Our Team

Going to Seed is a 100% volunteer-run organization. Is there something that you’d like to help us with? We’d love to hear from you. 

 

Leadership

Joseph Lofthouse is the author of the book Landrace Gardening, and is a popular speaker at farming conferences around the world.  He has been growing landraces and selling seeds for a decade. He is dedicated to helping gardeners and farmers grow healthy plants with less stress.   His book, Landrace Gardening, is what originally inspired this project and organization. Joseph is actively involved in ongoing content creation, and community mentorship through regular community meetings, as well as answering questions within the online community forums.  

Julia Dakin is a farmer and seed activist in Mendocino County, California. She has been involved in agriculture for most of her life, and has devoted the past few years to growing market crops and teaching the benefits of seed saving, local adaptation, and genetic diversity.  She created most of the content available in the online courses, and is working on the new course about traditional farming methods in Oaxaca and Guerrero. 

Anna Bonner Mieritz is a software designer, facilitator, and long-time home gardener. After completing the master gardener program at the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners in 1999, she managed Crenshaw Community Garden in Los Angeles. She now lives in Moss Beach, California, where she volunteers in the food distribution programs at Coastside Hope, and the HEAL Project educational farm. Anna leads the seed program and online store. 

Debbie Ang worked in a university molecular biology research lab for nearly 40 years, and has gardened since childhood. She currently volunteers with a local community gardening nonprofit editing its grant proposals.  Debbie has been editing and writing content and grant application for Going to Seed, as well as managing our finances.

Masha Zager worked as an economist for the SEC, a nonprofit foundation and a consulting firm; became a freelance writer and editor for a variety of corporations and publications and retired last year. She is currently a board member of the local farmers market and treasurer of the local Democratic Party committee.  She has been writing blog posts for Going to Seed about gardening, assists with editing other content, has created the outline for an upcoming seed saving course,  and has been supporting the Landrace Gardening online community engage. 

Marcos Cortez Bacilio is originally from the state of Guerrero, Mexico; and has been studying and teaching local farmers the traditional and ancestral methods of selection, improvement and conservation of native seeds. He is a regular contributor to the magazines La Jornada del Campo and ADN-Cultura. He is  collaborating with Going to Seed in the development of educational material based on community experiences in Mexico.

Bartolo Hernandez lives in a remote pueblo in the state of Oaxaca where he is actively involved with the local Chatino Indigenous community and  is president of the local Chatino radio station.  Bartolo has been interviewing and filming local farmers that use the traditional cultivation and seed saving methods of their ancestors, the original domesticators of corn, beans, squash and chilies. He is collaborating with Going to Seed on gathering content, which will also be used on his own social media channels to bring awareness to the traditional skills and methods of the Chatino people. 

Jim Tarbell has researched and written about economics, ecology and politics for 40 years. He co-edited the bio-regional journal Ridge Review Magazine for 15 years. Since 2005 he has edited the thematic publication Justice Rising: Grassroots Solutions to Corporate Power, which published an issue on Local Rules for Local Food in 2015. In that same year he co-founded the Grassroots Institute (grassroots-institute.org), which over the past seven years has presented a series of popular education courses on Grassroots Solutions and Corporate Power as well as a mapping project entitled Building the Local Economy for the Our Common Good. He and his wife Judy, live in Caspar CA and own the Field of Dreams where Julia Dakin carries on her research and seed production using landrace gardening methods.

Advisory Board

Joseph Lofthouse
Julia Dakin
Anna Bonner Mieritz
Lowell McCampbell
Debbie Ang
Masha Zager
Christy Garner

 

Volunteers 

Document and Course Editing
Robin Stewart 
Masha Zager
Christopher Weeks
Debbie Ang
Leslie Scrimshaw 
Skot Colacicco
Emma Calvert 
Jori Love
Nisendeh Neta

Interviews and lessons
Mark Reed
Holly Silvester
Emma Calvert
Lauren Ritz
Nancy Kost

Community Moderation
Mark Reed
Emily Sorensen
Greenie/Erin DeShong 
Joseph Lofthouse
Joseph Larson
Justin .
William Schlegal

Outreach
Tanja Eskildson
Emma Calvert
Masha Zager
Wojciech Gorny - Promotional videos and content for social media
Katie, Bramblewood Hill - Brochure design

Seed Stewards
Christopher Weeks
Anphlo Dubouloz
Julia Dakin
Joseph Lofthouse
Anna Mieritz
Kim Wolf
Lowell McCampbell
Carolyn Brown
Debbie A
Joseph Zarr