Greg Hart farms 1500 acres in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand. He works on the property with his wife and 3 young children, as well as 3 other workers and various WWOOFers from all around the world. The Harts practise regenerative agriculture and try to raise awareness about the urgent need to transition to a food production system based on nature that heals the earth and society.
Erika Rumbley is the Co-Founder and Director of The New Garden Society (TNGS). Each year The New Garden Society trains 100+ incarcerated students in the art and science of plants, building a bridge from Greater-Boston prisons and youth detention facilities to local careers in organic land care. Erika is also the Greenhouse Manager at Langwater Farm, a 50-acre, certified organic vegetable, fruit, flower and herb farm south of Boston. Her most formative experiences as an adult educator include her time with Southside Community Land Trust, The Trustees of Reservations, and growing food and flowers alongside students in prison gardens outside of Boston. A North Carolina native, Erika has farmed and found her home in southern New England for over a decade.
Ildi Carlisle-Cummins is Director of the Cal Ag Roots Project at the California Institute for Rural Studies. Cal Ag Roots puts historical roots under current California food and farming change movements by telling the story of California agricultural development in innovative, useful, and relevant ways. There is deep knowledge about the structures, driving forces, and key moments that have shaped California's food system among recognized experts; and those who have participated in the creation of CA farming, but this knowledge doesn't always inform food movement work. Cal Ag Roots shares stories from this wide range of people, opening new lines of communication among them.
Robert Olivier, founder of GrubTubs, Inc. invents and develops all aspects of insect based technologies, from conceptual design work to prototyping and final fabrication. Currently he is engineering a bioconversion facility in Austin, TX, to transform food waste into animal feed. Olivier holds a bachelor's degree in environmental sciences and business administration from Southern Methodist University. He received the Departmental Academic Excellence Award in Geological Sciences upon graduation.
Marie Hoff founded Capella Grazing Project in 2013. Using rare, heritage breed Ouessant sheep, she grazes in such unlikely spots as vineyards, orchards, on cover crop at local farms, and for landowners seeking holistic lawn-mowing services. In this unconventional manner of ranching, she blends ancient shepherding with modern day integrated agricultural and economic systems, stewarding both landscape and livestock genetics.
Locky Catron graduated from Iowa State University with an Agricultural Business degree and joined the three-person Cleber, LLC, team in Alabama. Her experiences working both in Big Ag and on organic farms led her to have a passion for regional food systems and a more diversified agriculture. Cleber's business model is one that encourages local/regional manufacturing by using an open system design approach. Their first piece of equipment is the Oggun Tractor - a simple, versatile tractor inspired by the Allis Chalmers G and made using off-the-shelf components. The focus is appropriateness of scale and affordability.
Tom Baldwin is the Farm Director of Ulua Palms Farm and Nursery in Makawo, HI. A permaculture designer and nurseryman, he is currently engaged in the development of a 5-acre homestead property on Maui in addition to maintaining an 18-acre farm on Big Island. This includes the current planting of a collection of roughly 50 avocado varieties, and an extensive renovation of an old family homestead built in 1906. Tom stewards an extensive collection of plants, including a repository of rare fruit and nuts. He also has a special interest in cacti.
Based in Kentucky and North Carolina, Sara Day Evans works through Accelerating Appalachia to advance the regenerative economy for North America's most diverse foodshed: the Appalachian region. She's a program developer, social entrepreneur, and living bridge who for over 20 years has delivered powerful impact through strong leadership, creativity, and collaboration. Launching Accelerating Appalachia was borne out of a variety of circumstances: a natural evolution of her ongoing commitment to people, place and prosperity in Appalachia; conversations with leaders in social enterprise and impact investing, the natural abundance and beauty of Appalachia; her connection to place as a 6th generation Kentuckian; her service to distressed communities in Appalachia to help rebuild the loss of their furniture, textile, and farming economies while with the NC Department of Commerce; her impactful work with Kentucky's Environmental Protection Cabinet; and the deep influence of her longtime Kentucky friends, bell hooks and Wendell Berry, and her activist, physicist parents and inspiring children. A hydrogeologist, community planner, entrepreneur, former truck driver, waitress, maid, and woodworker, Sara Day is also an accomplished musician, writer and poet.
