Joe Sperlak
Founder & Operator
Joe created Growing Wise, LLC to earn a livlihood making the world a better place for humans and nature while doing what he enjoys.
He is a lifelong devotee of creativity and natural sciences. Originally from Cape May, New Jersey, Joe grew up in the family landscape construction and nursery business.
Moving to Philadelphia in his 20s to broaden his horticultural experience, he was inoculated with the desire to grow his own food and medicine by a permaculture design course, inspiring him to reassess his impact in the world.
He moved to Vermont in 2020 where he dove deeper into farming, horticulture, soil science, and landscape design. He currently lives in Lincoln with his partner Lauren.
Cedar Teljes
Land Steward & Resident Philosopher
Cedar is a farmer, educator, and board game enthusiast drawn to land care as a form of practice and expressed love. He joined Growing Wise through friendship with Joe and a shared conviction — that tending a place well asks the same things a contemplative life asks: patience, observation, humility, and willingness to be taught by what's already there and building a relationship with it.
Before Vermont, he spent six years as farm educator at The Mountain Retreat and Learning Center in the Nantahala mountains of North Carolina, learning alongside Cherokee friends and others whose knowledge of the land shaped his own. To deepen the ecological side of the work he took a permaculture design course at Wild Abundance and a month-long immersion at Verde Energia in Costa Rica, where he came to appreciate and apply the principles of permaculture — which draw largely from the ancestral knowledge of indigenous ecological science.
He moved to Vermont drawn to the gentle landscape, living for a time at Metta Earth Institute in Lincoln, where he and Joe first met. He now lives in Lincoln with his partner, writes on farming and cultivation as vocation, and is glad to bring that long apprenticeship to the Growing Wise team.