Project Leader Biographies: Lopez Locavores

Jean Perry began feeding people early in life and fell back on this for a livelihood while studying for her MA in Near Eastern Languages and Literature. As a partner in a Seattle pizzeria, she began to view providing honestly good food as undertaking with potentially radical consequences in areas as varied as health, social justice, culture, agriculture, and economy. Jean and her family moved to Lopez in 1993, in part to have more gardening space, and she started Vortex Café and Juice Bar in 1996, hoping to provide simple food and a congenial gathering place to the people of the island.

Kim Bast was fortunate to have grown up under the loving tutelage of many fine cooks, and knew at an early age that her life’s focus would be food.  Her memories are defined by the smells, textures, and tastes of meals gone by. Kim has prepared meals at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, base camp on Mt. Rainier, and many fine kitchens in between. She lives with her husband and a bevy of animals on a farm on Lopez Island, where she’s discovered that growing food is as much fun as cooking it.

Danah Feldman has lived and grown food on Lopez Island for over 30 years. She has a passion for playing in the dirt, and falls into the category of the Horticulturally Obsessed. Danah is a Psychotherapist and Consultant in private practice with more than 25 years experience. The focus of her work--with individuals, families, groups, and in community--is to facilitate people in going beyond what they think is possible. She loves growing things--people, food, flowers, community--and delights in the challenge to do so.

Sue Roundy grew up in Northwest Washington where her family fished, hunted, dug clams, picked oysters, and foraged for mushrooms. A local farmer delivered eggs and milk, and every summer her mother canned local fruit and vegetables. Sue and her family moved to Lopez Island in part for the abundant local organic food. Sue has been a community volunteer working in support of kids and the arts for 30 years. She created a volunteer visual arts program for the Coupeville Schools and helped establish the Coupeville Boys and Girls Club.  In addition to being a Lopez Locavore, Sue is a member of the Lopez Community Land Trust board.

Michele Heller and her husband Steve have a 15-acre certified-organic farm on Lopez Island. Their farm reflects their mutual lifelong love of growing fruits, flowers, and vegetables, and their son’s interest in raising heritage chickens, ducks, turkeys and goats. Michele's work is based on the belief that the viability of a society depends on living soil and the food it produces, and that individual, community, and environmental health are interdependent. Lopez Locavores/Evening Meals at School is part of a group of synergistic projects she co-founded/supports that include a K-12 school garden program, biodynamic teaching farm and a one-mile fitness/ecology trail (see www.HellerFamilyFoundation.org). Aesthetics, social justice, people connecting with each other, and having a few more hours in the day also compete for space at the top of her wish list.

Marney Reynolds brings to the Lopez Locavores her love for raising food, cooking, and sharing what she grows.  She comes by this naturally--her maternal Sicilian grandparents raised food and sold it from vegetable carts in Palermo and her paternal Scottish grandparents raised chickens and turkeys and sold their produce at the Farmers Market in Seattle. She was surrounded by people who loved to eat wholesome food and could cook it so wonderfully well! Marney's other involvements are art (she taught classes at Western Washington University), as well as political and environmental activism (she co-founded No Spray Zone in Seattle).  She is a strong proponent for reducing the use of pesticides and chemicals, especially when it comes to raising food.  Her motto is "What you put into the earth today, you eat and drink tomorrow!"

A relatively new full-time transplant to Lopez, Ande Finley loves to cook and is ecstatic to (finally) have a kitchen that is fun to work in and a burgeoning garden from which she and her husband feed themselves all summer.  Over the years, she has raised vegetables, berries, and chickens, tended fruit trees, and grown to appreciate the value of preserving the precious resource of farmland.  After meeting Sue Roundy at the Lopez dump one day, she attended her first Land Trust Harvest Dinner (winning one of the first prizes!), started helping with the Evening Meal food prep, and found herself drawn irresistibly to the dynamic group of women calling themselves the Lopez Locavores.