An Agricultural Background

I’m a free-range educator, author, farmer and off-grid homesteader with decades of experience in food systems, higher education, and environmental conservation. Based at UpTunket Farm in Pawlet, Vermont (USA), my current work is focused on models of food systems transformation at regional, national, and international scales. I’ve written three books, with another underway: including A Precautionary Tale: How One Small Town Banned Pesticides, Preserved its Food Heritage, and Inspired a Movement; Rebuilding the Foodshed: How to Create Local, Sustainable, and Secure Food Systems; and Up Tunket Road: The Education of a Modern Homesteader.  My hands-on experience in farming and food systems is supported and complemented by my graduate studies in Environmental Biology, along with other academic forays into philosophy, religion, and literature.

I enjoyed twenty-two years at Green Mountain College, where I  was Professor of Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems. I established the college’s 23-acre organic farm, designed and launched the undergraduate program in Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems, and founded and directed the nation’s first online graduate program in food systems. I then served as Dean of Professional Studies at Sterling College in Vermont, where I established the college’s first online educational initiatives and oversaw the School of the New American Farmstead.

I’ve spent nearly forty years exploring sustainable agricultural practices, generally in the company of students and family, framing my teaching and academic research with farming experiences in the Alps, North Carolina, and Vermont. I find great joy and inspiration in working with people of all ages and cultures, while also appreciating the solace of working in approximately 150 acres of pasture and woodland with my family and our heritage-breed cattle on our remote, solar-powered farm in Vermont. 

At home and as an educator, I try to combine a farmer’s pragmatism with a teacher’s collaborative quest for the future. Sometimes it works.