Daniela María Escudero

Daniela María was born and raised in Ecuador. She was 19 when she moved to Colorado to study film at CU Boulder. After a few years of working in the film industry, she decided that was not the life for her, and a journey of deep transformation began. Daniela turned her focus onto the food she was putting in her body and became familiar with how quality truly impacted her health and well-being. While walking this path of self-discovery she completed several yoga teacher trainings, which have supported her in reconnecting with a grounded and connected sense of self. 

After two years of teaching yoga, Daniela and her partner Gary took a through-the-season permaculture course; through this she found biodynamics. Life shifted quickly, and soon she was working on a biodynamic medicinal herb farm, learning about cosmic cycles and making preparations. She took her first preparation-making intensive at Sustainable Settings in 2018 and has since had the privilege and joy to learn from many teachers such as Hugh Courntey, Lloyd Nelson, Brook Levan, TJ, Natalie Brinkley, and more.

In true Gemini sun, Virgo moon fashion, Daniela is passionate about learning and gaining different perspectives on many different topics. She dedicates much of her time to attending workshops, reading copious amounts of books, and connecting with people and learning from their stories and experiences. 

For Daniela, biodynamics is a meaningful practice that not only enhances soil health and food quality, but also provides a spiritual and playful way for people from all walks of life to reconnect to Mother Earth when making or applying the preparations. Since Daniela started this journey, she has supported many practitioners in Colorado and Chicago to bring biodynamic preparations and practices to their land. Her focus has been on what she considers the lowest-hanging fruit: Maria Thun’s barrel compost, or, as she likes to call it, The Harmonizing Offering. Though Daniela offers consulting and education for people of all walks of life and lands of all shapes and sizes, she has recently shifted her focus to more small-scale urban backyards, creating a much smaller pit for people to make this preparation almost anywhere. Daniela’s vision is to seed as many Harmonizing Pits as she can, creating a web of life-giving and healing points all over Boulder County, Colorado, the US, and beyond. 

Daniela weaves this work into her daily life, tending to her plants on her porch and a shared medicine garden. She also spends a good portion of her time working for Boulder Food Rescue, an organization dedicated to rescuing consumable foods that would otherwise be discarded and rerouting this nutrition to communities that need it in Boulder. She does all this work because she believes that food sovereignty is the key to liberation and health; by cultivating a deep relationship with the land and the hands that feed us, we can support a deep societal shift. 

You can find out more about Daniela here.