Meet Your Farmers!
Paul DeBusschere
One of Paul’s early farming memories is driving a 1955 John Deere 430 tractor sitting on his dad’s lap. Paul still has that tractor. But his path to Join the farm! wasn’t so direct from his childhood on his farm.
After spending a year as an accountant in a high rise LA office, Paul heeded the familiar call of farming. It was 1992 and his parents were ready to retire and transition their farm. Since then Paul has been farming lemons, avocados, and lima beans. Now Paul is embarking on a new adventure: VEGGIES! Paul is excited about connecting people with produce and forming the farm into something his daughters may want to continue into the future. Paul enjoys spending time with his family and sightseeing from the pilot’s seat of his Piper Cub airplane.
Julie Morris
Julie Morris will not allow herself to be called a farmer (yet) because she believes she has not earned the title. She prefers "aspiring farmer." She is connected to Join the Farm! as wife and partner to the Lead Farmer, Paul DeBusschere, and as one of the team members who works to articulate the spiritual dimensions of our project and connect it to social and environmental justice. An ordained priest in the Episcopal Church, Julie has been known to write blessings for the produce (put to music by Ted Lucas). If you like adding edible flower petals to your salads, thank Julie - it was all her idea. She is also a big fan of the carrots and arugula. Julie is thankful that her work at Trinity Church (Fillmore) and her life's responsibilities as mother to Emily (11), Molly (7) and Megan (4) are also her great joys, because she doesn't have time for much else. Every now and then, though, she drinks a hot cup of tea, reads the New Yorker and knows how good life really is.
Sarah Nolan
Sarah Nolan works as the Chaplain of The Abundant Table Campus Ministry at California State University, Channel Islands, and as Program Coordinator of The Abundant Table Farm Project. Sarah is a native New Mexican, currently living in Los Angeles, CA. Alongside her work in the Episcopal Church, Sarah volunteers with a local farming cooperative, coordinating its Community Supported Agriculture program. In her spare time (spare time...what spare time?) she enjoys reading, cooking, a little too much television and sleeping.
Interns
Cristina Rose Smith
Cristina (Cristy) Rose Smith is originally from Whittier, CA, attended Biola University for her undergrad and CSU, Long Beach for her graduate work – both in English Literature, focused on the Romantics.
After having spent the last ten years traveling around the world (I liked Capri the most!), she is interested in rooting herself in the earth and in authentic and loving communities as well as doing some hands on research for a PhD that involves Eco-Feminism and Women Story-tellers.
She enjoys kickin’ it with her dog, Oliver. She likes a good open conversation over a glass of Shiraz and kissing under fireworks.
Casey Hopkins
Casey Lynn Hopkins was born and raised in Phoenix, AZ, where her mother, father, and glorious younger sister currently reside. In May of this year, she graduated from Azusa Pacific University with a Bachelor of Arts in Global Studies.
In the fall of 2007, she spent 4 months listening, living, loving, and learning in Cochabamba, Bolivia. She has an ongoing desire to wander, and is looking into a Peace Corps position in urban agriculture (though she has difficulty making concrete plans, and thus is keeping her options open).
She is drawn to agriculture not only because deep down she is the biggest of biology nerds, but also because she simply loves food. Daily you will see her out in the field, bent over the cucumber plants with a furrowed brow, chomping on a carrot and trying to figure out how on earth she can get rid of all the caterpillars.
Katerina Friesen
Katerina Marie Friesen came to the Abundant Table Farm project from Mariposa, CA, a small town in the Sierra Nevada foothills near Yosemite National Park. At this time last year, she was in her last year at Wheaton College near Chicago, wrapped until unrecognizable in layers of sweaters and coats. Katerina is pondering ways to use her degree in cultural anthropology. Depending on the day, ideas include development work overseas to an M.F.A in creative writing, to starting another community on a friend's farm. She hopes that her experience at the Abundant Table Farm project will teach her more about a lifestyle centered on community, faith, hospitality, and connection to a place and to the earth. On her off-days, Katerina loves perusing the Camarillo library, reading Wendell Berry, writing poetry while nibbling very dark chocolate, and taking her bike “Fidget” for a scenic jaunt along Hwy 1. She enjoys the feeling of finishing a whole row of beans during harvest, sharing simple yet creatively cooked meals from the farm with her “sister-friend” interns, and walking around the field during the glow just after the sun goes down.
Erynn Smith
After growing up eating Ventura County’s strawberries and playing on Freedom Park’s soccer fields, Erynn moved to Los Angeles to earn a degree in journalism and promptly fled to Lake Tahoe to recover from big city life.
Recovered and ready to explore the world, Erynn started teaching in a bilingual preschool/elementary school in Cuenca, Ecuador. Her two year experience in the Andes was transformative. She realized her calling in the field of education. Her eyes were opened to eating locally on a daily basis in Cuenca’s vibrant mercados libres, or farmer’s markets, where she got to know farmers and food. Erynn returned to her native Camarillo ready to delve into bilingual education in a teaching credential program at CSUCI. Erynn returned to Ventura County with “new eyes” realizing how rich and vibrant our community’s agricultural history and present is and how vital it is to preserve this heritage by eating locally, supporting local farmers, and advocating for social and policy changes to support local food and farmers. Erynn hopes her work on the farm can develop young socially conscious eaters as she guides local students’ experiences here on the farm.
Erynn hasn’t changed too much from when she was a sunburnt kid on the soccer field. She still loves dancing, laughing, the beach, fishing, and camping with friends and family.
Sarah Baggé
When asked at age seven what she was thankful for, Sarah presciently answered “fruits and vegetables!” After growing up in Nairobi, Kenya, getting a degree in International Relations at Wheaton College, spending six months living next to a garment factory in Phnom Penh Cambodia, and putting some serious thought into the importance of local, community-based economies as a healthy alternative to the global marketplace, Sarah started reading Animal Vegetable Miracle last December. Trapped indoors during one of Chicago’s snowiest winters on record, she decided there was only one possible post-graduation step: move to Southern California and work on an organic farm!
While on the Farm, Sarah is enjoying trying new things like raising chickens, teaching our yoga classes, and driving the unpredictable farm pick-up. When not picking beans, coordinating the CSA, or protecting the “chickies” from the red-tail hawks, she enjoys books, running, following English Premier League football, and cooking from two Mollie Katzen cookbooks bequeathed to her by her mother.