Years of Experience, Shared

Operating  Bee Tree Farm at UAC, Bowsprit's founders, Graziella Cervi and Peter Brady, will mentor farming in vegetable production using biodynamic practices, growing  field crops and fruit. Daughter Sunniva runs her own goat dairy, Woodsong Farm.

Peter Brady is a Maine licensed arborist who has been serving the mid-coast Maine area for the past five years. As the interim lumber and firewood manager at Unity Agricultural Center, Peter  will mentor youth in the skills of caring for our forests. 

Through landscape conservation and plantings, establishing a protected apiary, and holding educational events, the Sanctuary will build resilient biomes. Farmer Barbara Booth's vision will strengthen our entire farming community.

Steve Murdock grew up on a farm in Unity, Maine creating with whatever was at hand, but with a special interest in metal.  He left to study Art in upstate New York where metal soon became his medium of choice.  Steve received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Ithaca College. He teaches Blacksmithing at Colby College’s Colby-Hume Center in Sidney, Maine for their January Program. Steve and his wife, Chia own and operate Unity Forge.

Elizabeth Radliff lives in Troy with her partner Cliff, dog Elvis, and cat Lou. She makes and sells pottery through her studio Oak Tree Pottery, and also works as an Occupational Therapy Assistant with elders and children  with special needs. "I look forward to helping Bowsprit grow and thrive!"

B'anna Federico and Nate Smith have turned their combined blacksmithing and welding experience into producing large scale  sculpture. They look forward to sharing their basically down- at-home skills/exciting wizardry with Bowsprit youth as guest mentors from away.

Louis Pontillo holds a B.S. in Professional Health Sciences and an M.S. in Oriental Medicine. He has been teaching mind/body exercises for over thirty years through yoga, qigong, and taijiquan.  A  certified instructor in QiGong, TaiJiQuan, and Kung Fu, and adjunct faculty at the Downeast School of Massage,  Louis also coaches wrestling for kids, K-8, in the RSU3 community, Waldo Co, Maine, where he lives with his wife and four children. Louis sees "the value of teaching young people meditation and mindful exercise. They are tools that too few possess and can be used as a coping mechanism for all kinds of emotional and physical issues that may arise in one's life".

Jo Hesse makes area rugs and sculptures using preindustrial felt-making methods that she learned in Turkey from the UNESCO honored felt-maker, Master Mehmet Girgiç.  Jo's rugs are firmly felted and functional, ranging from a quarter to half an inch thick. Jo’s commitment to traditional fabrication is juxtaposed with a playful, modern style and a raw, decisive approach to composition. She brings to her craft a precision attained from years living in the south of Germany, where she studied

textile design, and an aesthetic sense developed at the Freie Hochschule Stuttgart. In 2018 she  and her father Kent established The Ram & The Worm, a Northampton,  MA - based boutique rug brand