Miles Teitge took his first steps in the old growth forests of Vashon Island, WA, and was transplanted to the Idaho high mountain desert in 1983. Graduating from the Community School, he took up surfing in Kauai, trekked India, and biked across the U.S. to study Anthroposophy for a year at Camphill Village in Copake, NY. This Rudolph Steiner inspired community serves those with special needs, and is also the home of Turtle Tree Seed, a producer of biodynamic seeds. He earned a Bachelor's degree in education at Antioch University, while volunteering at the Seattle Tilth Children's Garden. Miles interned at the Herb Pharm in Williams, OR, and continued his education at Seed School (with local legend Bill McDorman), and the Fungi Perfecti mushroom cultivation course (with visionary Paul Stamets). He joined The Mountain School shortly after it opened, inspired to learn and teach principles of permaculture and the gardening arts; be it cultivating vegetables, gathering medicinal herbs, grafting trees, laying out hugelkultur beds, bee-tending, greenhouse design, poultry care, humane composting, worm wrangling or the like, there is a lifetime of learning on this path! He and Sweet Clover teacher, Jessica Banks, are the proud parents of SMS student Edyn Crow Teitge. Miles is delighted to continue with the Syringa Mountain School's Sustainability Arts program and plans to share his deep reverence for the natural world, plant fruit for future generations, and grow the largest watermelon the Wood River Valley has ever seen in 2017!
Mike Bologna, CEO of Green Lion Partners, is a decisive and personable leader with a comprehensive background in supply chain technology consulting, process analysis, and operational strategy. Using this experience, Mike focuses on ensuring organizational success by improving efficiencies, minimizing waste, and bringing socially conscious processes to the forefront. Green Lion Partners is a Denver, CO based business strategy firm focused on early stage development in the regulated cannabis industry.
Jeff Conant directs Friends of the Earth's international forests program, which campaigns to protect forests and the rights of forest-dependent peoples by addressing the economic and political drivers of forest destruction. Prior to joining Friends of the Earth, Jeff ran communications and popular education efforts around climate and development justice with Global Justice Ecology Project, International Accountability Project, and other advocacy organizations, and co-authored A Community Guide to Environmental Health (Hesperian Health Guides, 2008), a comprehensive community education manual that covers issues from basic sanitation to big dams and from forestry to food sovereignty. The Community Guide has been translated into over a dozen languages.
Berkshire native Maddie Elling and her partner Abe Hunrichs run Hosta Hill, a Berkshire-based business growing and making lacto-fermented vegetables. A lover of the outdoors, food, and dynamic work, Maddie spent four years after high school WWOOFing and wandering. After meeting Abe, they both settled in the Berkshires: dabbling in odd jobs and raising various animals and crops. Inspired by the Berkshire landscape and food scene they were eager to create a business of their own. They settled on growing vegetables and making fermented vegetables and tempeh. Maddie and Abe are in their 5th year of running Hosta Hill, distributing their products from the Berkshires to Boston and beyond. When not fermenting or doing office work, you can find Maddie staying busy outside, walking in the woods with her dog Oso, swimming, and scribbling on paper.
Ben Dobson grew up in Hillsdale, New York, on a small organic farm and started his first agricultural business in 2001. After two years on his own, he joined forces with his father Ted Dobson and managed the fields at his salad and tomato farm in Sheffield, MA, from 2003 through 2006. Since then Ben has started, managed, and overseen the sale of two agricultural businesses: One of which, Atlantic Organics, founded in 2007, was the largest organic vegetable farm in the state of Maine. The other, a company called Locally Known LLC, founded in 2008, was a salad processing company that sold pre-packaged ready to eat salads to Whole Foods Market, Hannaford Bros. and Trader Joe's supermarkets in the Northeast and Mid Atlantic regions. In 2013, Ben joined Stone House Farm as the Organic Transition Manager, and in 2016 he became their Farm Manager. He planned and oversaw the implementation of an organic transition on the 2,200-acre Stone House Farm property, and developed a non-GMO feed and grain business to sell their grain. The farm is now expanding its grain operation to include organic grain from other farms in the region. Ben also heads Hudson Carbon: a research project conducting long term research across several sites on Stone House Farm and two neighboring farms. Hudson Carbon monitors the economic impacts and ecological effects of organic farming systems regarding carbon sequestration. Collaborators in this project include the Rodale Institute, The Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, and Scenic Hudson. This winter Hudson Carbon will be launching a website with sections dedicated to farmers, science, and the public.
