Who We Are

Jonathan Snipes grew up on Snipes Farm and now serves as Executive Director of Snipes Farm and Education Center. Believing that nature is the best teacher, his passion is to share the beauty and ecology of the farm with our local community. He spent a summer in Mexico working in rural development and two years providing peace and conflict resolution training in Costa Rica. A year as an intern at the United Nations following college introduced him to environmental and peace issues on a global level. Jonathan has a BA in Spanish language and political science from Haverford College, and a master's degree in education from Temple University. He served 12 years on the Falls Township Board of Supervisors. He and his wife, Melanie Douty-Snipes and sister, Susan Snipes Wells, are dedicated to their five generation family farm as an oasis of good food and environmental learning for people of all ages.

Melanie Douty-Snipes has been an experiential educator for over 30 years springing from a degree in environmental education from Warren Wilson College in Asheville, NC. She was an instructor at several outdoor education centers in the U.S.working with a variety of nature study approaches,facilitating low and high ropes course elements and team building, She spent 9 years as coordinator of the Middle School Friends Program incorporating Quaker testimonies of peace, simplicity, integrity, sustainability, community and equality into 58 weekend retreats. Over the past 15 years at Snipes Farm she has developed garden, nutrition, farm and environmental education lessons for farm-to-school and school-to-farm programs for local schools. She and her team have helped to install school gardens, lead farm field trips three seasons each year, have provided hundreds of after school cooking lessons and tied a seed-to-fork curriculum to classroom lessons as well. She co-founded Snipes Farm Day Camp in 2008 which has grown into one of the finest camps in Bucks County and one of the greatest blessings to Snipes Farm.

Victoria’s love of growing plants has led her to a long and varied career in the horticulture industry. From the hallowed halls of Penn State (College of Agriculture, of course), to hydroponic tomatoes in Phoenix, carnations in Denver, and many millions of annuals, perennials, shrubs and trees later, she landed at Snipes Farm in 1999. She had the great fortune to have many long chats with nursery founder Bradshaw Snipes about all things horticulture. She began farming here in 2003 and was an integral part of starting the CSA in 2007 and the return of Snipes Farm to vegetable production. She gets huge amounts of satisfaction from seeing the truck stacked high with produce for our community and looks forward to the changes and challenges (not too many, please) of each new season.

The focus of Michele's education at Aberdeen State University in Aberdeen, SD and BCCC in Newtown, PA was health sciences and nutrition. She has many years of experience in Patient Services at Penn Medicine in Yardley, PA. She came to Snipes Farm in 2017 to make scarecrows for the fall festival, but since then she has held various positions in the SFEC office and is now the Manager of Operations and Accounts receivable.

Gayle joined the staff in 2016 to assist with fund development and office management. She brings experience from her positions at Shriners Hospitals for Children – Philadelphia; U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY; Anderson House Halfway Homes for Women in Recovery – Whitehouse Station, NJ and Market Street Rescue Mission – Morristown, NJ. Prior to this, Gayle was as an executive assistant and corporate officer with an apparel importer in San Diego, CA. Gayle attended Moody Bible Institute – Chicago, IL; Somerset Christian College – Zarephath, NJ and DuCret School of Commercial Art & Photography – Plainfield, NJ. She has volunteered with Sunday Breakfast Mission in Philadelphia helping homeless women gain employment skills and provided street-level outreaches to the homeless in San Diego.

With a background in theatre arts, early childhood education, and psychotherapy, Tim is now pivoting to land management and farming and couldn't be happier. Since catching the permaculture bug through backyard shiitake and oyster mushroom cultivation, he rapidly attained both a Permaculture Design Certificate and advanced training. Tim is a key player in considering how best to steward Snipes Farm and engage its well-established mission to serve the local community, the Bucks County foodshed, the Delaware River watershed, and the world.

A systems-thinker through and through, Tim has relished taking on the challenge of managing SFEC's egg-laying flock. He sees this work of designing regenerative food production systems that achieve both "Earth Care" and "People Care" as a logical extension of his work as a psychotherapist and is thrilled to be a part of the team!

