Francesco Tortorici talks about how biochar can prevent nutrients from leaching out of the soil. More on Francesco: https://www.olympicbiochar.com/ WATCH FULL EPISODES YouTube https://bit.ly/watchISOS Follow Diego @diegofooter - https://www.instagram.com/diegofooter

What’s the oldest thriving organic farm in Vermont and how have they grown throughout the years? Find out today from Howard Prussack of High Meadows Farm, located just a short drive from the center of Putney, Vermont. High Meadows Farm is a 65 Acre farm of rolling hills and fertile soils, surrounded by oak and maple woodlands. As Vermont’s oldest certified organic farm, High Meadows has been providing the community and greater New England with premium organic vegetables and potted plants since 1979. The land has been used for farming as far back as the 1700s when it was once part of the historic Ranney family farm, the first settlers in town. A farm (and a farmer!) with so much history must be rich in knowledge, so be sure to check this one out! You’ll hear: How Howard began his farming journey and what’s happened since 0:45 What kind of tunnels Howard uses on the farm 20:54 How the growing season progresses on High Meadows Farm 23:56 Whether Howard prefers larger or smaller greenhouses 25:25 What kinds of field crops High Meadows Farm grows 37:02 How Howard’s team is assembled 44:12 The story behind their farmer’s market 54:38 When, Howard believes, is the best time to start a farm 1.01:34 The biggest mistake Howard sees newer farmers making 1.02:11 Where you can find out more about Howard and High Meadows Farm 1.10:10 About the Guest: High Meadows Farm is a 65 Acre farm of rolling hills and fertile soils, surrounded by oak and maple woodlands. Situated just a short drive from the center of Putney, VT, Vermont’s oldest certified organic Farm. High Meadows has been providing the community and greater New England with premium organic vegetables and potted plant plants since 1979. High altitude, cool evenings, and mineral rich soils are key to High Meadows’ sweet nutrient rich vegetables. This land has been used for farming as far back as the 1700s when it was once part of the historic Ranney family farm, the first settlers in this town. Prior to its purchase in 1979, the farm was primarily run as a dairy farm. Four and a half miles from the center of Putney, VT, High Meadows farm is located just adjacent to the site where NOFA VT was founded. NOFA’s 40th year celebration was held in the High Meadows Farm barn! Howard is responsible for the sales end of the business, including sourcing new accounts, arranging promotions, and selling in new items. He does all of the seeding, manages the facility, including greenhouse and field production, fertilizing, pest control, repairs and maintenance, greenhouse construction, and trucks. Howard runs the retail business at the farmer’s market as well. Lisa manages the plant inventories, plans the production schedule, is in charge of rooted cuttings and plant material purchases, and instituted lot control. Lisa keeps the business financial records, forecasts, sales, and expenses, and works on strategy with Howard. In addition, Lisa readies plant pots for sale and fills orders and loads trucks. Resources: Local Line - https://site.localline.ca/, https://site.localline.ca/learn/free-tools Website - http://highmeadowsfarm.com/wordpress2/farm/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/vermontorganic/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/highmeadowsfarm/

Jay Hill is a conventional farmer and agricultural visionary from the American Southwest. Jay is a new breed of American farmer, focused on reinvigorating the industry through a new perspective on what is possible for large-scale growers. Through his social media presence and weekly podcast, Jay is calling on farmers across the globe to abandon their old ways of operating and take back the role of “business owner” from outdated intermediaries. Throughout their conversation, John and Jay discuss: * How Jay’s growing operation has evolved over the years to be less resource exhaustive. * Why farmers need to position themselves as both marketers and business owners * Jay’s transition from “Price Taker” to “Price Maker,” and how partnerships in processing give growers more control over their operation. * The public perception of American farmers and what needs to be done change the narrative. * Strategies to incentivize growing a more nutritious and agronomically beneficial product, and the role of the federal government in this process.

