Warren Lee: Owner and Farmer
I have spent most of my life outside. That I have ended up as a farmer is really not a surprise. One of biggest influences on my time outside was the school I grew up going to, High Meadows. I was there through 8th grade and also attended their camp each summer. The campus was surrounded by woods that we got to play in and have class in, there were animals and gardens, a compost pile and always, a new adventure to be found. Camp was instrumental in these outdoor explorations and both the school and the camp encouraged me to always ask questions. It was these experiences outside and the freedom to question things that informed the person I am today and set me on this path.
After High School I spent a year experiencing and giving back to this world. I worked on a conservation reserve in Peru, orphanages in Argentina, and farms in New Zealand. I came back ready for the challenge of College. From there I went to school in Vermont where I studied Religion and Environmental Studies. It was here that my life really began to take form. While studying for a semester in Montana I came to the realization that if someone can grow their own food, they are able to have control over their life in a completely different way. The autonomy that comes from being able to grow your own food was something I realized I wanted to help people find, and thus began my journey toward farming, and hopefully toward teaching others about it.
I also became keenly aware through my studies that our agricultural practices played a large role in some of the devastation we see to our environment. Our current form of industrial agriculture with our mono-cropped fields wreaks havoc on the soil, the animals, the water, and the plants themselves. On top of that there are the emissions from food transportation, the use of resources to irrigate, spray, weed, store, and process, the food. The fact that this food we destroyed our environment to grow, then got exported or fed to animals, really confused me. I figured there had to be a better way.
And apparently there are. These questions led me to different schools in Vermont and Massachusetts and eventually to my Masters in Ecological Design. Systems like Permaculture, Agroforestry, No-till farming, Rotational Grazing, Restorative Agriculture, were all things I was exposed to and got excited about. These systems recognize that the earth has been growing food for a long time, and is pretty good at doing so, and does it in a way that benefits the earth itself (sustaining itself, regenerating itself, whatever you want to call it). Each one of these “alternative” growing methods then takes those patterns and attempts to create a growing system or farming system that will mimic nature but be convenient and easy for human use. Something that can produce a lot of food and allow for easy harvesting of the food grown. It sounded perfect.
It was these understandings that I brought back with me to Georgia. I spent the first three years working and teaching at schools, at coffee shops, and completing a beginning farmer business program with the Organic Growers School in North Carolina. It is my hope that Kindred Oaks Farm can be another example of growing food in a sustainable way, on a large scale (there are farms out there doing it). Some of the biggest arguments of people railing against small farms, Permaculture, and other “alternative” growing methods, is that it doesn’t produce enough food and we can’t feed the world. These systems are incredibly productive even on a small scale, but can also be done on a larger scales (5, 10, 50 acres). I believe we can grow enough food to feed the multitudes utilizing these techniques. Not everyone is going to grow on this scale though, it will also take those growing in their backyard, front yard, half an acre, and those who grow nothing but support those around them that do. I hope this place can help connect those many people that are growing good food in good ways and we can start to change the way people see food, and grow food. I hope it is a space that can bring people together around food, empower them in new ways, and foster community. I hope we can enter into a deeper connection with the earth through this process. And I hope we can have some fun while doing it.
**Many of the methods I speak of are not new, they have been practiced by different cultures and groups of people around the world for thousands of years, they just have new names. A lot of the techniques that are becoming popular today are taken from these practices, and I hope to honor the original cultures they came from as best I can, recognizing that many of these practices are still practiced outside the view of the main stream. If ever I speak of something and do not seem to have the full context or understanding please let me know. I do believe it will take a combination of many knowledge bases to plan and plant for the future, but I want to also honor the history of this knowledge and the people that have kept it alive through genocide, colonization, enslavement, and many more hardships. It is these people both past and present, named and unnamed that we owe our future to and our profound appreciation.