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    Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good

    Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good is a podcast with and about hobby farmers, small-scale farmers and sustainable farmers. More than that, it’s about the important work these folks are doing for themselves, their families and their communities on and off the farm. Each episode, host Lisa Munniksma sits down to chat with someone doing the good work to discuss how they started, what they're doing now, and what drives them to keep growing. (A presentation of Hobby Farms® magazine, an EG Media company.)
    enRodney Wilson72 Episodes

    Episodes (72)

    Episode 72: Sara Martin

    Episode 72: Sara Martin

    Appalachian farmer Sara Martin asks us to put on our science hats and talks about farming at high elevation, running a truly diverse small farm, redistributing unsold produce and more.

    Hear about how Sara and her husband, Dustin Cornelison, became “accidental farmers,” as their homesteading endeavor just kept growing. Sara talks about how their Two Trees Farm and Sustainabillies business support their family and their community. With 3/4 acre in production, they’ve learned to grow vertically and construct multi-use structures to make the most of their small farm. Sara explains how her background in ecology, rather than agriculture, has shaped her farming experience. Learn about the ecological growing efforts they use to make this challenging property into a productive piece of land.

    Sara says when people ask them what they do, their first reaction is, “Putting out fires.” From growing plant starts and diverse vegetable production to using the plentiful shady areas on the farm for growing mushrooms and teaching classes, plus 70+ pastured laying hens, growing 70% of their own food and keeping a blacksmith shop, there’s no shortage of work to be done at Two Trees Farm. Learn about their wasabi-growing experiment and the mobile greenhouse that Dustin built on the back of their pickup truck. Let Sara take you back to science class as she reminds us about how to use the scientific method to make informed decisions on the farm.

    Also get to know the community work that Sara does, including with the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project and the local Cooperative Extension advisory board. Sara and Dustin manage Haywood’s Historic Farmers Market and have worked with their team to secure grants to pay farmers for their unsold produce and redistribute it to hunger-relief organizations. “There’s no such thing as a bad day at our farmers market anymore for our vendors,” Sara says.

    Sustainabillies website

    Sustainabillies on Instagram

    Sustainabillies on Facebook







     

     

    Episode 71: Holly Callahan-Kasmala and Chrisie DiCarlo, co-hosts of the Coffee with the Chicken Ladies podcast

    Episode 71: Holly Callahan-Kasmala and Chrisie DiCarlo, co-hosts of the Coffee with the Chicken Ladies podcast

    The Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good podcast meets the Coffee with the Chicken Ladies podcast with this episode’s guests, Holly Callahan-Kasmala and Chrisie DiCarlo.

    Learn about how these best friends of 40+ years started the Coffee with the Chicken Ladies podcast and why it’s important to them to share their experience with and educate others about poultry. 

    Listen to the impressive list of heritage chicken breeds Holly and Chrisie keep on their farms and why. Also, they try to answer the question, “Why chickens?” We talk about what to do with all these eggs—with more than 60 chickens between them—and the difference between backyard eggs and industrial eggs. Learn about the greens and herbs that Holly and Chrisie grow for their chickens, including a collards variety with an appropriate name for feeding to poultry.

    Hear about Holly’s and Chrisie’s own farms, including why they took a 17-hour road trip in the pursuit of heritage breeds. Holly explains how she chose the location for the poultry runs, sheep fields and gardens on her farm. She tells us about her fiber arts and why it’s important for her to grow cotton and keep wool sheep now. Chrisie explains that her experience with emergency veterinary care began with a toy doctor’s kit that she used to “take care of” all the neighborhood dogs as a kid and continued on into her career. She tells us about her 3 acres and what it was like to get started with just four chickens as a means of teaching her daughters about the responsibility and care of animals.

    Listen to the end for Holly’s and Chrisie’s favorite egg-based dishes!

    Coffee with the Chicken Ladies podcast website

    On Instagram

    On Facebook

     

    Episode 70: Anu Rangarajan, Cornell Small Farms Program director, talks about supporting farmers, a reduced-tillage technique and more!