We kick off Season 2 with a jam-packed episode entitled "Five Profit Building Tips". In addition to five exciting soil and plant health strategies, there is also a valuable segment on personal immune health, as well as Graeme's customary dose of humour. This month's episode covers: 1) The importance of putting the microbes behind the minerals; 2) Building cell wall strength for proactive pest management 3) The "fulvic flush", a super-productive soil cleansing strategy; 4) The yield-building potential of humates; and 5) Helpful tips for foliar fertilising.

In this episode of Beekeeping Today Podcast, we reconnect with our beekeeping friends from Season 2, Episode 29. They come from across the country including Central North Carolina, North East Ohio, the western slope of the Rocky Mountains and the West Coast of Washington. We talk with them about last season, this winter and what they expect for next season. We start out in North Carolina with Mark Smith, who has had bees since 2014 and is running 20 – 30 treatment free colonies. His season last year had some real surprises and he was playing catch up most of the summer. He has some good plans for this spring though that should help out this season. Next, on to North East Ohio, with Tracy Alarcon, an Inspector in Portage County. The weather played tricks with his honey flow last summer and he made a boatload of honey he wasn’t quite prepared for. Surprise! So, he’s going to be prepared this year. Next, on to the western slope of Colorado with Ed Cobey, the Bottom Board author in Bee Culture magazine every month. Ed runs about 70 colonies and keeps them at low, medium and high altitudes, so has a very mixed season. He had excellent overwintering last year, but some drought got in the way of the honey crop. Finally, meet Paul Longwell, a 12-year beekeeper in Olympia Washington. Paul uses topbar, Langstroth and AZ Slovenian beehouse hives, and volunteers to treat neighboring hives to reduce mite pressure. Lots of rain means lots of honey, some years, and you have to be ready for that, and do things at the right time, and he’s getting good at that. Four different regions. Four different beekeepers. Four different approaches to managing their bees through the seasons. Listen today and see how you compare and perhaps what you might do differently this year! Links and websites mentioned in this podcast: * First Episode with the Regional Beekeepers (Season 2, Episode 29) - https://www.beekeepingtodaypodcast.com/regional-beekeeper-perspectives-east-midwest-and-mountain-states-s2-e29/ * Mark Smith: * Flatwoods Bee Farm on Instagram -flatwoodsbeefarm * Flatwoods Bee Farm on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/flatwoodsbeefarm/ * Flatwoods Bee Farm on YouTube - https://youtube.com/channel/UC0gbVzebQUscVKmmwGeYh2w * Read Ed Colby in Bee Culture Magazine * Western Apicultural Society Monthly Conference - https://westernapiculturalsociety.org/mini-conferences/ * Honey Bee Obscura Podcast - https://www.honeybeeobscura.com ______________ Thanks to Strong Microbials for their support of Beekeeping Today Podcast. Find out more about heir line of probiotics in our Season 3, Episode 12 episode and from their website: https://www.strongmicrobials.com This episode is brought to you by Global Patties! Global Patties is a family business that manufactures protein supplement patties for honey bees. Feeding your hives protein supplement patties will help ensure that they produce strong and health colonies by increasing brood production and overall honey flow. Global offers a variety of standard patties, as well as custom patties to meet your specific needs. Visit them today at http://globalpatties.com and let them know you appreciate them sponsoring this episode! We want to also thank 2 Million Blossoms as a sponsor of the podcast. 2 Million Blossoms is a quarterly magazine destined for your coffee table. Each page of the magazine is dedicated to the stories and photos of all pollinators and written by leading researchers, photographers and our very own, Kim Flottum. _______________ We hope you enjoy this podcast and welcome your questions and comments: questions@beekeepingtodaypodcast.com Thanks to Bee Culture, the Magazine of American Beekeeping, for their support of The Beekeeping Today Podcast. Available in print and digital at www.beeculture.com Thank you for listening! Podcast music: Young Presidents, "Be Strong", Musicalman, "Epilogue" Beekeeping Today Podcast is an audio production of Growing Planet Media, LLC

