Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello

Grand Preview Keynote Speaker

P. Allen Smith is the host of the public television programs P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home and the new P. Allen Smith’s Garden to Table. He is a regular contributor on NBC’s The TODAY Show and is also the host of the syndicated program P. Allen Smith Gardens. Inspired by a childhood spent on the farm raising and showing livestock and poultry and since then a life of promoting good stewardship of the earth, Smith founded the Heritage Poultry Conservancy, an organization dedicated to the preservation and support of all threatened breeds of domestic poultry. Smith is the author of the best-selling Garden Home series of books published by Clarkson Potter/Random House, including Bringing the Garden Indoors: Container, Crafts and Bouquets for Every Room, published in 2009.

Presenters

Tabitha Alterman

Tabitha Alterman is Senior Associate Editor at Mother Earth News, the nation’s largest and longest-running environmental magazine. She also maintains the Food & Garden Editor post at Natural Home & Garden. Her passion for homegrown, sustainably produced and artisanally made foods informs the content of both magazines.

Ted Anderson

Ted Anderson is the third generation of his family to work with fresh seafood. Ted’s grandfather started selling seafood in 1906, delivering fish by horse and buggy, and his parents, Ed and Jean Anderson, sold seafood off the back of their truck for years before finally settling into their first building in Albemarle Square Shopping Center, and later at their present location in the Meadowbrook Shopping Center. Ted has been involved in the business his entire life, including time spent on the water with crabbers, shrimpers and fisherman, and traveling to Boston for the world’s largest seafood expedition. Anderson’s specializes in sushi grade and regionally-produced seafood, with close ties to several Virginia fishermen, allowing access to the freshest products at the best prices. All of their seafood comes in direct and Ted prides himself on learning new things about fresh seafood every day.

Alesandra, Sarah, and Kate Bellos

Alesandra and her sisters Sarah and Kate Bellos are fiber artists working with organic fabrics and natural dyes to create beautiful, ecologically sustainable distinctive clothing. Their studio and headquarters are located in Nashville, TN. ASK Apparel strives to transform fashion through a responsible movement toward environmentally sustainable business practices. They aim to provide customers with safe and socially responsible products that are created to be uniquely beautiful with the highest artisan quality. The Bellos sisters seek to ask the right questions so that their customers can wear the right answers.

Ken Bezilla

Ken Bezilla worked on and managed CSA farms in Oregon, until he traded Oregon’s giant slugs for Missouri’s armadillos. In Missouri he managed East Wind Community’s garden for nine years. Now he’s in Virginia, where he juggles growing seed crops for Southern Exposure with being the seed business’s inventory guy. He enjoys growing good salads all winter long. When he moved from Missouri to Virginia in 2004, he foolishly moved in December, leaving behind a beautiful garden of lettuce, spinach, parsley, cilantro, kale, collards, mustards, carrots, parsnips, beets, salsify, turnips, rutabagas, radishes, and more. The first time he walked into a local grocery store to buy some veggies, he stared in horror at the winter produce prices, and bitterly, bitterly cursed the timing of his move. Teaching folks about winter growing is one of his garden passions. Learning to grow winter veggies makes for healthier diets, and much less expensive grocery shopping! (Unless, of course, one is so foolish as to move in December. Hmff.)

Teresa Boardwine

Teresa Boardwine, Registered Herbalist, is on the teaching staff at Sacred Plant Traditions Center for Herbal Studies in Charlottesville, VA. She teaches and lectures at many venues in and around Virginia. Her consultation business, Green Comfort, is operated from her home Apothecary in Washington, VA. As the former co-founder and administrator of Dreamtime Center for Herbal Studies, Boardwine taught Nutrition and Laboratory Practicum for 7 years. Her education includes completion of several certificate programs with Dominion Herbal School, The California School of Herbal Studies, Emerson School of Herbology, the Natural Gourmet Cookery Institute, and the American Polarity Therapy Institute.

Boar’s Head Inn and Chef Xavier Baudinet

Distinctive Flavors. Superior Service. Historic Ambiance. A 2011 Wine Spectator Award of Excellence Recipient, the Old Mill Room serves an array of farm to table dishes which uniquely complement its varietal offerings. www.boarsheadinn.com

David Bradshaw

Dr. David Bradshaw is a naturalist, professor emeritus of horticulture at Clemson University and collector of heirloom seeds and their stories. Many heirloom vegetable seeds in Dr. Bradshaw’s collection are offered by Heavenly Seed’s LLC. Heavenly Seed’s mission is to encourage the use of heirloom, organically grown, open-pollinated varieties, and varieties developed by Clemson University, other agricultural experiment stations, and the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.

Pat Brodowski

Pat Brodowski is the vegetable gardener at Monticello, where she shares her passion for seed saving and heirloom vegetables with visitors. A gardener since childhood, Brodowski graduated from Cornell University in agriculture, and created a three-century kitchen garden at a Maryland museum. Her articles are published by regional magazines and newspapers.

Tom Burford

Tom Burford is a horticulturist, orchardist, nurseryman, and consultant specializing in restoration, re-creation and design at historic sites (including Monticello) as well as, backyard and commercial orchards, and private estates. He is the author of “Apples: A Catalog of International Varieties” and co-author (with Ed Fackler) of “The Fruit Grafters Handbook.” He co-authored the “Brooklyn Botanic Garden book The Best Apples to Buy and Grow.” Tom Burford, “Professor Apple,” presents lectures, seminars, and workshops nationally.

