Stewardship Team

  • Gavi is a land steward, dancer, and community organizer. They co-founded Zumwalt Acres in 2020 and are grateful to be living and working at Zumwalt Acres full-time since graduating last May with a degree in earth science and mechanical engineering from Yale University. Gavi is excited about ways that we can be in loving relationship with our bodies, the land and waterways, one another, and our ancestors. They are often found dancing in the fields, wandering the woods, baking bread, contemplating climate science, and striving to live into Jewish time.

Gavi Welbel

Program Steward

Eric Luu

Farm Steward

  • Eric (he/him) brings to Zumwalt Acres a passion for botany and education and is inspired to cultivate everyone's ecological responsibility. He combines experience growing edible and native plants for over 10 years in his home garden, interning with the urban agriculture program at Loyola University Chicago, and educating in schools and community spaces with The Organic Gardener. He apprenticed at Zumwalt Acres in the summer and fall of 2021 and returns as a farm manager, excited to continue co-creating perennial systems on the land.

Patricia Mathu

Organization Steward

  • Patricia is a graduate student interested in people, plants, and place. Growing up, her mom ran the local farmers market: teaching her an early love for local food systems. She is inspired by quiet mornings, beets, and Dorothy Day.

Remi Welbel

Community Steward

  • Remi is a co-creator of the Zumwalt Acres farming community and acts as the Community Steward. Currently, they are a medical student focusing on the intersections of climate change, food systems, and health.

    Remi is a radish enthusiast, loves to bake bread, and probably intersperses more Yiddish words into their everyday vernacular than your bubbie. She loves getting to collaborate with other folks who are excited about land-based reparative work, health equity work, and radical & expansive community building.

Sophie Lieberman

Resource Steward

  • Sophie is a farmer and researcher of the intersections of agriculture, plant biodiversity, and lifeways. She co-founded Zumwalt Acres and has been involved in stewarding this project from both near and far since. She was a 2022 Fulbright Scholar in Ecuador after studying environmental anthropology and Spanish at Yale University. Sophie enjoys meeting other farmers, turning compost, and exploring trails.

Marya Matlin-Wainer

Fellowship Steward

  • Marya Matlin-Wainer lives in Brooklyn, with fond memories of mushroom foraging and expansive sunsets from her seasons in Sheldon. She studies novel ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, such as enhanced weathering of basalt rock, as seen in field trials at ZA. She is passionate about curbing and redistributing food waste and urban biking.

Acacia Berg

Farm Steward

  • Acacia co-manages the farm as ZA Farm Steward and spends their time tending to the plants, trees, chickens, bees, community members, and other beings of this midwestern home. She brings learnings from her environmental studies and research in sustainable agriculture to her work at Zumwalt Acres, as well as experience as a farm and school garden educator and organic farmer at various scales. In living and farming at Zumwalt Acres, Acacia finds deep fulfillment and home in the intersection of regenerative practice, renewal Judaism, queerness, and intentional community.

JR Zumwalt

Land Steward

Community Council

Stephanie Berger

  • Stephanie is an environmental educator and urban farmer currently working at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in Brooklyn, NY. They spent two seasons at Zumwalt Acres, where they snuggled the farm cats, got excited about farm/food safety, and learned to enjoy radishes for the first time.

Nadav Kempinski

  • Nadav is from San Diego, California and is pursuing a Master's in Environmental Management (with specialty in pollution remediation) at UC Santa Barbara in pollution remediation. He hopes to use his mushroom knowledge from ZA to turn brownfields into communal farming projects!

Maia Welbel

  • Maia is a writer and movement artist from Chicago currently in residence at Urban Adamah in Berkeley, CA. She has a Master’s degree in climate journalism specializing in sustainable food systems, and her work has been featured in publications including Ambrook Research, i-D, In These Times, mindbodygreen, Cherry Bombe Magazine, Green Building & Design, Closed Loop Cooking, and more. Maia has performed and choreographed as a contemporary dancer throughout Chicago and in the Bay Area. She is thrilled to be exploring the intersections of dance and climate action as a co-director of UneARTh Arts Society and co-creator of Landing: A Movement Festival at Zumwalt Acres! In her spare time you can find her baking, reading, hiking in the Berkeley hills, and volunteering as an equine therapy assistant.

Ayden Holzkenner

  • Coming all the way from Brooklyn, NY, Ayden is so excited to get back on the farm and down in the dirt! She’s been reveling in all things fungal, animal, and musical. She can’t wait to see more flowers bloom, eat more alliums, and make more memories with the amazing spring 2024 team.

Maranda Raskin

  • Maranda is a writer and community builder who is passionate about the intersections of food justice, labor rights and embodied land connections. She is a Project Manager with the City of Chicago where she drives programs and policies to build a resilient, equitable food system in Chicago and advances urban agriculture initiatives. Previously, she worked with the national Farmers Market Coalition to advocate for farmers markets at the federal level and with the Equal Rights Center to conduct a civil rights testing investigation into a major fast food chain. She stewarded the land at Zumwalt Acres in Fall 2021 and misses the Sheldon sunrises and farm cats every day.

Isabella Zhou

  • Isa is a writer, dancer, educator, and organizer who cares about cultivating embodied knowledge of our interdependence with land and all beings. She was a farm fellow at Zumwalt Acres in summer 2022 and returned in summer 2024 to co-organize Landing, a dance festival, and build movement-based community with the land. She received a B.A. in Ethnicity, Race and Migration from Yale University, and at the farm, she is often found rolling around in the grass, experimenting with kombucha flavors, and adoring the cats. 

Martina Silberman

  • Martina is from the Bay Area and studied Environmental Studies and International Affairs at Northeastern University in Boston. Since graduating, she volunteered at an Indigenous territory in BC, did a conservation/trail crew, worked as a barista, and moved to Zumwalt Acres in September. She has loved feeling connected to the land and seasons, learning about soil, plants, and ecology, and building a Jewish community. In her free time, she enjoys crafting, reading, hiking, playing hacky sack, and line dancing!

Margalit Lytton

  • ZA is Margalit's first farm experience. Since starting in Fall '23 she has enjoyed building relationships with the land, plants, and people at ZA. In her free time, Margalit enjoys letter writing, spoon carving, and preserving.

Farm Fellows

Ella Cunningham

  • About Ella

Luisa Cichowski

  • About Luisa

Anya Kaplan-Hartnett

  • Anya grew up between corn and soy fields in Champaign-Urbana and studied at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. Her interests include civic engagement, urban and regional politics, and food justice. She loves climbing (trees, rocks, plastic, etc.) and can be found with her nose in a good book!

Daniella Shear

  • About Daniella