Crawford Stewardship Project is excited to welcome its first-ever Executive Director, Amy Fenn.
Amy brings great energy for the work of stewardship and fits right in with CSP’s history of protecting the environment and empowering local communities to manage their resources sustainably for generations to come.
Amy grew up in the concrete hardscape of Los Angeles, with frequent visits to her conservation-minded grandparents living in the Sierra Nevada mountain range of John Muir and Ansel Adams. Fascinated by the contrast between these two landscapes: one of intense development, the other of pristine wilderness, Amy gravitated to studies in land use planning, urban design, geography, geology, anthropology, earning a broad degree in Social Sciences from Portland State University in Oregon. It was during these years that Amy came to see “stewardship” as the sustainable model of right-relationship between humans and the rest of the environment… with humans neither dominating nor withdrawing-from the landscape, but as careful managers living and working within the ecosystem and all of its functions. She completed a year of graduate studies in concept-heavy Human Geography at UW Madison, then dropped out in favor of more hands-on work, spending over a decade empowering community at Madison Public Library.
In 2014 Amy decided to throw her lot in with agriculture. She spent every spare moment traveling around the Upper Midwest, cobbling together a sustainable-farming education by attending hundreds of workshops, field days, and short-courses. In 2016 she bought 40 acres in Crawford County, half overworked cropland and half logged-out woods. She built fence and water infrastructure, learned to chainsaw to thin the weedy woods into oak savanna/silvopasture, and is using managed grazing to convert the cropland into diverse perennial pasture with areas of native prairie grasses.
Amy currently works as a project manager with Green Lands Blue Waters, a University of Minnesota based network of regional partners with a vision of agriculture that is sustainable both ecologically and economically. Amy served for five years as Treasurer of GrassWorks, a grassroots farmer-led regional nonprofit that promotes managed grazing. She currently serves as volunteer coordinator for the Crawford-based Great River Graziers, a farmer-led peer-to-peer pasturewalk group founded in 1993 and facilitated by retired Extension agent Vance Haugen. Amy joined the Board of CSP in October 2023 and is thrilled to step into the ED role and work alongside staff members Forest Jahnke, Joe Childs, Omaru Ornelas, and Lamar Janes. Amy will be phasing into the ED role over the next few months as her work with these other groups wrap up. Stay tuned as CSP strengthens our core and grows our community outreach and opportunities in the months to come!
“The CSP Board wholeheartedly welcomes Amy as our Executive Director!”
Edie Ehlert, Crawford Stewardship Project Board President
