Meet Jason Lindsay

Jason is the first generation in his family born off the farm. He found a part of himself he didn’t know was missing through working the land. After graduating from college, Jason was on fire and driven to be an agent of change with a particular focus on youth development. He returned home to Pitt County with a vision of teaching in the public schools. For the next two years he taught Language Arts at his former middle school.

When his first child was on the way, Jason reached back to his ancestral agrarian roots and started a garden and found that in harmony and communion with the natural elements hours passed unnoticed and uncounted. Connecting with the land birthed a vision to restore the connection of people and land. In 2013, Jason stepped out of the public school system to work on advancing his vision full-time. Jason began managing an existing community garden within a larger community garden network in Greenville, NC. Through the garden achievements and his community engagement Jason was quickly promoted to manager all eight community gardens in the network. He also registered the first urban farm in his town, selling organic vegetables to local CSAs, juicing companies, and a mobile food market.

After years of cultivating community through the community garden network. Jason developed a youth agricultural training program – Cultivating Youth Entrepreneurs (CYE) and an urban farm school curriculum. CYE graduates have gone on to establish their own production farms and enroll in universities seeking agriculture-related degrees.

Jason continues to be an educator, taking the practical and theoretical knowledge he has gained through his journey to reclaiming his agrarian identity and serves as a consultant to local farms and organizations on best practices, certification, and operation management. With a clear calling for this work, Jason continues farming and building farmer – to – farmer relationships as a means to establish self – sustainable food systems throughout our communities.