatever, I’ll do this until I retire.” Instead, I listened to the inner voice even though it wasn’t comfortable and followed its promptings.
2. Patience. It took me a long time to land on what I really wanted to do. It’s been a meandering journey. I entered the work force at 22 and started my business at 40. Certainly I felt hopeless and impatient at times, but it did work out in the end. More patience, more hope could’ve only helped.
3. Continuous self-learning. I love learning & feel very happy when I”m learning new things, whatever it may be. The push to keep learning was a huge part of this journey, educating myself about organic gardening, permaculture, and going back to university for a second degree. I’m still learning. There’s so much to know, and there always will be.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
Not a book, per se, but a module in the online Herbal Immersion Program from the Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine. The program was about organic growing and herbal medicine, but there was an add-on module with multiple videos of Chuck Marsh explaining basic principles of permaculture. These ideas really sparked my excitement. The focus was on how humans are able to leave the land in a better shape than they found it. We can be healers of the earth. We don’t have to be agents of destruction, a dominant narrative at large and even in the conservation community. It may not be easy, and there are certainly pitfalls, but that idea that we can mend and repair was huge for me and sparked my hope and I am very grateful.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.growourfood.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/grow_our_food/
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