About Us

 Courtney Guido has been gardening and farming since 2003. She lived and worked at Southern Exposure Seed Exchange where she learned about seed saving and small scale organic farming. Since then she has had a passion for learning and teaching others about growing their own food. She has also been an experienced farm mentor for Future Harvest,  and a farm mentor for the Mid-Atlantic Beginning Farmer Training Program.

In 2005 she and her husband Brian Cricket Rakita (COO of Operations for QCS Organic Certification) moved a few miles down the road to Crickhollow Farm in Louisa, VA where she manages her small homestead that raises goats, chickens, and vegetables for her family and a few neighbors.

Courtney really enjoys gardening and growing her own food and loves it even more when other people want to talk about it with her.

She has experience with multiple methods of organic farming and gardening and has helped friends and family plan their small back yard garden plots over the years. Whether its a few raised beds or a several 1000 square foot kitchen garden, the planning is something she really enjoys.

Veteran farmer Amyrose has been enjoying the farm life in the bucolic countryside of the commonwealth since 2005 when she returned for good after her service to the U.S. Army had previously stationed her here. She runs currently runs Virginia Free Farm at Spotted Pig Holler which feeds those in our community that are historically underserved. She has served on task forces addressing racial equity in agriculture at the request of the Virginia Ag Commissioner, testified before the Maryland General Assembly of legislative language concerning urban agriculture, and to date received two invitations for advisement to the White House for her in-depth work at the intersections of racial equity,  and agriculture, specifically regarding environmental work, and tribal advisement.

She has a primary focus on indigenous agriculture, working with Virginia's federally recognized tribes on their food sovereignty programs, has served as the Director of Farmer Training for the Mid-Atlantic region,  and the Program Director for the Urban Agriculture Collective in central Virginia, and as a current board member for Common Grain Alliance. 

Her farm straddles Goochland, Fluvanna, and Louisa Counties in central Virginia. She focuses on no till growing, habitat conservation, pigs, bees, and poultry. As a regular writer, and presenter from such diverse orgs as Mother Earth News, to Food tank, combined with her successful background in marketing, and farming uniquely positions her to effectively help you grow your agribusiness.  

Vanessa Bolin is a traditional Indigenous artist, farmer, educator, activist, street medic/ trainer and founder of the Eyes Wide Open Project, Richmond Indigenous Society, River City Medic Collective/Richmond Community Care Collective. She sits on the board for SANTOS which is dedicated to providing bail funds for the undocumented community, she is also on the board for the Virginia Network for Democracy and Environmental Rights. 

 She is also the founder of the Community Roots garden. She studied Paramedic Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University. Vanessa served as a medic in Standing Rock ND during the No DAPL movement and in Charlottesville on August 12 traveled to Houston after Hurricane Harvey and acted as a street medic where she served and cared for the flood survivors. She established a Mutual Aid Disaster Relief warehouse in Robeson Co., NC after hurricane Florence and has taught street medic trainings across the country. She is deeply passionate about preserving the environment for her grandchildren and the next 7 generations. 

Deb Dramby has been running Communication & Outreach for Future Harvest: The Chesapeake Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture, since 2019. Prior to that, she co-founded and spent six+ years four-season farming at Willowsford Farm, a well-known agri-hood in Loudoun County, Virginia. At Willowsford, she built and managed a bustling Farm Stand, pick-your-own garden, a 300+ member CSA, and helped launch several farming enterprises including laying hens, broilers, pasture-raised pork and most famously, a herd of weed-eating goats.

Before production farming, her drive to learn about agriculture led her to the University of Maryland’s Institute of Applied Agriculture, where she graduated from a program for Sustainable Agriculture and played a pivotal role in the creation of the UMD Community Learning Garden. After the university allowed the use of Eco-Goats to clear the hillside that became the garden, she fell in love with the goats and their mission, became an apprentice, and eventually started her own herd, who are now retired but formerly operated as 56 Hooves.

Deb’s interest and ability to engage people in meaningful conversations about food and farming keep her active in the regional farm scene. While she can speak to many aspects of mid-scale farming, she considers her expertise to lie mostly in small ruminant management & health, chickens for eggs & meat, community building, and both digital & relationship marketing.