Chef Sebastian Carosi of Flora Danica

Originally from Federal Hill in Providence, Rhode Island Chef Sebastian Carosi has earned his degree in culinary arts from Western Culinary Institute in Portland, OR, the first Le Cordon Bleu accredited program in the United States. He has also apprenticed in Sardinia, Italy, and brings with him over 25 years in the “farm 2 fork” end of the culinary industry, operating some of America’s finest small luxury hotels, restaurants, ski resorts and historic working museums. Being one of Americas three remaining Shaker Chefs Sebastian keeps and maintains a direct link and line of communication with all of his farmers and producers. Prior to coming to Virginia Chef Carosi founded ‘The New England Farm 2 Fork Project’, a roving rural eco-gastronomic supper club and culinary educational machine based in Kennebunk, Maine, and studied artisan and farmstead cheesemaking under legendary New England cheesemaker and dairy consultant Peter Dixon at his ‘on farm’ classroom, The Training Center for Farmstead Milk Processing. Now in Rappahannock County, Sebastian operates Café Indigo, a local foods driven café, Rappahannock Natural Foods Coop and the Esopus Spitzenberg Project, an antique apple CSA. He is a devout member of The Chefs Collaborative, The Vermont Fresh Network, The American Cheese Society, Southern Foodways Alliance and SlowFoodUSA since its inception here in the United States. Chef Carosi resides in Sperryville with his wife Heather and 2 year old son Zander.

Kim & Jimbo Cary, Touring Artists of the Virginia Commission for the Arts.

Kim and Jimbo Cary will be at the Master Gardeners’ Roots and Shoots Tent, performing acoustic traditional folk music for families using their collection of gourd and other traditional instruments. Experience Irish jigs, Scottish reels, East European frailachs and West African rhythms culminating in a jam session with the audience playing varied percussion.

Tanya Denckla Cobb

Tanya Cobb is a writer, teacher and professional mediator and facilitator in environmental public policy. She co-founded and teaches at the Virginia Natural Resources Leadership Institute, and in 2004, she co-pioneered a series of graduate-level courses on food system planning. A surprise in Tanya’s journey is that one book on organic gardening has morphed into three, each time improving in design and organization: “Gardening at a Glance,” “The Organic Gardener’s Home Reference,” and the “Gardener’s A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food.” (Photo: Dan Addison, UVa)

Cindy Conner

Cindy Conner founded Homeplace Earth to provide permaculture education with an emphasis on sustainable food production. She researches how to sustainably grow a complete diet in a small space at her home near Ashland, VA, and has produced the videos Develop a Sustainable Vegetable Garden Plan and Cover Crops and Compost Crops in Your Garden. Cindy, a former market gardener, was instrumental in establishing the sustainable agriculture program at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in Goochland,VA, and taught there from 1999-2010. She is now working on how to get food from the garden to the table using the least fossil fuel and has built and is using solar food dryers. www.HomeplaceEarth.com

City Schoolyard Garden at Buford

The City Schoolyard Garden at Buford is an organic educational garden that serves as an outdoor classroom for 7th and 8th grade students and their teachers at Buford Middle School in Charlottesville, VA. Established in 2010 by the nonprofit City Schoolyard Garden Program and working in tandem with the Charlottesville City Schools, the schoolyard garden has inspired ownership and pride among the Buford school community where students are learn about the sources of local, whole and healthy foods. Our mission is an educational one. Assisted by our garden-educator, students engage in planting, harvesting, preparing meals from, and maintaining the garden and its bounty; they learn new ways of understanding concepts of math and science through hands on experimentation in the outdoor garden classroom and they gain real-life, collaborative experience in the garden.

Peggy Cornett

Peggy Cornett is the Curator of Plants at Monticello. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with degrees in English and Botany. Cornett has a master’s degree in Public Garden Administration from the University of Delaware Longwood Graduate Program. Her book, Popular Annuals, was published by Dumbarton Oaks and she has contributed chapters and essays for several books, including Keeping Eden (Mass. Horticultural Society). Peggy has lectured throughout the United States as well as in Bath, England and Bermuda. She was featured on NPR’s Morning Edition and appears regularly on the PBS series “Virginia Home Grown.” Since 1990, she has edited Magnolia, the quarterly publication of the Southern Garden History Society. In 2008 the Society honored her with the Flora Ann Bynum Medal for exemplary service in the field of garden history.

Rob Danford

Growing up on a small farm in NE Ohio, where corn and strawberries supplemented the family income, Rob’s interest was sparked in horticulture and seed saving. After a stint in the US Navy, Rob used his GI Bill to study Botany and Permaculture at the College of the Atlantic.

At his two properties near Boone, North Carolina, Rob grows much of his own food using heirloom seeds and organic methods, as well as producing sweet pimento pepper seed and seed garlic for commercial organic growers. Rob teaches workshops on grafting, seed saving, permaculture design and organic gardening. He has started and managed seed swaps at the Watauga County Organic Growers’ School, Cove Creek Heritage Days and has co-managed the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association annual conference seed exchange.

Lately he has been spending summers in Aotearoa/New Zealand where he has started to collect garlic varieties and heirloom seeds and plants there too!

Jeanine Davis

Dr. Jeanine Davis is an associate professor and extension specialist in the Department of Horticultural Science at North Carolina State University. For over 20 years, her program has been focused on helping farmers increase their profitability by diversifying into new crops and organic agriculture. Medicinal herbs are a specialty of hers and she coauthored the book “Growing and Marketing Ginseng, Goldenseal and Other Woodland Medicinals” with Scott Persons. Jeanine is a founding board member of the Organic Growers School and the NC Natural Products Association, an advisor to the NC Herb Association and NC Tomato Growers Association and is establishing an organic field research unit in western North Carolina.

