Lemont Native Joins Mistwood Golf Course As Sustainability Specialist

ROMEOVILLE, IL — Romeoville’s Mistwood Golf Club continues to grow its staff in new and innovative ways and recently announced it has hired a sustainability specialist to head up projects involving golf course maintenance, food production, and other areas.

Mistwood announced the hiring of Lemont native Angelica Carmen, who will implement multiple short-term and long-term projects as the golf club continues to make a major commitment to environmental social responsibility as part of its regular operations.

Carmen’s first project will be to create The Farm at Mistwood, which is a farm located on the golf course. Carmen is working with Mistwood executive chef Dan Casey to develop a crop schedule that will yield vegetables to be featured at McWethy’s Tavern, the locally popular restaurant operated by the Mistwood team.

The Farm will also serve as a venue for events. Mistwood officials said the golf course will also be hosting chef’s dinners on The Farm itself, as well as honey tasting events using honey harvested from hives on the property.

Carmen brings a wealth of knowledge, passion, and experience to this new position, seamlessly fitting in with Mistwood’s future goals of sustainability and continuing a tradition started by the McWethy family, officials said in a news release. Before joining his father at Mistwood, Todd McWethy founded McWethy Farms, a hydroponic greenhouse operation that produced high-quality produce and supplied the local market in Michigan and the Chicago area.

“There are many sustainable projects we can implement at Mistwood,” Carmen said in the release. “I have met with each department at the facility, and we have a lot of ideas, big and small, that will have positive environmental effects.”

Carmen graduated from Loyola University-Chicago with a communications and environmental sustainability degree. Five years of experience in the golf business showed her how many opportunities there are to make changes to benefit the environment and community.

The beehive project that will be used for the honey-tasting events is being done through a collaboration with Bee All About It, headquartered in Villa Park, which is bringing ten beehives to Mistwood. The hives are located in what was a previously wasted area, which now has the potential to produce more than 500 pounds of honey. Bee All About It fully manages all aspects of the beehives on the property, including honey collection. This partnership is beneficial to beekeepers looking for property to host their hives, facilities looking to add green programs and local honey production to their vision, and the ecological landscape by contributing to healthy biodiversity.

This spring, Carmen will begin work on a solar-powered greenhouse to start seedlings to then transition to The Farm at Mistwood. The 8,000 square foot farm will be situated in an unused area in the middle of the golf course and will be home to over 100 varieties of plants including edible flowers, herbs, and vegetables.

Carmen’s ideas and passion for her industry have been recognized with several local and national awards. She was the dual winner of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago’s 2021 Sustainability Summit Awards in the categories of Biosolids Beneficial Reuse Award & Sustainable Landscaping Award for her major green infrastructure projects and for creating a wash pad bioswale and establishing a culinary farm using MWRD’s products.

She was also second runner-up in the Innovative Conservation Award category offered through GCSAA’s [Golf Course Superintendents Association of America] Environmental Leaders in Golf awards.

“As a former farmer, being able to bring sustainability to the golf course brings me extreme joy,” Todd McWethy said in the release. “Angelica gives our team a great opportunity to introduce biodynamic growing, on-site beekeeping and building out vast sustainable projects in the future. Working closely with our chefs, we are also planning to create new customer experiences farmed from the organic farm Angelica is planning. She is a great addition to our Mistwood team.”