Heather Bryant is Grafton County's new agricultural resources educator. Originally from Maine, Bryant has a degree in natural resources from Cornell University and recently completed a Master’s in Plant, Soil and Environmental Sciences from the University of Maine which focused on yield, economic, soil quality and weed impacts of a hybrid mulching system using a combination of plastic and living mulches to grow vegetables.

Prior to graduate school, Bryant worked in Madagascar for nearly six years as a Peace Corps volunteer and later as a project manager with a British non-profit called the Andrew Lees Trust. During that time, her primary responsibilities included developing and managing a training program teaching trainers and end-users to build improved wood cookstoves.

Bryant’s team trained the women who built 42,000 stoves across southern Madagascar. While completing the stove project, Bryant wrote a funding proposal that now allows the former stove trainers to use their training skills to help farmers in southern Madagascar re-introduce sorghum as a regional agricultural crop.

Living and working in Madagascar sparked an interest in agriculture and taught Bryant the importance of food security. She is looking forward to putting what she learned there and in graduate school to work here in New Hampshire. Bryant’s particular interests in agriculture include local food systems, farm diversification and season extension in vegetable production. Please welcome her to Extension!