As announced recently on our webzine The Blue Ribbon Team, the Cernunnos Foundation LLC has officially relocated to Johnstown, Pennsylvania—and brought our whole family of ventures along for the ride. The move is personal and practical in equal measure. Personally, I needed to rebuild—and I wanted to do it somewhere that felt like me: an untapped resource, rough around the edges, but full of quiet power and waiting to show the world what it really is. Johnstown fits that description perfectly. It’s a city that has known hard work, hard times, and rebirth more than once. It’s a place that still hums with possibility if you’re willing to listen for it.
The Foundation’s work has always been about repairing systems—not just mechanical ones, but the natural and social systems that hold life together. It started humbly, with my early permaculture studies and a small podcast I hosted called DIY Food Supply, where we explored urban food systems and backyard sustainability through the lens of regenerative design. Those conversations lit a spark that never went out. Over time, that spark grew into a company built around a simple premise: we can rebuild the way our systems work, if we stop waiting for someone else to do it.
That mission crystallized with a concept called the River Refugium Project—a network of small-scale aquaponic greenhouses designed to clean nutrient-rich water before it reaches the Gulf of Mexico’s infamous Dead Zone. It’s a deceptively simple idea: use living systems to filter pollution, turn waste into growth, and prove that balance and productivity don’t have to be enemies. That project became the blueprint for everything we do now. Whether it’s ecology, economy, or community, wherever there’s a broken cycle—we build a loop that works again.
Johnstown, in its own way, is the perfect symbol of that mission. The city has been destroyed and reborn more times than any place should have to endure. Flooded, rebuilt, tested again, and somehow still standing. The stone bridge still holds. The people still show up. That’s resilience in its purest form. Beneath the scars, this region remains rich in both resource and resourcefulness. Just like the toxins we once filtered from river water, the challenges here are raw material—something we can harvest, process, and use to make the world a little cleaner, a little stronger, a little more alive.
I’m not pretending the world isn’t broken or that everything will be perfect—but we can fix this. So let’s get in it. The Cernunnos Foundation exists to prove that idea true. We’re not waiting on billion-dollar solutions or miracles from above. We’re rolling up sleeves and fixing what’s right in front of us: water, food, shelter, energy, safety, and community. Because everyday people can solve the biggest problems on Earth—we just have to start doing the work again.
And that’s what this move is about. Johnstown isn’t just a new address—it’s a declaration. This valley and this foundation share a heartbeat: damaged but determined, still capable of greatness. We’re here to turn damage into design, failure into flow, and loss into resource. No slogans. No saviors. Just systems. Just work. Just us.