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

 The Farm has been central to my life for a very long time!

 I've been a general-member since 1991, a longtime ICF Co-op member, a volunteer     fieldhand for decades, and a Board member since we established this guiding body in 1994.  

 On the Board, I'm continuing to treasure how our Farm's success is being shaped by our deliberations and decisions.  Our discussions are always respectful, consensus is continually achieved, and we are always striving for how our Farm can contribute to greater food access and justice in our community.  

 After more than thirty years, I still love our meetings, and I'd love to serve another term!

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 knowledge of our Farm is extensive.  I know the Farm's land and the history for how our farmers grow our crops.  I know how every staff person feels respected, is creatively engaged in a variety of tasks, and linked to an environment where she/he/they are continually learning.

Coordinating our lively volunteer mornings, attending our thoughtful Board meetings, staying on top of agriculture issues here in Vermont and beyond, all these activities have been giving me a voice for organic agriculture, food justice and community-wide well-being.

 What do I like best, weeding or taking Minutes at meetings or bringing batches of homemade cookies to our staff at lunchtime?  I love all in equal measure! 

3. The ICF Board has identified the importance of serving the diverse members of the Burlington community whether because of wealth, racial, ethnic or religiousbackground, 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've been connecting our Farm to the YMCA here in Burlington for years now.  As a member of both places, this is continuing to be such a joy!

 High-school students from the Y's Black Youth in Action program have been helping with tangible tasks and discovering the worth of community service.

 Recently, this crew was back for an amazing morning.  After a warm welcome from Georgia and George, the students and other Y people helped prepare one of our greenhouses for the winter, removing 8000 tomato-plant support-clips! 

 Everyone had been useful and included.  Everyone went home with veggies that their families treasured.  A morning on our Farm couldn't have been better than this.  

 Next summer, this BYA crew plans to be back and I plan to help make this happen!!

4.   ICF has experienced tremendous flooding in the past 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 thesechallenges? 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?

 As a long-time general member, ICF Co-op member and Board member, I've witnessed how climate change has increasingly threatened our precious Farm.  I've also witnessed, however, the incredible skills that our farmers have been bringing to their work.  Their institutional knowledge and adaptability are making it possible to produce incredible food, year after year.

 On the Board, I'm so grateful to be helping our Farm's staff stay supported, our Farm's members stay enthusiastic, and our Farm's finances stay robust.  Withstanding climate crises, it's going to take all of us working together and I'm confident that we can do this.

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

 I'm a lifelong artist, an illustrator for nonprofit organizations for more than fifty years and a landscape painter for more than forty.

 I'm also a food-justice activist who spent twenty years volunteering in Burlington's public schools advocating for local foods, school gardens, and activities connecting students and staff with the natural environments around them.

 And as a parent, I will always treasure the many years that my daughter Dia and I worked together at the Farm.  Side by side with Andy and the other amazing people, Dia grew up believing in cooperative decision-making, the worth of arduous work, and that wonderful food could reach more people.

 The Farm in countless ways has kept me an optimist, even in these terribly, terribly dark times.  The light of this place and people will continue to guide me forward for the rest of my life.