Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello

Rodger Winn

Rodger Winn is a Certified Organic grower who produces heirloom varieties for various seed companies and for presevation. He also runs a seasonal greenhouse buisiness selling vegetable, herb, and flower plants in Central South Carolina. When not at his day job, Rodger actively promotes sustanable agriculture, giving seminars and tours to garden clubs, stressing the need to conserve and preserve our resources and enviroment. Rodger recieved the 2011 Conservationist of the Year award for Newberry County, South Carolina, and is a past recipient of the Southern Leagacy Seed Project Seed Saver of the Year. www.rodgersheirlooms.com

Clifton A. Slade

A Virginia native who started farming alongside his father. Clif Slade is a graduate of Virginia State University and has recieved both a Bachelors and Masters Degree in Agriculture Education. With 28 years of service. Clif retired from Virginia Cooperative Extension where he worked as County Extension Agent and Area Vegetable Specialist. He currently farms in Surry, Virginia, raising mostly vegetables,hogs, and chickens.

Dr. Arthur O. Tucker

Dr. Arthur O. Tucker (to his students at Delaware State University in Dover for over 37 years) is a botanist specializing in the identification and chemistry of plants of flavor, fragrance, and medicine. In his capacity as Emeritus Professor and Co-Director of the Claude E. Phillips Herbarium, he has had the fortunate opportunity to work with all age groups, from young children to retirees, and a wide variety of ethnic groups to help them better appreciate herbs. As an advisor and writer for numerous scientific and popular gardening magazines, Art has helped untold numbers grow healthier herbs, bring in better harvests, and simply enjoy herbal flavors and fragrances more fully. cars.desu.edu/faculty/atucker

Forrest Pritchard

Forrest Pritchard is a professional farmer and writer. He holds degrees in English and Geology from William and Mary, and his farm, Smith Meadows, has been featured on NPR and in the Washington Post. One of the first “grass finished” farms in the country, Smith Meadows has sold at leading farmers’ markets in Washington DC for fifteen years. His book Gaining Ground, A Story of Farmers’ Markets, Local Food and Saving the Family Farm, was published in 2013 by Lyons Press. www.smithmeadows.com

Steve Bender

Steve Bender is the Senior Writer for Southern Living and has been writing about gardening for the magazine for the past 30 years. His book, Passalong Plants, was named the best-written garden book in 1994 by the Garden Writers of America. In 1995, Steve was presented the Horticultural Communication Award by the American Horticultural Society. He edited the best-selling Southern Living Garden Book and is currently working on its second revision. His blog, “The Grumpy Gardener,” is one of the most popular gardening blogs in the country. He holds a B.A. in History from Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, and makes his home in Hoover, Alabama, with wife, Judy, and son, Brian. grumpygardener.southernliving.com

Sue Ellen Johnson

Sue Ellen Johnson has been working with experienced farmers and new farmers since the 1980s. She works with livestock, vegetable and cash grain and hay farmers on the technical production and business aspects of their farm operations. She is the Director of Agriculture and Rural Economy for the Piedmont Environmental Council. Her specialties are pasture based enterprises and ecologically integrated-diversifed farming. www.buylocalvirginia.org www.pecva.org

Hank Will

As a farmer, scientist, author and editor, Hank Will is known for seeking creative solutions to problems as varied as moving genes between species to working the land without huge investment. He’s published hundreds of articles and five books on a range of topics, including low-tech homesteading solutions and antique farm machinery. www.Grit.com

Barbara Hobens

Barbara Hobens is an urban gardening and “gardening with wildlife” expert offering consultation and design, from window box and patio containers to community garden and historical reconstruction, to deer-free vegetable gardens and “whole property” evaluations. Author of Garden Your City, Barbara enjoys lecturing: five years at the Philadelphia International Flower Show, for the Ecological Landscaping Association, and garden clubs and historical organizations. Featured on two episodes of HGTV’s Gardening by the Yard, Barbara is also a certified Deer Steward (Quality Deer Management Association) and a National Wildlife Federation Certified Habitat Host Trainer. www.gardenyourcity.com

Ira Wallace

Ira Wallace is a Central Virginia Master Gardener, an Organic Seed Alliance board member and worker/owner of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange where she coordinates variety selection and new seed growers. Southern Exposure offers over 700 varieties of open-pollinated heirloom and organic seeds. Ira also organizes the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello. Her first book on year-round vegetable gardening in the Southeast will be available from Timber Press in December 2013. www.southernexposure.com

Grant Olson

Grant Olson is the Education Coordinator and Display Gardener at Seed Savers Exchange. Grant creates educational seed saving media/curricula and maintains the display gardens at Heritage Farm. He works with schools and other visitors to teach the value of genetic diversity in our food system and how individuals can participate in preserving this diversity in their home gardens. www.seedsavers.org

