Community Highlights: Meet Guru Das Bock of Awareness Ranch Inc.

Today we’d like to introduce you to Guru Das Bock.

Hi Guru Das, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, let’s briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today.
As an undergrad, I started thinking about natural building, aquaponics, and permaculture around 2005. During my summer breaks, I would travel with my brother Bali to Harbin hot springs in Northern California. We had the great opportunity to work with Sun Ray Kelley, a master builder and architect. We built a gorgeous yoga temple in the Harbin garden using natural materials like stone, clay, straw, and rough timber. It opened my mind to what was possible and changed my trajectory. During my semesters back in school, I studied geoscience and worked as a building mechanic on campus. After years of study, I finally landed my dream job in the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research.

Working as a dendrochronologist, I was able to travel the globe. My encounters with different cultures and explorations of old-growth forests brought me a rich global perspective. It came to a head in 2011 when a historic drought and social media pressure led to Arab spring uprisings stopping all travel to my areas of interest around the Mediterranean Sea. Our global society’s political and economic systems proved to be a threat to the environment and a major obstacle that limited my ability to do meaningful work. I shifted my focus to paleontology here in the Southwestern US and was lucky to land some field work alongside notable PHDs Bill Amaral and Anna Kay Behrensmeyer. Seeing degrading environments firsthand, quantifying global change in my laboratory work, and witnessing the evidence of extinction-level events in the fossil record, I felt the urge to take up work within permaculture and natural building. More was needed to study and interpret past and present environmental change. A great responsibility rests with each of us, especially the ones who have firsthand knowledge of the effects of human activity on the greater community and environment. Our community and its potential to thrive should not be hindered by the societal norms that pigeonhole us into mediocre and unsatisfied lives with the empty promise of ‘job security.’ I took a risk and quit my laboratory position, taking a part-time summer position at the Food Conspiracy Co-Op, stocking shelves in the evenings.

I began planning to create a career in permaculture during my free mornings and early afternoons. I joined the Sonoran Permaculture Guild and received my Permaculture Design Certificate. I also joined the Aquaponics Association and began working early mornings and mid-day, transforming my home with sustainability projects. Eventually, I landed jobs creating permaculture landscapes and rainwater harvesting systems. The work grew and allowed me to quit my part-time position at the Food Conspiracy. I was now working full-time in permaculture design and installation. Not wanting to disconnect from the local food movement completely, I ran for a position on the board of directors for the Food Conspiracy and became the youngest director and only former staff member on the board. The permaculture work rapidly grew, leading to bigger natural building projects like strawbale and cobb, adobe and rammed earth, and lava-crater and hempcrete buildings. In 2020 during the pandemic, my business partners organized Awareness Ranch. They purchased a farm property where we can experiment with building and agriculture to find the most sustainable and efficient methods. We currently run a Saturday morning workshop program where participants can visit the farm and engage in permaculture natural building and aquaponics through hands-on experiential learning. We also operate a contracting business that holds commercial and residential licenses in general and electrical contracting. We focus on sustainability and permaculture design and installation. Our current projects include a permaculture master planned 33-unit eco-community in Safford, AZ. I oversaw and directed the project master plan and architectural design. The project is constructed with a lava-crater, incorporating passive design and rainwater harvesting. It may be the most sustainable community development in AZ’s unsustainable mining community—a perfect juxtaposition. We also construct emergency housing in the San Xavier District of the Tohono Oodham Nation. We are excited to develop a relationship with the First Nation Community and be able to help build a more sustainable development on native land. After 10 years of board work for the Food Conspiracy, I have served as secretary, treasurer, and most recently, Vice President. The work has brought me a deeper understanding of cooperative organization. With the help of friends and other professionals, we have recently organized the Development of Regenerative Yield Cooperative, aka DRY Co-op. To learn more about our farm and contracting business, visit www.awarenessranch.com, and for info on our regenerative ag work, visit www.dry.coop.

Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has been a colorful journey. Huge ups and downs, but it is always a gift to be on an amazing trip with friends and family. There are moments of extreme stress with impossible deadlines, supply chain shortages, and crop losses due to climate and wildlife. During my wife’s first pregnancy, she contracted life-threatening fungal meningitis, and then again during her second pregnancy during the pandemic. It has been a challenging and bumpy road. Still, it has developed an unshakable mental fortitude that allows me to deal with the less critical day-to-day business and construction management issues. As long as no one is severely injured and the relationships we are cultivating are healthy, then all is good. It is easy to fall into the mental traps of depression and anxiety while trying to perform at a high level. It is important to consider things, focus on healthy relationships, enjoy your loved ones, and cherish good health.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next, you can tell us more about your business.
Awareness Ranch Inc. is the premier sustainable development contractor in the southwest. We are licensed for commercial and residential work in general and electrical contracting. We can develop and construct anything you can dream up. We offer permaculture design, natural building, aquaponics, solar, and rainwater harvesting. We provide the highest level of craftsmanship and sustainability. Our off-grid natural building and permaculture development are what we are known for. We are building better buildings and creating a sustainable future one day at a time. We engage in regenerative work that teaches teachers and builds non-toxic resource-efficient infrastructure that is low maintenance and long-lasting. We do regular educational workshops on our farm through our Awareness Ranch Foundation. In doing so, we cultivate a greater awareness of our role in the community and environment. We partner with the indigenous communities, actively building new infrastructure for tribal members and their families. We also sell sustainable agriculture products at local farmers’ markets and restaurants. We actively train and hire permaculture practitioners, natural builders, specialty craftsmen, and women.

Our exploration of building and growing techniques are developing into a new, place-based practice that will provide food and housing to our local community without degrading the environment. These practices can be replicated by workshop participants and clients in their communities and homes. We also offer waste reduction, recycling, and composting programs for large civic events and festivals like the recent Pueblos De Maiz, Ten West, and HOCO Fest. We provide compostable wares, waste sorting, and tree planting, reducing materials sent to the landfill and offset the carbon footprint from these larger events. Our goal is to make zero-waste events to celebrate without degenerating the environment. The greatest works we have developed so far are the integrated and holistic infrastructure we have built. For example, the solar-powered, rainwater harvesting airlift aquaponics systems are built with natural site-sourced materials of adobe and stone. With a blend of traditional techniques and modern methods, we have stumbled upon a new way of relating to our environment that allows us to benefit from the natural flows of rain and sun to provide the necessary resources for human inhabitants while promoting biodiversity and healthy habitat.

What do you like and dislike about the city?
What I like best is the community and the healthy relationships we build together and with our environment. I like the least the wasteful degenerative behavior and lack of general awareness.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.awarenessranch.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/awareness.ranch?igshid=MjEwN2IyYWYwYw==
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/awareness.ranch?mibextid=LQQJ4d