Dorn Cox, PhD, is an agriculturist, and farmer working his 250-acre diversified organic family farm in Lee, New Hampshire. He is a co-founder of the FarmOS software platform, a founding member of the Farm Hack community, and is active in the national soil health movement to develop systems that improve global agricultural knowledge exchange and local regenerative production capacity. He has a PhD from the University of New Hampshire.
Erica Frenay manages 35 acres of sheep, cattle, ducks, orchard, apiary, and high tunnels at Shelterbelt Farm near Ithaca, NY, with her husband and two young kids. She has also worked for the Cornell Small Farms Program for 11 years, co-founding the Northeast Beginning Farmer Project in 2006. She is a certified educator of Holistic Management and has completed permaculture design training, both of which have informed the design and management of her farm. She is passionate about connecting people to soil. And about playing the upright bass.
Amanda Swinimer completed her BSc+ at Dalhousie University with an advanced major in Marine Biology and a minor in Oceanography. Amanda furthered her education by apprenticing for two years with a wise herbal teacher, Bernice Woolham, and studying with the ‘Kelp Doctor’, Dr. Louis Druehl. Her deep love of the ocean and the rainforest brought her to the west coast of Vancouver Island where she started her own business, Dakini Tidal Wilds, in 2003. For 15 years, Amanda has been sustainably harvesting, by hand, edible seaweeds, wild herbs and crafting products from these wild gifts. For most of these years, she has been sharing her passion for the wild gifts of our coastline with many people through a variety of hands-on teaching methods and with a focus of sustainability and respect for our rare coast. She has taught at the University of Victoria, Bamfield Marine Science Center, Royal Roads University, public schools and through private venues.
Graison S. Gill is the owner of Bellegarde, a commercial bakery and stone mill in New Orleans bound to local ingredients, heritage, and flavor. He has been baking professionally for eight years and was trained at the San Francisco Baking Institute under Michel Suas, Mac McConnell, Mike Zakowski, and Frank Sally.
Alexandra Hudson is a holistic chef, clinical herbalist, and regenerative food system advocate. In 2013 Alexandra founded Kaleidoscope Foods, a California Bay Area-based producer of bone broth infused kale chips, to provide deep on-the-go high integrity nutrition to her community. Alexandra is committed to weaving a food system that regenerates at every step of the process, from the vibrancy of the soil to the health of her customers.
Jonny leads Kiva's work to reach financially excluded and socially impactful small business owners, artisans and farmers in the United States with 0% interest loans. He first came to Kiva in 2009 as a volunteer, and joined full-time in 2011 to lead the Kiva U.S. team. Jonny graduated with a degree in History from the University of Cambridge. He is married to Ali, who he met at Kiva, and a few weeks ago he became the proud father of Felicity Grace Price!
Becky Brand, of Brandmoore Farm, joins today's episode of Greenhorns Radio. Becky grew up in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and later attended University of New Hampshire– landing her on the New Hampshire Seacoast. After studying Environmental Horticulture at UNH, she worked in Massachusetts at Appleton Farms and New Hampshire at Meadow’s Mirth where she continued to learn about organic and sustainable farming practices. Becky and her husband Phil Brand started Brandmoore Farm in 2012. Brandmoore Farm is a diverse, organic farm with a focus on cow dairy and vegetables. Becky and Phil have a nearly one-year-old baby named Thomas, a dog called Ernie, and a cat named Mimi.