Accreditation - Farmer Vannah

Certified Permaculture Designer + Educator

While working on farms in Thailand in 2019, Vannah became a certified Permaculture designer at Rak Tamachat Permaculture Education Center. In addition to her intensive PDC, she also completed a Natural Building Certification and Permaculture Educator Certification.

Reevis Mountain School of Self Reliance

For most of 2018, Vannah worked and studied at the off-grid school of self reliance located in the Superstition Wilderness of Arizona. She ran the market garden, studied bushcraft, wildcrafting, homesteading, orchard culture and off-grid irrigation, solar + building methods.

Arizona Trail

Utilizing bushcraft skills learned at Reevis, Vannah thru-hiked the 800 mile Arizona Trail in 2018. She walked from Mexico to Utah, traversing over 100,000 feet in elevation gain across Arizona's deserts and mountains. All the food she brought with her she either hunted or grew herself at Reevis, and carried it dehydrated in her pack. She learned the hard way how to locate water in the desert, forage for food, and attend to her own injuries with wilderness first aid.

Southeast Conservation Corps

Vannah was part of a backcountry bridge building crew with the Conservation Corps. She and her crew hauled thousands of pounds of lumber into wilderness areas, camped at their work sites, and built bridges with hand tools. They worked on the Natchez Trace Natl. Parkway in Mississippi, King's Mountain State Park, and in Tennessee's Prentice-Cooper National Forest.

In addition to building bridges, she also assisted the National Parks Service in trail building, timber-stand improvement and controlled burns.

Historic Hacienda

Studying traditional life ways on the Santa Fe Trail in New Mexico, Vannah learned how to tan hides, spin thread + operate an 18th century loom, grow a traditional desert subsistence garden, throw hunting tomahawks and blacksmith in a coal forge. This experience solidified her knowledge of homesteading + self-reliance.

Woman sitting among rows of leafy green plants in a garden

Encompass Farm

Encompass began in 2019 as a network of urban yards in downtown Black Mountain NC. These plots, many of which are front yards, were donated to Vannah and transformed into abundant organic gardens.

Yards that Yield began as a way for Vannah, a first generation farmer, to start her own farm business while unable to access land. It has since become an incredible way to engage with the community and make use of formerly wasted spaces. With garden sites spread all throughout Black Mountain, folks walking by with their families or dogs have the opportunity to engage with their local food system.

When Vannah achieved her dream of farm ownership and purchased the forever farm in 2024, the urban sites became an incubator farm, transitioning to a new farmer. These urban garden sites give new farmers the same opportunity that Vannah had to start businesses and fund the future of local food.

Encompass found its forever home on seven acres in Rutherford County, nestled in the South Mountains. Three acres of flat land host the main production field for veggies + flowers, intersected by four perennial hedgerows providing native habitat. A two acre south sloping hill is home to the future food forest where native fruit, berries + nuts will grow alongside the animals grazed in their shade.

As we steward this land and develop deeper relationships to the plants, animals and people growing roots here, community becomes a focal point. The farm hosts intimate farm to table dinners and quarterly events for Veggie Box Subscribers. Soon, the farm will offer educational events like week-long Permaculture Design Certification .

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