408. The Garden We Share | Author Zoe Tucker | Brighton, England

Matt Powers is an experienced teacher, family guy, author, consultant, farmer, seed saver, plant breeder, musician, blogger, & permaculturist and creator of the permaculture student curriculum and online course. Permaculture Student Online Curriculum The Permaculture Student Curriculum is focused on starting resilient small businesses and homesteads from scratch. Students of all ages and families learn through weekly collections of videos, worksheets, coloring pages, projects, activities, & critical thinking with teacher’s guides, recipes, plant focus, seed saving, & Q&A. Mike found a great guest on Facebook yesterday, we are having a bit of a tech issue, but he is dropping lots of “golden seeds” about everything from gardening to promoting an online business, and running a positive Kickstarter campaign! Plus he’s a fellow educator! Interesting that you guys found me yesterday!!! Tell us a little about yourself. I’m a seed saver, a plant breeder, and an organic gardener, I’m also a teacher. I was an English teacher at high school for many years, a tenured teacher at a local district 15 minutes from my house. I live with my in-laws and my father -in -law’s parents on family land, 4 generations. My wife and I live here with our 2 sons. We have about 2-3 acres of garden area I’m heading towards becoming a farmer, a subsistence farmer. I’m a teacher, before that I was a musician. I played with SNL house drummer, Shaun Pelton, their house drummer for 20 years now…  but this was back in the day when I was a young man… I was just a traveling musician. It was my dream to do all that. What kind of instrument? I was a bass player. I played with Rachel Ray’s husband, John Kusimano for 7 years. I did lots of other things, my music is still on the Major league baseball channel everyday, I still get checks in the mail, it’s like pocket change… It was a thing for young people to do. It was great and I loved it, but then I had a family! And I was like I can’t tour for 2 months, I got to be a dad! That was like a generational moment for me. What happened was, I basically quit that band when I was in NYC and my wife got cancer the first time, and then when she got cancer for the second time we knew we needed to change a lot more because what the doctors were telling us wasn’t accurate, they were just reading from a list. From there we went out west to recover from cancer, I didn’t know what else to do so I was still doing music, but I was trying to figure out someway to be more present to take care of my wife. She wanted me to do substitute teaching, I hated school. I just hated school, I loved certain teachers and I loved certain classes. But the framework, of compulsory education where I’m being held against my will for 8 hours a day for the purposes of tax dollars for funding that school district mostly the salary of administrators. I didn’t agree with that. I don’t want to go… I just felt obligated, but as soon as I did, I fell in love with the kids, but I feel like we weren’t educating them. I had this crazy education that my dad gave me, they’re amazing, ones a University Professor, one’s a financial advisor for people with incredible amounts of money they’re just unbelievable people. They were both were stellar athletes so they had coaches. I got a lot of that bleed over and that education stuff. I applied all that to my...

28 Sep 201953min

Terra BIRDS educates and empowers youth through gardening to help prepare them as the stewards of a sustainable future for humanity. Regan Emmons is here to share her story of teaching elementary and high school students how to garden as well as about her seedling CSA model! Tell us a little about yourself. My first podcast! So very exciting! I live in Flagstaff, AZ, I have really awesome job very fortunate to work with elementary school students, high school students and I run a 100 member seedling CSA farm, that runs about Jan through the end 0f May. The rest of the year I’m doing a lot of planning and educating and so forth. Tell me about your first gardening experience? I am from Tennessee. One of my formative experiences of being in a garden, working in a garden, I was in high school and I was living with my mother. We had to move into s small apartment on the ground floor. And my mother being the tenacious woman she is, talked the landlord into tilling up the little space in the back of our apartment. She grew mostly tomatoes and peppers and if she grew other things I don’t remember, but the tomatoes were amazing and I just remember’d them for so long. They were big and juicy and ripe and a revelation! I just remember  my friends would come over in summer and  we would make these tomato sandwiches. I remember leaning over the sink was this beautiful memory that I have that my mother grew in this tiny space wasn’t mind blowing I thought everyone did that and later amazing how productive wasn’t even, wasn’t even 10 square feet. And I didn’t really help her very much, I was one of those teenagers who didn’t really care about helping my mother. I didn’t help my mom either, she’s still wondering how I ended up with a gardening podcast I’m sure. My husband wonders that too, but I definitely help him more then my mom. What does organic gardening/earth friendly mean to you? I believe in my realm it really means growing without adding a lot of things, pesticides and chemicals and really trying to work on soil amendments and soil health and to let that dictate the health of the plants. I feel like it really has to come with the soil and I’ve learned that through my work with the garden starts. using fertilizers sparingly, and the fertilizers you do use need to be well sourced from natural sources, I really really dislike synthetic sources. I really don’t like to use them at all. To me, organic gardening is not using additives and working with the space that you have, definitely have some permaculture training, it’s all part of that gardening sensibility. Who or what inspired you to start using organic techniques? Back when I was living in Hawaii, and I met my husband there. I was working in Hawaii, on the island of Maui. I met my husband there and we were getting to know each other. He came from a place and a family where they really cared about what they put into their body. I grew up caring about what I put in my body, but not really thinking about the food and  what was in the food that I was eating. I didn’t really think about additives in my meat, and things like that. And it really stemmed from that, learning about food system and our industrial food system, and that was a challenging place to eat anymore. If we weren’t trying to grow our own food or  trying to eat more locally, it was really detrimental. How did you learn how to garden organically? I read a lot, I’m still learning, I consider myself a novice gardener and novice grower. But in my career, I have had a lot of jobs where I grew things. In Hawaii I grew a lot of native plants at my job at the park service. As a community gardener here in Flagstaff, working...

