2023 Reflections
Oh the joy! 2023 was a big year!
The Farm To Crag wintertime hibernation has begun and we are delighted to reflect on the warm community, delicious food, on-farm learning, and additions to our local food map that marked our 5th year of wonderful work 💚🏔️🌱 We are incredibly grateful for our board of directors, all of our dedicated volunteers, and all the sponsors that make our F2C world go round - what a rad crew! We cannot wait for more adventures at the intersection of climbing and farming in the year to come! Please think of joining our membership or writing a check for your year-end giving ❤️
Community Gatherings & Events
While the Farm To Crag local food map is always in action with folks adding to the map weekly, our first community engagement event this year was in March at the Flash Foxy Climbing Festival in Bishop, CA. We had a table at the Patagonia Worn Wear booth and handed out fresh carrots for hungry climbers as Katie Lamb held a patching and repair clinic.
May
Also this spring, we celebrated our flagship Yosemite Farm To Crag Gathering with fantastic teachers and participants from all over the globe. Jeannette Acosta and Sandra Chapman (Southern Sierra Miwuk) brought beautiful indigenous food traditions to share as well as important and hard conversations about how climbers can do more to respect and connect with the landscape. Wild Idea Buffalo’s Jill O’Brien and Patagonia’s Chef Dan Carter spoke to sustainably produced breakfast sausage and local regenerative grazing practices. Lauren and Andrew from Raw Roots Farm taught about the regenerative practices they implement on their four-acre organic fruit and vegetable farm, and University of CA-Merced professor Becca Ryals backed them up with some pretty cool soil science. Tyler Karow led a team of climbers to make lunch and Esther Smith elaborated on how food becomes muscle and our climbing strength. Chef Matt Dillon went above and beyond again and created dinners that both honored the seasonal flavors (harvested day of) and wow’ed the taste buds of us all.
June
This year, we are proud to have helped facilitate the first-ever Yosemite Farmers Market! Special thanks goes out to the Yosemite Conservancy, Rachel Jacobs, Yosemite National Park, and Raw Roots Farm for bringing the farmers to the climbers in one of America's greatest climbing destinations!! We are delighted that each of the monthly markets sold out every time :)
We also collaborated with Yosemite National Park, Raw Roots Farm, and Patagonia for a F2C service project in May, followed by climbing, and a farm fresh tour and dinner at Raw Roots Farm.
One of our huge moments of joy this year came from the United in Yosemite Climbing Festival where we hosted a local, organic dinner for 200 participants from communities under-represented in the climbing industry. This event was made possible by chef Matt Dillon, All Rise Outdoors, Protect Our Winters, the American Alpine Club, Emily Fong, and Jessie Chackrin. Wow, what a celebration of hope and joy!
This year, we collaborated with Kareen Erbe, a permaculture specialist who helped climbers learn how to take action on climate change and their own health by getting back to the basics… starting with a compost video and blog!
July
In July, the awesome Farm To Crag Aid Station at the Lander Climbing Festival fed all the tired climbers as they turned in their scorecards at the Wild Iris climbing area. Beautiful food cooked up by Lisa Bedient and Emmy Aras with help from the lovely Nicole Frati at the Lander NOLS Kitchen. Such a rad way to continue to show up for climbers in Lander!
August
In August, we partnered with Inyo County for a Bishop (CA) Farm To Crag Gathering. Ranchers, master gardeners, climbers, and community leaders gathered to watch Madison Dusseau and Sage from the Akamya dance group celebrate the connection to the Payahuunadu - indigenous lands that the organic Apple Hill Ranch sits upon. We had a panel discussion and incredible food - hosting 85 participants despite the approaching hurricane. Special thanks to the Tri-County Fairgrounds for providing a beautiful barn!
September
Esther Smith and our Montana team put on an incredible F2C Fundraiser in Bozeman in collaboration with the Little Star Dinner – who are superb climbers, organic farmers, and restaurateurs. We climbed, cycled, fished, farmed, and feasted before conversations with a panel moderated by Emily Stiffler Wolfe and featuring Latrice Tatsey, Nate Powell-Palm, and Tim Seipel as well as local farmers/ranchers. With donations from the Little Star Dinner, Gallatin Valley Botanicals, and others, we were delighted to raise $5,000 towards our Grow Our Future Campaign, and inspire a subsequent Farm To Crag bike ride between farms + pizza with Syd Burk. Huge thank you to all who came!
The Bozeman gathering has since sparked a collaboration with Becky Weed (rancher, 13 Mile Lamb and Wool Co) Emily Wolfe, Esther Smith, and Latrice Tatsey (American Indian Tribal Liaison to the NRCS) who are working toward our common goal of building food security and equity in MT by answering the question, “How might we return to a culture of relationship based Management, so we can help restore ecological balance?”. We are seeing two objectives surface through this partnership: 1 ) Healing the earth by growing food and 2 ) Creating a pipeline for future farmers.
