Learn how to
rejuvenate forested land through the cultivation of medicinal herbs, mushrooms, and maple syrup during this full-day event at the YMC Forest Farm. |
Marlana Pennington
Branch and Root Forest Farm
https://branchandrootforestfarm.com/
Marlana resides in eastern West Virginia, with her husband and 3 daughters, together they operate Branch and Root Forest Farm. The small scale forest farm grows primarily ramps and a variety of mushrooms, along with a small patch of goldenseal, black cohosh, blue cohosh and bloodroot. The property also has a hearty native population of Solomon's seal, wild cherry, and witch hazel, as well as several maple trees.
Marlana officially started forest farming in 2022 after receiving the CAGP grant, but grew up enjoying ramps every spring, and now enjoys growing them, along with educating others about these special plants, while selling value-added products and mushrooms at local markets. Seasonally, Marlana also hosts small homeschool groups, as well as local families on the farm for maple tapping exhibitions and mushroom tours/harvests. |
Ed Daniels
Shady Grove Botanicals
Ed is a forest and market farmer in the heart of the Appalachian mountains. Born and raised in West Virginia, he and his wife, Carole, began planting wild harvested American ginseng on their farm in the mid-1990’s. They incorporated other forest medicinals, like goldenseal, ramps, and black cohosh, and continue adding other native plants to their properties. In 2016, they started a small business, named Shady Grove Botanicals, where they grow and sell starter kits to beginning forest farmers, as well as produce several value-added products.
They attend and present at forest farming conferences to increase and share their knowledge. Since 2016, Ed has been teaching the youth how to grow at-risk medicinals using sustainable and organic methods. Shortly thereafter, they incorporated vegetables into their program to teach kids how to grow their own food. This is how their non-profit, Plant the Seed Project, began. |
Will Lewis
WV Forest Farming Initiative Coordinator
Blessed Bee www.yewmountain.org/forest-farming
Will is the Yew Mountain Center’s forest farming coordinator and a technical service provider for the West Virginia Forest Farming Initiative (WVFFI). His degree in Horticulture served as a great baseline for him to launch into the forest farming coordinator at the Yew Mountain center in 2018.
Since then he has been establishing the forest farm at the Yew and has been trained to offer site visits and other technical assistance to forest farmers through the WVFFI. Will, alongside Erica Marks, was instrumental in creating the West Virginia Forest Farming Initiative project of the Yew Mountain Center and regional partners. He also works as a seasonal honey bee inspector for the West Virginia Department of Agriculture and manages his own beehives for his business which sells bees, queens, and hive products. With his years of experience in agriculture he has a diverse background of whole farm management to help serve farmers that are establishing or diversifying their farms. |
Ken Beezley
Davis and Elkins College Instructor
www.dewv.edu/staff/kenneth-beezley/
Ken Beezley is an Instructor at Davis and Elkins College in the Department of Biology, Environmental Science, and Sustainability and Forest Technology program, teaching courses in Silviculture, Forest Management, Ecosystem Protection and Forest and Wood Products.
A Registered Professional Forester and Certified Arborist, Ken has over two decades of experience in the forest management and professional tree care sectors, offering management and consulting services as a small business owner. Ken attended Glenville State University and WVU for forestry and received a master’s degree in Forestry from WVU researching tree biomechanics. Outside of his professional career, Ken enjoys being outdoors exploring nature, attending live music events and resides in the Hillsboro, WV area with his wife and two teenage sons. |
Wes White
Shadowlands Farm LLC
Shadowlands Farm LLC was born from a passion for clean, ethical, and nutrient-dense food. Starting as an urban homestead in KY and evolving to a “Farmette” in CO, we have now blossomed into a full-scale direct-market regenerative farm in the Highlands of Virginia. Since 2021, we’ve been establishing our roots in SW Highland County, building fences, pens, huts, sheds, a barn, and a future butcher shop with a custom exempt processing facility.
