Wild Bread: Hand-baked Sourdough Artisan Breads in Your Own Kitchen

Lisa Rayner is a person of non-binary gender. Pronouns used here reflect Lisa's preference.

Lisa has a 1991 Bachelor of Science degree in Natural Resource Interpretation from Northern Arizona University. Lisa is a graduate of the 1993 Black Mesa Permaculture Project's Design Certification Course and 1994 Coconino County Master Gardener Program. In 2008 Lisa won the Martin-Springer Institute Moral Courage Award and the Friends of Flagstaff's Future Livable Community Award. Lisa was also a Garden’s for Humanity 2009 Visionary Awardee.

Lisa writes books with permaculture and Transition themes related to food and fiber. Lisa was formerly the coordinator for the Juniper Street Community Garden where they had a plot at the garden for eight years. Lisa also gardens in small backyard plots.

The child of a chemist and a biologist, Lisa has long had an interest in the natural world. As a young person, Lisa was an avid collector of sea shells, rocks, bird feathers and more. They spent much of their time exploring the forest around their Delaware home. Lisa's mother introduced them to weaving on a floor loom at a young age.

Lisa is a self-directed person who enjoys their solitude and a few good friends. One exasperated teacher wrote in their second grade report card, "Lisa tends to play with little books, paper, yarn, etc. and rushes through assignments."

In addition to writing and gardening, some of Lisa's other favorite pastimes include grinding flour, baking, cooking, canning, spinning yarn, knitting, and designing, weaving and sewing their own clothing.

Lisa hated cooking growing up. Then, in 1985 they became vegetarian, and soon after, vegan. Lisa spent the next year-and-a-half teaching themself to cook and in the process discovered they enjoyed it. Lisa's reasons for being vegan include animal welfare, world hunger and environmental sustainability. In 1993 Lisa was teaching a vegetarian cooking class when they realized that they wanted to learn about which foods grew in their cool, dry mountain home. Lisa began to learn all they could about growing and cooking bioregionally-appropriate foods.

In 1996 Lisa found a word processor while dumpster-diving and wrote the first edition of Growing Food in the Southwest Mountains: A Permaculture Approach to Gardening Above 6,500 Feet in Arizona, New Mexico, Southern Colorado and Southern Utah. The fourth edition of the book was published in 2013.

Also in 1996, Lisa got to know their future husband, Dan, at monthly vegetarian EarthSave potlucks. From 2000 to 2002, Lisa and Dan published a small progressive newspaper that advocated for the protection of northern Arizona's environmental riches, the preservation of Flagstaff's small-town charm, and social justice issues. Lisa also ran a community currency program.

Lisa's interest in geology revived with the peak oil movement, which later morphed into the Transition Movement. Lisa's lifelong interests in do-it-yourself urban homesteading tie in perfectly with the need to economically relocalize and downsize this century.

Lisa has been a solar cook since 1995. Lisa started her solar cooking adventures with a used cardboard CooKitTM panel cooker from Solar Cookers International bought for $10 and later purchased the Sun OvenTM which they used extensively in Flagstaff on their south-facing townhome balcony. Lisa published their second book The Sunny Side of Cooking: Solar cooking and other ecologically friendly cooking methods for the 21st century in 2007.

Lisa has baked their own bread with a sourdough culture since 1995. In 2009, Lisa published Wild Bread - Hand-baked sourdough artisan bread in your own kitchen.

A canner since 2003, Lisa was unsatisfied with most canning books because they did not explain the principles behind safe canning methods. Lisa also wanted to can with only natural, sustainably-produced ingredients. After much research, in 2010 Lisa ended up writing The Natural Canning Resource Book: A guide to home canning with locally-grown, sustainably-produced and fair trade foods.

At age 12, Lisa bought a Navajo spindle in Tuba City, Arizona but did not have the opportunity to learn how to use it until many years later. In 2011, Lisa added spinning and knitting to an ever-growing do-it-yourself repertoire. After learning to spin, sock knitting became a bit of an obsession. Lisa also learned to dye plant and animal fibers with natural, non-toxic dyes like indigo. Lisa's Etsy store sells weaving patterns for pick up freeform overshot and twill for most loom types.

The books sold on LisaRayner.com were written by Lisa in Flagstaff Arizona, where Lisa lived for nearly 30 years. In 2016, Lisa moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico with her then-husband Dan. Like Flagstaff, Santa Fe is a high-altitude town (7,000 feet) with an arid climate in the Southwestern U.S. Lisa was also attracted by Santa Fe's vibrant local foods and fiber arts communities.

Today Lisa lives in Santa Fe with their wife LynnAnnRose and their cats. In recent years Lisa identifies as a "non-binary, autistic, physically disabled artist, writer and activist."

In 2021 Lisa was diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, a genetic connective tissue disorder with systemic health effects. EDS has greatly limited Lisa’s ability to weave, garden, cook and write. Lisa now requires supplemental oxygen.

Prior to the pandemic, Lisa volunteered for many years as a political activist who attended many city council meetings and wrote many letters to the editor of the local newspaper. Lisa has volunteered much of their time to non-profit organizations that exemplify Lisa's values. Lisa is concerned about maintaining democracy as civilization shrinks its ecological footprint. Ecoableism in the Anthropocene is one of Lisa's latest social justice interest.

Since the start of the SARS2 pandemic, Lisa can be found online blogging, selling their e-books and weaving patterns, and doing online activism for the disabled and LGBTQIA+ communities.