About Why NOLA Farms
You know where your food comes from, but do you know your farmers? Join us to learn the stories behind your local farmers and food producers. Our goal is to inspire New Orleans residents to grow their own food while celebrating the efforts of all kinds of growers and makers: backyard and container gardeners, urban farmers, community gardeners, and food producers.
What does Why NOLA Farms do?
We do our best to keep up with all of the urban farming and gardening events in the city and maintain a community events calendar—however, new farms and gardens amazingly keep sprouting up (pun intended) every month that we may have yet to discover! We cover local farm news and write farm profiles, along with the occasional local food recipe. Every June, Why NOLA Farms teams up with the New Orleans Food Policy Advisory Committee to put on free urban farm bike rides for the New Orleans community as part of the Eat Local Challenge.
Who is Why NOLA Farms?
Lisa Dahlke – Founder & Content Producer
Both of Lisa’s parents grew up on dairy farms in the fields of rural central Minnesota. She grew up playing on the hay stacks in the barn, and looked forward to visiting the chickens, cows, dogs, cats, and her grandmother’s giant garden. Lisa previously worked as a vendor for a local food producer at the Crescent City Farmers Market, where she had the privilege to get to know other vendors and hear their stories. As a volunteer and long-time rider with the NOLA Social Ride, Lisa became involved with organizing the Urban Farm Bike Rides for the Eat Local Challenge each June, and during the first year she realized just how many farming projects were happening around the city and discovered that her enthusiasm for supporting local farmers didn’t end at planning the rides. Lisa grows food in containers from her balcony in New Orleans.
Ronald R. Ferrucci, PhD – Webmaster
Dr. Ferrucci is an occasional resident of New Orleans, Italy, New Haven, the American Southwest, and the Northwoods. As a web designer and full stack developer, he has experience in HTML & CSS, PHP, JavaScript/JQuery, WordPress, and Drupal. Mainly building in WordPress he has experience developing and modifying themes, plugins, and creating new content types. As well, he has used his skills to mimic other website layouts. As a PhD student in population genetics, Ron learned to program in Python, Perl, and C++. Dr. Ferrucci is also an avid photographer specializing in abandoned places, cemeteries, and cityscapes of Italy, New Orleans, and the American Southwest. with extensive experience in Adobe Camera Raw, LightRoom, and PhotoShop he can create custom graphics, improve your photographs for the web, as well as any other work you might need. You can find his work at Nichilismo in Fotografia.