The Thriving Farmer Podcast

In this episode, I talk to Josh Volk who's been involved in farming and urban agriculture for over 20 years. He's a former mechanical engineer turned farmer and is the author of several farming books. We talk about a range of subjects including what makes small scale farming work, ergonomics, tools, labor, CSA, and urban agriculture.

In this episode, I talk about finances with Mary Jo Irmen who teaches the Infinite Banking Concept. This topic may be controversial, but I want to get diverse views on the show and learn about different strategies for farm financial management. Some of you may agree and others won't, but Mary Jo brings a really interesting perspective to the table and I hope you'll take a listen.

In this episode, I talk to Stephen Ciancioso who's in his first few years of market gardening in Hawaii. He reflects on how he got to where he is now, what advice he has for beginning farmers based on his experience, and how leasing not owning the land he's growing on has been essential for getting his farm business off the ground.

This week on the podcast I interview Alex Mackay-Smith of Juniper Farm in Wakefield, Quebec. He and his wife Juniper Turgeon have been farming organically and biodynamically for over ten years and serve their community by growing vegetables, fruit, meat, and eggs. They sell through multiple venues, have a fermented foods line, and offer experiences and connection to the farm through various events, dinners, festivals, workshops, and artistic partnerships.

Today's guests on the show are Cara Fraver and Caitlin Arnold from the National Young Farmers Coalition. We talk about the different services and resources that they offer young farmers, including policy work, business resources, a national network of local chapters. We also dive into some of the big challenges that young farmers face today, like land access, mental health, climate change, access to credit, and how being part of a supportive network of farmers can help navigate those challenges.

We've got a bonus episode for you this week! This is a follow-up to Episode 38 with Adam Turtle (who has been growing bamboo for decades and started a bamboo nursery in Tennessee). In this episode, I talk to Roseann Classic who is a rep for a bamboo company that partners with farmers to grow bamboo in Europe, China, and the US. We talk about the challenges of growing bamboo, the crop cycle, the varieties that they're using and exactly how they're planting them so it's a really interesting take on this.

This week, I talk to Adam Turtle, an 80-year-old scholar and researcher who has spent much of his life, researching a lot of rare plants in the US that can be used for regenerative purposes. We spend a lot of this episode is discussing bamboo. We talked about his Research Farm that has over 300 varieties of bamboo, his thoughts about building soil, his philosophy on life, how they ended up developing their niche which was providing large, high-quality bamboo clumps to zoos all over the US.

In this episode, I talk to Jonathan Bruderlein who started farming with horses, then took a break to spend a couple of years traveling to farms around the US and Canada. Jonathan owned and operated a successful certified organic vegetable farm in Dunham, Quebec for a number of years using a mix of tractor power and draft horsepower. Having completed a life coaching training during his travels, Jonathan currently is passionately bringing the life coaching model into the farming community.

In this episode, I interview John Moody, a well-known author, speaker, and homesteader from Kentucky. We discuss how he got into farming, and dive into his new book, Winning the War on Weeds, that he wrote to help small-scale farmers and homesteaders tackle one of the most challenging and labor-intensive parts of growing.

We're sliding in a bonus episode this week to answer some questions that came up in our Small Farm University membership and various Facebook groups. 

This week's episode is a fantastic conversation with Curtis Millsap of Millsap Farms, a 20-acre farm in Springfield, MO. We cover a lot of ground in this extensive conversation, including how Curtis started his farming career, how they grew their famous on-farm pizza nights, how using Harvie as CSA management software has been a game-changer, a discussion about winter growing and growing in an earth-bermed greenhouse, and so much more. It's a long one so you may need to listen to it in installments!

We're talking low-tech mushroom growing this week with Eric Jong of GroCycle out of the UK. Eric found his way to mushrooms after leaving a corporate career and becoming interested in permaculture and the local food movement. We talk about low-tech growing techniques, marketing mushrooms, having a team to support their business growth, and much more.

Brooke Sheffield started his first hemp brand, Smoky Mountain Medicinals, in 2018 and he now co-owns and operates Phytofox, a vertically-integrated hemp company that farms, extracts, and formulates USDA certified organic hemp products. In this episode, we talk about how he got started in the hemp business, his love of plants and growing things, the mistakes he’s made, the challenges he’s faced as the hemp industry has exploded, a run-down of yield and prices, and marketing in this unique industry.

In this episode: >> Why Josh encourages beginning farmers to have low expectations their first year >> Discussion about the lettuce mix varieties >> The importance of being open to pivoting your production and business as you learn more about what you and your farm are capable of >> Why it's important (and you’ll make much more money) by growing better, not growing more >> How Josh gets incredible production on his very small farm and doesn’t deal with many weeds.

This week I interview self-proclaimed mushroom nerd, William Padilla-Brown. In this fascinating interview, we talk about how he continually pushes the boundaries of mycology, cultivates and value-adds cordyceps, the opportunity for artisan mushroom growing, and what he's up to with spirulina. In 2015, William founded MycoSymbiotics LLC - a mycological research and mushroom production business. He has raised over 30 types of mushrooms and 6 types of algae.