Cher Stuewe-Portnoff

My first father-in-law taught me to garden in the mid-1960s. Over the next few years, with a family of five to feed, I read everything I could find about nutrition and learned to cook and preserve from Farm Journal cookbooks. By the mid-70s, the father-in-law was an "ex," but my garden was intact -- 100 tomato plants, 6' okra stalks, and growing.

I continued to learn more about nutrition and the wider health and environmental impacts of how we feed ourselves. Biodiversity became an issue, and I took an interest in preserving heritage varieties and permaculture. Farm Journal books moved over to share shelf space with Carla Emory, Moosewood, Laurel's Kitchen, and One-Straw Farmstead, along with stacks of TMEN, Countryside, and Johnny's of Maine organic seed catalogs.

The social, environmental, and economic possibilities of sustainable living led to more change -- a stint in a Pacific Northwest food co-op, organic gardening, chicks in my bathtub, and dairy goats (among other things) in my backyard. We've enjoyed "buying locally" while living in Washington State, Hawaii, a forest land trust in southern Missouri, and the cities of Columbia and St. Louis, MO. Now we're staying a while in Oklahoma, to be 15 minutes from our daughter and grandchildren while our son-in-law serves overseas (not, thank God, right in Iraq), also a few hours' drive from two of our sons and their families.

When not preoccupied with food, I've been a Community Action Head Start activist and volunteer (OK); county agency family-and-children's counselor (WA); program administrator/writing instructor at The Evergreen State College (WA); volunteer coordinator for the First-Ever Women's Olympic Marathon Trials (WA); and energy specialist (WA) and state energy office director (MO). I started my undergraduate studies in nutrition and social work at the University of Oklahoma, took a brief detour through a forestry program, and then completed my bachelor's degree and met Greg, my husband for 30 years now, at The Evergreen State College; my master's degree is from OU. I'm "Mimi" to 19 grandchildren, and I volunteer whenever possible for organizations that help people and native plants. Under the business name "cherWorks," I edit grant applications, reports, and articles on criminal and social justice, environmental issues, and cohousing for faculty, state agencies, nonprofits, and independent writers in various parts of the country.