The 2025 Strawberry Sprout Grant Winner:

Amanda Stamp!

From Broad Run, Virginia, Amanda Stamp recently started a new farm called Connected Roots Farm, a 17 acre farm. 

Her goal is to grow Connected Roots Farm into an organic, diversified flower and vegetable farm that uses regenerative practices to help nurture the land and provides the community access to nutrient dense food and flowers. Amanda plans to start growing flowers to sell at farmers markets and local delivery. She will also begin establishing perennials such as blackberries, fruit trees, herbs, and perennial flowers. In the following years, she will start vegetable production to sell at farmers markets and CSA, connecting with her local community and providing much needed local produce. 

 

Her background is in global education, working with students, teachers, and administrators around the globe.  Her work focused on helping people understand our interconnected world and how to understand, celebrate, and respect one another and our planet. directly in her local community to begin making changes that would focus on food security and increased local production.   Amanda began participating in her local Food Council meetings to understand the landscape.  Learning the many restrictions growers are facing, Amanda applied to join the Fairfax City Environmental Sustainability Committee with the goal of bringing food security and food production on the radar of the local government.  During her two two years on the committe, she was able to push for expanded definitions of urban agriculture in the Comprehensive Plan, which is a stepping stone for allowing people to grow food for sale.

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During the pandemic, Amanda became part of a community group that began growing and donating fresh produce to local food pantries to help with food shortages and increased community need. This group soon became a non-profit called Hands on Harvests and she joined the board in 2022. Their work focuses on creating and sustaining a network of growers to increase the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables for Northern Virginians. Her husband and his family are from India. Amanda's mother-in-law and her did not share a common language, but a few months out of the year when she visits, they would work in the garden, admire the growing plants, and cook together. Her mother-in-law taught her many things about growing and how to cook her favorite recipes.  Despite the language barrier, they formed a bond and built memories that Amanda holds dear to her heart.

 

Amanda plans to use the funds to purchase a variety of tools and equipment with the grant including plants, tarps, wood chipper, buckets, hand-tools, seeder, raised beds, irrigation equipment, and more. She also plans to use the funds to help build her website, and have a new logo for her new farm business!

 

Visit her progress on her new farm on her IG account:  @connectedrootsfarm
 

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