Jean Smith is retired from the West Virginia Department of Agriculture. She served as the Director of Marketing and Development from 1999 until her retirement in 2015. She in charge of the development of various farmers markets in WV and served as the WVDA representative for Capital Market in Charleston, which grew from the former Charleston Farmers’ Market, operated by the Department of Agriculture. She was instrumental in the development and growth of the Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program in West Virginia. Jean remains passionate in her love of agriculture in her retirement.

Kacey began farming full-time raising organic vegetables and building a cottage food jam business. After a few years selling at the Wheeling Farmers Market she competed in the National Farm Bureau Discussion Meet. Following the event, she became the farm manager for ECO-Vrindaban a non-profit farm in Marshall County and completed her Master of Professional Studies, Organizational Leadership.

From there she went on to manage the farms of Grow Ohio Valley a non-profit devoted to education and farming in Wheeling, and then became the Sales and Aggregation manager running the non-profit’s CSA, mobile farmers market, Farmacy, and wholesale accounts. With a focus on developing farmer relations and growing the local agriculture community, she started providing production planning, marketing, and additional services to local producers. Today Kacey is the Northern Region Planning Coordinator for the WVDA, working to strengthen the health of our farmers markets and community. Working one on one with farmers to grow their businesses is a passion and heritage she plans to pass on to her two young daughters.

Evan, along with his wife, Heather, and children, Amelia and Holden live in Charleston. When not at work, he enjoys cooking, especially with fresh seasonal ingredients from our beloved Mountain State.

Lisa has been the Program Coordinator for the West Virginia University Extension Service Small Farm Center for over 8 years. During her time with the Center, she has secured over $8 million in federal and state granting funding for agricultural projects and programs to benefit small farmers across West Virginia. Prior to which she managed the state’s most successful farmers market for four years and aided in the growth of sales to almost $500,000 annually. She has a vegetable and herb garden along with fruit trees in Morgantown where she resides with her spouse and toddler.

She moved to West Virginia in 2001 and in 2009, after five years in the wine industry, she decided to start a small farm.  She was a vendor at the Charles Town Farmers Market for five seasons, and she took over managing that market in 2012.  Along with a market committee, she grew that market from just a few vendors in 2011 to over 40 vendors on the books in 2015.  It is one of the premiere markets in the state and continues to foster a sense of community and friendship on Saturday mornings.

Fiona maintains a flock of  approximately 50 laying hens, a garden and seven cats.  In addition to being at market, she can be found in the garden cursing at the honeysuckle, declaring death to the chickweed with her flame weeder and waging war on the groundhogs that insist on chewing holes in her fence.

“FARMacy” was established to educate people that healthy food is medicine. Carol passionately works to promote health of patients with the understanding that convenient, unhealthy food permeates our culture and that people are in a hurry, too busy and too stressed. She is dedicated to the promotion of people eating locally grown foods as a prescription for a healthy life.

Nelson authors a food column for the Charleston Gazette-Mail where she explores the Appalachian food community and works to help tell West Virginia’s story. Her work has appeared in publications across West Virginia, in addition to Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, NPR, Food & Wine, The Huffington Post, CBS Sunday Morning and more. She writes a blog that focuses on food culture in West Virginia, Candace Lately, which can be found at www.CandaceLately.com.

She earned her Master of Science in Journalism (2013), Bachelor of Science in Journalism (2011) and Bachelor of Arts in English (2011) from West Virginia University.

She is a college instructor, author, published researcher, organization leader and community volunteer.