Jered Lawson and Nancy Vail: Pie Ranch: A Rural Center for Urban Renewal

Urban Farm DB summary

A profile of Pie Ranch, a farm on a coastal hillside in southern San Mateo County, California, between Santa Cruz and San Francisco. Jered Lawson and Nancy Vail, together with San Francisco-based Karen Heisler, established this non-profit working farm in 2002 as a place for city youth to learn about food. It produces nearly everything needed to make pie — pumpkins, berries, tree fruits, eggs, milk, butter, honey, and wheat. Students and teachers from urban high schools make monthly farm visits throughout the school year, experiencing hands-on learning about soil, compost, weather, the cycle of planting, tending and harvesting crops, the challenges and rewards of group work, and cooking and eating from-scratch meals. Pie Ranch also offers year-long apprenticeships, summer internships, monthly work parties and barn dances, and various educational and cultural events, sells produce at a roadside stand on coastal Route 1, and works with the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) to protect the historic Steele dairy lands. Lawson is described as a UC Santa Cruz community studies graduate and former apprentice at the university's Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS), who spent a summer during college at Live Power Community Farm in Covelo, Mendocino County. The text is cut off mid-sentence during this biographical description.