    Episode 70: Anu Rangarajan, Cornell Small Farms Program director, talks about supporting farmers, a reduced-tillage technique and more!

    Cornell Small Farms Program director Anu Rangarajan talks about supporting farmers as whole people, making farming communities more welcoming spaces, life as a strawberry farmer and a game-changing reduced-tillage technique.

    Hear about how the Cornell University Small Farms Program free classes and resources can support your farming—whether your farm in New York or elsewhere—and how they differ from and work in conjunction with Cooperative Extension resources. Anu emphasizes the importance of building networks and utilizing local knowledge in building farms that are socially sustainable as well as sustainable in every other sense of the word. Learn about the Reconnecting with Purpose, Be Well Farming Project and other programs meant to support farmers as whole people and farms as whole systems. (If the concept of “listening like a cow” intrigues you, this is an episode for you.) 

    This episode is recorded just a week after the first Northeast Latino/a/x Agricultural Community Conference, and Anu asks the question, How is it that we welcome and create a sense of safety for people who are not from traditional white farmer audiences? As a woman of color working in production agriculture for a couple of decades, this is a question that’s been on her mind. Anu explains how the Cornell Small Farms Program is working on answers to the question from supporting farmworkers to cultivating pathways to farming. 

    Get to know how Anu went from being a kid in Detroit to a premed student to a greenhouse employee to a vegetable specialist at a land-grant university. She talks about her organic U-pick strawberry farm—her experience “on the other side” of the research-production relationship. Learn about Anu’s research in small-scale vegetable production, minimum- and no-till system, and soil health. Keep listening for great info about using tarps in the garden to increase nutrient levels, reduce weed populations and more.

    Cornell Small Farms Program website

    Reduced tillage resources

    Futuro en Ag Latinx farmers program

    Reconnecting with Purpose

    Be Well Farming

    Online courses

     

    Episode 69: Chyka Okarter on practicing lean farming, creative financing and more!

    Episode 69: Chyka Okarter on practicing lean farming, creative financing and more!

    Chyka Okarter talks about farming an Extension work in Nigeria, putting the lean farming concept into practice, and finding creative financing from within the food system.

    Hear about what agriculture looks like in Nigeria—a pursuit with huge potential that Chyka feels is not being met in this country that’s slightly larger than Texas. He talks about growing up in a farming family and wanting to go into agriculture to help farmers work more efficiently.

    Learn about the Feed the Future Program, USAID, and Winrock International’s work in bridging the gap between Extension and small-scale farmers where there is one Extension agent to 10,000 farmers. Chyka’s work is to train the trainers working with micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) cohorts to implement the lean principles in farm business approach. They wanted to try using the lean approach rather than the traditional Good Agronomic Practices approach, which can lead to information overload. Hear two examples—in aquaculture and in crop production—of how the six steps of the lean approach have led to big wins for farmers and the whole food chain. (Spoiler alert: One discovery changed the catfish mortality rate from 50%+ to 0% with this approach, and another is leading farmers to more precise organic fertilizer use.)

    Finally, listen in on how farmers in Nigeria—a country in economic crisis—are working within the food system for an innovative financing model involving input credits.

     Learn more about Chyka Okarter’s work:

    Episode 68: Keisha Johnson talks career transitions, skill sharing, poultry keeping and more

    Episode 68: Keisha Johnson talks career transitions, skill sharing, poultry keeping and more

    Texas farmer Keisha Johnson talks career transitions, skill sharing, poultry keeping and more.

    Hear about Keisha’s career transition from administration and logistics to farming, and her advice for how anyone can take pre-farming-career skills into farm life—”turning your lifestyle into your livelihood.” Keisha talks about growing vegetables in Texas’s hot, arid climate through summer and more mild winter weather, plus her volunteer-potato-growing experiment. (Listen in for her prediction for this winter’s weather!) 

