Here is an article that was published in the Bryce Mountain Courier in July 2008.

Linna Ferguson: Fearless Fighter for Fit Food
By Peggy Boston

When Linna was nine, she planted and tended her first garden in her parent’s yard in Massachusetts.  Now grown up, with a husband, two-year old son, Broden, and 10 year old step daughter, Katie, she is more involved than ever with food.  Last week, she climbed the cherry trees on her property in Purcellville and picked a batch of sour cherries.  Then, she pitted and preserved them for winter when her work will be rewarded with fresh cherry pies.

She also watered her plants form a rain barrel collection system she and her husband put together and made most of her family’s meals from scratch with fresh, local products.  She also regularly turns out her own yogurt and cheese.

Linnas’ Garden Journal (www.linnasgardenjournal.blogspot.com) , a blog about how her garden is growing and what does and doesn’t work, listed other recent projects: “planted thorn less blackberry plants; my dehydrator and pressure canner arrived, just need to learn to use them; put up first batch of pesto (have lots of kinds of basic- cinnamon, lemon etc.; planted five wine vines; two pounds of worms for worm composter came in…) The blog also includes two pages of sour cherry notes with recipes for cherry pie and cherries in Pinot Noir, and lots of garden tips.

Locavore Chronicles (www.locavorechronicles.blogspot.com  A locavore is someone who eats food grown or produced locally) includes items on how to make the most of your visit to a farmer’s market, buying local versus organic and a lively look at making the transition from suburban living to Purcellville.  Stories are dotted with beautiful color photographs.

She also keeps busy with a small service business as a foodscaper (someone who creates landscapers with food based plants).  Her latest project was helping a woman set up food garden plots; Linna continues to advise her on how to take care of it. 

“I taught her to fish,” Linna says, using the adage that one fish provides a meal, but teaching people to fish feeds them for life.  “It is easy to grow your own food,” Linna says.  She helps give the confidence and knowledge to get started.

Oh, by the way, she also has a full time job.  She works on web sites to make them easy for clients to navigate.

“When people ask me ‘where do you find the time?’ I say, ‘how do I not find the time?”

Linna says, “I’m just an everyday person who mapped my journey” into the food web.

Maybe, but her energy, drive, and passion for turning the world on to local, healthy food have a lot to do with how she gets so much out of her time.

From high school, where she organized a recycling campaign and sold trees, to college where she studied natural resource management and worked for the EPAs environmental education division, Linna has always been clear headed and driven about her beliefs.

But, it was when she became a mother that “I made the 180-degree switch and started thinking about what food does to (or for) our bodies,” she says. Before that, she had focused more on what humans did to nature.

A move in October 2007 from the suburbs of Ashburn to Purcellville also made her mission a bit easier, providing the land and more nearby resources. But friends worried about husband, David, who wasn’t into food as much as Linna. Would he adapt to the lifestyle?

Friends now call him the Veggie Man, not for what’s in the garden, but for what’s in the tank.  Specifically, the tank of a 1997 diesel Mercedes.

He recently took on the project of converting the car to run on vegetable oil recovered from restaurants. Though it’s complicated, simply stated the diesel engine, which operates on compression, is converted along with the fuel lines to use the veggie oil. Diesel fuel starts the car, transfers the heat to a 20-gallon tank of oil, and when the oil reaches the right temperature, the engine switches over to run on the oil.

“Some days the people following us probably smell Thai food; the next day they smell burgers,” Linna says.

The couple has agreements with local restaurants to collect the waste oil, then filter it and put it into the car’s second tank. They also have a portable machine that will clean the oil when they are on longer trips so they can pick up oil from restaurants along the way. David is now converting a second car. 

Linna quotes from a June 23 article in LocalHarvest Newsletter, that “fear-of scarcity, of change- is a terrible master. It makes us forget our own creativity and adaptability.  We mistake the way it is for the way it has to be.”

Through her blog and her daily interaction with other locavores and foodscapers, Linna has come to believe there is a huge movement online toward buying local and harvesting. Since she began her journey, she has found a lot of networking and sharing of resources, from bamboo shoots to worms and rain barrels. 

Reprint from July 2008 Bryce Mountain Courier, Volume 15. No. 7. Front cover story, continued on page 23.

Note since this articl e was published, I have had another child, have expanded my garden and fruit trees, built a cold frame, and am getting more creative than ever!