About Us
Mission
The Harvest Collective LLC is a regenerative worker-owned agriculture business that empowers ownership in vibrant ecosystems through community farms, food scrap diversion programs, and ecological mentorship.
Vision
The Harvest Collective LLC is a community-based agriculture business that helps families and individuals to reconnect and restore their relationship with their local ecological systems. We are united by growing food and maintaining healthy, bountiful relationships. We build our community by outlining decision-making and data collection processes that create democratic and equitable ownership in local food systems. We will always strive to improve, learn, and modify our systems to produce quality compost, plants, and wonder.
The Harvest Collective LLC founded and is an owner of Star City Compost LLC, creating quality, fertile compost and compost products for gardeners, landscapers, and farmers in the Roanoke Valley by coordinating the area’s only food waste and organics recycling program at our permitted compost facility. We are committed to supporting and supplying compost to a network of growers and sustainable businesses in our region.
We are also a proud partner of Lick Run CDC – a nonprofit creating resilient infrastructure, an environment for interaction and exchange in the local human & biological ecosystems, and opportunities for education and community initiatives. We provide valueable resources to achieve our shared goals, and are an active partner in their education programming.
Our Story
A Montessori toddler teacher, a biologist, a retail manager, a law student, an environmental educator, and a sociologist walk into a bar... Ours is a story of serendipity and perseverance in the face of difficulties. It includes a cross-country road trip to pick up trash, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and a house fire. While we each took our own journey to get here, and this project is over a decade in the making, eventually we all gathered together and planted a food forest.
Our team boasts bachelors, masters, and law degrees, numerous certifications, and decades of management experience. Most important, we have a proven track record of compassionate community development.
Each of us shows up with our own history of successes and failures. Our opportunities for continued growth are like seeds, needing the right conditions to eventually bear fruit. Supporting each other in this process, we learn what to compost, creating the perfect soil to help our seeds to grow.