Debbie Donley

Monticello’s Head Flower Gardener Debbie Donley designs and maintains a wide array of historic flower varieties (both native and ornamental) in the restored gardens and landscape at Monticello. She is responsible for coordinating the departmental seed program, where she harvests, cleans, and packages seeds from the Monticello gardens for the Heirloom Seed Program. Each year she conducts several seed saving and preservation workshops for Monticello’s Saturdays in the Garden series. Also a professional artist, Debbie teaches a Saturdays in the Garden workshop on painting and sketching in the garden and she has been a featured artist at the Charlottesville City Market for nineteen years.

Pablo Elliott

Pablo Elliott, a graduate of Vassar College, is entering his seventh year as director of the Local Food Project at Airlie, a 4 acre demonstration organic garden at the Airlie Center in Warrenton, Virginia. The Local Food Project at Airlie provides year-round vegetables, fruits, and herbs to the Airlie Center kitchen while educating guests and the regional community about sustainable agriculture through garden tours, workshops, and an annual conference. To learn more about the Local Food Project at Airlie, visit www.airlie.com.

Fifth Season Gardening Company

Fifth Season Gardening Co. operates six stores in North Carolina and Virginia specializing in hydroponics, organic gardening and beer and wine making supplies. The roots of the company trace back to 2000 with the opening of Asheville Agricultural Systems in Asheville, NC and a few years later with new store openings in Durham and Greensboro, NC under the name Carolina Hydrogardens. The addition of organic gardening to the product mix in 2005 prompted a rebranding of the company to Fifth Season Gardening Co. In the past five years, Fifth Season Gardening has opened stores in Carrboro NC, Raleigh NC, Greensboro NC and Charlottesville VA and operates two locations in Asheville NC. Recently the company has introduced beer and wine making supplies to its product mix and has created a wholesale division to deliver bulk organic supplies to farmers throughout the region. The privately held family business is passionate about the ethos of doing-it-yourself and delivers a high level of knowledge and customer service to its customers, which include hobbyists, farmers, home brewers and weekend gardeners. For more information, please visit www.fifthseasongardening.com.

Kevin Fletcher of Countryside Organics

Kevin Fletcher is President of Countryside Organics of Waynesboro, Virginia. Countryside Organics manufactures organic mineral mixes and livestock feeds and carries a complete line of animal and soil supplements and fertilizers for organic farming. Kevin created what was once the largest organic farm in the state of Virginia. He has been providing leadership in all areas of organic, sustainable, and local farm development for the past twelve years. He is an expert in certification, sustainable farming techniques and organic farming best practices.

4-H

The 4-H program is an international youth development program utilizing non-formal experiential education to teach leadership, citizenship and life skills to youth ages 5-19. It is administered by the Cooperative Extension Service through Virginia Tech and Virginia State University. www.4-h.ext.vt.edu

Heather Gerry

Heather Gerry is a local crafter from Charlottesville, VA. She has studied many crafting techniques including batik, basket weaving, paper making, silk painting, fine arts, pottery, jewelry design, rubber stamping, paper crafting, and more. She has always enjoyed being creative and sharing her crafts with others and in 2008 she started her own business, The Jade Butterfly. Along with creating handmade cards, paper crafts, and gifts, she also offers craft classes, workshops and parties to teach others how to make these crafts as well. Being a green crafter whenever possible, many of her handmade items are made with recycled or re-purposed materials.

Kerry Gilmer

Kerry Gilmer has been Monticello’s Fruit Gardener for the past eight years and he cares for hundreds of apples, peaches, plums, cherries, figs, grapes, and berries in Thomas Jefferson’s restored orchards and vineyards. Along with Tom Burford and Gabriele Rausse, Gilmer has conducted many Saturdays in the Garden workshops, including fruit tastings, apple grafting, and cider making. Prior to joining the Monticello Gardens and Grounds team, Kerry worked in a small winery and vineyard for 19 years. In his spare time he grows herbs and bedding plants for the Charlottesville City Market and has been a vendor for 18 years.

The Greenhorns

The Greenhorns is a nationwide nonprofit group of activist farmers based in New York’s Hudson Valley. Our mission is to recruit, promote and support young farmers in America. We create media and new media for young farmers, original learning resources and indexes, events, a popular blog, useful interpretations of the institutional landscape, leadership with press coverage, public art installations, and widespread positive attitudes.

Christine Gyovai

Christine Gyovai, Principal of Dialogue and Design Associates, is a plant lover and avid permaculture designer. She is an environmental planner and educator with over twelve years of experience in facilitation and training, with a focus on increasing community and environmental sustainability. Gyovai holds a M.P. in Urban and Environmental Planning from the University of Virginia and a B.S. in Environmental Studies from Burlington College. She is certified in mediation and permaculture design. With authors Ken Haggard and Polly Cooper, she edited and designed the book Fractal Architecture: Design for Sustainability. She is currently living in the straw bale house that she and her husband Reed designed at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains with their young son, Elijah.

Brian Hartsock

Brian Hartsock, the assistant nursery manager at The Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants, graduated from West Virginia University with a degree in horticulture and an emphasis on nursery management and ornamental plant production. He is also a Certified Professional Horticulturist. As a student, Brian taught various plant science labs at WVU and was part of many different research projects including organic farming, season extension, and microbiology. He then managed at one of the largest production nurseries and garden centers in the two Virginias. Brian started at Monticello in 2009 and oversees the nursery’s production schedule and the visitor center garden shop. He gives workshops on propagation and pruning as part of Monticello’s annual Saturdays in the Garden series. He also works with several counties’ Master Gardener programs for hands on workshops at Tufton Farm. Using his experience as a former submarine veteran and horticulturist he has both technical and horticultural expertise with a variety of automated irrigation and environmental control systems.

