WHO WE ARE

ABBEY CMIEL

Abbey is an herbalist, activist, teacher, yoga instructor, community builder, permaculturalist, and ecologist. Her passion for connecting to her body, spirit, and the Earth began at a young age through practicing yoga with her mom and planting tomatoes with her dad. She has always found deep meaning in working alongside individuals marginalized by society and finding joy alongside people living outside of the bounds of conformity. She attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she studied Social Entrepreneurship and Global Studies with a focus on social and political movements in Latin America. These passions manifested through her deep involvement in the center for Social Justice on campus and work on justice projects in Uganda, Colombia, and the U.K. 

Through two summers spent visiting farms in Colombia, she uncovered her deep love for growing food and herbs and sharing them with community. Upon return to the US, she dove into garden volunteering at the Eco-Institute at Chapel Hill where she participated in the Rising Earth Permaculture Immersion after graduating. She then worked at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center in California on deforestation-free policy work in Nicaragua, developing Permaculture Design courses, and in the garden and plant nursery. This brought her to a year-long apprenticeship at Rancho Mastatal, a permaculture education center in rural Costa Rica, where she studied and taught natural building, farm-to-table cooking, fermentation, herbalism, and permaculture design.

True to her Libra nature, she is our connector and brings people around the table to share visions and create relationships. Abbey has an intuitive gift for connecting people to the land, communities, herbs, and opportunities that will allow them to live their most fulfilled and purposeful life. At her core, Abbey acknowledges the deep interconnections of social and ecological wellbeing, and channels her fiery Aries energy to bring about lasting change. 

BAILEY MCNEILL

Bailey is a permaculturist, herbalist, gardener, holistic health coach, teacher, community builder, traveler, and culinary creative. She’s insatiably curious and finds deep meaning in connecting with people from all walks of life, learning from their stories so that she may better understand what it means to be human upon this earth. 

Bailey’s search for authentic connection, both with the human and more-than-human world, led her down the path of permaculture while studying abroad in Australia.. Having been embedded in food systems work since birth, as her family owns and operates a fourth-generation wholesale produce distribution company, Bailey was inspired to come across an alternative approach to food production that balances the wellbeing of people and planet in symbiosis. Upon returning to UNC Chapel Hill, Bailey nurtured her deep passion for supporting the intersection of human and planetary health through the lens of food production.

After graduating, she volunteered on several farm projects and went on to participate in the Sustainable Horticulture Residency at Schumacher College in Totnes, England, where she earned her Permaculture Design Certificate and studied agroforestry, herbalism, and organic market gardening whilst living in community. There, she co-founded the Dart Community Apothecary to share and teach the magic of herbalism and fermentation through community workshops. In the years since, Bailey earned her Health Coaching Certificate through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and now works 1:1 with clients through her brand, Bailey Interbeing, specializing in supporting women to live in greater alignment with their natural cycles through nutrition and quantum wellness.

Bailey is an ambitious, dedicated, and practical leader with an intuitive, spiritual, and emotional side that brings balance and empathy to her life and work. She is a truth-speaker dedicated to living her life in alignment with her values and finds purpose in helping others do the same.

CAMERON CONKLIN

queer, kinky, relationship anarchist

facilitator, mediator, producer, container creator

food as medicine as creation as life: as local and bioregional expression

dancer: sensual and spiritual connection through movement

interpersonal communication: striving towards interactions based in cultivating curiosity and care

everyday design: clothing, inspiration, art, identity. how do we show up to create aesthetic environments for each other?

systems thinker: holding complexity and collaborating, managing power and change

permaculturalist: learning how to create regenerative production and consumption cycles

current moto/// go deep, get weird, have fun, love each other, be brave

Jobs, Communities, Organizations, Ways of being:

Current Office Manager at The Occidental Arts & Ecology Center; Apprentice with Rancho Mastatal 2021; Co-parent to a Ford Econoline E350 and van lifer 2019/2020; Start-up CPG world with ICONIC Protein 2014-2019 (supply chain, formulation, procurement); Divemaster (coral reef conservation) at the Tropical Research and Conservation Center in Sabah, Malaysia 2017; Political Economy, Communication & Architecture at Tulane University 2010-2014

DEWEY RAYBON

Dewey is an anthropologist, artist, herbalist and deep ecologist. She is a community builder, writer, yogi and creative. She is a teacher, but also forever a student interested in the intersection of integrated healing, herbalism, regeneration, community, consciousness, art, nutrition, wellness, and spirituality.

At Florida State University she studied to receive two degrees: one in Anthropology and another in Interdisciplinary Humanities with a focus in Literature, Eastern Religions, and Philosophy. Her education sparked ideas and questions about the world, which following graduation she chose to go beyond the horizon to seek answers to. Dewey has traveled to, worked, lived, and volunteered in over 50 countries. During this time she continued to let the world shape her understanding and perspective, always reconsidering what she knew to be true and reevaluating the purpose of her time here. 

She comes from a long line of teachers, and as it happens most of her work has been in research in the fields of paleopathology and bioarchaeology and as a teacher of Geometry, English, and Yoga. After returning to the US, she worked as an Interventionist and Special Education teacher in New Orleans for three years while she continued her self education through workshops and courses focusing on wellness, nutrition, movement, and herbalism. During this time, she was constantly reminded how many forms of injustice are interconnected and eventually decided to more seriously continue her self-education and search to create a more equitable and harmonious future for people and the planet. This led her to Rancho Mastatal where she completed a year-long apprenticeship in sustainable living. She has returned to the United States once again to continue this work and education closer to her roots. She currently lives at Mountain Gardens outside of Asheville, North Carolina where she works with and studies under Joe Hollis.

Through her life and work, Dewey seeks to revive our deep connection to the natural world through the preservation of folk wisdom and knowledge. She is interested in a model of healing that looks to this deeper connection and ancestral wisdom while using the support of modern scientific research in order to more deeply understand the process of creating vibrant human and planetary health. She stands at the intersection of these worlds and hopes to help bridge the gap between alternative and western approaches, acknowledging the importance of both. She aims to use whole systems design to create a life in alignment with her values in rebellion of the dominant consumerist/oppressive culture and hopes to also help others seek their own path of purpose and alignment.