Vanessa Passarelli
Vanessa is
a credentialed teacher and has worked with school gardens for the past
10 years in San Francisco Bay Area and Chicago. She was instrumental in
developing the sustaining garden program at Valley Vista School,
Petaluma and is a founding member of the School Garden Network of
Sonoma County. She is currently the Petaluma City Schools District
Community and School Garden Coordinator and has a consulting business
which helps school gardens with developing curriculum, sustaining
programs, and implementing farm to school programs while helping link
schools with their surrounding communities. She supports schools to be
academically strong, nutritionally wise, and environmentally aware.
Vanessa and her husband also run a small organic CSA in Petaluma,
Flicker Farms, which has vegetables, native plants, and fruit trees, as
well as, chickens, rabbits, ducks, goats, sheep, and bees. She is
passionate and dedicated to shifting food production from conventional
agribusiness to small community food systems. She believes strongly
people will heal themselves, others, and the earth by having connection
to the earth through their food.