Kelley Wilkinson

Kelley Wilkinson has been an avid organic gardener for more than 35 years. Once a market grower, she now grows nearly all of her family’s food. She lives near Asheville, North Carolina, on a 285-acre organic farm. She rediscovered heirloom corn when she moved to the high plateaus of central Mexico years ago. In addition to being a working homesteader, she also paints, makes artisan cheeses, loves to ferment, scouts wild foods, and grows unusual crops such as wasabi, water chestnuts, and many different fruits, vegetables, and herbs. She is an avid seed-saver. www.laughingfrogfarm.com

Ken Bezilla

Ken Bezilla has farmed for 20 years in Oregon, Missouri, and Virginia. He’s the seed inventory manager for Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and when he escapes the office he helps grow seed crops and variety trials for SESE, plus (of course) huge fall and winter gardens. www.southernexposure.com

Miriam Rubin

Miriam Rubin is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and the first woman in the kitchens of NYC’s Four Seasons Restaurant. She’s the former food editor of Weight Watchers Magazine. Her first cookbook, Grains, was published in 1995. She writes the “Miriam’s Garden” column for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Her work has appeared in Prevention, Redbook, Working Woman, and Woman’s Day. She was line-editor for the Encyclopedia of Jewish Food and contributed to The Encyclopedia of Appalachia and The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink. Her new book Tomatoes was recently published by UNC Press. www.miriamrubin.com

Harvey Ussery

Harvey Ussery and his wife Ellen are activists in the local foods movement. They produce all their own eggs and poultry, and most of their own fruits and vegetables, year-round, on three good acres in northern Virginia–and further reduce dependence on the supermarket by purchasing most of the remainder of their food from local farmers. Harvey writes for Mother Earth News, Backyard Poultry, and Countryside & Small Stock Journal. His book, The Small-Scale Poultry Flock (Chelsea Green, 2011), sets a new standard for holistic poultry husbandry. www.themodernhomestead.us

Patricia Foreman & Oprah Hen-Free, Celebrity Chicken

Patricia Foreman holds a Masters of Public Administration and a BS in Animal Science (genetics and nutrition). She is a licensed pharmacist. Pat is the author of City Chicks: Keeping Micro-flocks of Laying Hens as Garden Helpers, Compost Makers, Bio-recyclers and Local Food Suppliers. She is the co-author of Chicken Tractor, Day Range Poultry, Backyard Market Gardening and A Tiny Home to Call Your Own. She and her fellow Occupy Backyards™ movement cohort—chicken celebrity Oprah Hen-Free—will be co-presenting.

Oprah Hen-Free is the inspiration and “wind beneath the wings” of the Declaration to Occupy Backyards. She represents—on behalf of all chickens: “We hereby declare The Chicken Have More Plan to be a sustainable strategy that employs family flocks occupying backyards across America—and even the world—to enable individuals, communities and local governments to be more food self-sufficient and economically stable.” www.ChickensAndYOU.com

Michele Kayal, Bonny Wolf, & Domenica Marchetti

Michele Kayal is assistant managing editor of American Food Roots. She grew up in a Syrian-Irish family, but all she ever learned in Arabic were the food words. After years writing about “important” things – politics, business, the Federal Aviation Administration – she caved in to the lifelong desire to write about food and how it expresses culture and identity. A regular contributor to Associated Press and NPR.org, Michele’s pieces also have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Conde Nast Traveler and The Huffington Post.

Bonny Wolf is managing editor of American Food Roots. She grew up in a Midwestern home with a mother who thought b’stilla was more fun than burgers. She does a monthly food commentary for NPR’s Weekend Edition, is editor of NPR’s Kitchen Window and author of Talking With My Mouth Full: Crab Cakes, Bundt Cakes, and Other Kitchen Stories (St. Martin’s). As a teacher at Texas A & M, she taught journalism to singer-songwriter Lyle Lovett, who wisely ignored her advice to get a real job.

Domenica Marchetti grew up in an Italian family, with a mother who had her shaping gnocchi and ravioli before she could walk. She is the author of four books on Italian home cooking: The Glorious Soups and Stews of Italy; Big Night In: More Than 100 Wonderful Recipes for Feeding Family and Friends Italian-Style; The Glorious Pasta of Italy; and Williams-Sonoma Rustic Italian: Simple, Authentic Recipes for Everyday Cooking. Her fifth book, The Glorious Vegetables of Italy, will be published in 2013. She is a graduate of Columbia School of Journalism and worked as a reporter at newspapers in New Jersey, Detroit, and Washington DC. www.AmericanFoodRoots.com