    Learn about Keisha’s White Broad Breasted turkey breeding—a rare thing for this breed to be able to naturally reproduce. She talks, too, about the realities of keeping poultry, including predator pressure. 

    Hear also about the Texas Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association and their conference happening at the end of January 2024. Keisha talks about getting involved as a first-year board member and the new skill-sharing and job board they’re working on getting off the ground. 

    At the very end, Keisha shares her favorite farm meal, sharing a beloved family recipe.

    Episode 67: Ben Hartman talks doing less and getting more with lean farming

    Episode 67: Ben Hartman talks doing less and getting more with lean farming

    Indiana farmer and The Lean Micro Farm author Ben Hartman talks about the logistics of downsizing. 

    Hear about the CSA Ben started while still in high school and how this set him up for a career in farming. Ben shares the statistics that, by the end of this century, we will lose half of the farms that we have now, and the farms that are left will be twice as large. Statistics like this make him believe even more strongly that farmers need to increase their money-making potential.

    “We were really bad farmers,” Ben says about his and his wife, Rachel Hershberger’s, Clay Bottom Farm. Listen to his story of farming 5 acres on a growth trajectory, then changing course to start downsizing instead—and now farming just 1/3 acre and making the same amount of money. You’ll hear Ben’s step-by-step entry into the principles of the lean manufacturing system, including examining and getting rid of the seven forms of waste, designing a farm business that achieves specific goals, using the 80/20 principle to identify both customers and products, and more. Also learn a couple of lean concepts for managing workforce and the 5 S organizing system. (This will change how you use and store your farming tools!)

    Also get to know the work Ben has done with Winrock International’s USAID farmer-first lean-farming project in Nigeria and his teaching and training work for farmers everywhere.

    Episode 66: Li Schmidt talks Asian-heritage crops, small-scale farming in Taiwan and more!

    Episode 66: Li Schmidt talks Asian-heritage crops, small-scale farming in Taiwan and more!

    Taiwanese-American farmer Li Schmidt talks about growing Asian-heritage crops, growing crops for seeds, small-scale farming in Taiwan and preserving cultural foodways.

    Hear about how Li started her Cultural Roots Nursery, in Northern California, in 2020, as a result of the pandemic rather than in spite of it. Most of Li’s customers are Asian American and have encouraged her to grow a broad range of plants from the diaspora community, leading to Li pursuing some creative seed sourcing in addition to looking to a handful of US-based seed companies. Learn how Li has figured out how to grow these mostly subtropical plants in the hot, dry climate of California’s Central Valley.

    Check out a short list of Cultural Roots Nursery’s crops:

    • Bitter melon
    • Long beans
    • Taiwanese basil
    • Shiso
    • Bo Ju Hua chrysanthemum tea plant
    • Taro
    • Ginger
    • Goji berries
    • Tong Ho chrysanthemum greens

    Li talks about traveling in Taiwan, visiting with farmers and chefs, and learning about the food system and farming there. Hear about the accessible small-scale crop processing and infrastructure there and how this interplays with the food culture there. Li gets into the importance of cultural foodways to her work and way of living.

    Learn also about the California Farmer Justice Collaborative, which started out as a group formed to pass California’s Farmer Equity Act in 2017 and now focuses on farmer support and legislation. And Li tells us about the Cal Ag Roots storytelling project that she works on with the California Institute for Rural Studies, unearthing the historical roots of agriculture in California.

    Listen to the end to hear Li’s favorite meal using the Asian-heritage foods that she grows.

    Episode 65: Susan Poizner talks fruit-tree care, community orcharding and more

    Episode 65: Susan Poizner talks fruit-tree care, community orcharding and more

    Toronto orchardist Susan Poizner talks fruit-tree care, community orcharding and more with Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good podcast host Lisa Munniksma.

    Hear about the evolution of the Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard in Toronto, now in its 15th year. Susan admits to knowing less than she should have about fruit-tree care when she undertook the development of a community orchard and shares her journey through an orcharding self-education. Hear, too, about the volunteers coming together to tend the park’s orchard, pollinator garden and other spaces, and how this community orchard has birthed others.

