NPEW 2018

Casey owns and operates a dryland grain and cattle farm in Central Montana. He is part of the "Lentil Underground". He studied Religion and Music at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA and the University of Montana, in Missoula. Casey's worldview is deeply influenced by a semester working in San Francisco's tenderloin district with inner city kids and families while studying urban issues and then a trip to Guatemala through Augsburg College studying the intersects of globalization, social and environmental justice, focused on liberation theology. He got his first taste of soil science from Tom Delunca's soil science class at the University of Montana. Grabbing a backpack and a fist full of cash he traveled to Costa Rica and worked on an organic farm Casey started the first community garden in Great Falls Montana while working at an ELCA Lutheran church as the youth and family director. In 2008 he purchased the farm he had been leasing, certified it organic, and began transitioning the family farm. In 2010 he added a certified organic grass finished beef herd to the farm. Casey believes that true sustainability can happen when we each take time to walk outside to our own garden and get to know the soil that sustains us. When you ruin your first cell phone on your hands and knees in the soil-y bowels of your own garden, you know you are on the right track.