Chrys Ostrander

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Chrys is a certified permaculture designer. He is a member of the BZ Farm Collective at the Bezaleel Israel Eco-Village in Northeast Washington State.

Chrys Ostrander was born in 1957 and raised in upstate New York. In the late 1970’s, he went to college in Maine at the College of the Atlantic that was an alternative college offering a degree in Human Ecology. He would have been part of the class of 1980 had he not dropped out to join a communal organic natural foods bakery in Bar Harbor where he became an advocate for organic foods and critical of the industrial food system. Chrys moved to Washington State in 1990 from California where he had been a student, tofu maker, member of an organic produce distribution workers’ collective and farmworker on a collective farm during the 1980s. In 1990, he and his small family settled at Tolstoy Farm in Davenport, WA, the oldest surviving non-religious intentional community in the U.S..

During the nearly 20 years Chrys lived at Tolstoy he operated a 4-acre certified organic micro-farm. From 2009 to 2013 he managed a 35-acre non-profit educational farm in Cheney, WA. Chrys raised dairy goats for 20 years, has taught organic farming and gardening and became active in sustainable, now regenerative, agriculture and food system advocacy and policy work.

Chrys co-founded the Tolstoy Farms Community Supported Agriculture project (CSA) and the Tolstoy Farms Marketing Collective that markets and distributes the organic produce grown at Tolstoy through regional stores and restaurants and at the Spokane Farmers’ Market. Chrys co-founded the Spokane Farmers’ Market in 1998 which just finished its 23rd season. In 2021, Chrys was part of an effort in Spokane called the Latah Environment, Agriculture and Fisheries Heritage Project (LEAF) to save 48 acres of prime agricultural land from development, some of the last remaining zoned agricultural land in the city. His group was able to facilitate the rematriation of the land to the Coeur d’Alene Tribe who will preserve it and use it to educate about indigenous fisheries and food systems.

During the 1990s, Chrys served on the Boards of Tilth Producers (now Tilth Alliance), Washington’s organic and sustainable farmers’ association. He has also served on the boards of the Washington State Farmers’ Market Association, the Spokane MarketPlace (an attempt at a public market for Spokane) and the Spokane Farmers’ Market. Chrys served as paid staff and on the Steering Committee for the Washington Sustainable Food and Farming Network, a statewide policy advocacy organization. Among the other achievements of the Network, the advocacy group convinced a reluctant Washington State University to include organic and sustainable agriculture in its research program and curricula. Now, twenty years later, the University advertises their “world class” organic agriculture degree in many of their promotional materials.

From 2014 to 2022, Chrys was Caretaker at a former retreat center known as Heartsong in Tumtum in Eastern Washington State where he managed an 8000 sq. ft. polyculture garden and various permaculture plantings. He assisted in crafting and implementing the land’s permaculture design and mentored seasonal permaculture apprentices there.

Chrys does free-lance web design and publishes Inland FoodWise Online, a newsletter and action alerts communication conduit for the Inland Northwest Foodshed.

Chrys is a certified permaculture designer having earned his certificate in 2012 completing a permaculture design course taught by Michael Pilarski. He is involved closely with the Inland Northwest Permaculture Guild, Spokane Permaculture and the Friends of the Trees Society supporting information sharing, networking and event coordination. He is past President of the Spokane Food Policy Council and convener of the Spokane Farmland Preservation Working Group. He is a member of the BZ Farm Collective at the Bezaleel Israel Eco-Village in Northeast Washington State

Country: United States

Specialties

  • Biodiversity
  • Broadscale Permaculture Design
  • Community Gardens
  • CSAs/Market Gardening
  • Ecovillage and Intentional Community Design
  • Food Forestry
  • Nursery Operations
  • Permaculture Business
  • Permaculture Education
  • Permaculture Farming
  • Permaculture Gardening
  • Regenerative Agriculture
  • Self-Sufficiency with Permaculture
  • Small-scale Design and Gardening
  • Urban Permaculture

Latest Project

The Bezaleel Israel Eco-Village in far northeast Washington is named after the landowner, affectionately known as “BZ,” who has put more than 30 years of effort into developing his 20 acres to support a self-sufficient Permaculture Community Land Trust.

The land is in the process of becoming a community land trust to be preserved as a peopled conservancy for generations to come.

It’s a small village right now, but we are linked with a growing network in our local region including the Inland Northwest Permaculture Guild, the Northeast Washington Permaculture Guild, the Huckleberry Range Community Collective, Uhuru, Friends of the Trees Society, the Permaculture Conservation Trust, our volunteers, our customers and others.

The kinds of work we do involve growing food and livestock using permaculture and regenerative agriculture methods, water conservation, sustainable woodlot management, tree felling, bark stripping, pole construction, framing, green building, timber milling, fencing, off-grid energy production, equipment use and maintenance, earth restoration, plant and tree propagation, haying, direct marketing, firewood gathering, etc..

We also operate the BZ Collective Farm and seed business. We sell fruits and vegetables locally and seeds online.