Jennica is honored to be a part of the Farley Center’s collaborative farm. She moved to Madison in 2013 to work as a farm-based educator for Community GroundWorks (now Rooted) and simultaneously joined Barebones Cooperative Farm as a worker-learner. Jennica and her husband started a market garden on rented land in 2017; they converted to a low-or-no-till system the following year after their tiller broke down — a happy accident. As their family grew, Jennica became the primary farmer. She began Lansing Street Veggies in 2020 and moved her farm to the Farley Center in 2022.

Jennica is grateful to the many people who have been her teachers along the way. As a child, she sold green beans from her father’s garden to kindhearted neighbors out of a little red wagon. Later, she worked with educational gardens in her Michigan hometown, then as a graduate assistant at the Central Wisconsin Environmental Station. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, she lived in the island nation of Vanuatu, whose resilient people and year-round gardens have long been an inspiration. She has a particular interest in growing produce for winter storage.