I am on the Board of Directors for ECOV  and was recently requested to give a brief bio.

According to our website”ECOV is a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to cow protection, local production of food, sustainable housing, alternative energy production and energy conservation. Cow protection includes not sending cows to the slaughter house and letting them live out their lives until a natural death. We are also working towards having active teams of oxen, planting 1000 fruit and nut trees and building earth sheltered low impact housing using recycled or locally produced materials. ”

So applying the filter of what would be relevant to that here goes.

I was raised on a farm. My father put me on a tractor at age 11 in the flat and long fields of North Dakota. By the time I came to New Vrindaban at age  24 I had had my fill of industrial agriculture and wanted to get into a simple living scenario.  In the beginning  I trained a team of oxen, Bala and Deva, and worked the community vegetable gardens.

After a year in 1974 I was approached by the community leaders and asked to take over the field side of agriculture in New Vrindaban. As they wanted to free up labor to work at the Palace I was asked to use tractors and assured it was a temporary situation and we would go back to oxen later. It is now 40 years later and I am still trying to get back there thus supporting efforts to train ox teamsters and oxen and build an ox barn.

In the meantime I have had various services including Purchasing when we had 600 people here and were doing major construction projects many of which  you see  today.  For a couple of year I ran the Finance department of New Vrindaban. I  was also involved in various businesses New Vrindaban did to help support the community, including spending 3 years over a ten year period in New York City.

When I came back from NYC the final time I noted there was zero vegetables being grown in NV and have dedicated a lot of energy to reintroducing growing into NV culture.

I have 5 children and 3 grandchildren and still live in New Vrindaban where I garden, burn wood for heat, support my wife’s crafted gourd business,  and try to enable Srila Prabhupada’s vision for NV of  living simply dependent on the land and the cow.

I have also been keeping a blog  for 8 years that may   give some insight.