Windy Rutherford worked for 16 years for the 3HO Foundation as Donor Care Officer for their tithing program. She is well versed in the practice of giving back, committing and lovingly serving community. She was bookkeeper for LA Tropicals, a wholesale greenhouse in California, and a caterer, cooking for Kundalini yoga teacher training events and Superhealth addiction programs, as well as at the local homeless shelter in Santa Fe.
Marlene Fisher is a lover of Nature, gardener and a metalsmith member of the Santa Fe Artists Market. She was a devoted volunteer at Gaia Gardens, and worked intimately with Poki Piottin. She lives off grid and solely on rain/snow catchment, outside of Santa Fe where she enjoys a simple and mindful way of life that reflects her nature, and the teachings she’s received from her peasant ancestors: living off what the land provides and being thankful. All through her life she has maintained her earthbound way and compassion for creation. She’s lived in various countries, owned a gardening business and helped create a vegetable garden in a refugee community.
Poki Piottin is the founder and Director of Mil Abrazos Community Land Trust. He created Gaia Gardens (2012-2016) in Santa Fe, and served on the Board of Directors of the Santa Fe Farmers' Market Institute (2013-2015) and the Board of Directors of the Evergreen Land Trust (2000-2003) in Washington State. After 25 years as an entrepreneur (Biography) in Seatlle, WA, he began a new life of service, creating several small farms and community gardens, providing dynamic educational environments for people of all walks of life and ages to mingle and experience the regenerative power of community. He believes that lasting ecological health and social well-being can be fostered by rekindling our connection to the Earth and reclaiming our food sovereignty.
Advisory Board
Paul Larmer has been the publisher and executive director of High Country News for the past decade, an award-winning non-profit journalism enterprise that started in 1970 and continues today from its base in Western Colorado. Through a bi-monthly print magazine and active web and social media sites, HCN covers the one-million-square mile American West in all of its beautiful, ugly, contentious glory. It is an enterprise committed to in-depth, contextual journalism and to frank civic dialogue on the many environmental, cultural and political challenges that face our region and our country. In addition to journalism, Paul is passionate about birds, rocks, and music.
Laurrien Gilman “La" is the co-founder of CultureSeed, an organization providing year-round transformational programming and mentorship to underserved youth with a focus on outdoor adventure. She is an artist and teacher of many modalities including ceramics, transformational writing, and metapoetics. She is a dedicated student of yoga and meditation, and in recent years has studied Non-Violent Communication, Council Tech, Dynamic Governance, and other modalities to assist in community building. She was the founder and operator of the organic restaurant the Gravity Bar in Seattle for 14 years, where Poki Piottin (who then ran the Free Mars Cafe in the same downtown neighborhood) and her became close friends and allies. In 2006, she co-created Atlan, her biggest dream of a Permaculture land-based Intentional Community on 150 acres in the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon.
Rich Pecoraro helped facilitate the creation of Seeds of Change in 1990, the nation's first 100% organic non-hybrid seed company. He served as co-director of seed production, harvest and post harvest handling for 5 years until he started Abbondanza Organic Seeds and Produce (1996-2015) in Longmont, CO, where he cultivated 50 acres, providing 400 CSA members with seasonal produce, while also selling at the Boulder Farmers Market and gourmet restaurants. He's currently the Founder and Director of the MASA Seed Foundation in Boulder, CO.
Tom Dixon is a life-long resident of La Cienega, a small farming community close to Santa Fe. Green Tractor Farm, his three acre family farm is fed by the El Guicu acequia, which dates to 1703, a small, spring-fed acequia serving only twenty acres. Water, soil, food crops, and self-sufficiency are his passions, in addition to family. His children and grandchildren now live and work Green Tractor Farm, making them the fourth generation to do this. Tom and his wife Mary are active on the Boards of the Santa Fe Farmers Market and the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market Institute, in addition to managing their 1/3 acre vineyard, helping with grandchildren, washing and selling vegetables, and giving their time and energy to community efforts. A knack for building, and a sincere desire to live in the manner that leaves the lightest environmental footprint, have defined Tom’s efforts to bring his family’s farm into the twenty-first century.
Mil Abrazos Community Land Trust is a 501(c)3
Donations of cash, stocks, vehicles or material goods are tax-deductible