A Dream Team for the Summer
In May, my husband Judson and I are expecting the birth of our first child! The last several months as a farm team we have been preparing for me to be on maternity leave during the summer, our busiest season at the farm. After starting the farm by myself nearly 4 years ago, God has provided so powerfully for our farm ministry and equipped us with a team of loving and dedicated staff and volunteers who make our farm run. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to step away two years ago, without shutting down our normal CSA (Church Supported Agriculture) Program for the summer. But through the generosity of the church, the Matthew 25 grant, and generous donations from community members, we have been able to employ a wonderful crew to run the farm (a close knit farm-ily, as it were) this summer, and I want to tell you more about them.
Julia Myhre: Julia started at the farm as a fellow in September 2018 and swiftly made herself an indispensable member of our community. This summer, she will be our farm manager and run all the farming operations, from crop production to harvesting. Julia is a graduate of Duke University, where she worked at the wonderful Duke Campus Farm. Working closely with MacEntyre, Julia can rig anything, solve any conundrum, and surmount any obstacle. She also keeps us all on task and has an incredible work ethic. She works 18 hours/week at the farm. She and her brother, Jack, are responsible for the new, beautiful pizza oven in the medicinal garden, which they built by hand. Julia will be leaving the farm at the end of July to pursue graduate level studies in business. We are so proud of her and we will miss her dearly.
Gia Lineberry: Gia started working at the farm through funding from the Matthew 25 project to help us grow the business side of our ministry, as well as oversee our CSA (Church Supported Agriculture) Program. Gia has a graduate degree from Appalachian State in Sustainable Technologies, where she wrote her thesis on CSA programs. She also worked in Boone for a cooperative CSA program. Gia has been such a blessing to the farm, bringing order and intentionality to our programming and our finances, as well as her dedication to our CSA program and the Free Farmers Market. She works 14 hours/week at the farm.
Innocent Muco: Innocent has been working at the farm since 2018, working 5 hours a week to tend to land care and develop our East African farming program, alongside Julia. Originally from the Congo, Innocent is such a kind and dedicated man, and has been the main liaison with our East African community. At our Free Farmers Market, he ran our East African portion of the market. This summer, he will help Julia coordinate the harvest and distribution of our East African crops that we grow.
Madison Miller: Madison joined us as a fellow in the fall of 2020 and has been a blessing to us from day one. Madison’s calling is to the ministry side of our work: caring spiritually for everyone who comes to the farm. She has pioneered and planned our Sabbath Days this year and will be developing our ministries to our volunteers, to folks with disabilities, our partnership with Hope Academy, our East African community, and our partnership with Combat Female Veterans United. She will be our volunteer coordinator going forward, working 18 hours a week, and is the person to contact if you’d like to volunteer in any capacity at our farm!
Tony Nguyen- Tony came to Redeemer as a Greensboro Fellow several years ago and was a part of our community and a very active farm volunteer until he moved to attend Duke Divinity School last summer. He has been attending seminary and pursuing Duke Div’s concentration in Food & Faith, while also working for our mentor farmer’s church-based no-till market farm, Faithfull Farm, in Chapel Hill. Tony is going to come and be our summer intern to help cover for me when I’m on maternity leave, working 20 hours a week for the farm and 20 hours a week for the parish, as part of his summer field education with Duke Divinity School! We are thrilled to have him join the team for the summer and are honored to help form him in his pastoral calling to Food & Faith work.
