Leah Webb is avid gardener and edible landscaper residing on her ¾-acre urban homestead in the mountains of western NC. Leah studied soil processes and food systems for seven years before starting her career in health and gardening education in 2009. Her practical approach to whole foods cooking and gardening is inspired by the complexities of raising two children with unique medical needs. Learn more about her approach in her two books, The Seven-Step Homestead and The Grain-Free, Sugar-Free, Dairy-Free Family Cookbook. Find her online at LeahMWebb.com.
Leah is speaking in Wisconsin and is a contributor to Mother Earth News Fair Online.Workshops
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The Art and Mastery of Meal Planning and Prep
When Leah learned that her son had severe food allergies and that her daughter had cystic fibrosis, she knew a healthy diet would play an integral part of her children’s care. But learning to get organized in the kitchen while still having time for other activities felt like an impossible task. Over the course of three years, Leah learned to master the art of meal planning and prep through the use of bulk shopping, freezing foods, planning ahead, and getting organized. Her techniques are effective enough for those needing to follow the strictest of diets, but easy enough for those who don’t necessarily love to cook or plan ahead, but also understand the necessity for home-cooked meals. Leah provides participants with an overview of the techniques that have enabled her to spend a minimal amount of time in the kitchen while serving her family a nearly 100 percent made-from-scratch diet. Home-cooked breakfasts, snacks, lunches, and dinners are possible because of these techniques. She shows you how to get organized, get cooking, and stay sane!
Real Foods Hands On
Speaking At:
Seven Steps to Homesteading
Discover how to build a highly productive homestead using incremental steps that increase your workload and skillset overtime. Leah Webb will discuss the seven stages and corresponding inputs she’s used to slowly build her diverse homestead using no-dig, no-till, deep organic practices that are applicable for both rural and urban settings. Participants will learn how to dream big while setting realistic and achievable homesteading goals.
Modern Homesteading
Speaking At:
Wisconsin, Sunday 10:00-11:00 a.m., Mother Earth News Stage
Regenerative Practices for the Home Gardener
Learn how the same techniques many farms implement to enhance carbon-storage capacity can be easily applied in backyard gardens by those who want to transform their home gardens into highly productive carbon sinks. Participants will learn about the factors affecting soil health, why carbon storage is so important, how to use naturally occurring soil processes to enhance soil nutrition, and why these practices are your most powerful tool to improve the health of your soil.
Modern Homesteading
Speaking At:
Wisconsin, Saturday 5:00-6:00 p.m., Grit Stage
Nurturing a Healthy Eater Through Exposure, Play, and Participation
Raising a healthy eater in a society that doesn’t necessarily support or encourage healthy habits can be a major challenge for parents. Leah Webb, family food and garden coach with more than a decade of experience teaching kids, will discuss her fun and effective approach to encouraging interest in healthy foods. She’ll demonstrate her tried-and-true methods that will help you turn healthy meals into a joyful part of an everyday routine. The recommendations are best suited for 1-to-8-year-old children but can be modified for older children as needed.
Real Foods Hands On
Speaking At:
Meal Plan Your Way to Better Health
Learn how to get organized, get cooking, and stay sane when cooking for better health! Leah Webb slowly learned to master the art of meal planning and prep through the use of bulk shopping, freezing foods, and planning ahead. Her techniques are effective enough for those needing to follow the strictest of diets, but easy enough for those who don’t necessarily love to cook or plan ahead, but also understand the necessity for home-cooked meals.
Natural Health
Speaking At:
Wisconsin, Sunday 11:30-12:30 p.m., Real Food Stage
Finding Abundant Opportunities in Specialty Diets
Leah Webb covers reasons why an individual/family would want to explore a restrictive diet. One of these being that health is valuable! Restrictive diets are not a form of punishment for past behavior. She explores the concepts of nourishing choices and loving boundaries and how these concepts relate to our food choices including the psychological impacts of restrictive eating. She'll also review strategies for getting prepared such as making lists of possibilities (foods that are on the "yes" list), arming yourself with the appropriate resources (i.e. cookbooks, recipes, websites), learning to identify aspects of restrictive eating that feel depriving and strategize solutions to feel rewarded, and preparing for social situations without the awkwardness as well as how to deal with kids and restrictive diets
Natural Health Hands On
Speaking At:
Feeding Kids Healthfully: A Stress-free Approach to Creating Healthy Habits
Parents understand the importance of a healthy diet but influences from peers, media, and other forms of advertising complicate mealtimes. No perfect solution exists, but there are a number of stress-free strategies that parents can use to encourage kids to develop a more diverse palate. This workshop is designed for caretakers of children age 0 to 8 years of age.
Hands On
Speaking At:
Create Your Inexpensive No-Till Garden with Sheet Mulching
Traditional methods of garden establishment require the use of a tiller or an immense amount of labor to remove existing grass from your new gardening space. This technique fails to preserve the beneficial processes that are present in undisturbed soil. Using a no-till, no-dig approach will help improve the quality of your soil over time, which ultimately results in fewer pests, fewer inputs, fewer weeds, less labor, and improved soil fertility. Sheet mulching is a technique used by numerous no-till, no-dig organic growers and permaculturists, in which multiple layers of organic matter are used to smother grass and build organic-rich beds on top of existing lawns. Learn how to build raised and in-ground beds using sheet mulching, the benefits of this technique, and the numerous materials that can be sourced (mostly free) to start your beds.
Organic Gardening Hands On
Speaking At:
Belly Biochemistry: Relationships Between Food, Microbiome, and Wellbeing
Backyard Greenhouse Growing
Discover the unique opportunities greenhouses offer for the home gardener or homesteader including longer growing seasons, better protected cool season crops, and enhanced ability to successfully grow starts from seed. Leah Webb will share the numerous ways that her 315 square-foot greenhouse has transformed her growing abilities and resulted in higher yields with less effort. She’ll discuss greenhouse options, construction considerations, limitations and benefits, greenhouse specific growing methods, and tips and tricks for growing your most amazing seedlings to date.
Organic Gardening
Speaking At:
Wisconsin, Saturday 11:30-12:30 p.m., Organic Gardening Stage