Ep 182 King Corn: The World's Only Corn Palace

Steve Montgomery of Lamppost Farm is our guest on today’s podcast, coming to you from a stop on the Devon Congress pre-tour - Columbiana, Ohio style this time. Steve and his family raise Devon Cattle, Coopworth Sheep, pigs, turkeys and a partridge in a pear tree (okay, no partridges, but there are more chickens than you can safely count). Their goal is to make and teach connections between living things, but the annual flock of Lamppost interns can tell you that they learn how to ...

18 Mars 202440min

Andrea Tibbets of Clover Brooke Farm is our guest on today’s podcast. We usually see her at the New York State Sheep & Wool Festival (Rhinebeck), but since at that fine event we see her running the Camelid Barn and running the Leaping Llama contest and running the Spitters’ Club and…well, just plain running, we decided it was way past time to visit her home turf. For a walk. One of the most peaceful things you can do, we found, is to take a hike through Hyde Park with a llama ...

1 Mars 202439min

It’s another stop on our Devon Pre-Tour run. This time, we’re bringing you the sights and sounds from a delightful and delicious visit to Lakota Ranch in Remington, Virginia. Lakota is the home of Jeremy Engh, President of Red Devon USA, Dr. Jerry Engh, the founder of the herd itself (and Jeremy, for that matter), and Patty Engh, who runs them both, we’re fairly sure. We had a visit that included pasture rotation avec spicy herding dogs and spicier cows, a 30-year old Devon ...

13 Feb 202442min

Don’t you love talking to people who know their stuff? While crashing the Kilnsey Show in Yorkshire on our UK trip last August, we came across Clive Richardson, Field Officer for the Jacob Sheep Society. It was a spontaneous tailgate conversation, but we magically ended up with not only someone who raises some of the most interesting-looking sheep you’ll ever lay eyes on, but he was a truly well-spoken and well-researched man. He has more than one book on his author creds pa...

26 Jan 202419min

It’s the Devon Congress 2024 - Coming soon to an east-coast back road near you (if you live on the east coast and are there in April, that is). This April, people are coming from all over the world to celebrate the Devon Cattle breed and all of its many shapes and sizes. And if you live in the U.S., 400 years of Devon history is something even more amazing to celebrate. Red Devon USA is the host organization for this amazing road trip, and they gave us a little taste of the famili...

10 Jan 202437min

It’s time for the mashup! The Dutchess County Sheep and Wool Growers’ Association once again hosted 30,000 (plus) attendees at the New York State Sheep and Wool Festival, and we were there to see (and interview, and livestream, and…everything) all of it! Maybe lots of it. Part of it. Okay, so we got what we could again this year, but this is the kind of wonderful occasion that we still haven’t seen most of, no matter how much we run or how many relatives we co-opt to help ou...

14 Dec 202343min

Here at Backyard Green Films, we’re getting ready to celebrate the 400-year anniversary of the Devons coming to America with our Plymouth to Plimoth documentary. In preparation for this event (and our film!), we spoke with Tom Begley, Deputy Director for Collections Research and Public Engagement at Plimoth Patuxet Museum. Doesn’t the site of the Pilgrim connection seem like a wonderful podcast for today’s Thanksgiving holiday? We thought so, too. In addition, we hope you j...

23 Nov 202337min

Our podcast guests today are Jeri Robinson Lawrence and daughter Irina Lawrence Mathias. This hardworking mother/daughter team has contributed a few soundbites in between Points A, B, C and X in the rush of the New York State Sheep and Wool Festival every year, but as they’re the ones that everyone needs something from at all times, a relaxed moment has been hard to come by with these two. So we went to the mountain (so to speak, although it’s southern Pennsylvania just west of the Susq...

9 Nov 202334min