Farming with purpose

Corey Hamza ’03 LS

At Rivenwood Gardens in Rocky Mount, Virginia, leafy vegetables grow in orderly rows, bordered on three sides by a forest that follows the path of a winding river. On the property’s pastures, sheep, rabbits, ducks, and geese are free to roam.

The farm is owned and operated by Corey Hamza ’03 LS and his wife, Christine Mann, and the couple are in the midst of their first full growing season. Both trained ecologists, they use regenerative farming practices to help maintain the health of the soil and surrounding habitat. “Our vision is to combine a more ecological way of farming with habitat management, to have natural areas supporting agriculture and vice versa,” Corey says.

Rivenwood sells its produce directly to consumers through a popular farm share program and at farmers markets; at one local market, it is the only certified organic vendor. The small farm boasts a wide variety of crops, including melons, squash, and eggplant in the summer, and beets, broccoli, and garlic in the spring and fall. The diversification of crops is key to Rivenwood’s farming goals, as the practice bolsters the soil’s nutrients and structure. One of the farm’s unique practices is the incorporation of livestock into the growing process. Corey explains: “After we grow a crop [for people], we grow a cover crop, usually a combination of nitrogen-fixing legumes and grasses, which are great forage products for livestock. Before we come back and plant, we’ll rotate the livestock through [and] … use them to mow down that cover crop and recycle that organic matter into the soil.” The livestock also provide a natural fertilizer.

Corey’s interest in agriculture began with his grandfather, who had a dairy farm in Kansas. “When I would go visit him, I just had a real connection,” Corey remembers. At Santa Catalina, where Corey attended middle school, trips to the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Marin Headlands helped deepen his connection to nature. Santa Catalina benefited him in other ways. Corey served as an admission ambassador, meeting with prospective families and showing them around campus. “That was a nice opportunity to take on some responsibility and grow up a little bit,” he says. He also fondly recalls learning Latin, which helped him understand word origins—a skill that came in handy when he and his wife were trying to come up with a name for their farm. (“Riven” is distantly related to the word “river,” which stems from the Latin ripa.) More than anything, though, Corey says Catalina prepared him well for all subjects in high school: “I think that helps you all the way [through school] because you’re ahead of the curve.”

In his senior year at Palma School, Corey attended an ecological farming conference in Pacific Grove that brought growers from all over the world to talk about how to combine nature and farming. The opportunity inspired him to attend UC Davis, where he studied sustainable agriculture and ecological management. After graduating, he performed restoration work for the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, which leased agricultural land to organic farmers who almost exclusively grew strawberries. That was a bit of an eye-opener for Corey. “[The farmers] weren’t connected with the rest of the land and they weren’t necessarily regenerating the soil or being connected with the ecosystem that we were preserving around it,” he says.

Early on, Corey and Christine formed a vision of becoming ecologically aware farmers. Shortly after they got married, they went to New Zealand for a year and worked on various farms—what Corey describes as “an extended honeymoon-slash-farming training.” When they returned to the United States, they worked on a large organic farm in Bend, Oregon, that incorporated livestock and boasted an on-site commercial kitchen for serving farm-to-table meals.

After briefly returning to California, they found land in Virginia that they could turn into their own farm, and in May 2020 they headed east and took the plunge. The farm is about 300 acres, with only about 3–5 acres devoted to vegetables and about 100 acres for livestock. They spent most of the first year setting up infrastructure—building in-ground beds, removing grass, adding compost and organic matter, installing the irrigation system, and gathering necessary equipment. They planted a few crops to get a feel for the place and to become acquainted with the diseases and pests particular to the area. Corey says, “How you grow things [in Virginia] is definitely different than in California, so learning from locals who have been growing here a long time has been invaluable.”

Looking ahead, Corey says he wants to grow the livestock side of the business while keeping the farm small and diversified, incorporating perennials such as fruit trees and berries. He would also like to expand the already popular farm share program to about 100 members, selling excess produce at farmers markets or to restaurants to avoid waste. Whatever they do, it will be with one goal in mind: supporting and honoring the land that surrounds them.

Rivenwood Gardens is a popular vendor at local farmers markets.

Regenerative Farming

“Good farming can restore life to a landscape.” That simple statement is the ethos behind Rivenwood Gardens.

According to their website, here are some practices involved in the regenerative farming process:

• Keeping the soil covered with crops and having living roots in the ground all year long

• Using minimal tillage to protect microorganisms in the soil

• Growing a diversity of crops

• Creating designated spaces for wildlife

• Not spraying synthetic fertilizers or pesticides

• Composting waste to circulate back into the system

And here are some benefits:

• Crops are resilient and nutrient-dense.

• Carbon is stored in the soil, which can help draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

• Biodiverse farmland can provide habitat that is otherwise unavailable for wildlife.

• Nutrients are held in the soil rather than leaching out.

• Good farming practices help protect soil from floods and drought.