Staff and Board

Eric served here from 2022 to 2024 as CSA Partnerships for Health Program Director, where he helped build the healthcare partnerships and Medicaid reimbursement infrastructure that connect patients at Multnomah County health clinics to locally grown produce as a form of preventive care.
At Ecotrust, as Director of Food Equity, he led grant programs channeling direct funding to BIPOC urban farmers, developed statewide institutional procurement pathways for small producers, and built climate-smart agriculture initiatives across Oregon and the broader Pacific Northwest. Before that, he spent years at the High Line in New York, finishing as Director of Horticulture. At Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn, a historic African American cultural museum, he served as Curator of Living Collections, building an urban farm and community seed library as a means of cultural preservation, food access, and environmental stewardship rooted in African American and Afro-Caribbean food pathways.

Kristie grew up in a variety of different places until landing at Lewis & Clark College in 2006. After 17 years in Portland, she can now confidently say this is where she is from. Kristie began her farming journey with the very apprenticeship that she now helps lead. Kristie was inspired to go into sustainable agriculture while studying the intersection of food and social justice at PSU. When Kristie is not farming she can be found playing with her two sweet pups or doing projects in her new home just down the road from Zenger Farm.

Coming to us from the great state of Vermont, Sara is a powerhouse of a farmer, bringing to the team an impressive breadth of education and experience in agriculture from all across the country. When Sara isn’t farming at Zenger, she’s probably still farming with her partner and friend at Fast and Loose, growing delicious produce for local restaurants. In the few minutes a day Sara has between farm tasks you’ll find her playing with cats that aren’t her own, sending photos of adoptable pups to her partner or experimenting with gluten free sourdough.

Luke’s path to Zenger Farm starts in the kitchen of his childhood home in Bloomington, IL, where he began to experiment and learn to sate his curiosity and considerable appetite. As a repeat student at the University of Oregon’s Urban Farm, he was sparked by the combination of experiential learning in growing food, coupled with critical inquiry into food systems and more-than-human ecology. After a few years working in Spain as a teacher, he moved to Portland to pursue a graduate degree in PSU’s Leadership for Sustainability Education program, drawn by the promise of learning how to create the sort of experiences in learning gardens that had helped him along his path. Through years of thinking about and practicing urban agriculture, he honed in on year-round food cultivation, soil ecology, seed stewardship,  as ways to work at the speed of Life. He has heroes in Masanobu Fukuoka, Carol Deppe, Steve Solomon, the team at Wild Garden Seed Co., and Adaptive Seeds.  When he’s not geeking out about rare culinary cultivars of food plants, he’s probably fishing, play-fighting with his cats, or cooking up some of the food he spends all his time trying to find/grow/pick/forage/glean.

An Oregonian and outdoor enthusiast through and through, Mike grew up exploring the greater Portland area. His connection with Zenger began in 2018 when he joined the Beginning Farmer Apprenticeship and returned to join the crew the year after in 2019. Following that, he and his partner started Two Hills Farm – focused on dry farming practices and serving a 20 person community CSA and 2 farmers markets. When he’s not growing food you’ll either find him with his pup, baby and partner at the dog park, or conquering some feat of outdoor athleticism. Mike loves to ski, surf, cycle and backpack his way through life – or really anything that keeps him outdoors.