Create a Place Where You and the Life around you will Flourish

The Earth Steward is a consortium of talented professionals who are committed to working with you to make the dreams for your land a reality.

The Earth Steward Vision –

Through a wide array of offerings we will help others become stewards of our beautiful earth, and make the choices to help create spaces where life flourishes.

Be an Earth Steward - Creating life enhancing environments.

These days, it is more apparent than ever, that the choices we make, and the way we live, have broad reaching influences on the whole planet and the beautiful life and landscapes on it. The Earth Steward will assist you in aligning your life choices in such a way to bring benefit to the life and landscapes that make up your home.

The Earth Steward Mission – To help people make life supportive choices for all the life on our earth

Design and Build your Dream Home

The Earth Steward connects you to the people and resources to create your dream home - connect, plan, permit, design, build, landscape, thrive and enjoy. With our team of professionals we will help you not only envision, but create a home that nourishes.

 

Fire Mitigation

Those living in Big Sur and most of California know the threat of wild fire.

Many of us have lived through a major fire event. The Earth Steward helps you

maintain your landscape to minimize the threat from fire.

 Edible Landscapes

The Central Coast of California provides one of the most agriculturally

productive and diverse landscapes in the world. Create an edible landscape

that brings delicious meals to your table, health and energy to your body,

and medicine to your soul

Education

Education with a focus on Earth Stewardship.

“Stewarding my property has brought me more closely into alignment with everything that is important to me. Working directly with the land and the other life on it brings me into a state of unity with everything”

Theo Maehr

Land Stewardship Consultant – Theo Maehr

I live an off the grid life in the Santa Lucia mountains of Big Sur, stewarding my land in such a way that life flourishes.

I have spent decades gleaning knowledge and skills from my experience as an eco leader, educator, steward of the land, designer/builder, ranch hand, and farmer. As a child I roamed the 2300 acre nature preserve that adjoined our backyard. As an adolescent, my best growing up years were spent on an 8000 acre cattle and sheep ranch in Montana with a multi-generational family who grew and raised everything they ate besides coffee and sugar. I spent three years as a commercial organic farmer in Ohio, following the plants from seed to harvest. I worked with Mennonite horse and buggy farmers in Kentucky, and managed my own 100-acre horse and hay farm in Ohio for 7 years.  

I built my homestead on 40 acres at 2700’ in Big Sur, where I continue to live. I developed a 60,000 gallon rain catch system, planted hundreds of food bearing trees, berries, and several garden beds. Through wise land management practices wildlife populations have flourished.

Knowing the greatest risk living in the mountains of Big Sur was fire, I spent years creating a defensible zone around my buildings, gardens and orchards. I built with fire resistant materials, and created a buried cold room that doubled as a fire shelter. I became a member of the MidCoast Fire Brigade. In the 2016 Sobranes Fire, I stayed on my land and defended my buildings and cultivated land. I did so because of the fire mitigation I had done, and the confidence that when things became unbearable I could take refuge in the fire shelter. Though 85% of my property burned, I was able to safely protect my buildings, gardens, and orchards. The night the fire came up our ridge I was able to stop the fire’s advance, creating the opportunity to save the ten houses above me. When CalFire eventually arrived, my rain catch system provided the water for the firefighters to keep the homes on our ridge safe.

I have worked professionally as an educator most of my life; as a storyteller, a song leader, a Waldorf class teacher (15 years), a movement/games teacher, a woodworking teacher, a home school teacher, a Wilderness Skills Educator, an Environmental Educator, and as a River Guide.  

I have designed and built everything from toys to homes including 3 houses of my own and a line of musical instruments – lyres.

Though it took me 25 years to graduate from Stanford, I finished with two degrees – a Bachelor of Science, in Geologic and Environmental Science with a focus on Land Resources, and a Master of Arts in Education with a focus on Teacher Training and Curriculum Development.

I experience great joy culturing a working relationship with the land and the life dependent on it, and encouraging in every way possible others to assume a role as an earth steward.

Contact Theo Maehr for a 20 minute free phone consultation.