Christine Pielenz
Owner
Christine hails from Germany. After coming to San Francisco in 1995 she founded the family foundation Potrero Nuevo Fund with her husband, Bill, which supports after-school arts education, school garden programs and sustainable architecture for low-income communities. She always has enjoyed growing her own vegetables; in 2008 she decided she needed more space to grow things and bought Potrero Nuevo Farm.
Bill Laven
Bill taught literature at the secondary level for 8 years and photography from the secondary to post-graduate level for 20 years until he retired from teaching to found the Potrero Nuevo Fund with Christine. He now runs the farm with Christine.
Jay Trexler
Farm Manager
Jay came on board at PNF in 2011 to co-manage with his wife Suzie. The two first farmed together at the UCSC Farm & Garden apprenticeship, where they met in 2008. He then led wilderness therapy trips in Oregon but is happily now back in the soil and working together with his wife on the land where they married. When he’s not farming, Jay enjoys fly fishing, woodworking and picking out old time tunes on his claw hammer banjo.
Suzie Trexler
Farm Manager
Suzie found her way to farming as a Boston food critic. She quickly realized that she had no business writing about carrots and kale until she knew where it all came from. She volunteered at east coast farms like The Food Project and Siena Farms before landing an internship at Spannocchia in Tuscany, Italy, working with heritage breed farm animals. From there, she apprenticed at UCSC’s Farm & Garden and met Jay – her future husband and farming partner at PNF, where she has been putting down roots since 2009. The act of farming, for Suzie, is a grounding force that provides connection to everything that matters.