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Staff Directory

 

Martha

Martha Worcester

Administrative Assistant
martha@troygardens.org

Martha Worcester joined Community GroundWorks as Office Administrator in late 2011, after serving on the Board of Directors for 5 years.  Her knowledge of the programs, staff, and constituents made for a relatively easy transition.   She has a degree in Journalism and worked in publishing and event management for several decades. After living in many parts of the country Martha chose Madison as "home" in 2005 and quickly discovered Troy Gardens and the co-housing community.  She hiked the land weekly in 2006, watching her first home being built.

Martha grew her first vegetable garden at 9000 feet in a deep Colorado valley where she developed a fondness for parnsips which could actually survive June, July and August snow.

Jake

Jake Hoeksema

Acting Farm Director
jake@troygardens.org

Jacob Hoeksema loves to grow food for other people and has been doing so professionally since 2000. In addition to his time in the field, Jake also takes the lead on sprout production and marketing, regular greenhouse infrastructure improvements and plant monitoring, and equipment upkeep.  Jake lives in the Troy Gardens cohousing community with his wife Kat, son Oliver and daughter Grace. In the winter Jake can often be found pursuing his other passion: sleeping outside in the cold.
 

Julie

Julie Engel

Acting Farm Manager
julie@troygardens.org

Julie Engel has farmed since 2005, starting with livestock, then dairy sheep, and moving onto vegetables in 2009. When she’s not hanging out with vegetables and people at Troy, she works on “The Coney Garth,” as she calls it, which is how she raises meat rabbits on grass without cages. She was recently awarded a SARE grant to continue working on this project and hopes to spread the habit of eating more rabbit. She also loves to cook, a direct result of working with fabulous ingredients. And ride her bike.

Nathan

Nathan Larson

Education Director
nathan@troygardens.org

Nathan Larson joined Community GroundWorks as the Education Director in 2006. He has worked as a garden and nature educator for the past twelve years. Nathan directs urban farm and garden education programs for pre-K-12 students including the Troy Kids’ Garden Program and Goodman Youth Grow Local Farm. Nathan provides professional development for school teachers, college students and community educators locally and nationally through workshops, courses, and trainings including the annual Growing Minds course. He writes garden-based curricula and recently co-authored Got Veggies?: A Garden-Based Nutrition Education Curriculum. He also conducts collaborative research with faculty partners at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and he is a Senior Outreach Associate in the Department of Landscape Architecture. Nathan—a third generation Madisonian—lives with his wife and children at Troy Gardens. In addition to growing food, he thoroughly enjoys skiing on freshly fallen snow and walking barefoot in the sand.

Ginny

Ginny Hughes

Program Manger
ginny@troygardens.org

Ginny Hughes is the Program Manger for the Troy Kids' Garden.  Before joining Community GroundWorks, she earned a master's degree in Environmental Leadership from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.  She co-founded and managed the Sherman Middle School garden on the northside of Madison.  She is passionate about sharing the magic of the garden with kids and is delighted to be working at Troy Gardens.  Ginny lives and gardens here with her husband and two children.  She also enjoys bikram yoga and color-coded filing systems.

Beth

Beth Hanna

Training and Outreach Specialist for the Wisconsin School Garden Initiative
beth@troygardens.org

Beth Hanna is the Training and Outreach Specialist for the Wisconsin School Garden Initiative.  Supported by the UW School of Medicine and Public Health's Wisconsin Partnership Program, the Wisconsin School Garden Initiative aims to build off the success of the Got Dirt? Garden Initiative to employ youth gardening and garden-based education strategies to reduce rates of overweight and obesity in Wisconsin's children.  Beth is eager to use her background in teaching and Public Health to get more Wisconsin kids in the dirt.

Beth, her husband, and their two dogs are recent transplants to Madison and already enamored with the good food, numerous trails, and welcoming people this city has to offer.

Jennica

Jennica Skoug

Goodman Youth Grow Local Farm manager
jennica@troygardens.org

Before joining Community GroundWorks, Jennica earned a master's degree in Environmental Education from UW-Stevens Point, where she helped run environmental education programs and care for 33 chickens at the Central Wisconsin Environmental Station. Jennica has worn a variety of educational hats, such as coordinating a school garden program in Kalamazoo, Michigan and teaching math as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Vanuatu, where she gardened next to banana trees. Her love of well-grown food and the outdoors began in her family's garden, from which she sold gigantic zucchinis out of a little red wagon with her brother.  Besides vegetables, Jennica enjoys collecting corny jokes and puns, early morning runs, and winter canoeing adventures.

Creal Zearing

Goodman Youth Grow Local Farm Assistant Manager
creal@troygardens.org

Since moving to Madison in June 2012, Creal has found plenty to keep her passions for the environment, children, and the local food movement occupied.  This includes working as an intern in the Troy Kids' Garden, interning for Sustain Dane, cashiering at Willy Street Grocery Cooperative, and developing Youth Programming at the West Lussier YMCA.

Creal comes from a charming farm town in Illinois called Princeton.  She graduated from Knox College in Galesburg, IL in 2010 with a B.A. in Environmental Studies and Spanish.  Upon graduation she moved to Lanesboro, MN where she explored the rolling hills of the Driftless Region as a naturalist for two years at Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Center before moving to Madison to be closer to her boyfriend and her cat.

Patricia Lindquist

Natural Areas Coordinator

patricia@troygardens.org

Patricia Lindquist joined CGW as the Natural Areas Coordinator in January 2012.  Patricia has been a familiar face in the Natural Areas for the past two years as she served as an intern, leading volunteers on the land and working with ZDA on the management plan and the new master plan.  She graduates from UW-Madison in May, 2012 with a bachelor's degree in landscape architecture.   She loves to run the trails around Madison, immerse herself in new cultures while traveling abroad, and eat her fiancé's Indian cooking.

A Wisconsin native, she studied art at Lawrence University in Appleton before completing a master's degree in Art History at UW-Madison in 2008.  She also works as a nursery and greenery sales associate at the Bruce Company in Middleton.

 

Kelly Humphry

Madison FarmWorks Manager
kelly@troygardens.org

Kelly Humphry is our Madison FarmWorks manager, and designs and installs edible gardens for residential and commercial clients.  Her background in landscape architecture and education compels her to help others find innovative ways to grow organic food in diverse urban conditions and spaces.  Since moving to Madison in 2007, she has been working in the design and green building industry, managing 13 LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification projects. She's currently working on Willy Street Co-op's LEED certification remodel project. Kelly has a BA from University of Chicago in Environmental Studies, a Certificate of Ecological Horticulture from University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Masters of Landscape Architecture from University of Texas, Austin. She is a current fellow in Edgewood's College Graduate Sustainability Leadership Program.

Before moving to Madison, Kelly farmed for eight years in California and Texas. Her farming career began in 1999 at UC Santa Cruz alongside fellow apprentice Claire Strader. Her farming adventures took her from organic olive orchards in California to large goat and cattle ranches in Texas. Her obsessions are design of all sorts, traveling to fabulous gardens in remote places, espaliered fruit trees, and the dream of someday playing the fiddle at a barn dance.