In this episode pioneering regenerative thinker Carol Sanford rejoins me to share a living systems framework she calls The Seven First Principles of Regeneration. Sketch by Dan based on Carol's description Resources to Deepen Learning My first chat with Carol (also see these follow up words from Carol)My second chat with Carol where she shares her four levels of paradigmCarol's websiteThe Deep Pacific Change Agent Community (That Dan is part of)A series of articles in which Carol applies the Seven First Principles to educationCarol going through the principles in a different way on her Business Second Opinion PodcastCarol's book The Regenerative Life in which she goes through the seven first principlesWholeness and the Implicate Order by David Bohm Carol Sanford. A few transcribed lines from the episode Thanks to MPS patron Jon Buttery for pulling some comments that stood out for him from the chat (with approx times): 13:36 – "I don’t want you to be disappointed that after a year you haven’t got them [the seven first principles], that’s a good sign" 18:57 - "You can’t go do – in the sense that you’ll change something – you have to go think a different way and you have to start in a different place" 22:43 - "The word ‘systems thinking’ is thrown around for a lot of things that are machine based"  23:23 – "There are no feedback loops …. we impose those kinds of ideas" 24:05 – "A fragmented view …  we assume … if we get good enough … somehow we’ll see how they all relate"  26:53 – "What is the work this place does in this planet?  … what is its story?" 30:23 – "Watch yourself making lists" 32:26 – "Fragmentation is the basis of every problem on the earth" 38:40 – "It took me literally a couple of decades to learn to see essence. … it’s a different way of seeing the world"

How high can we build? What are the new technologies that might see our skyscrapers go beyond anything we ever imagined? What creativity and drive is needed to push engineering forward? Structural engineer Roma Agrawal delves into the history of the materials that enable immense construction and the developments that have made our structures what they are today. All while noting the accomplishments of key visionary engineers of the past. Check out our website: www.rigb.org/ Twitter: twitter.com/Ri_Science YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/TheRoyalInstitution And Patreon: www.patreon.com/TheRoyalInstitution

“If you imagine the mind as a piece of unshaped clay, and if I’m the first person to get in there on a particular topic and mold the clay, I am so far ahead of anyone who comes after me, because they have to try to unmold it,” says Ken McCarthy. This statement pulls together and illustrates how public perception is manipulated, and why it’s so difficult to undo once it’s been done. In this episode, you’ll learn: * How universal literacy, access to printed materials, and the ability of people to generate their own printed materials had a significant impact on the power dynamic between the general public and those in power * Why, upon closer examination of the fine print on the CDC and NIH websites, the COVID-19 vaccine is not a vaccine, but experimental gene therapy * What role the Creel Committee played in persuading the American mind on a number of historical events, and how the same techniques are still used today * How the use of psychological warfare influenced American women to view smoking cigarettes as fashionable, rather than as a dirty, "unfeminine" habit Ken McCarthy is a pioneer in the world of internet marketing and was one of the foremost visionaries on how the internet would unfold. Time Magazine credited him as the person who first understood how click-through rates would be a key metric in the commercialization of the internet, and in 1994, McCarthy commissioned the first published article on video on the internet. During his time in the business world, McCarthy studied the persuasion and influence of the media on the public mind. How do you get people to show up in large numbers and pay money, go places, or even change their career? How do you change people’s perception through the media? How are psychological impressions and ideas formed? Having studied social psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University, McCarthy is well-equipped to not only answer these questions, but utilize strategy in order to implement in the real world what he learned in the classroom. To understand the COVID-19 situation, you first have to understand the context within which it has developed. McCarthy explains this context through a conversation that touches on so many subjects, including the JFK assassination, the CIA’s Operation Paperclip, the likely connection between Rockefeller, prohibition, and gasoline, the motivation behind WWI, the historical use of parades in swaying public perception, what exactly emergency use authorization is, how local politicians become corrupted, how a curated link between public health and defense kept the CDC alive, the role of the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) in influencing press and public health officers, the crime of death certificate falsification during the Nuremberg trials and how this relates to COVID-19, the adulteration of foods in the US, Kristallnacht and Edward Bernays’s book, Crystallizing Public Opinion, the history of war, how the small rural island of England rose to power, and so much more. Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK

