Greenhorns Radio

Jessika is a small business owner and food systems aficionado. As co-founder and CEO of Starvation Alley Social Purpose Corporation, a cranberry company located in Southwest Washington, Jessika spends much of her time building a new business that supports regional cranberry farmers through the organic certification process. Though she is passionate about farmers, her favorite part about her job is getting to partner with many other inspiring Pacific Northwest food producers to create collaborative value-added products. In 2012, Jessika aided in the design of Seattle's Bainbridge Graduate Institute's first Certificate program in Sustainable Food and Agriculture. Jessika's other experiences include a receiving her Master's in Business Administration, working as an urban community garden coordinator and consulting for outdoor trails expansion in her region. She lives in Ilwaco, Washington near Starvation Alley Farms with her partner Jared Oakes and two dogs.

Brendon Rockey is a third generation farmer from Center, CO. He is currently managing the farm that his Grandpa started in 1938, and he is returning to the same fundamentals that the farm was founded on. His Grandpa Floyd use to preach that you must take care of the soil before the soil can take care of you. Rockey Farms has eliminated their dependency on toxic chemicals and synthetic fertilizers by managing the farm as a complete system. Rockey Farms raises high quality specialty potatoes for fresh market sales and for certified seed by investing in their soil with carbon based fertility, reduced tillage, companion crops in the potatoes, flowering border crops, and rotational cover crops. They are also bringing livestock back in to the operation to enhance to impact of the cover crops even further. This Biotic approach has allowed Rockey Farms to maintain production wile improving the quality of their potatoes, all while reducing input costs and optimizing water use efficiency.

Natalie Kilmer lives in Oakland, California where she owns and is the lead gardener for a socially minded, mini-farming and consulting business called, The Little Acre. Natalie also works with Bay Area pioneer, Greywater Action giving lectures and leading hands on workshops across Northern California. Natalie graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in Religious Studies. She continued her ongoing studies through Permaculture Design at Esalen Institute, a gardening internship at Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, Ayurveda at the dhyana Center and a Chinese Herbal Farming Internship at the Chinese Medicinal Herb Farm.

Jack Motter and Jeff Kramer, owners of Ellwood Canyon Farms, are life-long friends who grew up in fourth generation farming families in the small town of Brawley, located in the Imperial Valley in the desert of Southeastern California. They each attended college in Santa Barbara and have lived there for the last fifteen years. Jack established Ellwood Canyon Farms in 2009, and Jeff has been on board since 2010. They currently grow mixed organic produce on 50 acres, focusing on organic methods of farming, building healthy soil and growing healthy crops.

Until his retirement last summer, Russ Cohen’s “day job” was serving as the Rivers Advocate for the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game’s Division of Ecological Restoration, where he had worked since 1988, and where one of his areas of expertise was riparian vegetation. Now Russ has more time to pursue his passionate avocation, which is connecting to nature via his taste buds. He is an expert forager and the author of Wild Plants I Have Known…and Eaten, published in 2004 by the Essex County Greenbelt Association and now in its sixth printing. Mr. Cohen has been teaching foraging since 1974 and conducts over three dozen foraging walks and talks each year at a wide variety of venues throughout the Northeast. In addition, since his retirement, Russ is aspiring to become a “Johnny Appleseed” of sorts for native edible plants: collecting wild edible seeds and nuts for propagating and planting, and assisting and partnering with others in this endeavor.

Robert Bauer joined Southwest Badger Resource Conservation and Development Council, Inc as the Grazing Broker on October 12, 2015. As Grazing Broker, Robert connects landowners of grasslands with livestock producers to increase acreage of well-managed grazing. He also assists in determining the fair market value of grasslands, writes grazing plans, and provides technical assistance to both producers and landowners. Robert works closely with a multi-agency team to coordinate educational events and network with landowners and grazing organizations to promote grazing and grass-based agriculture in Southwest Wisconsin.

