Andros Howes
Landscape Project Manager & IT Manager
Andros Howes (He/Him) is OAEC’s Landscape Project Manager and Information Technology Manager. Before coming to OAEC, Andros was the farm manager at Foxhole Farms in Sebastopol and also worked for five years before that at Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, based out of the egalitarian intentional community Acorn Community in Mineral, Virginia. There, he managed the pastured poultry and orchard programs and served as a major team member in the gardens.
On Staff Since: 2014 Email > Phone: x129
In Their Own Words
My work at OAEC:
My primary job at OAEC is executing landscape projects throughout our land. The work is very physical and varies quite a bit; it can be anything from cutting down trees to creating perennial beds to building trellises.
As the IT Manager, I do all the work to maintain and upgrade our computers and network system.
My background:
I am from Isle of Palms, an island right beside Charleston, South Carolina. My friends and I loved computer games, and we grew up spending years building and tinkering with computers for fun. After school I worked at a fine dining restaurant for years and learned about high quality cooking. This led me to question where our food comes from, and in the beginning of 2007 I moved to Acorn Community. Acorn runs Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, an heirloom, organic seed company. I lived there for over 5 years where I learned about gardening and farming, and went on to become the orchard and poultry manager. In 2013, I moved to Sonoma County and became the manager at Foxhole Farms. After that I got the opportunity to become a resident at OAEC and began my work here.
What community means to me:
The network of people closest to us where we synergistically seek to attain as many of our needs and wants as possible.
When my life is over, I want to be remembered for:
Exemplifying virtuous living.
Why my work matters:
My work matters because I help to support and strengthen the systems at OAEC, from which our various programs progress.
My passions:
I’m very passionate about the outdoors. I love going on adventures in nature and I love all work involving ecological stewardship. I’m also passionate about developing local community networks because I believe in empowering ourselves to become as free and decentralized as possible. I’m also very passionate about music. I’ve been playing music since I was 12 and play bass guitar in a funky rock band.
My favorite resiliency resource:
The secret to life is to:
To learn that relative perspective is everything, and you can choose to see truth as positively as you want.