Community Highlights: Meet Heather & Nathan Walbright & Burnell of Earth Wizardz

Today we’d like to introduce you to Heather & Nathan Walbright & Burnell.

Hi Heather & Nathan, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
The Earth Wizardz, Heather Walbright and Nathan Burnell met in the summer of 2020 while living in Charleston, South Carolina. At the time, Nathan was the Farm and Garden Manager for the Green Heart Project, a non-profit that built school and community gardens and education programming. The Green Heart Project was in the middle of building their largest community garden (66 raised beds on a 1/2 acre), and Heather became a regular volunteer. Something unique that we have in common is our past experience working for small composting companies. With a lot in common, we quickly became friends and eventually started dating.

Together, we transformed nearly our entire front and back yard into a garden, and in late 2022 purchased a 2 acre property about 35 minutes outside of Charleston to expand into market farming. We often talked about starting a business, and in the spring of 2023, we created the company, Earth Wizardz. Earth Wizardz’s mission is to cultivate a community that practices the art, science and magic of partnering with nature. We sell plant seeds, young plants, herbs by the stem, and produce at farmers markets.

We had lived in Charleston for most of our adult life (nearly 15 years) and have many fond memories and experiences while living there. However, we reached a point where we were ready for a fresh start together, and in early 2024, decided to move to Ohio, where we grew up. There are complexities to searching for a new home 12 hours away. Without seeing it in person, placed an offer on a one room schoolhouse built in 1899. Nathan and Heather packed up 15 years of life in Charleston, a farm business and moved with our 3 pets to establish roots near Wapakoneta, Ohio.

After less than a year operating in Charleston, the move to Ohio felt very much like starting over for the Earth Wizardz. Most of 2024 was consumed with much needed home updates, and the beginning stages of building a market farm. Fortunately, this time the farm is located on their property, and Heather scaled back on her job, allowing for more time to be invested into growing their market farm and business.

Just weeks after moving to Ohio, the Earth Wizardz signed up to be a part of the Celina Farmers Market, which operates year-round. In hindsight, it might have been a little soon after the big move, but we were eager to become active in our new community. Through the Celina Farmers Market we have met many welcoming and supportive people – customers, vendors and market staff.

Nathan has a food and beverage background and an entrepreneur mind. Heather has a background in sustainability, along with a desire to address the issues with conventional food systems. In August 2024, we decided to add a new segment to the business, and drove to Madison, Wisconsin to purchase a 1984 school bus that was partially converted into a commercial kitchen. It took some time to repair and replace equipment, and by November 2024, the “Magic Food Bus” was licensed and introduced at the Celina Farmers Market. The Magic Food Bus is also operated by Earth Wizardz, and much of the menu is sourced from local producers (farmers and bakers).

It takes time to build a business, and farm business is full of variables, some outside of our control. We are still a new business in Ohio, and have spent so much time building and rebuilding. We are looking forward to some stability in 2025 and optimistic that we’re now in a position for the company to grow!

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Some of our challenges have been self-inflicted, with our move to Ohio starting just over since 6 months since starting the company. We had spent the past 2 years fixing up the 2 acre property outside of Charleston and were finally at a point where we were ready for production crops and getting perennials in the ground. When we moved to Ohio, we had the intentions of trying to maintain the property in South Carolina – to continue to grow warm weather crops/plants such as sweet potatoes, luffa gourd (sponge), peanuts, citrus, avocados, and pineapple guava, as well as to have an excuse to visit Charleston every so often. We had the property set up on automatic irrigation timer (with weather detection) and a robotic lawnmower. However, with Heather scaling back on her job it was not possible financially, and we realized it was going to be too difficult to maintain – we had a small space available for farming but our renter was not able to follow through.

The property (& home) that we moved into in Ohio did not appear to have been lived in regularly for quite some time. We have had some costly home repair projects, and have been battling poison ivy and many overgrown plants/grasses on the property. We focused last year on cleaning up the property, and have been solarizing the production area to kill as many “weeds” as possible – we do not use any chemical products (herbicide, pesticides or fertilizer), so it felt like lost time not being able to have much growing our first year.

We’re still getting used to living in a very different setting – e.g. weather, living in a small town, demographic differences, and lifestyle changes. As exciting as it is starting your own business, it also meant walking away from a lot as well.

At times we talk to customers that came from an industrial farming background, who look at our business and seem to struggle since we call it farming just like them, but it’s not done on a massive scale so it looks so different.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Our mission is to cultivate a community that practices the art, science, and magic of partnering with nature.

If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
Nathan grew up in New Bremen, Ohio, which is about 15 minutes from where we currently live. Nathan’s father was a teacher and coach, and first generation separated from farming. Nathan’s mom was an inspiration for cooking, however she was not the most supportive of it as a career. Nathan gets his passion from his dad and his creativity from his mom. Nathan also grew up with 2 older sisters.

Heather grew up in Worthington, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. Heather was always an observer at first but always very curious. She knew that she would leave Ohio with a yearning to experience new places and people, and did not see herself returning to Ohio until meeting Nathan and after the sudden passing of her younger brother in 2022. Heather has pieces of all her family members, but had a reputation of being full of surprises and doing things different from the conventional suburban family. Heather was also a collegiate water polo player and continued to play through her adult years while in South Carolina.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/earthwizardz/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EarthWizardz