Jake Daigle is the lead farmer overseeing the development of Headwaters Farm at SOMO Village. This 25-acre farm will focus on regenerative practices to become a source of locally produced, nutrient-dense food. Headwaters Farm will operate as a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) where you can buy a share of weekly or biweekly produce boxes. A membership comes with incentives like farm dinners and invitations to events. 
Right from its inception, SOMO Village’s vision has been to form a sustainable community with its own food hub and respectful practice of caring for the land. While the concept of a neighborhood with localized agriculture (or “agrihood”) isn’t new, taking better care of ourselves and the planet has become a rallying call for communities around the country looking for more sustainable homes and food sources. This need is especially notable in wellness-focused, socially conscious areas like Sonoma County and the Bay Area. 
Jake himself is a Bay Area transplant. He moved to California after Hurricane Katrina and the devastating floods that followed. He describes the storm as a sort of rite of passage, awakening him to Earth’s changing climate and a powerful desire to learn about giving back more than what is taken. 
The regenerative farming movement has strong ties to the Bay, and Jake was lucky enough to learn from some of its early pioneers. They helped him realize the meaning of the saying “as above, so below.” In agriculture, there are many metaphors for human consciousness—there has to be a balance of life above and below the soil. Just as in our personal reality, there is much going on below the surface which can influence the quality of our lives. 
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Organic farming is Jake’s passion, a practice he’s been cultivating for the past fifteen years. He&#8217;s been growing soil in Marin and Sonoma counties to produce fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers in partnership with Mother Nature. 
“If you think about how much land supports all of the human population’s food needs, it’s such a small fraction of the earth. So what’s there has to be tended to and cared for, and I’ve kind of made that my purpose. Wherever I have a little chunk of the earth [I] just care for it the best I can,” says Jake.
Jake describes his work as creating connections. “When we talk about regeneration, we’re putting life into every action that we take. We can grow soil by growing the soil life.” Jake has been doing just this for over a decade now, helping create connections between healthy food and healthy people. 
“Eating things that are locally produced by people with good practice is the most ideal situation. The more life-giving food we eat, the healthier we can be,” says Jake. “It’s the old way of eating when people raised their own food or grew their own food. That was the majority of the population a hundred years ago. Now that’s a fraction of the population.”
Jake sees the importance of food grown within and shared by a community—another connection aligned with SOMO VIllage’s mission.
“We’re a melting pot of cultures, and every culture has a different way of working with food and ingredients, but the one thread that connects them all is when people come together to share a meal, it lifts their spirit. That can be seen as our medicine. Food is our medicine,” says Jake. “If we have a connection to it, then we’re healthier. That’s the simplest path to health.” 
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Jake plans to create a polyculture with Headwaters Farm, planting a variety of plants that strike a natural balance, “farming in harmony with nature instead of trying to control and dominate and destroy.”
“To have a beautiful space where you have so many different things going on that work together, then you can recover the resources that you’re producing on-site and create a system that feeds itself and becomes self-sufficient. I do feel like there’s hope for that,” says Jake. “We’re going to try to model that here, starting with a nursery and growing plants that will be put out into the landscape and into the neighborhood and increasing our food production over the years.”
Jake is happiest when he sees a vision come to fruition. “A big part of growing things is envisioning spaces…to see it after the seeds have sprouted and knowing it’s going to provide.” He hopes that Headwaters Farm becomes a place that people are excited to return to. “That they’ll visit, that they’ll taste something that inspires them, that they’ll learn something that gives them hope and connects them to the natural world.”
When Jake isn’t farming, his favorite place to visit locally is the ocean, a resource Sonoma County residents are lucky to find in abundance. You can also find him at SOMO Cowork, home to the Headwaters Farm office, just a few steps from the Zen Garden. 
If you’re interested in learning more about Jake, Headwaters Farm, and the importance of agrihoods, visit our <a href="https://www.somovillage.com/blog/agrihood-environmental-societal-human-health-benefits/">SOMO Village Blog</a>.

January Member Spotlight: Farmer Jake Daigle