WORKER MEMBERS
CHARLIE ALLER
CHARLIE (aka CHARLICEPS) is a lover of mushrooms and an independent researcher of fungal roles in local ecosystems. He co-founded Mush Luv in 2017 with Nina O'Malley, and together they have worked to bring native fungi into the food, medicine, and awareness of their community.
KELLY WALSH
KELLY has been farming, foraging and gardening for the last decade. Springing from the salty sands of the Florida Keys and landing in the red clay foothills of Afton, Virginia, her desire to learn how to be in right relationship with land & community; human & other, has led the way. She has experience establishing forest gardens, managing rotational livestock systems, production vegetable gardening, homesteading, wild foraging, working with medicinal plants and is currently apprenticing under a restorative forestry draft horseman. These skills and interactions have shaped her understanding of what tending the land can mean & she continues to follow that path in her work today.
LILIA FUQUEN
LILIA was born to a poet and a scientist on a high plateau surrounded by some of Earth's youngest mountains. Her work as a convener in land-based learning is guided by her life-long love for the wild. Lilia's experience in learning from water, humans, and trees alike has ranged from the Colombian Amazon to interior Alaska. Today, she finds home next to a stream amid the wizened Blue Ridge Mountains where she works with youth, elders, and those in between to plant gardens and tend wildernesses of adaptivity.
BEN KESSLER
BEN is or was a schoolteacher, biologist, writer, landscaper, and nurseryman. He used to work with birds who eat mammals who eat plants, and so became involved in botany by process of elimination. Ben lives in a hollow in Nelson County where the water is sweet.
BEN PATTERSON
BEN is a long-time gardener and audio engineer living in the woods west of Charlottesville, Virginia. He spends his days in the field or in the studio, and really digs scifi and synthesizers. His favorite organism is either a moss or a fern.
VICTORIA MARIA MOYER
As an ecosomatic practitioner/researcher, VICTORIA studies the inherent bonds between human and earth bodies and walks bridges of feeling between inner and outer landscapes. Her professional background includes work in fields such as eco-landscaping, plant growing and tending, education (arts and nature-connection), somatics and therapeutic support, holistic psychiatric care, performance art, and probably a few others. Although it is impossible to pick favorites, her favorite plant friend and teacher at the time of writing is Stoneroot ("Collinsonia canadensis").
TERRY LILLEY
TERRY has been doing ecological gardening, farming, herbalism, and landscaping for over 20 years. She is dedicated to regenerative and holistic practices in her work, personal development, mothering, and relationships. She currently lives in Afton, VA where she owns and operates a native plant nursery as well as works with the amazing Little Bluestem Collective.
ADVISORY CIRCLE
MICHELE MATTIOLI
After stints living among the coastal redwoods and in the New Mexico desert, MICHELE returned home to the eastern temperate forest over 40 years ago to live in central Virginia. She is grateful for decades of work with University Montessori School and Virginia Organizing, and is delighted to continue working for the good of all beings by serving on the Advisory Circle of the Little Bluestem Collective.
HEATHER PECK
HEATHER supports Little Bluestem cultivating a resilient and harmonious future for Central Virginia's land and people as an innovative collaborator. She loves the outdoors, people, and building a truly healing system of whole healthcare. Enjoying nature while doing generative, harmonizing, human ecology efforts is healthcare!
HYPERION YVAIRE
Todo es místico.