Member Biographies

Hartzell Household
Hammann Household
Knight-Cisneros Household
Maginnis Household
Pierce Household
Plotkin Household
Miller Household
Mazza Household
Bolen-Miller Household

Hartzell Household

Sandy was born in 1958 in Gettysburg.  She has been developing her private educational therapy business over the last few years and enjoys returning the smiles to the faces of kids that struggle with learning.  Interests include homeschooling (she homeschools her two boys, Ben and Sam), composting, and gardening. When time permits she hopes to return to weaving, and learning Spanish. She promised her boys that if they moved away from their friends in a cohousing community in WA State, that she would create a community where they could have new cohousing friends. Her original idea was to create a CSA on the farm but instead became friends with a local CSA grower and has been learning from them and hopes to implement many of their ideas on the farm.

Bill, born in 1959, has dabbled in all sorts of careers over the years.  Before moving to PA, he worked as an environmental scientist for a power company and as a project manager for an engineering firm that developed wind power.  Interests include having time with his family, sailing, building a boat some day, and finding a good place to set up his telescope.  Skills include electrical and plumbing work although he is not a master at these.

Sam was born in Seattle in 1991 and has spent most of his life living in community.  He loves to read and wishes that he could sail away on a pirate ship.  Making all sorts of strange things from Lego’s is a passion along with ice cream and fencing class. This fine list of my interests is actually very old. It’s outdated. But, I can compare myself now, to the younger Sam who wished he could sail away on a pirate ship. I still love to read, though it’s becoming more difficult to find interesting books. I no longer wish to go a-pirating, as pirates have lost most of their buccaneering charm. Still, due to the medium of digital entertainment, computer games that is, I can now go a-pirating while still sitting on dry land. I don’t wield the power of the mystical Lego blocks any longer. I also decided to stop eating the copious amounts of ice-cream that I had been devouring, and have held myself to that, not touching the ice-cream since. Instead, I’ve hovered around looking for other junk food which kind of defeats the purpose. I have always been interested in the bladed instruments generally called “swords.” So, over time, I’ve taken a variety of fencing (sword fighting) classes. But, since I lacked “the fire,” as an old story goes, I eventually stopped attending them all, and have subsequently forgotten all the skills required for those arts. Oh, and I also like to write.

Ben, born in Seattle in 1988, is the oldest non-adult member of the Hundredfold project. He enjoys pursuing his interests in most of the things present in the known universe, but tends to focus on worldly subjects such as anthropology, geography, and language. He is interested in gallivanting off to many foreign places in the world, though he has not yet managed to get so much as an eyelash off the North American continent. Vancouver and Alaska are the most exotic places he’s ever been, though California contains the most peculiar population of indigenous natives he’s ever encountered. Ben also enjoys theatre and acting, and he has occasionally been known to stand on a stage somewhere and pretend to be somebody he isn’t.

Hammann Household

Lou was born during 1929 and is a semi-retired, Gettysburg College, professor of religion.  Born in Baltimore to a family whose business was fishmongering.  After attending one of the best high schools in the country, he attended Gettysburg College, Yale Divinity School, Penn State, and Temple.  He is an ordained clergy, but taught religion for 42 years.  He has traveled to Japan, Taiwan, Pakistan, Central America, Italy and Germany.  He has written a couple of books and was blessed by being father of five very interesting daughters, who now have given him six grandchildren.  His professional, civic and personal life runs together but he indulges himself by going to the movies.  He hopes to be part of a community in which life is sharable.

Pat is a retired special ed. teacher who was born in 1930.  Pat figures her wisest move was marrying Lou and having five wonderful girls.  She is active with Lou in the Alliance for Democracy, and locally Democracy for America, a movement to reduce the power of international corporations.  Interests include history, reading, and political interests, plus family interests.  She is interested in community because she doesn't want to live too much alone and she thinks she can better preserve the environment by living in a sustainable community.

Knight-Cisneros Household

Mark Knight, the eldest in a family of six, grew up on a cattle farm on the PA/West Virginia border. He attended a seminary run by the Capuchin Franciscans and studied existential phenomenology in college. After getting his masters in social work he moved to DC and worked for many years in associations focused on social change. For the last seven years, he has worked in affordable housing finance in the DC and Maryland. He is active in membership and finance aspects of Hundredfold Farm and looks forward to building a house there in 2008.

Mario Cisneros came to the U.S. in 1983 from his home in Quito, Ecuador. He grew up as number 8 in a family of 9 children. After seeing much of the world in the U.S. Navy he settled into a career as a draftsman. He is a marathon runner (has finished the Marine Corps Marathon) three times and a long-distance cyclist (three AIDS rides including one in 1998 from San Francisco to Los Angeles). Mario loves being a Papi to Moises and hopes to raise animals at Hundredfold Farm. He operates a residential and commercial design and permit management firm and assists members to produce plans for their homes at Hundredfold Farm.

Moises Cisneros-Knight was born in the Manta region of Ecuador in September 1999. He came to live with Mario and Mark in March of 2000. He's in third grade and especially likes science and animals. He has a kitten named Solly, a Pekinese named Peppy and a tank full of tropical fish.

