We Stayed
This year opened under the sign of the Snake…and moved toward the Horse.
The Snake asks for shedding. Not drama. Not destruction. Just the quiet, often painful letting go of what no longer fits. Old skins. Old stories. Old ways of proving worth. This year required that kind of shedding…assumptions about growth, about pace, about what success was supposed to look like.
The Horse, by contrast, is about stamina. Forward motion. Staying upright over distance. Not sprinting. Not performing. Just continuing.
2025 demanded both.
As the year closes, it does so at the winter solstice…the darkest point on the calendar. Not an ending, but a pause. The moment when the light stops retreating, even if you can’t yet see it returning.
This December forced a reckoning.
I can see what we built, and how we built it. I can see where integrity held, and where it faltered. I can see what we proved…and what we didn’t.
But the hardest question wasn’t operational or strategic. It was quieter and more personal: why I stayed.
That turning point, when nothing looks like it’s working and yet the light has already begun to return, reframed the question for me.
When I finally said this out loud, my board chair, one of many mentors who has walked this road with me, said something simple: Of course you stayed. It has never been about you. It’s about your brother.
He was right.
This work has never been about personal endurance or professional identity. It has always been about building a world where the people we love are not afterthoughts. Where systems make room. Where dignity is designed in, not argued for.
The solstice reminds me that staying isn’t bravado. It’s devotion. It’s choosing to stand in the dark long enough for something better to emerge.
Not because the path is clear, but because the purpose is.
This year, as much of the vertical farming industry collapsed under its own weight, I watched competitors disappear almost overnight. Companies that once dominated headlines shut their doors, some quietly, some very publicly. And in the aftermath, I watched a different kind of return…fewer promises, less noise, and more people willing to do the hard, unglamorous work with humility, clarity, and grit. The hype burned off. What remains is purpose.
I was one of the first to step into this industry. A woman. An architect. Carrying a why that didn’t fit the prevailing narrative. And now, I am one of the last still standing. Not because we were louder. Not because we raised more. But because we chose people…again and again…even when it was harder.
There is a Viktor Frankl quote that has been rattling in my brain this year: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. And in our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
That space is where this year happened. When capital tightened. When systems failed. When fear whispered that walking away might be easier. So many times it would have been easier to give up.
So many.
To not expose myself to the agonizing doubt. The fear. The overwhelm. In that space, I chose to stay. To respond with responsibility, not reaction. With care, not collapse. With meaning, not momentum for its own sake.
A good friend reminded me this year of Simone de Beauvoir. She believed that meaning is not inherited…it is constructed through action, through choosing responsibility even when the outcome is uncertain.
That ethic has shaped every hard decision I made this year. Leadership, to me, isn’t about having answers. It’s about refusing to abandon others when certainty disappears. A good life is one that strengthens the people around you…that makes it possible for others to keep going.
And in staying, we did build.
At our farm at home in Wyoming, the one we have run since 2016, we deepened what it means to be rooted…strengthening the model that first proved this work was possible. We refined. We stabilized. We remembered who we are.
In Maine, we crossed a different threshold altogether. A farm brought fully into being. Systems coming online. Teams stepping into place. People who had waited years for this work finally walking through the doors. A promise moving from drawing board to lived reality.
These were not flashy milestones. They were earned ones.
Vertical Harvest has always been about lifting ourselves and each other up. Not as a slogan, but as a daily practice. It is slower. It is messier. It demands more of you than you think you have. And it is the only reason we are still here.
This was also the year I began to write…not as marketing, not as explanation, but as truth. Somewhere along this journey, I found my voice. Or maybe I stopped muting it. Writing became a way to return to those December questions…to sit with them instead of outrunning them.
I do this work because food is never just food. It is dignity. It is access. It is who gets to participate and who gets left behind. It is systems made visible. It is a mirror.
I do this work because a meaningful life is not built on ease…it is built on choosing to remain human inside systems that reward the opposite.
Who knows what next year will bring. But this year, I can answer December’s questions honestly. We did not get everything right. We did not prove everything we hoped to.
And still, we stayed.
As this year closes, I am not interested in triumph narratives. I am interested in endurance with integrity. In quiet courage. In staying soft without breaking. In building something that can hold people, even when the ground shifts beneath it.
We are still here. And that is not an accident.
I keep coming back to this meal at the end of long seasons. A whole chicken and rice, cooked together in one pot. It’s simple, steady food, the kind that nourishes without demanding too much in return. Nothing performative.
One-Pot Roasted Chicken and Rice
A meal for endurance, not applause
Ingredients
1 whole chicken, about 4 pounds
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Small pinch saffron threads
1½ Teaspoon turmeric
3-4 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1½ cup long-grain rice (basmati or jasmine works well)
2½ cups chicken stock
1 lemon sliced & one juiced
Green herbs & microgreens
Method
Heat your oven to 375°F.
Pat the chicken dry with paper towel and season generously inside and out with salt and pepper.
In a large Dutch oven or heavy ovenproof pot, heat 3 tablespoons olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until golden, 7-9 minutes. Reduce heat to medium-low, sprinkle the onion with a little salt, add the garlic and cook until softened, 1 to 2 minutes. Add ½ teaspoon of turmeric and stir until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Turn the heat off and transfer the onion mixture to a small bowl. Don’t wash the pot.
Sprinkle the remaining 1 teaspoon of turmeric all over the chicken. In the same pot, heat the remaining 1 tablespoon of oil over medium-high, and carefully place the chicken breast side down in the pot. Cook the chicken on the stovetop until the breast side is golden, about 5 minutes. If the heat is too strong, reduce to medium. You’re not completely browning the skin, just getting some color on it. Very carefully, with the help of tongs and a wooden spoon, or using your hands, turn the chicken over and cook the back side until golden, another 5 minutes.
Spread the onions evenly around the chicken, keeping them off the skin. Add 2½ cups of chicken stock to the edge of the pot, making sure it doesn’t wash over the bird. Bring the liquid to a brief boil, then cover the pot and transfer it to the oven to cook for about 50 minutes.
Take the pot out of the oven and spoon the rice into the broth around the perimeter, distributing it as evenly as possible. If any rice lands on the chicken or gets caught in the wings, gently push it down into the liquid so it can cook fully. Sprinkle the chicken with lemon juice, lemon slices and saffron, if using. Cover the pot and return it to the oven for about 30 minutes, until both the chicken and rice are tender. Let the dish rest, covered, for 5 minutes before serving, and finish with fresh herbs if you like.
It’s best to carve the chicken right in the pot and serve along with the rice. But you can also gently lift the chicken out and place it on a board and carve.
This is food that nourishes without exhausting. Food that gives more than it asks.
Your passion and dedication are a beacon. And yes, your purpose beyond the business and to the people is what makes you unique. So glad you stayed!
Dear Nona,
We have shared a journey very similar to yours. For us, the closure of USAID led us into a difficult period of survival and reinvention. On top of that came disappointment with partners and a sense of abandonment by our government—all within just a few months. And yet, we survived. We even expanded our dreams. It feels as though we would never have discovered this new path without the crisis itself. Please keep writing. You put words to thoughts and feelings that so many of us carry but struggle to express—and you do it so beautifully.