John & Rebecca
Rebecca
It is safe to say Rebecca feels at home on a farm. She grew up on a dairy farm in West Virginia, and spent seven years at Blueberry Hill Cohousing, which sits adjacent to Potomac Vegetable Farms. She and John Patrick moved to Nashville to be nearer to John’s children and grandchildren, but quickly realized they missed living in cohousing. Rebecca enjoys gardening and deeper connections with neighbors, which she can combine in Burns Village & Farm.
Professionally, Rebecca has worked as a psychologist in public schools, community mental health centers and children’s hospitals. Currently, she’s a public health researcher at Tennessee State University and member of an editorial board for a web-based publication called the Deep Times Journal.
Rebecca dreams of preparing favorite recipes with her neighbors for community dinners, helping with landscaping the common areas (she likes to weed), and impromptu conversations and walks around the Village.
John
Similarly to his partner Rebecca, John grew up on an Arkansas farm and spent seven years of his adult life at Blueberry Hill Cohousing. John and Rebecca moved to Tennessee to be closer to family, but when he unpacked his traditional house in Tennessee, he thought 'oh my gosh, where is everybody?' Blueberry Hill Cohousing was an agrihood before the term existed, but they couldn't find anything like it in Tennessee, so they decided to form Burns Village & Farm.
John is a retired Program Analyst for the Environmental Protection Agency, Office of the Inspector General (OIG) in Washington, D.C. After “retiring,” John served on nonprofit boards including Southern SAWG, Southern SARE and the Tennessee Organic Growers Association. Currently, John is a School Board member of Cheatham County, where he successfully initiated a program to install solar panels on one high school and a USDA Farm to School Grant.
John & Rebecca currently own a small farm of blueberries, chickens and chestnut trees in Cheatham County. Although John has lived in Memphis, St. Louis and Vienna, VA, he has been a diehard St. Louis Cardinals fan ever since the 1960s.