Michelle Krieg

My background:

Born in Wisconsin, I grew up surrounded by farmland, expansive prairies, and a landscape spotted with hundreds of glacier-formed lakes. As a child I learned to notice and appreciate the changing seasons—catching fireflies and watching lightning storms in the summer, picking apples and carving pumpkins in the fall, building snow castles and ice-skating in the winter, and watching flowers bloom and butterflies emerge from their chrysalises in the spring. Through these experiences I began to gain an awareness and respect for the natural rhythms of the Earth, and observe and experience nature as one system of integrated relationships.

For over a decade I worked as an ecologist, horticulturalist, farmer, and educator with various community-based rewilding and regeneration organizations in California, Washington, England, and Italy—developing, coordinating, and facilitating place- and process-based learning programs for students and adults through ecological, land-based practice. I spent years teaching, training, and mentoring diverse groups of students, interns, and community volunteers through observation, exploration, and sensory activities, group workshops and discussions, and hands-on land stewardship projects—including native wild seed collection, native plant propagation and planting, food and greenhouse production, watershed and creek stewardship, garden design and tending, and natural crafting. Over time I came to learn that only through awareness, observation, and engagement with the natural world—something I first practiced as a child—can one instinctively understand the natural patterns and rhythms of nature, and how to harmoniously engage and respond within these processes.

Why my work matters:

Considered an ‘acupuncture point’ of social and ecological systems, food practice has been a decisive element of human culture, directly shaping and reflecting our relationships with each other and our natural environment. By reorienting this critical gesture to be more regenerative, we can not only widen our ecological perception, but can also enliven and regenerate our relational dynamics.

In this sense, the OAEC Mother Garden does not simply model a design for regenerative human living, but serves as a space for reunion—a place to practice and learn radically human, de-colonized ways of being. As we garden, we are not only learning to cultivate relational diversity, but bringing dependency back into our understanding of ourselves—replanting the vital root of existence.

My work at OAEC:

As a steward of the OAEC gardens, my role is to be in dialogue with the land—exploring its composition, meaning, and context through attentive and reciprocal correspondence. As a participant in this process, my role is also to hold a space for others to engage—teaching compassion and response-ability by creating opportunities for others to observe and respond.

For me, the practice of growing food is not simply the making of a product, but a window into the nature of life—a space where we can remember, not only our relationship and dependency to place, but also our place and responsibility amongst these relationships. By becoming more attuned to the pulse of the wind, the rain, the sun, the soil, the seasons, and the stars, I believe we can find our own rhythm in the space between—discovering not only how we reveal ourselves through the world, but how the world reveals itself through us.

My passions:

With a graduate degree in arts-based education, I am passionate about teaching, learning, and advocating for ecological literacy—seeing it as a way to transform how nature and our role within its processes is perceived and expressed. With an interest in craft as a process of mutual transformation, in early 2019 I founded a consultancy organization—Food Pathways Education—to explore how place- and process-based food practices can inspire an immersive, tactile ontology. This work, which is dedicated to helping students of all ages become more attentive, creative, collaborative, and empowered, has since supported educational initiatives with ThoughtBox Education, the BSc in Sustainable Food and Farming at Schumacher College, and the ‘Fridays for Future’ Climate Forums at the University of Gastronomic Sciences.

The most impactful project I’ve ever worked on:

Throughout the twentieth century, many waterways in the United States were subjugated into concrete and hidden underground as a way to seize and control the definition of property. Through the compartmentalization and channelization of the commons, we aimed to tame our wildness—unaware we were also removing an element of ourselves.  Founded on the idea that natural flowing water is a vital force that renews our sense of community and collective well-being, from 2014-16 I worked on a pilot project to daylight and restore a stretch of Sausal Creek in Oakland, California – removing the culvert, recontouring the creek bed, and planting thousands of native plants along the banks. Once a barren field, now a river flows freely through the heart of the city.