talking co-ops

Today on Greenhorns Radio, Sev speaks to Faith Gilbert, author of the Greenhorns Guidebook  Cooperative Farming, a how-to handbook on forming collaborative farm ventures, and the Vegetable Manager and Administrative Lead at Letterbox Farm Collective. Letterbox, which produces everything from vegetables to pasture rabbit (which you may remember from our post earlier this week), uses a cooperative model to increase worker investment and spread power horizontally through the farm.

Faith and Sev will talk cooperative farming, Hudson Valley, and community organizing in the digital agrarian age LIVE today at 4:00 PM on Heritage Radio Network. Tune in then, or, as always, catch the podcast any time after the show airs!

to reduce food waste, farm insects

It’s called protaculture, and Robert Olivier has made it accessible using an invention he calls the “biopod.” The idea is simple: put food waste into an enclosed space with the black soldier fly to bioconvert the food into proteins and fats that can then be used for livestock feed. Unlike composting, the biopod can even be used to convert animals products. The paradigm shift he proposes is this, what if we didn’t need to grow corn and soy to feed livestock? What if we could do it with our food waste alone.

Tune into the Greenhorns Radio Show on Heritage Radio Network tomorrow at 4:00 to learn more when Sev interviews Robert Olivier. Or, as always, catch the podcast!

 

when farms are not fair

Fair Food: Field To Table is a video project of the California Institute for Rural Studies, a nonprofit research organization whose mission is to “increase social justice in rural California for all residents, building sustainable communities based on a healthy agriculture.” Their research takes a keen look at the often-obscured lives of California farm workers in the form of research reports, videos, and action plans. They form strong relationships with grassroots organizations and farm worker communities in order to “turn research into action.”

Needless to say how important and progressive this work is.

Tune into the Greenhorns Radio on Heritage Radio Network tomorrow at 4:00 P.M. to hear us speak with Ildi Carlisle-Cummins, the Project Director at CIRS and learn more. Or, download the podcast any time!

accelerating appalachia today on GH radio

Accelerating Appalachia is a “word HUB for sustainable business,” providing training to, coordinate mentorship for, and encourage financial investment in organizations who are “solving big problems with their business models.” They work predominantly with women entrepreneurs, look to support students, and have even had farms in their accelerator program. If all of this sounds revolutionary for a business incubator, it is. What does this all actually look like on the ground? Tune into the Heritage News Network today at 4:00 PM to hear that and other questions answered on Greenhorns Radio.

biodynamics in idaho on greenhorns radio this week

In case you missed it, this week on Greenhorns Radio, we spoke to Miles Teitge, of Syringa Mountain School in Idaho about Waldorf Education, biodymanic farming, and why young farmers should think about moving to Idaho. Enjoy a bonus interlude of fun ambient noise from 8:08 to 12:46.

Miles has interned at the Herb Pharm in Williams, OR, and continued his education at Seed School (with local legend Bill McDorman), and the Fungi Perfecti mushroom cultivation course (with visionary Paul Stamets). He joined the Mountain School shortly after it opened, inspired to learn and teach principles of permaculture and the gardening arts; be it cultivating vegetables, gathering medicinal herbs, grafting trees, laying out hugelkultur beds, bee-tending, greenhouse design, poultry care, humane composting, worm wrangling or the like, there is a lifetime of learning on this path!

Listen to the full episode here: http://heritageradionetwork.org/…/miles-teitge-syringa-mou…/

tomorrow on greenhorns radio! jeff conan on the devasting effects of palm oil production

Palm oil plantation in Indonesia. Photo by Archbad Robin Taim.

Tomorrow January 25th on the Heritage Radio Network, Greenhorns radio talks to Jeff Conan, Senior Forest Campains Manager at Friends of the Earth, a global activist network that campaigns for international environmental and climate justice. Much of Conan’s work focusses on the toxic legacy of palm oil production in Gautemala. Maybe you already knew that the production of this oil was rapidly spurring deforestation of some of the world’s most important rain forests, but were you also aware that the byproducts of its processing have a long legacy of polluting water sources as well?

As Conan writes in a September article on Medium.com, “One year ago, a series of spills dumped toxic palm oil effluent into the Pasión River where it runs through the municipality of Sayaxché in Guatemala’s Peten region. The spills were the latest in a long history of abuses associated with Guatemala’s palm oil industry —

Greenhorns 2016 Impact Report

 

On this winter’s solstice, along with traditions of stoking the hearth and nestling fireside, we thought to drop a line on the past season.

