Speaker Biographies

Mary Beth Lind

Mary Beth Lind is a registered and licensed dietician. In 2000 she wrote the new foreword to the 25th anniversary edition of More-with-Less cookbook, and previously she and her sister Sarah E. Myers wrote Recipes from the Old Mill: Baking with Whole Grains.

Her new book, co-authored with Cathleen Hockman-Wert, Simply in Season, explores how the food we put on our tables impacts our local and global neighbors. It shows the importance of eating local, seasonal food - and fairly traded food - inviting readers to make choices that offer security and health for our communities, for the land, for body and spirit.

In rural West Virginia Mary Beth and her husband, Lester, operate the Old Mill, one of the few continuously functioning water-powered mills in North America. Their stone-ground flours go into the breads Mary Beth bakes for her Community Supported Bakery (Old Mill Bakery). Like the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms in which members receive a box of fresh vegetables throughout the growing season, Mary Beth's customers receive a supply of fresh baked goods each week.

The Linds are also co-directors of Mountain Retreat, a small Christian retreat center whose logo is "Discovering the connection between the spiritual and organic sources of life." On their farm, Highland Patch, they raise and preserve nearly all of the food they eat as well as sell blueberries and raspberries to local restaurants, farmers' markets and private customers.

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