Jennifer Rose Marie Serna and her family found solace on Sauvie Island 20 years ago. They were looking for somewhere to put down roots.

The idea appeared three days after the birth of Serna’s third child. 

“My dad was like, ‘Have you ever heard of this place called Sauvie Island?’ He started driving, and there was this place for sale that had been on the market for 10 years,” Serna said. “My dad makes this low offer, and they accept it.”

After 20 years of Serna’s care, Wapato Island Farm has become a regenerative, no-till farm. The 32 acres are abundant with full plots and tall grassy meadows alive with life. Yellow and orange flowers dot the grassy fields and pop out of huge bushes. Three acres are protected from human activity.

Serna offers skill-sharing workshops, medicinal products and open events. She leaned heavily on the practices and ideals her grandmother, María Barrios, taught her. Barrios was from Hermosillo, Mexico, a descendant of the Yaquí tribe. 

“She taught me so much, and because of her and our teachings, I get to do the work that I do today,” Serna said. “She listened to the plants and was the matriarch of the family. I come from a matriarchal people, and her considerations were vast. She was thoughtful of so many and not just the human kin.”

At first, Serna said, she wasn’t sure how to put her grandmother’s values into practice within Western society. 

“My focus is important to stay connected to the land, to the community and to the unseen world,” Serna said. “The land’s been very generous and patient with me.”

Collaboration with community

Through the farm, Serna has built a relationship with Barbie Weber, founder of Groundscore and a resident of Hazelnut Grove. 

After tabling next to each other and becoming friends, the two have been working to revitalize and regrow the hillside adjacent to Hazelnut Grove, a self-governed homeless village nestled below Interstate Avenue in North Portland. Weber has lived there since 2020. 

In the fall of 2025, they planted 316 native and medicinal plants on the hillside. The space is now densely covered by brightly colored plants. Here and there, chickens poke through the brush. 

“For the last three years, we’ve been supporting with plants, mostly native and medicinal, to plant them at Hazelnut Grove,” Serna said. “I’m so moved by her generosity, when I witnessed the space she holds with such tenderness.”

When she first began living there, Weber spoke about the violence she saw and the lack of community that many of the residents felt. This project to revitalize the hillside has brought a new sense of community to the village, Weber said, by encouraging participation and community input.

“This project has helped a lot because Jenny and I go around and ask, ‘What do they want to do?’ and ‘What are they worried about?’” Weber said. “All these plants are designed by conversation. It’s a collaboration.”

When the MAX tracks were built above the village, workers tossed debris from the project onto the hillside, Weber said. 

Weber and the Hazelnut community worked to clean out the space, then introduced goats to eat the invasive blackberries that had taken over. That process took over three years, before the land was ready to be planted.

“I wanted to heal the hillside, and I asked her how to revegetate it,” Weber said. “I really leaned on Jenny’s Indigenous knowledge, and I know she got a lot of help from the unschool.”

Serna shared her knowledge of medicinal plants with Weber to create a garden that continues to give to the residents in Hazelnut Grove. 

“I feel like it’s them leading us in how they want support,” Serna said. “I feel like I’m listening.”

Focus on building relationships

Over the last 10 years, Serna and others at the farm launched Wapato Table, a year-long, skill-sharing experience that invites people to coexist and create lasting relationships with the land they tend. 

“It’s sort of this unschool for adults who want to be on their medicine path and want care, not teachings, but skill-sharing and repetition and conversation,” Serna said. “We’ve been offering space for folks to work in the land, and we’ve invited people to really listen to the plants.”

The students meet in a building on the farm that lends space for free discussion. A long wooden table sits in the middle of the room with products from the gardens lining the walls. 

Each student has their own plot in a dedicated section for the cohort. They get to choose what to grow based on their personal desires and needs. 

Nanao Carey is a part of the current Wapato Table cohort and has volunteered at the farm since 2021. She also tends to the Living Dead Shrine Serna created on the farm. 

“The shrine is more for our unseen kin, and not just ones who were human, but other beings as well,” Serna said. “Lots of other people tend it, and it’s growing. We do our best to show up in a good way for all these forms.” 

For Carey, this process of asking herself and the land what they need has given her a new lens when looking at her own health and that of her community. Before, Carey felt like she wasn’t paying attention to what was around her and was stuck in her own world.  

“Knowing what plants are growing here and how they can support me and make me closer to the land doesn’t just give me the healing,” she said, “but a sense of belonging and understanding in geography.”

Serna asks participants to cultivate plants that can be used to heal people outside of the Wapato community. 

“We have to have community in mind when we pick the plants, like ‘How do we want to help our extended community?’” Carey said. “We are asked to donate at least half the plants we grow here, so you want to think about what kind of plants are needed in the community.”

Her plot has tall greens shooting up with purple and white flowers peppered along the stems. Fava beans flourish as a cover crop that feeds nutrients back into the soil.

Serna said this longer form of skill-sharing allows her and her students to form relationships that don’t end after the first workshop.

“Workshops are fun and lovely, but they don’t create the sense of kinship that I see is created with Wapato Table,” Serna said. “These people have been together for a year, and they’re really investing in relationships with each other. I see a deep value in it.”

That relationship building element was a pull for Carey to join the program.   

After growing up in Japan, Carey lived around the United States for her adult years before moving to Oregon in 2021. She said finding community and friendships has become more difficult as she has grown older. 

“It’s really nice to have a community I can go to for one year and make relationships slowly,” Carey said. “It’s really precious, and it doesn’t happen often. Each person is so special and has already done so much in the community. I feel like I get more collaborative about what I do.”

This article appears in June 3, 2026.