Welcome to new farmers at Stone Coop Farm!

We are happy to report that we have two new employees at Stone Coop Farm this season! Here is a little more about them:

Troy DeBruhl

Where to begin?

Well, it all started back in 1993.

I was born in San Francisco, son to a married couple that had a passion for adventure, and what an adventure raising me would be. I guess from an early age my parents Joannée and Perry have instilled a very strong love of the outdoors, and through that I've always remembered eating organic food in our house. As I've gotten older and become more aware of the world around me it's apparent that things need to change. I think a great start to solving the problems this country faces is through local farming. Not only is the food better for you nutritionally, it also keeps the money in your local economy instead of it being shipped all over the country like normal produce. If we support our local businesses and farms, everyone in the area benefits.  So when I was given the chance to help be a part of that change and work on my Mom's local organic farm, I couldn't say no.  I'm an 18 year old kid who wants to make a difference in the world with my life, and the best place to start is on an organic farm.

Ryan Peterson

Growing up, sustainability has been something that was always on my mind. I saw the way that we treated the earth and its resources and I knew something was wrong. From using resources in a non sustainable way I knew that it would be only a matter of time until problems would occur. I began thinking about sustainability with renewable energy technologies. I was researching night and day everything about wind, solar, geothermal and so on. With this I subscribed to many different websites and one day I received an email about a sustainability project in Highland Park, Michigan. I didn’t know what to think of it but knew that I needed to get out there in the real world and use my knowledge instead of just researching all the time. The project talked about Permaculture, something that I knew nothing of at the time. I decided to take the plunge and see what would turn out from this. I learned that Permaculture is a sort of “permanent culture” that works with nature instead of against it. When we started using this concept in our project things started making sense very quickly. I learned that large majority of our natural resources are used in industrial agriculture business and by staying small scale and local you could cut away these inefficiencies. This took my attention to less of a renewable energy focus (although still a very important piece) to a more local food based focus.

With this a friend of mine that I met from the project in Highland Park started up a club at my school called the Washtenaw Community College Permaculture Club. In the club we talked about the problems that we have got ourselves into with modern agriculture and the steps that can be taken to make them better. We talked a bunch about what can be done to make the earth more sustainable and it made me ever more eager to get out in the field and get my hands dirty. This led me to the desire to working on a local farm to learn everything from the ground up. With problems I see opportunities, and I am excited to be working with the farmers at Stone Coop farms to make this planet a much healthier sustainable place.