Peter and his five brothers bounded about Bucks County farms since learning to walk, raising hogs and Holsteins at the Buckingham Township dairy their dad’s parents began in the early-1960s and slinging hay bales on Plumsteadville acreage their mother’s ancestors have stewarded since 1809. Trained as an elementary educator, Peter taught for two years in Pennsylvania public schools before several years of youth and urban ministry at his Doylestown home church and in Philadelphia and Atlanta. By late-20s-land he had recaught the farming bug further afield, learning ins and outs of a market vegetables operation near Portland, Oregon and apprenticing in orchard, berry, flower, compost, and veggie production in Santa Cruz, California. He even spent part of a winter glimpsing tropical tricks at a nonprofit organic farm on the leeward side of O’ahu, Hawai‘i. Upon an east coast return he hopped the Delaware to manage The Lawrenceville School’s Big Red Farm for two years, then worked in the gardens of Isles, Inc. in Trenton, New Jersey, where he also lives and grows vegetables, herbs, compost, and flowers with his wife, toddler son, and mother-in-law. A seasoned farmer, teacher, and community leader, Peter passionately connects with youth, congregations, neighbors, and strangers around the deepest roots of social change: land, farming, and food! He earned a BS in Education at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania, an MA in Theological Studies at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, and a Certificate in Ecological Horticulture at the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Peter has shepherded Snipes Farm’s Seed-To-Fork summer youth program since 2018 and is thrilled to now lead as a Farmer-Educator with varied duties and projects. He enjoys coffee, many cuisines (recent: Trenton’s Guatemalan pupusas!), novels, ensemble & hymn singing, picture books, songwriting, family gatherings, and his sweet tooth.

Odalis is the Education Program Manager, Nutrition educator, and Teen leadership coordinator with a passion for improving the well-being of others. Since 2019, Odalis has been dedicated to supporting healthy lifestyles and creating positive experiences for everyone in various roles. She is fluent in both Spanish and English, Odalis is also skilled in program management, food safety, graphic design, teaching, and leadership.

Since completing her Masters in Nutrition from Johnson & Wales University, Odalis has gained valuable experience in a variety of roles, including Program Coordinator at a Non - Profit Organization in Philadelphia, where she helped support the healthy corner store program in Trenton & Camden by coordinating nutrition lessons, community outreach and collaborating with community health partners.

Today, Odalis has made a positive impact by providing support in numerous areas. As an Education program manager, Odalis is responsible for handling camp technology setup, registration, and communication, as well as scholarship applications. In addition to managing camp operations, Odalis also manages all education programs such as community education, after school, farm to school and field trip programs with the help of the amazing education team.
As a Nutrition educator, Odalis helps facilitate workshops and classes at our partnered local schools developing curriculum and creating hands-on activities to teach participants about healthy eating habits. Odalis also provides our local shelter, healthy, easy, delicious cooking demos. Throughout her career, Odalis has demonstrated a commitment to providing quality education and promoting positive experiences for all with food & nutrition. She continues to empower children’s lives through positive growth, learning, nature and healthy eating habits.

Inquire about: Birthday party reservation, Field trips, Summer Camp, After school programs: odalism@snipesfarm.org

Nicole Kissinger moved from Florida to Pennsylvania in 2016. She has always been passionate about working with young children. During her internship for Elementary Education, Nicole realized her calling was in Early Childhood Education, where she has now worked in for over 20 years. Nicole always loved adventure and the outdoors. Many summers in Florida were spent tubing down Rainbow River, eating pizza at her dad’s restaurant, and driving in her 1972 Mustang. When she moved to PA, she fell in love with the vast amounts of outdoor activities and opportunities. It doesn’t matter what season it is, she will always be outside, exploring.

After she visited Snipes Farm and Education Center with her family, she fell in love with its peacefulness, focus on education, and dedication to sustainability. One of her four daughters attended a class for school-age children and through this, Nicole had a vision for a preschool-age program at the farm. After several conversations with Melanie, Little Sprouts was born in August of 2021. Nicole encourages her Little Sprouts friends to “stay wild!”

Ella Coscia is the assistant to Victoria, the Director of Farming at Snipes Farm and Education Center. Ella is a lifelong resident of Morrisville, where she grew up visiting Snipes Farm regularly, developing a deep appreciation for nature and passion to care for the land we inhabit. Ella graduated from Guilford College in 2019 with a BS in Environmental Studies and Geology, and shortly thereafter joined the farm team in 2020. She can be found every Saturday in the Big Red Barn working the farm market, and every Thursday at the CSA market. Ella also has a passion for photography and uses her time on the farm to capture different aspects of farm life. Some of her work can be found on the Snipes Farm instagram page.

Growing up Nicole had a deep love for camping and hiking and found herself drawn to outdoor work. After living out of a tent on an educational farm in Colorado, Nicole realized she had a passion for working with the land and nature to help provide and educate the local communities. Following her stay in Colorado, Nicole lived in Philadelphia for a few years testing out her endurance in the east coast weather by being a bike delivery courier. Even though she loved Philly, she found herself wanting to get back to farming and slowly migrating back to her hometown in Bucks county, where she found and fell in love with Snipes Farm and Education Center.

Edy started his relationship with Snipes Farm in the summer of 2018, joining the Seed-to-Fork high school program. It was then that Edy began developing a knack for being in the outdoors. After two summers on the Seed-to-Fork volunteer team, Edy opted to work at Snipes Farm Day Camp. Soon after his work began he realized he just couldn’t get enough of working in such a beautiful and calming space. As soon as the Day Camp was over, He joined the Farm team. Ever since then, Edy has been dedicated to the vegetables and whoever might be eating them.