About Us
Mission
The Harvest Collective is a regenerative agriculture business cooperative that empowers ownership in vibrant ecosystems through community farms, food scrap diversion programs, and ecological mentorship.
Vision
The Harvest Collective is a community-based agriculture business cooperative 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.
Our Business
The Harvest collective is a worker-owner cooperative building Roanoke City’s first permitted compost facility, organize ownership in sustainable community agriculture, and provide products and consultations to proliferate an ecologically based food renaissance.
Our compost facility, food scrap drop off stations, as well as residential curbside and commercial tote pick-up programs aim to divert roughly 440 tons of food waste from Roanoke City annually. With an emphasis on quality product, testing, and improvement we will become the go-to source for quality compost, compost teas, and worm castings for local gardeners, farmers, landscapers, and community gardens.
By organizing a pool of talented ecological thinkers in the Roanoke Valley, we provide quality consultations for home and business owners to plant more ecologically diverse landscapes that support our bees, sequester carbon, and produce food. By organizing our community as a membership base, we work together to build food forests, support sustainable husbandry, and enhance our community resiliency.
The Harvest Collective is a resource for changing times, reminding us of ancient rewards. The time we devote to restoring our relationship with our natural resources is a timeless tale that defines humanity’s survival or extinction. The Harvest Collective is an avenue for humanity to focus on the things that deeply matter – community, ecology, good food, and good times.
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.