    Susan shares her advice for getting started with a fruit tree so you can be set up for success from the start. (Hint: Some cultivars are disease resistant!) 

    Also get to know Susan’s books, Growing Urban Orchards and Grow Fruit Trees Fast, her online orcharding courses, and the monthly Urban Forestry Radio Show and Podcast. 

    Episode 64: Reeba Daniel talks farm to school, land access, leadership in food systems and more

    Episode 64: Reeba Daniel talks farm to school, land access, leadership in food systems and more

    Reeba Daniel talks farm to school, land access, leadership in food systems and more on this episode of Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good.

    Reeba talks about their business, Keep Growing Seeds, that allows them to create and manage school gardens, work with “learners” to grow and eat good food, and also examine culture and connection through food. They talk about the benefits and challenges of gardening and garden education in the Pacific Northwest climate of Portland, Oregon, and how they adjust their plans based on the weather. Reeba shares their dream for school gardens and garden education everywhere and why this could be important to all of us.

    Hear about Reeba’s own garden, growing and marketing culturally relevant crops from responsibly sourced seeds, and learning about the business side of farming from the Come Thru Market. They talk about the search for farmland, Black land loss and opportunities to create community partnerships for growing space. Learn about some of the value-added products Reeba creates—like vegan honey!—their R&AIRE botanical skincare line, Oregon’s cottage-food laws, and why value-added products are a smart business idea.

    Get to know the nonprofit Farmers Market Fund, which matches SNAP purchases at Oregon Farmers Markets. Reeba talks about their experience as a first-time board member—and podcast host Lisa Munniksma gives Reeba (and you!) a pep talk about why “we”—meaning everyday farmers and community members—are fully qualified to serve and actually must serve in leadership roles.

    Episode 63: Amy Glattly talks gleaning, fermenting, sheep shearing and more

    Episode 63: Amy Glattly talks gleaning, fermenting, sheep shearing and more

    Amy Glattly talks about gleaning, fermenting, sheep shearing and more in this episode of Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good.

    Hear about the Lawrence, Kansas, food and farming scene. Amy talks about how they and fellow farmworkers started a totally volunteer-run gleaning program that donated 3,000 pounds of produce during its first season and involved multiple farmers, restaurants and food-access organizations.

    Learn about the incubator farm where Amy grows corn, medicinal herbs and garlic, plus their plans for developing their space there. Get to know Amy’s kitchen workings at Wild Alive Ferments, too, sourcing almost all of their produce locally. 

    Learn about Amy’s entree into sheep shearing, from hosting a fundraiser to get them started to an honest assessment about gaining and losing clients. Take notes as Amy goes over what you need to know before your shearer comes to your farm. Finally, hear about Amy’s own podcast, Prairie Ramblings, exploring her favorite things that the prairies of Kansas have to offer, from native plant growers to kombucha. 




    Episode 62: Frank Hyman talks gardening, chicken-keeping, mushrooms and more!

    Episode 62: Frank Hyman talks gardening, chicken-keeping, mushrooms and more!

    Chicken keeper, gardener and author Frank Hyman talks about his gardens, chickens, books and more.

    Hear about Frank’s books, Hentopia: Create a Hassle-Free Habitat for Happy Chickens and How to Forage for Mushrooms Without Dying: An Absolute Beginner's Guide. Hear about the design of Frank’s chicken pagoda—not just a coop—and some of the time-saving chicken-keeping projects in Frank’s book and his backyard. Learn about the origins of How to Forage for Mushrooms Without Dying and how Frank is advocating for all of us to let loose of our fear of fungus. 

    Get to know Frank’s unconventional vegetable garden-ornamental garden-“lawnlet”-chicken area. He shares some garden-design tips, including what Frank calls his No. 1 horticultural technique. Hear about Durham, North Carolina’s, zoning ordinances for lawns and chickens, too.

