The story that got Me here

My relationship with the natural world wasn’t inherited from my parents, I was born in the early 1990’s in Louisville, Kentucky. Nature began to really mean something to me, of which I wouldn’t have attempted to explain, in my early teenage years when I developed a passion for film photography. Taking photographs of the small woodlots I rambled around in near my childhood home was very inspiring and created a connection to place that I have to this day.

By the time I was approaching my twenties, now a father, I spent all of my free time hiking and backpacking with a field guide, a hand lens, and a voracious desire to interpret the ecology taking place around the forests, fields, and floodplains I explored. The weight of my backpack never lightened but changed in its contents; once being weighed down by bulky cameras and film to later being weighed down by notebooks, field guides, and other field instruments.

Throughout my twenties I was studying botany, horticulture, ecology, mycology, natural history, anthropology and ethnobotany. Foraging for wild foods and medicinals became another important piece to the complex relationship with the natural world I had cultivated. I had become more intimately involved in the local ecology by my activity and diet. The four seasons began to change in their meaning to me: April meant morel mushrooms and looking for salamanders, May meant gathering mulberries and serviceberries, June meant reishi mushrooms, September meant gathering acorns, hickory nuts, and persimmons. I began keeping phenology records of both flora and fauna in a dedicated notebook around this time and continue to do so today. No observation is too insignificant to record if I can help it.

By 2018, I was beginning to work in both horticulture and forestry. I spent two seasons as a volunteer backcountry ranger with the U.S. Forest Service before transitioning into working full-time in the trade of horticulture and natural areas restoration. Over the past six years, I’ve worked for many parks, gardens, and environmental non-profits around central Kentucky. My understanding and therefore connection of the natural world multiplied each year with more hands on experience, and still no college degree to speak of.

In the spring of 2020, I started a grassroots program called The Hungry Forager and hosted the first foray in July that same year. Over the next five years, I travelled all over the state of Kentucky hosting workshops and giving lectures focused mostly on foraging for wild foods. Throughout that time, I had two more kids with the love of my life, published my first book Foraging Kentucky (2024) and was featured on various podcasts and outdoor media channels.

In the autumn of 2025, I decided it was time to expand on my mission. I knew that while teaching people about identifying and gathering wild foods is essential for an ultimate human existence, there’s other big pieces of knowledge that I’m just as interested in teaching people of all ages that offer just as intimate of a connection as foraging, or at least a close second. That’s why I’ve started the Barnett Nature School.

The mission of the school is simple; to bridge the gap between people and the natural world as it is in the 21st century. That is accomplished through discussing and teaching natural history, deep ecology, ecosystems, flora and fauna, and the long human history we all are descendants of. Regaining the knowledge that matters is the goal, building a lasting connection to the natural world is the goal. Sharing it with others, be it family, friends, and/or the community, that’s what it’s all about. I’m fortunate to have a unique skillset that allows me to host a class on pond ecology one day and plant a native pollinator garden the next. I’m looking forward to meeting more of you and serving the community where it really matters. To get a full scope of what I currently offer, go to our Contact page.

A bit more about me: As of 2026, I’m raising my three sons with my life partner, working full-time as a horticulturist and part-time on the Barnett Nature School, and a second book project. In between all that I’m outside daily gardening, foraging, fishing, reading, and camping.