Jacob James Marty is a young farmer from southern Wisconsin. Farming by the side of his father, Jim, he is continuing the farm's legacy into its sixth generation with Green Fire Farm. Historically, a dairy farm, Jacob is transitioning the farm into regenerative practices including grass-fed beef, pasture-raised pork and poultry, and establishing silvopasture, pollinator habitat, and wildlife habitat. The mission of Green Fire Farm is to focus on direct marketing and instill a strong sense of connection, community development, and stewardship with all partners to the farm.

Learner Limbach a committed leader in the local food and agriculture movement. He has been a farmer, an educator, a community organizer, a business professional and a consultant. Through this work Learner has grown increasingly passionate about eliminating the barriers that make it difficult for farmers to be successful. In 2013 Learner spearheaded the creation of the Orcas Food Co-op, a consumer-owned co-op that he now manages as his full-time job. With a central goal of creating a sustainable local food system with strong regional connections, the Co-op has quickly grown to over 1000 members and $2.3 million in sales in 2015. In addition to running the Co-op, Learner also serves actively on numerous agriculturally focused boards and committees, with a strong focus on increasing inter-organizational collaboration and capacity building.

Born in the Central Valley of California, Nikiko Masumoto spent her childhood slurping over-ripe peaches on the Masumoto Family Farm (an 80-acre organic farm in Del Rey, CA). She has never missed a summer harvest. In 2007 she graduated from UC Berkeley with a B.A. in Gender and Women’s Studies. It was there that she realized she wanted to return to the Valley to farm. But first she completed a M.A. in Performance as Public Practice from UT Austin. Her research focused on the performance of memory and Japanese American history. Daily, she apprentices with her father on the family’s small organic farm whilst continuing work in arts and community. In 2013, she published her first book, co-authored with parents Mas and Marcy, a cookbook The Perfect Peach. She participated in the Catalyst Initiative, a civic practice cohort program of the Center for Performance & Civic Practice, Emerging Leaders of Color in the Arts program of WESTAF, and is currently a Creative Community Fellow with National Arts Strategies. She has served on various volunteer and nonprofit boards in the Central Valley (Central California Asian Pacific Women, Central Valley Community Foundation, Valley Public Radio, California State University Fresno’s College of Arts & Humanities). She currently serves on the board of the Alliance for California Traditional Arts and Western States Arts Federation. On most days you can find her on a tractor, dreaming of projects yet to be born and justice yet to be won.

The Masumoto Family Farm is also the subject of the documentary film Changing Season: On the Masumoto Family Farm.

Allie grew up in Ohio on her parents' farm shoveling poop, climbing trees, and playing in the dirt. These formative years were not easy to wash off and stuck with her. She ended up studying sustainable agriculture, herbal medicine, alternative energy and sustainable architecture at The Evergreen State College. Most of Allie’s life has been spent in the out-of-doors, mountain guiding and growing food. She naturally migrated to Chickaloon, Alaska, in the heart of the Matanuska Valley at the age of 21. Striving to have more time than money, Allie focuses on off-grid living, chainsaw milling, and a "hunt-fish-gather- grow" lifestyle, where she wildcrafts plants into medicine, harvests berries, catches salmon, and hunts moose. Allie, her husband Jed, and dog Dylan, run Chugach Farm. Chugach Farm is a modern day homestead farm that focuses on growing nutrient dense, human powered, beyond organic, and off grid vegetables. Chugach Farm grows enough food to feed the family year round, sells at the farmers market and to local restaurants, runs CSA and CSF (Community Supported Ferments) programs, and sells a variety of value added products.

Cory grew up ranching on her family’s fourth-generation ranch in rural Oregon. After graduating from Stanford University and working on Capitol Hill and in Los Angeles, she returned to the ranch to try a different production model and transitioned Carman Ranch to grassfed beef production. After a decade of successfully raising and selling grassfed beef, she joined the the Pasture One team to help create a national presence. In her role as the Director of Production, she leads the growing collective of pioneering grassfed ranchers. She is passionate about the ecological and human health potential of a robust grassfed beef industry as well as the potential to create economic opportunities for ranchers, more efficiently meet a consumer demand for healthy, humane beef, and put more carbon in the soil. She lives on Carman Ranch with her husband and three children.