Jacob Holzberg-Pill

1. Describe your past and current involvement with Intervale Community Farm (ICF) and why you are excited about serving on the Board. 

Our kids love eating ICF vegetables at the farm. They munch carrots and peppers the entire time we are at pickup. On the drive home, they continue to request and devour delicious ICF produce. The majority of vegetables my children have consumed in their lives comes from the farm– all of their salads, their French fries, their sweet red peppers, every jar of tomato sauce. Their cells and bodies are literally built from that soil, that land. When my children were younger we’d go to pick up twice a week, once for veggies, and again to visit with friends and ride the vehicles and climb the apple tree. On weekends we ride bikes down the bumpy dirt road and picnic under the pavilion. ICF is a foundational part of our community and our lives and a pillar of the world we want to celebrate.

 2. Please describe any relevant skills you would like to contribute to ICF that make you a good candidate for the Board. This may include specific skills such as accounting and financial planning, land management, engineering, flood management, farm and food sovereignty policy, experience with cooperatives, addressing diversity issues, strategic planning, or past board or community organization experience. Or, you may have never served on a Board or don’t have specific skills but have a passion for food, health or farming and love ICF; describe these qualities as well.

 My life’s work focuses on community based land stewardship projects. I have served on the board of Branch Out Burlington since moving to Vermont 7 years ago. I am currently the Branch Out board president. I have taught regenerative agriculture classes and workshops to people of all ages and knowledge levels. I founded and run a landscape consulting business focusing on helping people design and install edible, native, pollinator, joyful, gardens and landscapes. I am a 4H educator with University of Vermont Extension. I work with New American teens to grow and tend vegetables at a large garden plot in the Intervale with New Farms for New Americans.

3. The ICF Board has identified the importance of serving the diverse members of the Burlington community whether because of wealth, racial, ethnic or religious background, recent immigration, gender or LGBT identity or other. What experience do you have, personal, business or organizational, that could help ICF work towards this goal? Do you have any suggestions?

I am working hard to build strong connections with the refugee resettlement community. I am a special projects educator at Extension 4H and I run a teen program partnering with AALV, the Association of Africans Living in Vermont. We have embarked on a year-long exploration of Vermont food and agriculture. Through field trips, we visit farms and producers and learn about the amazing work of growers. We also follow local ingredients to value added businesses like bakeries, cheese makers, fermenters, and ice cream shops so the teens can gain a more complete understanding of our food systems. Before and after each of our ingredient themed field trips we gather to explore more about the local techniques, influences, factors, and considerations of each crop and making culturally significant food with that product.

 4. ICF experienced tremendous flooding this year which impacted our food, our land, and our personnel. We think these events might become more frequent in the future, what ideas do you have about the future of ICF and how it might deal with these challenges? Do you currently have the time outside of Board meetings to help grapple with these challenges which involve both short-term and long-term solutions?

I think we need to diversify our field locations and grow some long-season flood-sensitive crops in a high and dry field in South Burlington or Colchester. I am excited to help locate and work towards accessing land that meets our farmers’ criteria.

5. What else would you like ICF members to know about you?

I was appointed to the ICF Board this summer to fill out the remainder of a term, and II am excited for the opportunity to continue supporting the ICF community.