Green Path Veterans Farms US Navy
May 03, 2021 12:00 PM
Camille Van Sant, Operation ECO Vets Director
Green Path Veterans Farms US Navy

Camille Van Sant lives on 5 acres located on the watershed for Lake Manatee in Bradenton, FL known as Paradise Creek. It is the scene for GreenGardenChef.com. – an educational website. Experiencing the challenging climate and soil in Florida since 2004, Paradise Creek has adopted permaculture principles and practices for sustainability. Working with the fundamentals of sustainable permaculture, Camille has built and maintained organic gardens in a variety of climates, (CA, NJ, NY and FL). Research and experimentation in the Principles of Permaculture have been applied to improve knowledge of organic gardening in this climate.

A Navy veteran, instructor and entrepreneur, Camille is presently Director of Operation Eco Vets at Green Path Veterans Farms in Sarasota. Operation Eco Vets is a cooperative education non-profit that assists in training veterans in entrepreneurial agriculture and landscaping.

Camille began at Crowley Nature Center as she designed and built their demonstration garden/farm there. Also, she was an instructor at Crowley Folk School, teaching classes on Sustainable Edible Landscaping and cooking from the garden. Venturing into business, Green Garden Chef developed a line of jam, spice and tea mixes made from local fruits and herbs grown on her farm, selling them at the Bradenton Farmers Market. She renovated and built a permaculture garden at Gocio Elementary and ran a Gardening after school program there motivating elementary age children in eating better and growing their own food. At Florida House Institute, as Edible Landscape Manager, Camille designed, built the gardens and created a program for volunteers, teaching organic and sustainable gardening, ecological design and nursery plant propagation. Now at Green Path Veterans Farms, the mission is to train, employ, and heal our veterans through ecological design of farm and landscape. Develop and execute the business plan to build a farm and learning center with apprenticeship opportunities to help veterans become entrepreneurs.
After 2 years Camille asked the board of Veterans for Common Sense Fund who started the project to create Operation ECO Vets, another non-profit exclusively for the project. Camille is now the Executive Director and ECO Vets employs 3-4 veterans.