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Nourishing People and Planet

Aerial view of The Ecology Center farm.
In the beginning, The Ecology Center started as an educational garden designed to inspire a shift toward living spaces that exist in harmony with nature.

Over the years, our organization has grown into a working demonstration of an ecological food future for our community, with the goal of cultivating transformation in our collective food culture. But when the 2020 pandemic brought our programming to a pause, we were left with a choice: indefinitely shutter our organization, or invest all our resources and efforts into growing food for our community.  

Evan Marks holding sprouting purple broccoli.

The choice was obvious, and we haven’t looked back since. Resolving to lean into our value for community has turned out to be a source of unexpected growth for our Village. We’ve expanded our farm from 1 acre to 28 and created new programs around health, nutrition and culinary leadership. Along with growing food enjoyed by thousands of families on a weekly basis, we’ve provided over 150,000 pounds of food to individuals and families struggling with food insecurity. Along the way, we’ve discovered new opportunities to grow and improve the work we do. Along with growing more food and engaging more people, we’re focusing more than ever on the rich cultural heritage of our community and the deep agricultural roots within the land we share. We are the newcomers in a long lineage of land stewards in this valley. Their legacy nourishes our work to cultivate sustainable abundance for all.

We’ve always believed that our best way to help our community is to change the food system. 

But now we’ve seen that the best way to change the food system is to help our community.

It’s simple.

It’s profound.

Best of all, it’s delicious.

This feature is part of our year-end Impact Report, which will be released online as a series over the next few months. We can only have a transformative impact on the food system with your support, so please click here to make a donation and help us in our mission to build an abundant future.