Meet the 2024 MICG Staff Gardeners
The 2024 growing season is unfolding, and we are ready to start planting at the community garden. We are especially excited to have two part-time staff gardeners supporting our growing efforts. Please meet Jami and Kyra who will primarily take care of crops for the Food Shelf, and will also help with the many other tasks around the garden.
Jamie Halder: MICG is happy to welcome Jami Halder back to the garden for her second season as one of our staff gardeners. In the garden, Jami is passionate about sustainable growing practices and caring for the environment. She enjoys foraging, learning about food-as-medicine, traditional medicines, herbs. Jami has experience in gardening on her MICG plot and at the Duluth Community Garden. She brings her “life- long-learner” attitude to her role at MICG and is looking forward to sharing her gardening knowledge through 1-on-1 interactions in the garden and educational events the MICG will host this summer.
Jami and her son Olli first traveled to Madeline Island 8 years ago during her involvement with water protection actions and activities. Now as a full-time resident she is involved in many aspects of the community including working part time for the Town of La Pointe with the summer rec program, being a guest artist at the La Pointe School as well as doing independent contractor work. Jami also offers classes and sells her jewelry at Woods Hall gallery.
Kyra Bingham: Kyra (they/she) is a fresh face on the island, having moved full time to Mooningwanekaaning (Madeline Island) in June 2022 to co-steward land at the Middle Road Farm, now known as Manitou Makoons Gitigaan (Little Spirit Bear Farm). Kyra is passionate about food-systems, now entering their eighth season of full-time farming, having started at an urban farm in Pittsburgh, then several farms on and around White Earth Reservation. Now, Kyra is on staff at the newly opened Darling’s Grocery and assists with The Afterschool Program at La Pointe Elementary. This summer they can be found behind the counter, with their dog Anpo at the farm, or in the community garden! Also to note, Kyra is also a coordinator with Giiwekii, a project to return ancestral Ansihinsaabe flint corn to the island, starting this summer.
Kyra is a white settler, who hails from the unceded traditional territory of the Wahzhazhe (Osage), the Shawandasse Tula (Shawnee), and the Onödowá'ga:' (Senaca) that is known today as Pittsburgh, PA. Kyra completed an undergraduate degree at University of Toronto (Tkaranto, Canada) in 2021. Their work is intended to return the generous sharing of knowledge from Indigenous teachers, mentors, academics, activists, and writers who shaped the lands where they work, play, and live, around the Great Lakes and across Turtle Island.
Welcome to Jami Halder and Kyra Bingham- we know it will be a fun and successful season with your help!