Point of View: Cultivating Business Engagement through Story
Point of View: Cultivating Business Engagement through Story
Monday, March 22, 4-5pm CT
Our WFAN/SARE advisory leadership team will share stories of how they address issues like managing diversified income streams, juggling children as a farmer, farming while brown and queer in Iowa, running a community garden in Indianapolis, and planning for farming after age 50. Learn how they use their stories, in myriad ways, to engage their customer base and to connect with community.
Our panel/leadership team features:
Annie Warmke: Annie Warmke is an activist who believes in an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky and that has taken her on an amazing adventure with life experiences ranging from being a homeless battered woman to organizing 22 rural family violence projects, to gaining freedom for battered women in prison, to living in Europe with everything she could possibly want, to building Ohio’s first Earthship
She’s led delegations of women to foreign lands to build networks, written a widely popular newspaper column during her life in Europe, and received numerous awards from corporations and governments for her work in sustainability and to organize women and girls.
In 2004 Annie returned to Ohio to live and farm at Blue Rock Station Green Living Center. She teaches workshops on topics like cheese making and natural goat care, plus organized with Carie Starr Women Grow Ohio and Buffalo Gals Voices. She has written books on natural goat care and has a weekly podcast (When the Biomass Hits the Wind Turbine) with her husband, Jay Warmke. She is a graduate of Ohio University.
Cheri Hood: Cheri Hood is the garden manager of 3 Sisters Garden. Located on the far east side of Indianapolis, 3 Sisters is an urban homestead garden.Cheri is passionate about providing chemical free food at a reasonable rate for the community.
She participates in community education programs to encourage neighbors to grow produce for their families. Cheri completed a course with the local Purdue Extension Office to increase her knowledge of growing natural wholesome food. She earned an Urban Agricultural Certificate. Cheri’s goal is to become a Master Gardener
Míchi López: Southside Chicago born and Iowa-raised, Míchi (rhymes with peachy) López started her food systems journey as a 2018 farm apprentice. She learned to plant, weed, harvest, and distribute fruits and vegetables on a four-acre plot. Prior to that, Míchi had never farmed or gardened, nor had she ever met a farmer or gardener. Míchi will tell you, “it was love at first sweat.” Her first season of growing shifted her career passions to improving food access, educating community members about vegetable farming, and leading grassroots community engagement with underrepresented populations. Now in her third season, Míchi loves connecting with other beginner farmers, especially women of color, and sharing stories of how they came to steward the land.
Lisa Kivirist: A national advocate for women in sustainable agriculture, Lisa Kivirist is the author of the award-winning book, Soil Sisters: A Toolkit for Women Farmers and leads the Soil Sisters initiative, a project of Renewing the Countryside. She served as Senior Fellow, Endowed Chair in Agricultural Systems for the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Minnesota.
Kivirist is the co-author of multiple books on sustainability, food and entrepreneurship with her husband, John Ivanko, including Homemade for Sale, Farmstead Chef, Ecopreneuring and Rural Renaissance. A leading champion for cottage food entrepreneurs, Kivirist served as a plaintiff in the successful lawsuit against the state of Wisconsin that declared the ban on the sale of home baked goods unconstitutional. For over twenty years, she and her family have run Inn Serendipity Farm and B&B in Wisconsin, completely powered by renewable energy.
Anne Massie: Anne has a tenacious appetite for all things local food. From owning and operating her own diversified vegetable farm to leading significant non-profit work on food insecurity and farm viability, Anne has fully committed herself to changing our local food system as we know it.
Prior to farming, Anne received her BA in Psychology, Spanish and Philosophy from Kalamazoo College and spent 10 years doing odd jobs in local food work throughout NW Indiana, from volunteering at community gardens to deliveries for farmers to planning farm to table events. Anne is in her second term as President of the NW Indiana Food Council, a former Hoosier Young Farmers Coalition Fellow and National Food Systems Leadership Fellow. Local food systems work is her life and comes full circle through her farm.
Anne grows over 70 varieties of fruits, vegetables and nuts using regenerative methods. She enjoys sharing her harvest with her 125 CSA members, farmers markets and farm stand customers. Anne and Ben have two children, Teagan (8) and Barrett (2) who you’ll often find running amuck around the farm.
This workshop will be recorded! We will send the Zoom access in the confirmation email after you register for this event. We will be sending reminder emails with the link closer to the date of the event. We encourage you to join with a computer so you can have access to full Zoom capabilities. We will be encouraging the use of video and audio during the breakout sessions. If you will be joining with a phone, please be sure to join the call at least 10 minutes early, so we can rename your Zoom profile according to your preferred breakout group. New to Zoom? Check out these tutorial videos.