We’ve just signed off from 2020 and we’re starting a new year in 2021. Looking back at the past year, how does it make you feel? Are you sighing with relief, just glad that it’s finally over? Or maybe you’re looking at how even though 2020 wasn’t that great of a year, there were still things to be happy and thankful about? Javan's workshop: https://allpointsdesign.ca/product/envision-2021-workshop/ In this episode of Farm Small, Farm Smart, we have Javan Bernakevitch, and we’re talking about year-end reviews: how you should do it, why you should do it, and how it can hopefully help set you up for a better 2021 by doing an honest self-reflection and setting intention. It won’t just be looking at facts and numbers, it’s also taking stock of your emotions, what brought you joy, what brought you suffering, and planning it out in the year ahead to get the same, or even better, results. It's simply changing your approach. Follow Javan: https://allpointsdesign.ca/ https://allpointsdesign.ca/life-design Increase farm efficiency with the Paperpot Transplanter and Other Small Farm Equipment at https://www.paperpot.co/ Follow Diego on IG https://instagram.com/diegofooter Follow PaperpotCo on IG https://instagram.com/paperpot Podcasts by Diego Footer: Microgreens: https://apple.co/2m1QXmW Vegetable Farming: https://apple.co/2lCuv3m Livestock Farming: https://apple.co/2m75EVG Large Scale Farming: https://apple.co/2kxj39i Small Farm Tools https://www.paperpot.co/

Regardless of what products you are farming, you must have a diversified marketing and business plan for your farm to be successful. Darby Simpson has developed from scratch a “real world”, successful direct marketing approach for his farm thru nearly 10 years of trial and error. In his three hour workshop, he’ll cover all of the basics you will need to successfully sell your products for a profit. The marketing portion will focus on how to build a marketing list, marketing displays, free marketing tools, how to select a farmers market, customer interaction and education, income diversification, working with restaurants or health food stores and more. During the business planning session, he will deal with various business strategies, cash flow management, production cost analysis, economies of scale, setting retail and bulk program prices, tracking expenses, liability insurance, legal protection and more. Learn more with Grassfed Life Courses: https://farm-business-essentials.teachable.com/courses or https://www.grassfedlife.co

Jayne Merner Senecal joins the show to talk about compost production in Rhode Island, inputs, using the garden to show off the compost quality, rhubarb, and much more!  Sponsors:    Supporters:  JM Fortier and Scott Snodgrass.  Support our work: Living Soil handbook:

Regardless of what products you are farming, you must have a diversified marketing and business plan for your farm to be successful. Darby Simpson has developed from scratch a “real world”, successful direct marketing approach for his farm thru nearly 10 years of trial and error. In his three hour workshop, he’ll cover all of the basics you will need to successfully sell your products for a profit. The marketing portion will focus on how to build a marketing list, marketing displays, free marketing tools, how to select a farmers market, customer interaction and education, income diversification, working with restaurants or health food stores and more. During the business planning session, he will deal with various business strategies, cash flow management, production cost analysis, economies of scale, setting retail and bulk program prices, tracking expenses, liability insurance, legal protection and more. Learn more with Grassfed Life Courses: https://farm-business-essentials.teachable.com/courses or https://www.grassfedlife.co