    Episode 61: Stephen Mackell has big thoughts about microgreens (and more!)

    Episode 61: Stephen Mackell has big thoughts about microgreens (and more!)

    Ohio farmer Stephen Mackell talks with podcast host Lisa Munniksma about microgreens, actually sustainable (profitable!) small-scale farming and food access.

    Hear about how Stephen found his passion for farming through the magic of starting seeds. Learn about the Mission of Mary Cooperative Farm in Dayton, Ohio, where Stephen started out as a volunteer farm manager and went on to build their community programs for nine years. Stephen explains how the farm came to financially sustain itself with a two-tier CSA being grown on six empty housing lots and eight homemade caterpillar tunnels and greenhouses. He also talks about other food-access programs, including an after-school program that eventually led to food production for the school salad bar and a program to help 100 neighbors start their own gardens.

    Get to know Stephen’s 1/2-acre Greentable Gardens in Xenia, Ohio, where he and one part-time employee serve a 90-member microgreens, salad and full-vegetable CSA. Learn how Stephen got his garden beds established from lawn to permanent raised beds, including the installation of drainage tiles. Stephen talks about his farming and business efficiencies—hint: microgreens are a year-round, stable source of income—and his farm’s niche as a USDA Certified Organic home-delivery CSA. Get Stephen’s advice for growing microgreens yourself, too.

    Hear about how Stephen, as a college student, was inspired to start a curbside-collection compost subscription company, which he then sold. It’s still in business today! 

     

    Episode 60: Jann Knappage talks part-time farming, farmers markets, Extension and more!

    Episode 60: Jann Knappage talks part-time farming, farmers markets, Extension and more!

    Kentucky farmer Jann Knappage talks with Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good podcast host Lisa Munniksma about part-time farming, farmers markets, working behind the scenes in Extension, and food preservation.

    Get to know Cooperative Extension’s Nutrition Education Program and the behind-the-scenes work that goes into bringing Extension programming to us as farmers and citizens. Jann explains the University of Kentucky’s Recovery Garden Toolkit, bringing gardening programs into substance-use recovery centers; Growing Your Own publications for homesteaders and home gardeners; the Farmers Market Toolkit for farmers markets wanting to reach customers purchasing food with SNAP; and the Cook Wild Kentucky program, promoting the heritage of hunting, fishing and foraging in the state. (You need to hear why Jann had a meeting in a Lowes parking lot in Eastern Kentucky!)

    Learn about how the Red River Gorge Farmers Market was born from Jann and her partner’s own dreams of building community and bolstering local farmers’ income. Now in their third season, the market runs two days a week with as many as 40 vendors and features various community programs. Jann gets honest about what it’s like to start and run a farmers market as a volunteer—the good and the less good.

    Jann also talks about her and her partner’s Fox and Hen Farm and the journey they took through a series of rental properties—including one that involved growing in 5-gallon buckets and another that flooded—for 3 1/2 years until they found a place to call their own. And she shares her hack for getting through food preservation while managing a full-time job, young baby, farmers market and regular life.

    Listen to the end for Jann to convince you that you need to be eating beet greens—and to get a creative recipe for using them.

    Episode 59: Denà Brummer talks farming, gardening and building a life around food

    Episode 59: Denà Brummer talks farming, gardening and building a life around food

    Denà Brummer talks farming, gardening and building a life around food in this episode of Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good.

    Hear about Denà’s journey from reading the recipes in Seventeen magazine to throwing epic house parties that were all about the food to studying culinary arts and growing her own food. And now she teaches others about these things! Hear about her new On The Grow business, centered around educating folks about health, lifestyles and habits related to food, picking up where home economics and gardening classes left off. 

    Learn about the Garden of Hope community garden, which Denà manages for the City of Hope cancer center. She talks about the Garden of Hope community education programs,  kid-powered farmers market, Produce for Patients food distribution and the upcoming Farmacy work-trade program.