27 Sep 201959min

Brian Moody shares his passion for organic food gardening and AERO Montana in this must listen interview. A rockstar millennial to boot, he worked at Terra Birds in Arizona where Reagon Emmons worked as well. Listen to my interview with her here as well. Tell us a little about yourself. East of Yellowstone in Wyoming avid gardeners looking back on it is pretty impressive now all throughout the rocky mountain early and late frosts lots of other challenges I remember growing up and eating fresh carrots and peas from the garden, big influence on me. We moved around quite a bit moving back to Montana and then Flagstaff, Arizona ~ down there, I gained a whole other perspective on farming indigenous folks down there and hopi people. Learning about how they farm and gardenI I never had my own farm or garden business How do we connect with you? you can connect though my work email bmoody@aeromt.org a lot of what missions gardening comes into that been around since 1974 comes out of the early years of AERO original founders alternatives of how to generate electricity wind turbines educate folks about alternative in the 80s added the sustainable agriculture side changes and shifts AERO’s newest focus alternative energy and agriculture come together strong community food systems production distribution dealing with food waste local scale so much of our energy use comes from producing and shipping food strong local food systems deal with energy use as well AERO is focused on doing workshops and meetings and communities where their food comes from all of the above when you make food peelings stuff that doesn’t get put in food leftover in meals school cafeterias and hospitals anything we don’t eat <span...

23 Sep 20191h 8min

I’m so excited! It’s Monday March My guest has been here before but he’s started his own podcast the No-Till Market Gardener Podcast and from Kentucky he’s here to tell us about their  garden journey and a rockstar millennial right? There’s Jesse Frost to tell us about his podcast and farmstead! Tell us a little about yourself. I am one half of the farm team, my wife Hannah Crabtree is the other half, arguably the better half. We’re in Central Kentucky about 25 min hour from Louisville nw of lexington. Kind of in the middle of the state it’s a pretty hopping spot as far as Kentucky goes. We have 3/4 of an acre mixed vegetables Our 4 year old has 10 chickens! Mostly we have vegetables. Our entire farm is 100% no tillage I’m happy to talk about that The podcast is geared towards that No-Till Market Gardener Podcast growers like ourselves who are small production but trying to make a living off our vegetables. farm ecologically eliminate tillage various people all over the country all over the world And talk about their methods and it seems that everyone does it a bit differently. Growing for Market Magazine market gardening stuff Andrew said publishing articles since way back cutting edge trend setter Rest of show notes coming ASAP! Make sure you listen to the No-Till Market Gardener Podcast and give it a great review on iTunes! This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Spotify Ad Analytics - https://www.spotify.com/us/legal/ad-analytics-privacy-policy/

