SouthSide Community Farm

Chloë Moore (he/she) has served as Southside Community Farm’s farm manager since 2020 and has been farming for 15 years. Chloë strives to support people of color reconnecting with land and food in ways that feel empowering, restorative, and delightful. He is a queer, Black and Borikua-Taino, land steward, educator, and parent who loves to eat good food, sing to plants, and play in the dirt.

Lydia Koltai (she/her) is the youth educator and community engagement manager for Southside Community Farm. A mother, gardener, herbalist, and educator, Lydia has many years of experience playing with and educating children in gardens.  She completed a permaculture design course in 2003 and participated in a yearlong permaculture intensive with Regenerative Design and Nature Awareness (RDNA) in 2005.

Kudzu Kabin Designs

Nancy Basket may not have finished the art education degree she started at Blackhawk College in Moline, Illinois. She may have learned instead, as she says, through “the school of hard knocks.” But this woman is an artist and art educator extraordinaire.

She became intrigued by basketmaking 40 years ago, and soon afterward met a Cherokee man who sold pine needle baskets shaped like bears. She asked to buy one, but he said, “Your job is to make them.” She’s been doing that ever since. And 10 years later, having become skilled at this craft, she adopted her Cherokee grandmother’s name of Basket.

These days, she works mostly with pine needles and with kudzu, which has to be used when green and fresh. The thicker vines are available all year. She keeps stretching what kudzu—which she calls “a miracle vine”—can do, which includes making baskets, paper and cloth.

Hawk Nest Healing Gardens

Hector Lopez has worked in several community projects focused on strengthening the social fabric through the care and regeneration of local ecosystems that allow people to achieve food autonomy for their health.

Through the planting of organic vegetables with a focus on permaculture, he has traveled part of the continent (Mexico, Ecuador, U.S.) sharing his knowledge with children at rural schools, community leaders, women in prison young people from the city and stay-at-home moms in order to empower all those who want to build a better world.

He shares his cultural legacy through millenary spiritual practices that he inherited from his ancestors. He is also passionate about renewable energy and music. Today he works in the triangle area in North Carolina accompanying social movements in search of social justice for the good of humanity.

G (she/they) is a treeworker, gardener, bodyworker, childcare provider, and theater performer.

They received her permaculture design certificate in Ithaca NY, 2007. Their fascination with the cascade of positive vibes that come from trees / perennial agriculture has led them to be a devoted hobbyist fruit & nut grower.

She gets joy by taking simple action everyone has access to- promoting regenerative agriculture. She believe we must not only sustain what we have, but we must improve our ecosystems…not just because it will sustain us physically, but spiritually.

They have been grafting and maintaining trees in community parks, in her garden, and throughout Asheville for 12 years. She is excited to share what she knows about how to select, train, prune, and graft a tree through its lifetime.

BareRoot Designs

Jennifer Verprauskus is a North Carolina Licensed Landscape Architect and a Permaculture Design Certificate Holder. She studied Landscape Architecture at the University of Massachusetts & Cal Poly.

Since graduating, she has traveled the world to help people grow trees and their own food. She is the founder of both UpBeet Landscapes and BareRoot Designs, PLLC.

Jennifer actively practices Permaculture through Landscape Architecture all over the States and currently teaches Permaculture classes at the North Carolina Arboretum.

Phat Ninja Foodforest

Permaculture was explained to me as using nature as a guideline. The edge of the forest turns full and green every year with no help from man. It happens from a symbiotic relationship between plants, animals, and fungi.

I started running with this philosophy and turned our Asheville property into a Permaculture Foodforest. I bought chickens and ducks, removed all grass, and installed swales, ponds, mushrooms, and fruit trees. A year in, I sought help from more experienced minds and took a permaculture design course and became a certified instructor.

Now we are giving classes, tours, and having other local permaculture and gardening instructors do tours of our farm as well. This is Phat Ninja Foodforest.

The Urban Farm

"What if there was a garden and fruit tree in every yard?" This is a question that Greg ponders every day. For over 32 years he created of one of Phoenix's first environmental showcase homes for urban farming. The 1/4-acre yard featured a primarily edible landscape with over 80 fruit trees, rainwater and greywater harvesting, solar applications, and extensive use of reclaimed and recycled building materials. What we now call an Old Growth Food Forest.

He is the co-founder of Great American Seed Up an educational organization designed to energize local seeds. He is also the founder of UrbanFarm.org and the host of The Urban Farm Podcast that has over 900 episodes and over 5 million listens. The podcast is designed to help fulfill Greg's passion of spreading the word about growing your own food and sharing new and seasoned gardeners epic stories.