    Denà tells us about the Multinational Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture nonprofit and its pay-what-you-can networking, international education and fellowship programs. She acts as an Agroecology Fellows Mentor, “breathing life into people’s dreams,” as she explains it. 

    Denà shares her personal philosophy behind producing and sharing food, no matter the scale. Hear also about her teaching in the Fundamentals of Food Communication class at the University of Southern California’s Annenburg School of Communication and Journalism.

    At the end, Denà shares her favorite food to cook for others. 

    Episode 58: Barbara Lawson of Meet Me in the Dirt Talks Gardening Through Grief

    Episode 58: Barbara Lawson of Meet Me in the Dirt Talks Gardening Through Grief

    In a Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good episode that’s just a little bit different than usual, Barbara Lawson talks about gardening’s place in moving through grief.

    Hear about how Barbara’s business, Meet Me in the Dirt, eventually grew out of her own grief over her mother’s death and the healing power of her own garden. She talks about healing gardens and shares a really special story about the tropical milkweed that brought home this concept to her.

    Learn about the progression of Meet Me in the Dirt, from a group of Facebook followers to a mobile garden Barbara built in a bus to the current iteration of a wellness retreat space full of plants. This plant-filled wellness retreat is in a storefront in a mall, of all places, and serves as a healing space for Barbara’s clients—and it’s not the final iteration of Meet Me in the Dirt.

    Listen to the end and get yourself to a quiet space for Barbara to lead you through a meditation-like experience that she might use in her gardening sessions.

    Meet Me in the Dirt website

    Episode 57: Miranda Duschack talks urban cut flower farming, supporting farmers and more

    Episode 57: Miranda Duschack talks urban cut flower farming, supporting farmers and more

    In the second episode of the two-part series with the farmers at Urban Buds City Grown Flowers, Miranda Duschack covers urban cut flower farming, supporting farmers through an 1890 land-grant university and the realities of being a part-time farmer.

    Hear about the history of the land that this farm sits on—it’s been a flower farm since 1870—and how it came into Miranda’s and Mimo Davis’ hands. Miranda gets honest about having to work off-farm to make a farm business work and her dream of farming full-time. Learn about agricultural census and National Agricultural Statistics Service data in an actually interesting way to understand the picture of small-farm profitability in the US.

    Hear about Miranda’s role as a Lincoln University Small Farm Extension Specialist and how she’s using her Urban Buds farming experience to benefit the folks she serves through Extension—and how you can best work with your Extension professionals to boost your own farm dreams. Learn also about how Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education’s (SARE) grant programs work—including the Farmer-Rancher Grant and Youth Educator Grant—and the efforts of the Farm Service Agency’s new Urban Ag County Committee Pilot Program.

    Listen to the first part of the Urban Buds City Grown Flowers interview, with Mimo Davis, in Episode 56.

    Episode 56: Mimo Davis talks growing flowers year-round, Black flower farmers and more!

    Episode 56: Mimo Davis talks growing flowers year-round, Black flower farmers and more!

    St. Louis flower farmer Mimo Davis talks about growing flowers year-round, Black flower farmers, her work as vice president of the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers and more!

    Listen to this episode of the Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good podcast to hear about Mimo Davis’ journey from being a social worker for homeless adolescent males in New York City to becoming a flower farmer in rural Missouri in just eight weeks.

    Mimo talks about what it’s like as an African American to farm flowers in rural Missouri and the dearth of Black flower farmers in the state. Hear about the transition Mimo made into the current iteration of her farming dream, Urban Buds City Grown Flowers, which she operates with Miranda Duschack, and learn everything about the farm, including the 1-acre property’s history as a flower farm since the 1800s—plus learn how Mimo manages to grow flowers year-round.

    Also get to know the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers and how you can tap into the education and resources they offer to farmers.

    Episode 55: Marykate Glenn and Lindsey Melling on cooperative farming, sliding-scale CSAs, handcrafted herbal products and more

    Episode 55: Marykate Glenn and Lindsey Melling on cooperative farming, sliding-scale CSAs, handcrafted herbal products and more

    Farmers Marykate Glenn and Lindsey Melling join Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good to talk cooperative farming, sliding-scale CSAs, handcrafted herbal products and more.

