Robin Hoy grew up in Bucks County and is active with the Environmental Advisory Council of Wrightstown Township. She led the startup of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project at Anchor Run Farm--one of the first CSAs initiated by a municipality in the country. She is Conservation Chair for the Bucks Sierra Club and is active with the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture and the Northeast Organic Farming Association. She holds a master's degree in environmental studies from the University of Pennsylvania. She is especially interested in the justice, health and environmental reasons for buying local, organically grown food. She lives with her husband Mike (Neshaminy HS chem!) in a passive solar house they built. When they are not off with one of their three grown kids, they are enjoying the antics of their 160 pastured hens or happily preparing eggs, bread or garden bounty for the Wrightstown Farmers' Market.

An independent professional writer providing communications services to area businesses, Cookie’s background includes more than 30 years in journalism, public relations, business writing and training. She grew up on an old farmstead in Plumstead Township, smack in the middle of the pivotal ’50s and ’60s when the farmers in the area were just starting to sell out to developers. She remembers her first taste of sweet peas right out of the pod in a neighboring farmer’s garden, eating shortcake topped with wild strawberries and collecting eggs from her big brother’s 4H-project hens. Having been raised on local history, she appreciates antecedents—where do we come from? who was here before us? how did former inhabitants make a mark on their environments? Her fascination lies in the connections between our agricultural past and the call for a sustainable future for ourselves and our planet.

Meryl co-leads the Education Committee of the Foodshed Alliance. She has been a leader at Anchor Run Farm CSA and a long time Bucks County resident. She is an experienced pre-school and elementary educator and has been involved in the development of youth programs for over 30 years. Her experience includes teaching as well as working to analyze, assess, and develop unique youth programs, including parent-child and special needs classes. As a children's programming expert and consultant she specializes in creating, developing, organizing and implementing youth classes, dance departments, and sports activity programs for preschools, elementary schools, camps and within the health club industry. Other areas of specialization include curriculum development, teacher training, marketing, member relations and event planning. Most recently she has been involved in new business development, research of projects, client relations, and the development and production of marketing strategies. She has a degree in psychology, and has made numerous presentations in her areas of expertise. She is particularly interested in helping children learn where food comes from, how it grows and how food choices contribute to our health. She and her grown family love gourmet cooking and local, fresh foods and agriculture are a priority for the entire family. She is a docent at the Michener Museum of Art, and currently sits on the boards of several non-profit organizations.

Susan co-leads the Education Committee of the Bucks County Foodshed Alliance. She is particularly interested in connecting children to farms to learn where food comes from and how it grows. She is busy helping their family farm, Snipes Farm in Morrisville, to transition to organic production and educational priorities, a farm that has been in their family for more than two centuries.

Paul is the president of the BucksMont Organic Gardeners, teaching healthy, sustainable gardening practices while protecting the environment which sustains all life on Earth.

Paul comes from generations of small scale family farmers in Vermont where his father ran a roadside vegetable farm market. He has experience starting and operating a hydroponics lettuce greenhouse business marketing to local restaurant and grocery businesses.

Paul is interested in promoting residential food production, developing skills for winter harvest and food storage, developing local food processing, and local distribution methods for a local food economy. Paul is very concerned about global pollution to the web of life, resource depletion (especially oil), and making our communities more resilient in the face of these challenges.

Gina is the Public Relations Manager at Applegate Farms, a natural and organic meat company in Bridgewater, New Jersey. She was asked by Applegate Farms to create The Organic Schoolhouse Foundation, a nonprofit initiative that educates young people across the country about organic food and sustainable farming practices. Two years ago Gina started a Farm-to-Table summer program at the Bucks County Technical High School. The program combines the teaching of basic culinary techniques with the growing of vegetables and herbs from seed in the school's organic garden. Gina has also used the Farm-to-Table program with youth at The Bridge, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility in Philadelphia. Gina and her husband own The Cafe© @the Sporting Club in the Bellevue Hotel in Philadelphia.