Maginnis Household

Ann was born in 1948 and is librarian by trade.  She was born and raised in a small town on the coast of Connecticut. Soon after moving to the D.C. area 20 years ago, she discovered the Shenandoah National Park. She hikes its rugged trails several times each year. She has been active in the local Sierra Club and involved in stream cleanups in the Northern Virginia area.  Hundredfold Farm offers the opportunity to have an extended family and to work with like-minded people to preserve and protect this parcel of 80 acres that Fate has bestowed upon this community.

Pierce Household

David began this life in 1942, growing up and attending school and graduate school in the Midwest before moving to the DC area in 1972. He is busy pursuing his second career in alternative healing (including hypnotherapy, psychic education, and reiki), having retired in 2000 from his first as a statistician in academia and federal government. His daughter and son-in-law have active careers and lives in the San Francisco Bay area. David’s interests in a rural environment, sustainability & self-sufficiency, organic eating & living, intentional community, and planetary stewardship all merge at Hundredfold.

Plotkin Household

Gretchen, born in 1943, spent a busy childhood in Methodist parsonages around New York’s Capital District. After many years working in theater, she returned to school to study nursing, inspired by the physical changes of her first pregnancy. Her journey through this profession took her to large urban and small rural hospitals, urban and community nursing, infection control, and nursing education. She and Joel spent the academic in 1998-99 as volunteer teachers at Universities in Jimma Ethiopia. Gretchen 's life has been forever changed by by the suffering and service she experienced her clinical experience there. She is currently an adjunct nursing faculty member at Gettysburg-HACC. She is active in growing perrennial flowers and  tending the community orgainc vegetable garden at HFF.

Joel, born in 1943, grew up in a housing project in the Bronx, and has since sought greener surroundings. He and his family moved to rural upstate New York and built their own home, an experience that convinced him the tasks of building and living need to be shared. He has worked as an actor and stage director, and taught at both college and secondary levels. He and Gretchen look forward to sharing the Hundredfold experience with their adult children, grandchildren, and extended international family and friends

Miller Household

Linda describes her life as "traveling adventurous fun mixed in with volunteer work, a shade of learning and splashes of spirituality"

Linda was born in upstate New York and raised in a small village 35 miles west of Philly. After receiving a BS in math from LVC, she married and eventually settled in a 200 year old log house in rural Bethel, PA to raise 5 children. Between new babies she also attended MU, received 45 credits in SPED and certification to teach. Substitute teaching, doing pick up and delivery work on Saturdays (actually, she counted this as her free time), paint removing, horse hair plaster removing, dry walling, spackling, painting sanding , etc on the log house with it’s 10 foot ceiling, sewing most of the clothes for herself , children and even tried a suit for her husband, learning every new craft that came her way, and in her spare time reading all the sci-fi, alternate energy, self-sustaining, earth sheltered homes and meta-physical books the local libraries contained, with best friends built and produced a yogurt business making 1000 lbs of yogurt a week, and to top it off 2 years as PTO pres for the school district. On April 22, 1991 life suddenly changed and Linda moved from the safe home of family, left her jobs, and began soul searching journey for purpose and meaning to life. Across the continent with only her cat she lived life meeting strangers that became friends. She traveled both near and far to Thailand and Vietnam, to Germany and Bermuda and twice to Brazil doing volunteer work, living in Canada, California and Boston. Building a home at Hundred Fold Farm, is another new adventure but one that bring a feeling of community. It is a coming home. 

Mazza Household

Lenny, born in 1959 in Brooklyn, New York, is the second of five children. He saw mountains for the first time on a ninth grade science field trip and has been in love with the outdoors ever since. This love led him to a degree in Natural Resource Management with an emphasis in Forestry from Cook College (Rutgers University) in 1982. He later changed professions to Chiropractic and has been practicing since 1987. He sold his practice in New Jersey to move to Hundredfold Farm, and opened a practice at the Gettysburg Holistic Health Center in January 2006. He is an avid hiker, biker and photographer. In 2001, he and Lorraine did an unsupported bike tour across the United States and raised money for chiropractic scholarships. One day, he plans to do a mountain bike tour of the Continental Divide. Recently, he has started gardening after a long hiatus and has also become interested in preserving the harvest by drying and canning. He is very excited about the opportunity to be in a community of like-minded people who want to live in an ecologically and economically sustainable way.
 
Lorraine, born in 1970, is an only child and grew up in small-town Clarksburg, NJ. After working in corporate communications at a number of different companies, she is currently pursuing writing and graphic design freelance projects. She met Lenny in 1995 on a Sierra Club hike in Harriman State Park (NY), got engaged atop a Mayan temple in Mexico, and has been sharing adventures with him ever since. Other interests include biking and hiking; caring for animals; cooking, entertaining and eating; reading and movies; and yard sale shopping. She found the Hundredfold Farm website through a link from Cohousing.org a few years ago, and has been making plans to join and build a home since March 2005. She believes that we will benefit greatly from (and can also contribute to) a community with a larger piece of property and the shared skills of the residents

Bolen-Miller Household

Rosie

Aaron