    Hear about Marykate’s and Lindsey’s individual backgrounds, how they each became farmers, and how they came together for collaborative farming under the Mustard Seed Farm CSA umbrella. Learn how they farm individual pieces of rented land and share equipment, distribution systems, support and knowledge. Lindsey and Marykate talk about how they found three pieces of land they’re renting for their operation—pay attention if you’re working on your own access to land! 

    Have your sliding-scale CSA questions answered with Marykate’s explanation of Mustard Seed Farm’s program—from whether customers intentionally pay a lower price to how the sliding-scale math works out—and what she’s learned with 10 years of working with sliding-scale models. 

    Lindsey closes out the conversation telling us about how her Effloresce Herbals business began using a healing salve she started making with chickweed she weeded from her garden beds. Listen to the end to get Lindsey’s recipes for a violet simple syrup and a soothing plantain skin salve.

    LINKS:

    Episode 54: Rachael Harrop talks agriculture in Isle of Man, the Manx Wildlife Trust, rare British sheep and more.

    Episode 54: Rachael Harrop talks agriculture in Isle of Man, the Manx Wildlife Trust, rare British sheep and more.

    Rachael Harrop talks about agriculture in Isle of Man, the Manx Wildlife Trust, rare British sheep and more.

    Get to know the Isle of Man, a Crown Dependency island in the Irish Sea, which is the only UNESCO Biosphere Nation in the world (but is more famous for its TT motorcycle road races). Hear about how Rachael started raising rare British Teeswater sheep, which she grazes in a community orchard in Patrick and keeps for their wool. Learn about her breeding program, how to select sheep for their fiber, and the challenges of maintaining a flock on a small island. Rachael also talks about her family’s fiber arts, Willing Heart Wool, their wood processing and natural dying.

    Hear about the Manx Wildlife Trust and its partnership with the Isle of Man government to manage the Agri-Environment Scheme, enabling farmers to work better with wildlife. After just two years, 69 percent of farmland on the island is enrolled in the program—which is 49 percent of all land on the island! Forty-three initiatives put forth by the program, plus those suggested by farmers for their own land, offer farmers payments for farm-management projects that benefit conservation on the island. Rachael talks about some of the farm-management projects and some of the wildlife—including fungi!—being protected through the Agri-Environment Scheme.

    Listen to the end to hear about Rachael’s hopes for the future of farming in Isle of Man and her favorite all-Manx—meaning from the Isle of Man—meal.

    LINKS

    Episode 53: Helga Garcia-Garza talks crippling drought, cooperative organic farming and more!

    Episode 53: Helga Garcia-Garza talks crippling drought, cooperative organic farming and more!

    Helga Garcia-Garza talks about the farmer opportunities offered by Agri-Cultura Network and La Cosecha CSA, dealing with crippling drought in the Southwest US, and cooperative organic farming.

    Hear about how the community-led Agri-Cultura Network began in 2009 with just three small-scale farmers who wanted to build capacity, aggregate products for larger markets and work cooperatively. Helga talks about how the organization has grown into a coalition of 57 farms—the majority less than 3 acres in size—using a shared food-entrepreneur kitchen and other infrastructure, hosting a CSA with a food-access mission, selling to public schools and other institutions, participating in farmer training, partnering on nutrition-education programs, saving seeds, developing food policy and more. 

    Learn how acequia water rights govern what and how farmers can grow in New Mexico and what the critical drought looked like in 2022. Related to this, Helga talks about how the Agri-Cultura Network farmers realized they needed to be more serious about saving their own seeds and what exportation of agricultural products means for the land. 

    Listen through to the end for Helga’s breakdown of the financial value of each market for the Agri-Cultura Network and some of the wins the New Mexico Food and Ag Policy Council have recently seen.

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