Sierra Harvest is honored to welcome Maggie McProud as our new Farm Manager at Food Love. Maggie will be running seasonal programs including summer camp, visiting groups, U-pick, field trips, and classroom visits. Maggie has a long history of farming in this county where she grew up, but she didn’t always want to be a farmer. While majoring in art with a minor in environmental studies at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA, she became increasingly interested in social justice and environmental degradation issues, and started looking for a way to address both subject matters. Food and agriculture turned out to be the perfect nexus of these topics. At the same time, back in Nevada County, her mother (Jo McProud) started dating a farmer (Alan Haight, of River Hill Farm). She ended up coming back to Nevada County to work for Alan, was surprised to meet several friends from high school (including Tim Van Wagner of First Rain Farm), who had all returned for the same reason.
After working at River Hill for three years, Maggie made the rounds at some other local farms that her friends were running: Four Frogs, Soil Sisters, and Mountain Bounty. Her work at Mountain Bounty allowed her to indulge another passion — arranging flowers – which blends her interest in art and creativity with farming. With this experience under her belt, Maggie worked at Woolman School for three years, helping youths to reconnect with their bodies, with their relationship with food and place, and with each other: “Most students have no idea where there food comes from and how it gets to them, what resources are used.
Maggie has been excited to watch Sierra Harvest grow and expand in the community where she grew up, and the opening at Food Love was the perfect opportunity for her to join us: “I want to honor all the work Amanda and Katie have done to create Food Love from scratch, and I also want to take it to the next level and apply what I have learned (my technical and commercial farming experience) and focus on the programmatic aspect, watch and see what students like, and then create and expand on programs that get kids going.”
Please stop by to say hello to our newest staff member or connect with Maggie via email at maggie@sierraharvest.org.