This year, we also collaborated with the Climate Farm School on an amazing fundraising dinner in September at The Ramen Shop in Oakland, CA. Ryan Peterson, Kate Rutherford, Jenifer Latham (former head of bread at Tartine), Paul Lightfoot (Patagonia Provisions) and Sam White (Ramen Shop co-owner) all spoke on behalf of the importance of sustainable local food systems, and how we climbers can use our voices and dollars to make change.
October
October brought our second annual Chamonix Farm To Crag with Alex Megos and the Patagonia store. Zoe Heart and Kate Rutherford helped welcome 50 climbers and 10 farmers to a day of cragging and beautiful local organic food by Zoe Smalley from Saveurs du Mont Blanc. We had awesome presentations from Alex and Kate and conversations with farmers. We can’t wait for next year’s full weekend Chamonix Gathering. Thank you Alex!
From there, our team flew straight to Chattanooga, TN for the Sequatchie Cove Farm autumn Farm To Crag weekend gathering. An honor to be welcomed back for a second year and we were lucky to screen the film What the Hands Do, and have climbers Miguel Cezar, and Marianna Mendoza join us to speak to social justice and ways to imagine a better future for climbing and food. The 50 participants learned about, harvested, and ground heirloom corn which was incorporated into delicious food from Lisa Bedient, Kenyatta (Neutral Ground, Chattanooga), and Edgar (Alebreije, Nashville) Wow, we love this community!
November
In early November, we were invited to the Memphis ROX festival where Farm To Crag president Kate Rutherford and amazing climber/caterer Brittany Griffith spoke about F2C’s power to be a positive force in the climate change conversation, but more importantly serve delectable, nutritious, local, organic, breakfast and lunch to all 150 climbers who mostly hailed from under-represented urban communities. Some of these folks were able to climb outdoors for the first time! What a rad opportunity to collaborate with POW, Patagonia Provisions, Sequatchie Cove Farm, Black Diamond, and Memphis ROX - we look forward to more collaborations in the year to come!
The Red River Gorge Hop’s Farm To Crag day was an opportunity to gather around the beautiful, always locally sourced food cheffed up by April Haight at Hop’s. After climbing at the Graining Fork nature preserve, we feasted on a soup buffet and heard from Red River Gorge Climbing Coalition’s Billy Simke, Alex Megos, Emily Foster - Revival Ridge farm, and Alex Petit - Among The Oaks farm
Community Engagement
This year, we also put a ton of work into improving offline capacity and a fully functional back end on our Farm To Crag Map. Now, you can save the map to your smartphone home screen and search for locally sourced snacks straight from the crag! This is all thanks to our awesome Map Team: Lucas Wojciechowski, Jackie Sweet, Ale Guerrero, and the ever-present Kate Rutherford and Matt Bain. Look for more opportunities to help with the map soon!
This summer, we also launched a Farm To Crag Virtual Slack Community. Over 100 climbers from our beloved Farm to Crag community have joined to share tips and advice on recipes, climbing, events, gear, agriculture, and relevant ag news and policy. We also plan to continue building and improving Slack engagement to keep connections, community, and stoke between events.
AND this winter, we were super excited to launch our Farm To Crag Membership Program to help deepen engagement with our community. We hope you’ll join us by becoming a member! With different membership levels, your donation will help to grow our future, and in exchange, we will send a sticker, t-shirt, or print, you’ll be invited to virtual coffee hours to keep the F2C spirit going between events, offered to join our F2C Slack channel, and weigh in on important decisions.
Join Farm to Crag in Growing Our Future
Since 2019, Farm To Crag has made it our mission to help climbers connect the dots: between themselves and farmers, crags and local food, their food choices, and climate policy. We are beyond stoked at all the incredible work we have done this year and all of the communities Farm to Crag was able to show up to help mobilize climbers to take action to fight climate change by investing in regenerative food systems. But, everywhere we go, we hear from increasingly more climbers who want our help fostering these important conversations in their own communities, or who need more tools to help them translate their passion to save the home planet into tangible actions.
That’s why we launched our Grow Our Future Campaign this year to raise $1 million over the next 5 years to allow Farm to Crag to take meaningful steps in closing the sizable gap that exists between our current and potential reach.
We know the world urgently needs more folks pushing to transform our food system and join the climate fight, and we have big ideas for how we want to continue to build power and create systemic change. If you share our vision, please consider investing in Farm to Crag’s future by making a tax-deductible donation. These funds will go directly to building our mobile-friendly Local Food Map, hiring passionate folks to carry the Farm to Crag banner into even more communities, and launching new mentorship and educational resources to cultivate new leaders in our movement.
THANK YOU for being part of the Farm to Crag community. We truly cannot do this work without you.