SHOW NOTES There is a debate that has been arising over the past decade or so about whether or not paying for a college education is a wise investment.  This debate has continued to grow as valuable skills are being taught more and moreover the internet.  As the advancement of technology moves forward at a more rapid pace, the people with the most up to date skill sets are not coming out of colleges but are coming offline. When you throw out professions that require a college degree; such as a doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc. you really start to see a devaluation of a college degree.  If you focus specifically on entrepreneurship type skills, the value drops even lower.  Part of the reason for this is the rapid pace of increased tuition costs that have outpaced inflation for years now. Today's guest, Kyle Stockdale, is a married, 25-year-old dairy farmer from Ontario, Canada.  At the beginning of our interview, Kyle told me that he had not attended college, and then he made the statement "might as well go to work and make money rather than go to school and spend money".  There is financial wisdom in this statement.  Of course, Kyle did not incur the expenses of college, and during the four years that he would have been making minimal income as a student, he was able to make significantly more money, giving him the opportunity to start investing and growing his net worth if he wished. That was how we started the interview.  But by the end of the interview, I was recognizing something completely different about Kyle that was very compelling in light of him choosing to skip college.  Kyle knows marketing, and when he starts talking about marketing and growing his business he is clearly very educated.  So, without college, how did Kyle obtain all of this knowledge? Kyle is one of the millions of people who have followed a relatively simple formula.  He found a niche that he was passionate about and that he could start a business within.  Then he found mentors and teachers online that would help him develop the skill sets he would need to create a successful business. Kyle started a business called KYVision Sharpening & Repair in 2018.  He did this because he wanted to make extra money and because nobody else in Canada was doing this.  He had always sharpened his own blades and repaired his own clippers for fitting and showing dairy cattle, and he thought that he could turn this into a profitable business.  So, Kyle already had one important skill set to put towards his idea. However, no matter how good you are at your core skill, your business will not flourish if nobody knows about you.  So, you must market.  This is where Kyle went to work finding online mentors who would help him grow, and this is how he became a marketing expert.  It is clear from listening to Kyle that as passionate he is about his core business, he is equally or more passionate about marketing.  I can say first hand that it is surprising what passions you expose in yourself when you start your own business.  Kyle discovered something about himself by building this business, and he can now talk about marketing like the most polished of college graduates. Connect with Kyle Stockdale and KY Vision Sharpening & Clipper Repair: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KyVisionblades Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kyvisionblades/ Email: kyle_ky-vision@hotmail.com More Places You Can Listen to Off-Farm Income And Matt Brechwald:

Craig Rupp is the CEO and founder of Sabanto. Prior to founding Sabanto he was a cofounder of 640 Labs where FieldView Drive was originally created. The first part of today’s episode will be about Craig’s journey at 640 Labs and its eventual acquisition by Climate Corp. Despite all of these impressive innovations and industry game-changers, that’s not the only thing he joins us to share about today. His current project, Sabanto, is gaining momentum and continuing to develop its autonomous tractors. “In the last month, I was just amazed as to how mature our software is and how hands-off we have become. The little tractor that we use is very dependable and our software is very mature.” - Craig Rupp The Sabanto tractors can participate in tillage, cultivation and tine weed and are one of the “hardest working tractors in the US” according to Craig. While initially they required intensive monitoring they have continued to develop and allow for more autonomy. By continuing to develop the technology and allowing Sabanto to take care of some procedures, farmers will be able to repurpose labor needs, expenses and focus on their own efficiency. “I think everyone’s waiting around to see what the industry brings them…..I wanted to bring autonomy into agriculture and I wanted to completely change the landscape of agriculture.” - Craig Rupp In conventional farming with large manual equipment, Craig feels that we have “peaked in horsepower” as an industry. While the previous objective for agricultural equipment was to cover as many acres as possible leading to larger equipment, now we see Sabanto prioritizing efficiency, ease of use, connectivity and decreased soil compaction. Craig looks forward to continuing to spread the use of autonomous tractors in more locations and on more operations. This Week on The Future of Agriculture Podcast: * Meet Craig Rupp, founder and CEO of Sabanto * Learn about the journey and major successes Craig has experienced in his career with agriculture technology * Explore the many uses and value Sabanto can bring to a farming operation * Follow Sabanto at @sabantoag on Twitter Join the FOA Community! Be sure to join the new Future of Agriculture Membership for even more valuable information on the future of the ag industry. I’m sending out my email newsletter on a more regular basis, focusing on what I call the front lines of agtech: where product meets producer. You can sign up for that at www.FutureOfAg.com. There’s an email icon in the center of the page, just click on that and it will take you to a signup form. Do you have suggestions for topics to be explored? Tweet them to me @timhammerich or email them to tim@aggrad.com. Find us online! Future of Agriculture Website AgGrad Website