Peter Hatch

As Director of Gardens and Grounds for the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Peter J. Hatch, has been responsible for the maintenance, interpretation, and restoration of the 2,400-acre landscape at Monticello since 1977. Hatch’s contribution to historic preservation has shaped the gardens of Monticello and as a lecturer and author he has created a passionate discourse for those interested in learning more about gardening, landscape architecture, cooking and American history. Considered one of the foremost scholars on Jefferson and gardening, Hatch is the author of “The Gardens of Monticello” and “The Fruits and Fruit Trees of Monticello.” Hatch forthcoming book “Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Garden,” explores Jefferson’s collection of plant varities—330 varieties of eighty-nine species of vegetables and herbs—in his garden. The book will be published by Yale University Press in spring 2012. Hatch has also written numerous articles and lectured in 35 states on Jefferson and gardening. He oversees educational programs, including the Garden Tours, the Saturdays in the Garden program and the Monticello/UVA Historic Landscape Institute.

Chef Brian Helleberg of Fleurie

Growing up in a family of avid gardeners and passionate cooks, Brian learned to appreciate the importance of producing and preparing food at an early age. His first restaurant job was at age fourteen at Wintergreen resort and he continued to weave a love of restaurants and a growing passion for food and wine throughout his scholastic and college years. After graduate studies in psychology, Brian decided to focus solely on cooking and to realize his dream to be the chef of his own restaurant.

His culinary training began at the popular local eatery, Duner’s and continued on to D.C, Colorado, back to D.C., and finally Manhattan. Brian lists the highlights of his training as having had the privilege to work under famed chef Yannick Cam and a pair of Michelin two star chefs, Gerard Pangaud and Jean-Yves Schillinger.

It was near the end of his apprenticeship under the Alsatian Chef Schillinger that Brian asked his chef for guidance on whom to work for next in order to continue his culinary education. “Go back home to Charlottesville and open your restaurant” was Schillinger’s response. “It’s what you have always wanted, and you’re ready.” With that, Brian headed back to Charlottesville to work on a business plan and find the perfect location for his restaurant. Brian opened Fleurie Restaurant as the chef and owner in September 2001 and followed that by opening Petit Pois in September of 2006

When he isn’t working, Brian enjoys relaxing on the Chesapeake Bay, skiing, gardening, cheering on the Steelers, and spending time with his family.

Guinevere Higgins

Guinevere Higgins is co-founder of Blue Ridge Backyard Harvest, which provides design, installation, maintenance and consultations for edible gardens. She has worked in organic landscape design, taught ecology and sustainable agriculture, and runs a small organic farm. Higgins is a founding member of the Charlottesville League of Urban Chicken Keepers (CLUCK). She is a lifelong gardener and is passionate about helping people grow their own food. She lives with five chickens, three mushroom logs and a strawberry patch in her own downtown Charlottesville backyard.

Charles House of Way Cool Tools

Charles has been really digging gardening for more than 30 years. He was an organic gardener at the Eco-Village in western NC and then later founded the Earth Care Company in the D.C. metro area, one of the first companies to offer organic turf care in that area. Charles is a garden designer and a pioneer in alternative fuel lawn care. Currently, he is the owner of WayCoolTools.com – a local online source for the right gardening tools for the job.

Leslie Jenkins

One of the many passions for Leslie at the farm is harvest, from wildcrafting to precision cut Chef Flower Boxes. She is instrumental in the cycle of the food produced at the farm, working on recipes and ideas to extend the harvest such as syrups, sauces, canning, and essential waters. Excess fresh cuts may find their way into a sandwich, spring roll, tea urn, shish kabob, coffee cake, or other creation that is then shared at the markets demonstratively.

Leslie partners in annual events of Virginia State University, such as the Berry Conference and Field Day, and Virginia Association for Biological Farming. She is in active production of Meet the Farmer TV and can be found at 2 Farmer’s Markets each week, Wednesday at Meade Park and Saturday at Charlottesville City Market. Leslie has been studying and working with plants since 1986, but started eating flowers when she was about 4 or 5 yrs old. Leslie has taken the “Safe Seed Pledge”.

Kathy Jentz

Kathy Jentz is editor and publisher of Washington Gardener Magazine. A life-long gardener, Kathy believes that growing plants should be stress-free and enjoyable. Her philosophy is inspiration over perspiration. Kathy’s work is featured in numerous area publications including the Washington Examiner Newspaper, Pathways Magazine, and Washington Women Magazine. In addition, she appears on regular gardening guest spots on Channel 9, Channel 4, and WAMU radio.

Mark Jones

At Sharondale Farm, a small permaculture site in Virginia’s piedmont, Mark Jones cultivates gourmet and medicinal mushrooms and perennial food and fiber plants. Because of their food value and essential ecological role as recyclers, mushrooms offer a way to integrate and optimize species diversity and provide multiple functions in gardens and landscapes. Jones’s focus has been on developing perennial gardening systems and is evolving to include farm waste management strategies, and developing methods that contribute to agro-forestry and natural resource management plans, intercropping mushrooms with vegetable production for food and soil building, and using local strains of mushrooms for bio remediation.

Chef Brian Jones of Petit Pois

Brian Jones is the chef and general manager of Petit Pois restaurant. Located on Charlottesville’s downtown mall, Petit Pois serves classic French bistro items and dishes inspired by Virginia’s seasonal offerings. Brian grew up in Richmond, VA, where his passion for cooking grew out of a love of eating. He received his formal culinary training at the Culinary Institute of America, where he met his wife to be. After school he spent seven years furthering his education working alongside talented chefs in the ski resort town of Telluride, Colorado. Taking advantage of the long off seasons, Brian was able to apprentice in some of America’s most celebrated kitchens, such as Le Bernardin, The Ryland Inn, The Inn at Little Washington, Jean-Georges, and Café Boulud. In 2005 Brian and his wife chose to relocate back to the east coast to be closer to their families. Brian, his wife and two girls landed in the Charlottesville area and are enjoying the many delights it has to offer.

