Andraya is a small business owner, gardener, forager, herbalist and land steward in Kingston NY with a background in early childhood development in education. Her family partnered with Habitat for Humanity in 2017 for the build and purchase of their first home. She began raising her children in apartments, while learning container gardening and vegetable growing independently on rental properties
in uptown and midtown Kingston, with the desire to feed her family in more affordable and nutritious ways. She found herself gardening amongst neighborhood children who became interested in helping and learning all about vegetables which deeply nourished her drive to homeschool her son for preschool. She found connection with the Montessori and Sudbury styles of education and utilized them to enrich her desire to teach. Since 2015 she has maintained this business. It supports causes near and dear to her heart while offering handmade crocheted stuffed animals, hats, scarves and gloves as well as gifts that have been recycled from unique everyday items. It arose from her desire to financially support her family in ways that included her natural talents for crochet and paper craft along with her budding interest in metal crafting. DIY with Dray is the fb group where she teaches her methods for crafting, childhood enrichment in education, and shares her creative writing in descriptions of her work. When the opportunity to purchase their first home with Habitat for Humanity came along, she started exploring the downtown Kingston neighborhood where it was being built and discovered wild mushrooms right on the property! The land began to speak to her spirit. It led her on a journey of self discovery through foraging, wildcrafting, the history of agricultural land stewardship, permaculture workshops with the Kingston Land Trust, and eventually Chestnut herbal medicine school. This life change also landed her family in the wonderful community of JFK elementary school where she's served as their PTA President. During this time she has grown and gardened with many others for the development of the Community Food and Pollinator Garden adjacent to the school parking lot which held it's grand opening in the fall of 2022. She started her second home based business, Dray's Oily Garden, in 2019 when she learned of the power of plants through the use of essential oils in Aromatherapy. She continues to produce her own natural skincare products for her family and friends while subsequently adding the new product line to her gift shop and completing her herbal medicine education. Andraya is also the chairperson for the MyKingstonKids Parental Advisory Council in which she, along with other parents in the community, advocate for desired programming within the organization and in collaboration with additional establishments who are striving to reach the same goals.