Episode Summary Join Harry Duran, host of Vertical Farming Podcast, as he welcomes to the show Chief Science Officer (CSO) of AeroFarms, Ed Harwood. It is the mission of AeroFarms to grow the best plants possible for the betterment of humanity. With over forty years of agricultural and engineering experience, Ed founded GreatVeggies before transitioning to AeroFarms. In this episode, Harry and Ed share a discussion on the difference between hydroponics and aeroponics, the merits and disadvantages of both and Ed’s never-ending quest to change the world for the better through education, technology and science.  Episode Sponsor Ceres Greenhouse Solutions Key Takeaways 03:22 – Harry welcomes to the show Ed Harwood, who shares new hobbies he’s picked up during the pandemic, the benefits of living in Ithaca, NY and his affinity for poker and reading 11:44 – What sparked Ed’s interest in biology, agriculture and AgTech 17:08 – Ed shares lessons he learned from founding his own company, GreatVeggies, and the path that led him to AeroFarms 30:40 – The importance of having Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) in place and obstacles Ed encountered as he transitioned into the role of CSO of AeroFarms 34:15 – Ed expounds on the difference between aeroponics and hydroponics and the pros and cons to both 36:31 – Advances in aeroponics technology that Ed has witnessed throughout the years 38:49 – Ed speaks to the importance AeroFarms places on taste 43:08 – The work Ed is doing with schools in New York and New Jersey to combat food deserts and improve access to food 49:51 – Ed speaks to AeroFarms’ involvement with the Lettuce Project initiative 51:39 – What excites Ed most about the future of aeroponics, a tough question Ed has had to ask himself recently, and what he thinks of being compared to the Wright Brothers 56:22 – Harry thanks Ed for joining the show and let’s listeners know where they can learn more about AeroFarms  Tweetable Quotes “Serendipity – if you’re ready for it – will really help you out. If you’re persistently curious, curiosity c an really take you a long way. So, if you want to start a new business, stay curious and be ready for serendipity.”(19:14) “The whole idea here is to do something consistently so that the customer gets the same product over, and over, and over again no matter what time of the year.”(31:06) “Hydroponics is work with water. So, as opposed to growing in soil, you now move to soilless culture. And I think of it as being broken up into three different parts. In all cases, if you don’t have sufficient oxygen with the water, the plants will die.”(34:32) “If you understand what the spectral needs of the plant are to give you the chemistry that you want, then you can manipulate the plants to become little factories of stuff that is valuable.”(37:50) “Taste is everything. It’s the reason the customer comes back. If you can impress a person’s pallet, they’ll keep coming to find you.”(39:07) “You can’t count on what you learned in high school to get you through the next sixty years of employment. It’s just not gonna happen.”(53:09) Links Mentioned AeroFarms Website Ed’s LinkedIn Learn More About The Lettuce Project 🎙️🎙️🎙️ Podcast Production and Marketing by FullCast: https://bit.ly/3sxZ34y See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This tasty fruit has powerful medicinal qualities and is easy to grow, whether in home gardens or market farms.

Are you stress (or freaked out) trying to make sense of the world today? Not sure which way is up? Today, I share a recent story and how I handled it. We'll also dive into the best way forward for all of us

It’s easy to think that all houseplants are unlikely to flower when indoors, but it’s far from the truth. There are a ton of incredible options that will flower, even with minimal light. Connect with Lisa Steinkopf: Lisa Steinkopf is a blogger, freelance writer, and houseplant enthusiast, and the author of Houseplant Party: Fun projects & Growing Tips for Epic Indoor Plants. She loves taking care of her own plants, and teaching others to take care of theirs at The Houseplant Guru. * The Houseplant Guru * Houseplant Party: Fun Projects & Growing Tips for Epic Indoor Plants Buy Birdies Garden Beds Use code EPICPODCAST for 5% off your first order of Birdies metal raised garden beds, the best metal raised beds in the world. They last 5-10x longer than wooden beds, come in multiple heights and dimensions, and look absolutely amazing. * Click here to shop Birdies Garden Beds Buy My Book My book, Field Guide to Urban Gardening, is a beginners guide to growing food in small spaces, covering 6 different methods and offering rock-solid fundamental gardening knowledge: * Order on Amazon * Order a signed copy Follow Epic Gardening * YouTube * Instagram * Pinterest * Facebook * Facebook Group