I received a B.S. in Environmental Soil Science from Brigham Young University in 2005.  While there I worked on a number of research projects with diverse interests, including soil testing for P and trace metals applied to Mesoamerican archaeology; wastewater treatment microbiology; and entomology and agriculture research in the island Pacific.  My honors thesis, “Small-Scale Agriculture on Maupiti, French Polynesia,” led directly to a job doing agroenvironmental consulting for Tahitian Noni International after graduation.

I became interested in horticulture and ecology by doing a lot of gardening while growing up.  My dad’s job in the Navy and nuclear engineering took us all over the country, from Honolulu to Miami to Green Bay, Wisconsin and several points in between.  We always kept some kind of garden wherever we lived, so the whole family got to learn about the effects different climates and soils have on the vegetables we thought we already knew how to grow.  (For example: given an unusually cool and wet Green Bay summer, tomatoes will outgrow and smother zucchini.  That was one of our more unexpected outcomes.) 

My husband Rob and I have a little girl, Ainsley, born in October of 2008, and look forward to locating in the Midwest and going into production with a small- to midsize farm with a variety of produce and livestock for direct marketing.  I also plan on putting my DPM training to good use with on-farm research projects and consulting for organic and sustainable operations.  As such, my academic interests are in a variety of topics such as IPM, soil health, rotational grazing, temperate-climate forestry, freshwater aquaculture, and US food and agriculture policy.