Meet the Farmer
Feral Heart Farm
Kanoa Dinwoodie
Established In 2013
Location Sunol, CA
Acreage 3
What they sell Vegetables & herbs
When they began working with KTA 2022
Advising Focus Organizational structure & governance; financial management systems; capital access
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Kanoa Dinwoodie has been working in the agricultural space for over 25 years - first, advocating for food access at UC Santa Cruz, then deepening his interest in gardening at EcoFarm, and now, for the last 10 years, through his own farm business: Feral Heart Farm.
Feral Heart Farm was started when Kanoa was approached by a friend to join an agricultural collective. The opportunity, Kanoa hoped, would serve as a food sovereignty project, allowing him to grow food for himself, his family, and close friends. As Kanoa deepened his knowledge and refined his farming skills, he began growing surplus produce that he sold to the greater community through farmers markets, CSAs, and restaurants. Around this time, the farm expanded to two acres and then three. Over the last couple of years, Kanoa has focused on growing more Asian diasporic crops that are special both to him and his community.
With the farm’s expansion, Kanoa has continued farming with a focus on agroecology, mindfully interacting and caring for the land through practices such as cover cropping, crop rotation, interplanting, microclimate creation, and seed saving. Alongside promoting the interactions between soil, animals, and plants on his own land, Kanoa has also grown the interactions between his farm and the larger community by promoting educational efforts around sustainable farming and the food system at large.
Advising Snapshot: 2023
From the beginning, Kanoa was interested in creating a flat-structured farm operation embedded with democratic decision-making. He manages Feral Heart Farm alongside two other partners in a collective business partnership, working together to guide and expand the business. Collaborating with Farm Business Advisor James Nakahara, Kanoa has sought partnership and guidance around developing and stewarding this model, ensuring the smaller problems are solved such that larger issues can be tackled. In the past year, James and Kanoa have worked together on setting up Quickbooks, solidifying food safety plans, applying for new sources of capital, and record keeping. Now, Kanoa is looking to further build connection with his community through Feral Heart’s CSA. Kanoa also has an eye on joining a farmer-led seed collective and has started working with Second Generation Seeds, an organization that preserves, adapts, and breeds Asian diasporic crops.