Christine Kastan

Christine Kastan has worked for Virginia Cooperative Extension (Orange and Madison Units) since 1992. She gives leadership to programs for families in nutrition, health and sanitation. She has been a program director for a national non-profit organization for families and children with limb deficiencies and worked as a healthy lifestyle educator.

Sandor Katz

Sandor Ellix Katz, a self-taught fermentation experimentalist, wrote “Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods” in order to share the fermentation wisdom he had learned, and demystify home fermentation. Since the book’s publication in 2003, Katz has taught hundreds of fermentation workshops across North America and beyond, taking on a role he describes as a “fermentation revivalist.” Newsweek recently called “Wild Fermentation” “the fermenting bible,” and the New Yorker wrote Katz’s books “have become manifestos and how-to manuals for a generation of underground food activists.” Sandor is a native of New York City, a graduate of Brown University, and a retired policy wonk who now lives in a rural, off-the-grid community in Tennessee. He is currently working on a third, definitive volume. For more information on fermentation and his workshops, visit Katz’s Web site at www.wildfermentation.com.

Michael & Audrey Levatino

Michael and Audrey Levatino have been hobby farming for almost ten years, growing and selling flowers, vegetables, honey, eggs and hand-made jewelry at several local farmer’s markets. Their book, The Joy of Hobby Farming, was published this year by Skyhorse Press. Michael works off the farm at a major publishing house. Their 23-acre farm, Ted’s Last Stand, is located outside of Gordonsville. Follow them on their website at www.tedslaststand.com.

Living Earth School

Kate and Hub Knott are the directors of The Living Earth School, a deep nature connection based organization. LES is dedicated to renewing our connections with the earth and building healthy relationships with nature, self and community using earth-based mentoring. LES has been providing the greater Charlottesville area and beyond with summer camps, and youth and adult programs for ten years.

Master Gardeners

Virginia Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners are volunteers dedicated to promoting environmentally sound horticulture practices through sustainable landscape management educational programs. The five area Master Gardener organizations supporting the Heritage Harvest Festival are Central Virginia Master Gardeners, which includes Louisa County and surrounding counties (www.louisacvmg.org), Fluvanna County Master Gardeners (www.fluvannamg.org), Piedmont Master Gardeners (www.piedmontmastergardeners.org), Greene County Master Gardeners, and Nelson County Master Gardeners (www.nelsonmastergardeners.org). See also www.vmga.net.

Michael McConkey

After birth, Michael played in the woods. Before 10 he had a hillside his mother said he could plant. So besides bringing turtles home he also brought Tiger Lilies, Yucca and other native plants. By high school, music and performing occupied most of Michaels time. He’d go out of his way for black orchid corsages for special dates that also took up most of his time. In the 1970s Michael fell into the “grow your own” movement. He built a yurt and set up a garden in his brother’s back yard. Michael grew everything edible he could find. He wrote songs about it, he went to school about it, and as fate would have it, he started a mail order nursery about it: Edible Landscaping. www.ediblelandscaping.com

Jeff McCormack

Jeff McCormack, Ph.D. is a writer, ethnobotanist and sustainable agriculture biologist who has worked extensively with medicinal plants, heirloom seeds, and their oral histories. He is the founder of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and Garden Medicinals. His articles have appeared in gardening magazines, and he has authored seven organic seed production manuals for the USDA, which are freely available on his informational website: www.savingourseeds.org. Recently McCormack completed a three-year ethnobotanical research project on medicinal plants. His first book titled, “Bush Medicine of San Salvador Island, Bahamas: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, including Pharmacology and Oral Histories,” will be published in August 2011. A companion website is in preparation at www.bushmedicine.org.

Jane McKinney of Spring Gate Farm

Spring Gate Farm is located on 220 acres in Barboursville, Virginia, on the Rapidan River. The farm is one of the largest cashmere producing farms in the East and is home to over 80-100 cashmere goats. We offer a full range of products, including breeding stock, companion pets, pelts, meat and fiber. Throughout the year we have farm open houses where we offer the public the ability to see the goats and learn about their care and maintenance. We are a working farm that produces fruits and vegetables, horse quality hay and other farm related products, such as pasture-raised meat (hormone and anti-biotic free beef, pork, goat, and lamb), eggs and honey. As careful stewards of the land, we practice sustainable agriculture which protects and preserves the land as well as our animals. The farm lies in one of the most picturesque and beautiful settings in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, just 17 miles north of Charlottesville, VA. We welcome your visit and hope you will fall in love with the natural beauty of the land we love.

Shepherd Ogden

Shepherd Ogden is perhaps best known as founder and president of The Cook’s Garden, a mail-order seed and supply house in Londonderry, Vermont, from 1983 until 2003. The Cook’s Garden was an early leader in the marketing of certified organic garden seed in the United States and Canada. He has written five books including “The Cook’s Garden” and “Straight Ahead Organic.” Ogden now works on a number of projects, including farmland preservation in rapidly urbanizing areas, food production methods in already urbanized areas, and the application of organic principles to public landscapes in the region. He continues to plant new gardens everywhere he goes. He is currently serving as Agricultural Development Officer for Jefferson County, West Virginia and as a board member for Future Harvest/Chesapeake Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture. Ogden resides in Bakerton, WV.

