The ground
beneath you
is ready.
Endings are raw material. Everything that grows next begins there.
I help people and teams
grow through hard seasons.
I am a farmer, a teacher and a facilitator. I bring the lessons of the soil to the stage, the training room and the field, so your people leave with something real to carry back.
Speaking and keynotes
Honest, story driven talks on resilience, growth and the conditions people need to thrive, from a TEDx speaker with lived experience.
Book Jay to speakCorporate training
Workshops and learning programs designed by an adult educator with a Master of Adult Education and years of service in the college and public sectors.
Explore trainingTeam building on the farm
Seasonal days at Thunder Gardens where your team plants, harvests and works side by side, with a facilitated session woven through the day.
Plan a farm dayCoaching
One on one coaching for leaders and individuals in a season of change, grounded in the same principles Jay teaches on the farm.
Start a conversationWhat people carry back
Rated 4.8 out of 5 by 28 front-line youth justice staff. 27 of 28 would definitely recommend it.
Jay’s teaching really reinforced our Trauma Informed approach in dealing with high crisis situations involving youth and staff.Front-line staffRooted in Belief workshop, Youth Services Bureau
How meaningful it is to plant a seed in a youth and how your words can help them believe in themselves.Front-line staffRooted in Belief workshop, Youth Services Bureau
You’ve got the art of storytelling. Able to connect.Front-line staffRooted in Belief workshop, Youth Services Bureau
What Nature Taught Me
About Healing
How a life in the soil turned the hardest seasons into fertile ground.
In the room, in the field
Keynotes, workshops and farm days.
Unleash the Heat
Six small batch fermented hot sauces, grown from seed by young people in Youth Justice Services at the Youth Services Bureau. They grew the peppers, fermented the sauce and saved the seed. All profits go to YSB to support their future.
Grow your own food.
Grow together.
Jay farms and keeps bees at Thunder Gardens, a regenerative community farm in rural Ottawa, because growing food is growing people.
Through the Community Growing Collective, neighbours come onto the land for shared work through the season, learning as they go and sharing what the season gives.
The ground beneath you is ready. It has been fertilized by everything you have endured.Jay Smith
