Joe has called the Piedmont of North Carolina home for over 35 years. His farming passion comes from summers spent on his grandparents’ farm in Indiana. Driving tractors, feeding cows, bailing hay, helping his grandmother in the garden, and fishing in the afternoons cemented that farming was the path for him.

After years in the craft beer scene in Boston reignited his interest in the integrity and artistry of artisanal products, Joe returned to North Carolina to focus on growing food. He spent four years as a farmer in training at the Elma C. Lomax Incubator Farm (now Elma C. Lomax Research and Education Farm). He purchased an 18-acre homeplace in 2012 and operated a sustainable, formerly organic-certified fruit and vegetable farm. Joe has also managed multiple farms in that area.

He has a B.S. in agricultural education from NC A&T and a horticulture certificate from NCSU. He was CFSA’s beginning farmer of the year in 2015 and the Cabarrus County Soil and Water Conservation’s farm family of the year in 2018.

He lives on his farm in Gold Hill, NC, with his daughter Eleanor Pearl and their dog Holly, growing fruits and vegetables, edible nursery crops, and a permaculture orchard and food forest.

Mr. Harvin has spent twenty years as a community development practitioner in Communities of Color addressing the issue of social inequality using community-building and -organizing principles. Mr. Harvin graduated from Scott’s Branch High School in the historic civil rights community of Summerton, SC and was honorably discharged from the United States Marine Corp. Mr. Harvin holds a masters’ degree in nonprofit management with a specialization in community development finance from the New School for Public Engagement, Milano School of International Affairs, and Management and Urban Policy. As a practitioner, Mr. Harvin has consulted with nonprofits, community action agencies and public charter schools in urban and rural environments to build organization capacity to effect change at the individual and community level. Among his accomplishments are the securing of multiple federal and state awards for community development projects.