We’re committed to a resilient future, integrating livestock and poultry to mimic natural systems, seeking to sustain and protect our local ecosystems. We raise heritage Duroc hogs, Boer goats, egg layers, broilers and will be adding grass-fed beef in the coming year, additionally in our woodlot we tend and grow forest botanicals such as Ramps, Goldenseal, Solomon’s Seal, Ginseng, Goldenseal, Cohosh, etc. Our journey is ongoing, and we look forward to sharing more as we grow. |
Trevor Swan
Hillsboro Maple Works
The Swan family has been making syrup since 2015 and now have roughly 1100 maple taps and 120 sycamore taps. They have just a handful of maples at our house outside Hillsboro, where our sugar shack is located. Most of the trees we're tapping are leased from several landowners on the beautiful waters of Stamping Creek of the Greenbrier River, in addition to our partnership with the Yew Mountain Center in Lobelia.
Hillsboro Maple Works aim to provide an economically and environmentally sustainable alternative forest land management to traditional timbering. They are lovers of maple syrup and other maple sweets and products, and have a growing sweet tooth for additional tree syrups such as Sycamore, Black Walnut, Birch, Beech, Hickory... who knows what they'll try next year. They enjoy seeing the agricultural and tourism related value that this adventure brings. |
Jon Lamastra
Lamastra Farms
https://lamastra-farms-llc.square.site/
Jon Lamastra is the owner of Lamastra Farms, a family run agri-business. Located in beautiful Greenbrier County, their focus is on growing high quality gourmet and medicinal mushrooms, mushroom spawn, grow kits, heirloom produce, and egg/meat production of poultry and other small livestock.
While they focus on agricultural production, they also offer educational workshops, as well as perform several speaking presentations for the local community, including such organizations as the WV Master Gardeners Society, The Shepherd Center, The WV Mushroom Club, The WV School of Osteopathic Medicine, and the Yew Mountain Center. At Lamastra Farms, their goal is to spread the knowledge of the nutritional and medicinal benefits of mushrooms and their cultivation methods, to help people be able to grow their own food as well as their own medicine. |
Bella Walker
Appalachian Headwaters
https://appheadwaters.org/program/native-plant-nursery/
Bella is Appalachian Headwaters Native Plant Program Director; her career has been focused on growing native plants from local populations and getting them back out into the landscapes where they belong.
With Appalachian Headwaters, Bella is focused on engaging the community in native gardens and landscapes; offering retail and wholesale native plant inventories, educational greenhouse and garden workshops, botanical tours, and of course locally-collected seed-grown native plants. |
Tyson Sampson
Bigwitch Indian Wisdom Initiative
www.bigwitchindianwisdom.org
Tyson Sampson is a two-hearted and two-spirited individual who has descended from the indigenous matriarchy called the ᎠᏂᎩᎶᎯ (A-ni-gi-lo-hi). He grew up in the Bigwitch community (Western NC) and that’s where his roots originate.
Tyson has a background in the healing arts and communications. He has been of service in his communities here and beyond for 19+ years. In multi-faceted contributions, he has worked on everything from documenting endangered language, holding mindful awareness/presence, to sharing wild food practices and cultural sensibilities about Cherokee cuisine. He has contributed to efforts for residents of the Qualla Indian Boundary to have more intimate and legally protective relationships to plants/wild foods in this indigenous bioregion. Currently, Tyson is cultivating an apothecary for ethnobotanical accessibility, called Bigwitch Botanicals. He is also developing a broader collective to support traditional ecological knowledge for his fellow tribesfolk, called the Bigwitch Indian Wisdom Initiative ᏍᎩᎵᎡᏆᎯ ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯ ᎠᎦᏙᎲᎢ. |
Contact Us
Yew Mountain Center 9494 Lobelia Road, Hillsboro, WV 24946 E: [email protected] P: 304-653-4079 |
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