Hello,
My name is Devin Mason. I live in the small town of Albany, located in Vermont's beautiful Northeast Kingdom, a Rhode Island-sized region in northeastern Vermont. Until the age of 14, my parents home-schooled me. At the age of 14, I enrolled at the Community College of Vermont. I graduated in 2013 at the age of 17 with an Associate's degree in Liberal Studies. In August of 2013, I enrolled at Goddard College, which is located approximately 10 miles northeast of Montpelier (Vermont's capital city). In August of 2015, I will graduate from Goddard with a Bachelor's degree in Sustainability.
I have been fairly passionate about the environment since I was 13. My family has composted and recycled for as long as I can remember. However, it wasn't until after reading a book about our environment's poor condition that I became passionate about making an effort to help save it. It began with fairly small things such as replacing incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent ones. Then it grew to paying a bit more attention to the environmental impact.
In 2010, I watched a documentary that highlighted some of the issues with industrial agriculture, such as its environmental impact, its social impacts, and the disregard for animal welfare. After showing the movie to my parents, I was able to persuade them to begin buying more organic food. Even before watching the documentary, we ate grass-fed beef raised by my uncle (we paid for the expenses associated with raising the cows, but since we did not have the land for cows, they were raised on my uncle's property). After watching the documentary, we began buying more organic meat instead of conventional meat.
In 2012, my family moved off-grid and began growing a garden, and raising chickens and pigs, a decision my parents told my I also partially influenced. Since the soil around the house is very sandy, the garden is grown in raised beds which were filled with compost and manure. In 2014, the garden grew nearly 1,000 pounds of food.