Wendy Marie Crews

Wendy Crews – Garden, Pantry, and Homesteading Expert

Wendy Crews is a garden and pantry educator and homesteading veteran, dedicated to educating, mentoring, consulting, and designing in service of grassroots local food leaders—individuals and groups committed to growing food, teaching food production, and feeding their communities. With over four decades of hands-on experience and study in DIY, regenerative, and sustainable living skills, Wendy brings deep knowledge and a strong desire to support pay-it-forward organizations and community-driven efforts.

She has a particular gift for seeing the potential for abundant, inviting gardens in places others overlook: vacant lots, window boxes, light poles with hanging baskets, large fruiting containers between parked cars, and all kinds of shared or public spaces. This gift comes from a lifelong connection to plants, strengthened by decades of homesteading and practical experience. Wendy places the greatest value on working with sincere, committed growing stewards—people and groups genuinely invested in tending, learning, and showing up over time.

Her One Small Garden program and Real Food Culinary Academy support organizations and neighborhood cooperatives building durable, community-based local food security. Wendy is currently available for online work and can travel to your project.

Wendy’s Vision and Opportunities

• Wendy is seeking a new home for her dream greenhouse and demonstration gardens.
• She hopes to collaborate in a folk school teaching regenerative living skills—onsite, virtually, and through traveling project sites.
• She is open to joining an established fruit farm, offering lifetime caretaking in exchange for a place to call her forever home.

Preferred Criteria for Location:

• Sunshine-rich, snow-free or nearly so; prioritizing NC, SC, TN, VA, WV, AK, MS, and CA. Deserts are excluded.
• Forested, mountainous, and/or water-rich small towns or rural environments.
• Easy access to hiking, freshwater swimming, kayaking, and trails.
• Availability of farmers markets, food co-ops, and farm/hardware supplies.
• Employment opportunities.
• Optimally progressive, conscious, alternative, culturally diverse, art-rich communities; non-political and non-religious; with singing, dancing, and like-minded neighbors.

What Wendy Brings

Growing & Food Systems

• Urban and rural growing, greenhouse and deep-mulch techniques, espalier, site planning for water, infrastructure, and food systems.
• Woodlot management, mushrooms, maple syrup, keeping bees, and foraging.
• Plant-based chef, pantry stocker, preserver, caterer, educator (Real Food Culinary Academy).

Construction & Property Care

• Master painter and eco-cleaner, former certified lead remediator.
• Construction: framing, roofing, siding, owner-builder; studied multiple natural building methods.

Education & Community Leadership

• Experienced English teacher and certified interpreter.
• Organizational involvement in WI: MREA, Valley Stewardship Network, Transition Town, Community Rights with Paul Cienfuegos, The Natural Step Program, Kickapoo Woods Cooperative.
• Community involvement in CR: Diamante Bridge Collective, Earthwaking Village; studied sociocracy, NVC, consensus, and alternative legal structures.

About Wendy

• A dream of a fully enclosed, submerged greenhouse with predominately food trees and shrubs.
• Dedicated to collaborating with others to teach regenerative living skills for pay-it-forward organizations and young growprenuers.
• Plant-based, early riser, super organized and tidy, drug- and alcohol-free, sensitive to noise and chemicals.
• Virgo sun, Leo rising, Mars in Scorpio; non-religious, non-political; described as a pioneer, revolutionary, visionary, and dynamo.
• Open to sharing living space with aligned, quiet, single, plant-based individuals; readers of Ringing Cedars.

Neighborhood Cooperative Vision

Wendy seeks individuals interested in forming a cooperative of 8–12 fully independent, intergenerational households living in proximity to facilitate a sharing economy, security, and mutual support. Members could choose what to share, including:

• Vehicles, commercial washer, hot tub, lawn equipment, gardens, internet access, pet/property care during travel.
• Sharing skills, talents, and wisdom to build bonds of mutual care and trust, functioning as a cohesive, supportive unit.

Wendy hosts monthly online sessions through One Homespun Revival, creating space for others to discuss and form their own Neighborhood Cooperatives.

Professional and personal references; https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QGSYDBQBCRSqdzdfsojQD8jvD4CMRXyP4NUpKY3DECY/edit?usp=sharing

952 465 2440

wendycrews@gmail.com