Don Patterson

Don Patterson spent much of his youth on his father’s dairy farm in western New York, before chemical agriculture became what is now called “conventional.” Fertilizing was done the old-fashioned way, as it had been done since the dawn of agriculture, and the farm raised what it needed: alfalfa, clover, timothy, corn for silage, and small grains (plus berries, apples, and vegetables for the family to eat). The heavy work was done by a team of horses, an early Ford tractor, and a couple of old trucks. Don has been committed to organic agriculture ever since. He is a member of the American Agriculture Movement (AAM), which works to protect family farmers in an era when “the nation’s cheap food policy has kept agribusiness in the driver’s seat.” He will speak about how to repair the damage done by a system that has driven farmers off the land at an average rate of 1000 per week for decades and the “terrible price” of creating an unsustainable chemical- and fuel-dependent system with too few farmers, and all of them economically brittle.

Patterson has owned an organic distributorship and raised beef, but he is not farming now and says he is afraid to “given the mess bio-tech agriculture has created since Vice President Dan Quayle declared it ‘generally recognized as safe (GRAS).’” The risks are too great for him to want to engage in the kind of organic farming he knows, especially now that the USDA has released transgenic alfalfa onto the market without restriction. If the realities of farming are not changed quickly, he fears that the risks will begin to be too much for many others as well. He believes that may be what the biotech industry wants: “if they can contaminate all the organic farmers, they will be able to control the food supply through control over the seeds.” Neither farming nor food “will any longer be what it has been for thousands of years.”

Barbara Pleasant

Born and raised in Mobile, Alabama, Barbara Pleasant is “one of America’s most trusted garden writers” (Cheryl Long, editor-in-chief of Mother Earth News magazine). A three-time winner of Garden Globe awards given by the Garden Writers Association, Barbara has written numerous books on a wide range of subjects from vegetables to weeds. Her newest book, “Starter Vegetable Gardens,” leaves no excuse for newbies not to grow a garden. It’s a fine follow-up to her 2008 title, “The Complete Compost Gardening Guide,” which turned composting upside-down by moving it from the shadows to the heart of the garden. Barbara is a contributing editor for Mother Earth News, and she also covers the southeast region for Gardening How-To magazine. She lives in Floyd, Virginia, where she grows vegetables, herbs, fruits, and flowers.

Krista Rahm

Krista Rahm is a grower and educator living in Louisa, VA. Krista and her husband Rob purchased Forrest Green Farm in 1992 with the desire to raise their children learning how to produce their own food in accordance with the seasons and the land. Krista has a degree in marketing and has grown and studied herbs for over 15 years while she homeschooled her children. The Rahm family uses herbs for daily nutrition as well as culinary accents, medicine, crafting, and beautiful gardening. In 2007, the Rahm family decided to operate the farm full-time. They specialize in culinary and medicinal herb plants, heirloom vegetable plants, and flowers. They also raise pastured poultry and Miniature Hereford cattle for breeding stock and grass-fed beef. During the summer months, they raise vegetables and in the winter. They utilize their greenhouses for growing salad mixes and specialty greens. Educating others through workshops on herbs, whole living, and gardening, as well as children’s nature programs, has also become an important mission for Forrest Green Farm.

Gabriele Rausse

In 1984, Gabriele Rausse first grafted Jefferson’s 1807 wine varietals for Monticello and eleven years later he joined the staff as Monticello’s assistant director of gardens and grounds. Rausse, a native of Vicenza, Italy, graduated in Agricultural Science from Milan University. He first worked for the Tenuta Santa Margherita winery outside Venice and later was invited to Virginia to begin what is now Barboursville Vineyards. Rausse, called “the father of Virginia wine,” has helped to start more than 40 vineyards and ten Virginia wineries. He was nominated for the Virginia wine industry’s Man of the Year in 1996. At the 2011 Virginia Wine Expo, the Virginia Agribusiness Council presented Rausse with the 2011 Distinguished Service Award, for his service to the Virginia wine industry.

Lisa Reeder

My title is Farm Services (Outreach) and Warehouse Support at Local Food Hub in Charlottesville, VA. I consider myself the luckiest gal in local foods: I love my job as it affords me the opportunity to help food producers bring their wares to market, plus gives me a birds-eye view of regional production and constant weather reports from all corners of Central Virginia.

Nicole Schermerhorn

Nicole is co-owner of A Thyme to Plant at Lavender Fields Herb Farm. The farm combines A Thyme to Plant, an 18 year old Richmond business, with Lavender Fields, the retail arm established in May 2000. Nicole and her husband Stanley grow and sell over 200 USDA Certified Organic herb & vegetable plants, specializing in lavender, on their 40 acre farm on the Chickahominy River in Old Glen Allen in Henrico County. Married 14 years to Stanley, a Glen Allen native, Nicole is a native of Sydney, Australia, living in the US for 13 years. Their eight year old son Luke Stanley & and five year old daughter Ellen Frances are 6th generation on the farm. In Spring 2005, Nicole and Stanley launched HerbScapes, specializing in the design and installation of herb gardens. They installed a commercial kitchen on the farm in 2004 and opened a Tea Room in 2009, serving lunch and afternoon tea by reservation only. They offer cooking classes in their on-site commercial kitchen and other herb related classes including ‘How to Grow and Use Herbs’, ‘Fresh Herb Wreath Making’ and ‘Raised Bed Gardening’. www.lavenderfieldsfarm.com

Karl Shank

Karl says the bedrock of his knowledge goes back to the age of three when he first began raising plants and animals with his family on their very large, productive vegetable and fruit garden and mini farm. By integrating increasingly sustainable practices, the Shank family transformed a sprawling fescue lawn and pasture into a healthy and beautiful oasis to eat from and call home.

Karl began landscaping professionally in 1993, putting into practice his years of hands-on learning, and in the process awakening his passion for ecological design, stonework, native plants, and habitat restoration. Through the years Karl has built The Natural Garden into an ecological landscape & habitat restoration company, located in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley. The Natural Garden creates elegant and low-maintenance outdoor homes, for people to live, work, and play within, by applying nature’s elegant design principles along each step of the design and build process. Using this approach saves time and money and creates stunning works of art that are healthy and delightful to use, beautiful and enduring.

