Katrina Light

I’ve always loved watching things grow: ideas, relationships, plants, and animals. My path into farming began with a curiosity about how food connects people, how a meal can tell the story of a place, and how soil health and community health are deeply intertwined. My interest began as a child growing up on a homestead, and has grown into a career devoted to helping people understand and participate in the food system that sustains us all.

Before joining Chewonki, I lived in New York’s Hudson Valley, where I worked in community food systems and developed deep relationships with emergency feeding providers, schools, and neighbors working toward food sovereignty and greater access to good food. Over the past two decades, I’ve worked across the food landscape – from coordinating farm-to-institution programs to managing food access initiatives and teaching on educational farms. Along the way, I earned a Master’s in Food Systems and learned that some of the best lessons about resilience come from NATURE.

At Chewonki, I co-manage our diversified farm, where vegetables, sheep, pigs, and laying hens all play a part in our educational ecosystem. I love finding the rhythm of the seasons here – beginning with planting garlic with students in the fall and welcoming lambs on brisk spring mornings. Each moment offers a reminder that learning can be as tangible as pulling a carrot from the ground or gathering eggs from the coop.

When I’m not in the field or the barn, you can find me exploring Maine’s woods and beaches with my five-year-old, tinkering with new recipes, dancing, or dreaming up ways to make composting cool.