Greg Swartz moved to the Upper Delaware River Valley in 2000 to learn the craft of farming by doing a series of apprenticeships on organic farms. He then worked on a local organic vegetable farm for 5 years to hone his skills. In 2007, Greg and his wife Tannis Kowalchuk founded Willow Wisp Organic Farm in Damascus, PA. From 2006 to 2009 Greg was the Executive Director of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, a statewide education and advocacy organization working to build a regional, organic, and sustainable food system. In 2009 Greg returned to farming full time. In 2015, Willow Wisp purchased a new farm a few miles away allowing a tripling of production. On 25 acres of beautiful river bottom soil, he and his team grow a diverse mix of vegetables, herbs, and cut flowers. The farm distributes its products through 4 weekly farmers’ markets (2 in the Delaware River Valley and 2 in New York City) and through direct wholesale accounts throughout Wayne County, PA, Sullivan County, NY and New York City. The farm’s goals are to grow high-quality food, improve the farm ecosystem, and employ as many people as possible to show that farming can be and should be the key to economic development in our region. Greg lives on the farm with his wife Tannis Kowalchuk and their 12-year-old son Simon.

Mark Dunau and his wife, Lisa Wujnovich, have been making their living growing vegetables without synthetic pesticides or fertilizers at Mountain Dell Farm in Delaware County, NY since 1990. They were farm to table many years before that term was coined, and most of their income has been from direct sales to restaurants in NYC or locally. 

Mark served on the Board of Directors of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York from 1998 to 2012. He is currently on the Board of Directors of Delaware County Farm Bureau, where he has served since 1998, promoting policies that organic and conventional farmers have in common. He was the Green Party of New York State’s US Senate Nominee in 2000.

Mark has been writing plays for fifty years. His play Glass, 1977, is the only play the National Science Foundation has ever sponsored, and was nationally toured for three years. His play Courage, co-written with NACL, was performed at Apple Pond Farm in Sullivan County, and on Governor’s Island in NYC in 2017.

Mark believes that global warming is being driven both by fossil fuel burning and the destruction by humans of nearly half the earth’s biomass. He believes that only a global strategy that includes conserving and regenerating the earth’s greenery and soils will truly address climate change.  See the resource list before for more links and suggested resources from Mark.