Leni Sorensen

Leni Sorensen is Monticello’s African-American research historian. She is particularly interested in the material culture, culinary history, and agricultural lives of whites and blacks in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. After farming for eight years in South Dakota, she and her husband have gardened in Albemarle County since 1983.

Martha Stafford

Martha began cooking when she was 8 years old. She loved to experiment in the kitchen. Her interest in seasonal eating began while attending High School in Tokyo, Japan. She graduated from the professional program at Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School (now the institute of Culinary Education) in 1990 and was awarded a Blue Ribbon. She apprenticed with Chef Wayne Nish, owner of March restaurant in New York City. Martha has studied with James Peterson, Marcella Hazan, Nick Malgieri, Katherine Alford, Paul Grimes, and at the Natural Gourmet Institute for Food and Health. After graduation Martha cooked in New York restaurants and catering companies before returning to Peter Kump’s as an instructor. Martha began working for Eating Fresh Publication as a recipe editor and writer in 1996. The first book, “Eating Fresh from the Organic Garden State”, was published in 1997 followed by “Cooking Fresh from the Bay Area” in 2000, and “Cooking Fresh from the Mid-Atlantic” in 2002. In 2008 Martha opened The Charlottesville Cooking School, a school specialized in hands-on cooking classes. In April 2009 Martha was named as one of the “Up and Comers” in Charlottesville local food.

Patricia Stansbury

Patricia L. Stansbury is an organic gardener, marketer of wholesale and retail organic products, radio personality and educator. Her passion for natural foods and sustainable agriculture took root years ago when she became involved in some of Richmond’s first natural foods co-ops, and developed into a wide range of interests and services, all centering on creating and promoting an environment for helping people eat healthier, while sustaining the earth.

Ellie Thomas

Ellie Thomas, a Charlottesville-area native, is a gardener in Monticello’s fruit, flower, and vegetable gardens. She has been farming and involved in the local food movements in North Carolina and Virginia for seven years. Thomas holds a degree in Sustainable Agriculture from Warren Wilson College. Her background in Agriculture Education inspires her to facilitate hands-on learning in the gardens at Monticello.

Mark Thompson

Master Brewer Mark Thompson, of Starr Hill Brewing Company in Charlottesville, VA, is producer of the new Monticello Reserve Ale, a brew made from a combination of lightly hopped wheat and corn and inspired by what was produced and consumed regularly at Monticello. Mark was formerly Master Brewer at the Alcatraz and Mile High Brewing Companies (Denver, CO) and the Nor’Wester Brewing Company in Portland, OR. Since 1996 he has received numerous awards at the Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup.

Transition Charlottesville/Albemarle

Transition Charlottesville/Albemarle’s goal is to raise awareness of sustainable living and build local ecological resilience in the near future. Individuals are encouraged to seek out methods for reducing energy usage as well as reducing their reliance on fossil fuels for essential items. Reduce-reuse-recycle.

Michael Twitty

Michael Twitty is a food historian, community scholar and living history professional of African-American food and folk culture. He is webmaster of www.michaelwtwitty.com, a site dedicated to his work preserving African-American historic foodways. Michael’s blog “Afroculinaria” celebrates his passion for food and its relationship to cultures of African descent around the world. He has lectured and given open-hearth cooking demonstrations at over 100 groups from Colonial Williamsburg to the Symposium on Food and Cookery at Oxford University, England. Michael currently lives in the Washington, DC area.

Harvey Ussery

If you read Mother Earth News, Countryside, or Backyard Poultry magazines, you’ve probably read an article by Harvey Ussery. In recent years he has become a prolific writer of articles about various homesteading topics. Ussery retired from the post office and with his wife Ellen is documenting their journey toward self-sufficiency and food independence at www.TheModernHomestead.us. Harvey’s book The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An All-Natural Approach to Raising Chickens and Other Fowl for Home and Market Growers will be published this fall.

 

Virginia Food Heritage Project

The VFHP is conducting a pilot project, with funding from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, in the Charlottesville and 5-county region of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District to 1) identify place-based threatened and endangered foods, unique to the central Piedmont; 2) identify food heritage sites (mills, granaries, traditional food production areas, etc.); and 3) collect and record food heritage stories relevant to this region. Its goals are to build knowledge about heritage place-based foods, and to create opportunities for economic development and community-building throughout our agricultural future.

VICFA – Virginia Independent Consumer and Farmers Association

VICFA’s mission is to promote and preserve unregulated direct farmer to consumer trade that fosters availability of locally grown and home-produced food products.

 

Ira Wallace

Ira Wallace is a Central Virginia (Louisa) Master Gardener. She serves on the board of Organic Seed Alliance and is a worker/owner of the cooperatively managed Southern Exposure Seed Exchange where she coordinates variety selection and seed grower contracts. In addition, Ira is a member of Acorn Community which farms over 60 acres of certified organic land in Central Virginia, growing seeds, alliums, hay, and conducting variety trials for Southern Exposure. Southern Exposure offers more than 700 varieties of open-pollinated heirloom and organic seeds selected for flavor and regional adaptability and helps people keep control of their food supply by supporting sustainable home and market gardening, seed saving, and preserving heirloom varieties.

Tracy Webber

Tracey Webber is the founder of EAT! located in the Belmont area of Charlottesville. She is a former corporate professional who, after much soul searching, left a successful high energy corporate career to do what she is passionate about – she helps busy professionals, stop feeling stuck, and start feeling like they can bring their “A” game into any situation. Without making drastic changes or giving up wine and chocolates.