In 2016 our Greenhorns network surpassed 62,000 – a community within reach of our media projects, news and inspiration. We are continuously working to broaden and diversify our network of new agrarians, to bring the voices, testimony and success stories of today’s new agrarians to ever more aspirants and students. Please take a moment to review our 2016 impact report for all the clever details.

Thanks to your support, we continue to grow stronger.

Happy Winter, The Greenhorns’ Team

 

 

 

agricultural trailblazer dorn cox on GH radio tomorrow, dec. 20!

Where does Dorn Cox find the time to get so much done? Dorn is a founding member and board president of farm hack, is director of Greenstart, and– as his bio on their webiste totes– on his 250-acre family farm in Lee, NH, “has worked to select effective cover crops, grains and oilseeds for food and energy production, and has designed, constructed, documented, and shared systems for small-scale grain and oil seeds processing, biofuel production,  and no-till and low-till equipment to reduce energy use and increase soil health.”

Also, in his spare time, Dorn find time to contribute to our Almanac. You won’t want to miss this interview. Tune in, as always, at 4:00 P.M EST to Heritage Radio Network.

on radio tues dec. 13: farmer, straw-bale builder, and all around agriculture do-er Erica Frenay

Live on Heritage Radio’s Greenhorns Radio show this Tuesday, we’ll interview farmer Erica Frenay of Shelterbelt Farm in Ithaca New York. Erica also works for Cornell’s Small Farms Institute, and her bio on their page should give you an idea of how many rich topics of conversation this interview might follow.

Erica began working for the Small Farms Program in 2006. A former co-manager of Cornell’s student-run farm, she graduated from Cornell in 1998 and moved to Oregon to serve in AmeriCorps. Erica spent 6 years in the Pacific Northwest, working as Project Coordinator for an agricultural land trust and then as Executive Director of an urban educational farm in Portland. In 2005 she completed a 2-year program in Holistic Management. During her long and indirect journey back to Ithaca, Erica and her husband lived on a permaculture farm and nursery in the San Juan Islands for a year, and spent another year working on farms and building with clay and straw in New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Australia. They returned to Ithaca to settle down in the summer of 2005, and five years later started Shelterbelt Farm. Now she works part-time for the Small Farms Program and part-time producing sheep, beef, duck eggs, honey, fruit, and veggies on her farm.

Bellegarde Bakery

The best way to restore justice and foster equality is to remediate the land. Respect for ourselves derives from respect for nature, first and last. If we do not respect the system of life, we will have no moral ecology. Nature is a church and its rhythm a prayer. The democracy of food, that most basic human right, is the stewardship of our humanity. If we do not regain control of our food’s narrative—its quality, origin, price, preparation—we will become victims instead of protagonists. If we do not make affordable access to fresh, healthy, organic food the premise of our new system—if it remains distant, contrived, boutique—we will duplicate the systems of oppression we seek to usurp.

Graison Gill will be on Greenhorns Radio, Heritage Radio Network tomorrow 4pm EST – listen in! And for more information on Bellegarde and their process, check out this video.

sassafras stomp tour dates!

Remember Adam and Johanna, the sweet song birds of Songbird Farm in Unity, ME? Good. Just to keep you abreast of their happenings: you can catch Adam’s interview on the Greenhorns Radio here, order his CD here, and see him and Johanna live at the following shows!

Fri. Oct 21st.  Contradance in Brooklyn, NY

Sat.  Oct. 22nd.  CDNY Contradance.  Manhattan, NY.

Sun. Oct 23rd.  House Concert, Brooklyn, NY (email newrootmusic@gmail.com for more info)

The songbirds also report: “We’re heading out on a longer tour in late November, with shows in Kentucky, Indiana, Colorado, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Montana.  More of these dates are contradances, though we’re hoping to add a number of concerts to the tour to promote the songs and stories on Walk These Fields.  For more information see: www.sassafrasstomp.com/schedule and to book them: song.bird farm@yahoo.com

radio bliss

Greenhorns Radio episode featured on Heritage Radio Network Top Episodes of 2015! This particular episode features Suzanne Hunt, founder of Hunt Green LLC, who discussed national policy with Severine. Her company provides strategic advising on energy, agriculture, transportation, and the environment.

It’s a good one, and we bet it will peek your interest. You can listen to all the episodes at  http://heritageradionetwork.org/series/greenhorns-radio/!