Diana Cercone is the editor of both Montgomery Town & Country Living and Chester County Town & Country Living magazines and the associate editor and contributing writer with Bucks County Town & Country Living magazine. As a journalist she specializes in food, travel, and art, and has written for The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Art Matters, among other publications. A long advocate of sustainable agriculture and community supported farm markets, she is an avid practitioner of think globally/eat locally, who strives to build community awareness about food issues and the benefits of buying and eating locally. Over the years she has cultivated relationships with area farmers and chefs, both professionally and personally, and is a strong supporter of farmer/chef tables. Diana is also a member of Slow Food and has written several articles on the subject. Her favorite room is always a well-equipped kitchen where she can cook Italian food using local ingredients.

Kimberly is the Bucks County Convivium Leader of Slow Food, a movement to catalyze a broad cultural shift away from the destructive effects of an industrial food system and fast life; toward the regenerative cultural, social and economic benefits of a sustainable food system, regional food traditions, the pleasures of the table, and a slower and more harmonious rhythm of life. She learned about The Slow Food Movement in California where she worked as a Development Officer for the Culinary Institute of America's Napa Valley, Greystone Campus and also attended wine education classes. She had worked as a sommelier at some of the areas finer local restaurants and is currently working on an entrepreneurial project that will expand the market for Bucks County agriculture. Her personal slow time is spent cooking for family and friends, hosting monthly wine tastings in her home, reading and gardening.

Jane is the Outreach Committee chair for the Bucks County Foodshed Alliance and coordinates our information table at the Wrightstown Farmers' Market. Jane serves on the Board of Supervisors of Wrightstown Township as well as on the Bucks County Open Space Committee and numerous other boards and committees. She has been an ardent supporter of farm and open space preservation in Bucks County. She grew up on a Kansas wheat farm and is particularly sensitive to the needs and concerns of farmers today. She is retired from her molecular biology lab research and professorship at the University of Pennsylvania and enjoys spending her spare time gardening and preserving the art of colonial cooking.

Susan serves on our Farmers' Markets Committee and manages the Doylestown Farmers' Market and New Hope Farmers' Market. Susan has been active for years in sustainable agriculture and lives on their family farm in Buckingham. Susan is an experienced environmental and nature studies educator.

Dr. Jacqueline Ricotta is an Associate Professor of Horticulture at Delaware Valley College. Originally from Rochester, NY, she received her B.S. degree from Cornell University, M.S. degree from North Carolina State University, and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. Dr. Ricotta teaches courses in Sustainable Agriculture, Organic Crop Science, Integrated Pest Management, Commercial Vegetable Production and Marketing of Horticultural Products. In addition to being on the board of the Bucks County Foodshed Alliance, she is active in the Sustainable Agriculture Education Association and the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture. Jackie and her husband have two busy sons and in her rare moments of spare time enjoy reading, gardening and cooking Italian meals from fresh, local ingredients.

Brenda Slack is a fourth generation farmer from Newtown, PA. The previous generations were dairy farmers until her father, Carl Slack, sold their Holstein herd in 1988. After graduating from Council Rock in 1991 Brenda attended West Virginia University and Eastern Washington University and obtained her Master's degree in Psychology in 1997. She practiced in psychology for ten years before she felt a need for more balance in her life and returned to farming in 2007.

She and her father now farm their 120 acre farm in Upper Makefield in 30 acres of produce and 90 acres of soybeans, field corn, hay and straw. Brenda sells her produce at the New Hope and Wrightstown Farmer's Markets as well as maintains her own retail outlet, the Milk House Farm Market, in the dairy barn on their farm. She has 300 laying hens and two pet pot-bellied pigs.

Brenda and her father have been involved with the Bucks County Foodshed Alliance for two years before her election to the board. Brenda brings her knowledge and expertise in the therapeutic aspects of caring for plants and animals and children's involvement in agriculture, as well as her interest in growing organic grains and marketing produce in a more informative and eye catching way to the work of the Foodshed Alliance.