For years Tracey suffered from fatigue, foggy brain, thyroid disease, and migraines all brought on by her diet and lifestyle. Today Tracey no longer suffers from any of these symptoms. “Unlike the diets and programs you’ve tried in the past, I’ll teach you how get un stuck, double your energy and feel a decade younger. You will gain skills & knowledge so that you can be in control instead of life & food controlling you.”

Tracey is a dynamic speaker who conducts classes on topics such as cooking, health, life balance, and leadership. She has a long list of certifications, but life has been her greatest learning experience. She is a board Certified Holistic Health Counselor (CHHC) through the American Association of Drugless Practitioners (AADP) and a graduate of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York, which offers a curriculum with an integrative approach to nutrition and health. She is also certified as a Co-Active Coach, an Executive Coach, and a Team Coach, which has enabled her to work with many corporate executives as an Executive and Life Coach. Tracey calls herself a “Real Foods Chef” and has received her training from the Natural Gourmet Cooking School in New York and the Natural Cooking School in Philadelphia.

Bryan Welch

Bryan Welch raises free-range chickens and grass-fed cattle, sheep and goats on his 50-acre farm. He grew up in New Mexico where, as a child, he cared for a neighbor’s dairy goats and other livestock. Welch also runs Ogden Publications, the publisher of Mother Earth News, Utne Reader, Natural Home, The Herb Companion and six other magazines devoted to self-sufficiency, sustainability, rural lifestyles and farm collectibles. He is author of the recently published book Beautiful and Abundant.

Heather Wetzel

Heather Wetzel is Apothecary Manager and a staff teacher at Sacred Plant Traditions Center for Herbal Studies in Charlottesville. She practices energetic herbalism to support women’s and children’s health. Wetzel is a graduate of the Center’s “Three Year Community Herbalist Program” and has a master’s degree in education from the University of Virginia. She offers herb classes in Charlottesville and Northern Virginia through her practice and at Heather’s Herbals.

Diane Ott Whealy

Diane Ott Whealy is the co-founder of Seed Savers Exchange and presently serves as Vice President of Education. For more than 35 years, Diane has been a national leader in the heirloom seed movement and a strong advocate for the protection of the earth’s rare genetic food stocks.

Founded in 1975 as a non-profit organization, Seed Savers Exchange’s has more than 13,000 members, made up of gardeners, orchardist, chefs and plant collectors, dedicated to the preservation and distribution of heirloom varieties of vegetables, fruits, grains, flowers and herbs. With thousands of varieties in its collection, Seed Savers is one of the largest non-governmental seed banks in the United States.

In 1986 Diane helped to develop Heritage Farm, Seed Saver’s scenic 890-acre headquarters near Decorah Iowa. Heritage Farm is a unique educational center designed to maintain and display collections of endangered food crops. Diane also founded the Flower and Herb Exchange where members offer over 2000 heirloom flowers and herbs for exchange each year.

Diane has just published Gathering: Memoir of A Seed Saver, which tells the story of how the dream of two people became with the help of likeminded people the extraordinary organization Seed Savers Exchange is today. www.seedsavers.org

Rodger Winn

When not at his day job with the local power company, Rodger Winn is a certified organic gardener growing heirloom fruits, vegetables, and flowers for seed, and market. Additionally, he teaches sustainable vegetable gardening to local garden clubs and the extension service master gardener program with emphasis on incorporating flowers and herbs in the vegetable garden. In 2008, Winn was named Seed Saver of the Year by Southern Legacy Seeds.

Dawn Fields Wise of Lynchburg Old City Cemetery

Dawn Fields Wise, a graduate of the University of Virginia, is entering her seventh year as Public Relations and Visitor Services Manager at Old City Cemetery Museums and Arboretum in Lynchburg, VA. Established in 1806, Old City Cemetery is a 26-acre graveyard that is Lynchburg’s number one tourist attraction with over 30,000 visitors a year. In addition to the five museums on the grounds, the Cemetery is home to a host of flora and fauna, including over 270 Antique Roses, an Antique Daffodil Garden, a Butterfly Garden and Lotus Pond, billy goats, cats, and, of course, the bees and hives which produce the gravegarden’s famous “Died and Gone to Heaven” Pure Honey. The Cemetery sponsors and host many workshops, programs, tours, and festivals throughout the year. To learn more, visit www.gravegarden.org

Alexis Zeigler

Alexis is an avid orchardist, communitarian, builder and environmental activist living in central Virginia. He is the author of a recently published book, Culture Change: Civil Liberty, Peak Oil, and the End of Empire. Alexis is a founding member of Living Energy Farm, a newly formed “fossil fuel free” community demonstration project in Louisa, VA. He is always eager to help people get started with producing home grown fruit and lots of it.

Lisa Ziegler

Lisa Mason Ziegler, a home gardener turned cut-flower grower, began in 1998 on less than 1 acre in Newport News, Virginia. This garden now yields 3000-4000 stems of flowers each week. Her flowers are sold to upscale florists, Colonial Williamsburg, Farmer’s Markets, and through her programs “Friday Flowers Garden Share” and “Subscription Drop-off”(both in their 10th year). Lisa shares her knowledge and passion for cut-flower gardening through garden shows, radio programs, garden clubs, master gardeners, and more. Lisa’s mail-order business The Gardener’s Workshop offers gardening and flower arranging tools and supplies that she uses in her own gardens

Ethan Zuckerman

Ethan Zuckerman is a Nelson County native who began making kombucha 9 years ago as a college student in Northern California. He has been refining the art and science of kombucha brewing ever since. Ethan is now co-owner of Barefoot Bucha, a Nelson County kombucha company that brews delicious local kombucha using sustainable production and distribution methods. He is a skilled teacher, sought after for his ability to make a seemingly complicated process simple… and fun!