25 Aug 20191h 24min

I thought I should replay this episode from last winter because the applications for School Gardens opens in 2 weeks on September 1st and I thought educators and people who want to help get a garden in their school would be interested. Applications are due by October 15th. I’m just thrilled to be back behind the mic it’s January 7th. I have a great guest that was recommended by Lem Tingley from Growing Spaces in episode 256 and here from the Whole Kids Foundation is Nona Evans! Whole Kids Foundation Facebook Page It’s always so much fun to see how seeds that you sprinkled about germinate. It’s so fun to know how we connected! Thank you so much! I reached out to you and you said you checked out the podcast and thought it’d be a perfect fit. Tell listeners about the Whole Kids Foundation  because I had never heard of it! We are on the order of things, a pretty moderate size non-profit organization. We are Whole Kids Foundation  and our mission to improve kids nutrition because we know when kids are well nourished they learn better have the opportunity to reach their full potential. we found 3 ways we are capable of reaching children. 1. salad bar equipment for schools Because the moment you put a salad bar in kids have the power of choice and kids get to choose the vegetables they want. 2. support school gardens which is how I connected with you. we have the honor and pleasure with supporting  5,000 school gardens in  USA, UK and canada we know when kids are connected to the roots of their food they make better school choices.  it’s not just kids The secret is: It’s not just kids it’s us adults too when we start understanding what the magic we all make good choices. <p...

16 Aug 201943min

Today I am so excited to introduce my guest Bob Quinn who is back to tell us about his new book Grain by Grain: A Quest to Revive Ancient Wheat, Rural Jobs, and Healthy Food You can read the Golden Seeds Issue #7 here if you prefer! Here’s my 5 star review, make sure you write yours! Thanks so much for sending me your book, you were worried if I would be able to read it and then I whipped through it in under 48 hours was so engaging! Thanks Jackie! It was a lot of fun to write  with Liz who is a great partner who made the story easy to read. She was able to keep it free flowing from one topic to another. There’s so many things to discuss, it’s a bit of a challenge to meet the limitations that they place on us from keeping the book  from being a gone with the wind version with so many topics. We tried to hit the highlights of subjects I’m passionate of The High Cost Cheap Food Decline of Rural America and the Disappearance of Our Farms all because we have been encouraged to look at our farms like factories and industrial agriculture food systems. I love the relationships you build and people you talk to. I love biographies, I’ve had a lot of time to read this year, I’ve been to the library a lot this year! Along with Liz Carlisle author of the Lentil Undergound Why don’t you tell listeners a little about yourself? Well I was raised on a wheat and cattle ranch in Big Sandy about 12 miles out of town. Near Havre Great Falls. It’s South of Canadian border where Alberta and Saskatchewan meet. My father was raised here and I started after him and now I raised my children so 3...

10 Aug 20191h 2min

Happy August! Announcing the winner of Andrew Mefferd’s new book: The Organic No-Till Farming Revolution: High-Production Methods for Small-Scale Farmers And the Winner is drumroll please John Keith! Remember you can get a 20% discount by using the code: garden on a subscription to Andrew’s awesome publication  Growing for Market magazine or any of his books or the books in their online store. The Greenhouse and Hoophouse Grower’s Handbook: Organic Vegetable Production Using Protected Culture Congratulations to a listener, Organic Gardener Podcast Challenge participant and hopefully future guest! Carrots going to seed make great flowers for beneficials that eat pests  Scott Mann and I just talked about how he plants onions and other umbel shaped flowers at the end of his rows of vegetables because they attract a parasitic wasp that eats pests. Herbs in the garden Should have mulched my lavendar… This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:...

5 Aug 201913min

So in this update I go through the questions I usually ask others on my way to work. Tell me about your first gardening experience? Clark gardens and I hated it. How did you learn how to garden organically? My mom, Mike and Organic Gardening Magazine Tell us about something that grew well this year. So far potatoes and carrots. Is there something you would do different next year or want to try/new? Strawberries Tell me about something that didn’t work so well this season. My blueberries and raspberries Which activity is your least favorite activity to do in the garden? Anything that requires me to get down in the dirt. I like raised beds and keeping my jeans clean. What is your favorite activity to do in the garden? Eat the food. I’m not the biggest fan of harvest I just like to cook it. What is the best gardening advice you have  ever received? Water your blueberries. A favorite tool that you like to use? If you had to move and could only take one tool with you what would it be. The broadfork, although I’m still a big fan of the wheelbarrow. I want 4 This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Spotify Ad Analytics - https://www.spotify.com/us/legal/ad-analytics-privacy-policy/

5 Aug 201920min