Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good

Amy Glattly talks about gleaning, fermenting, sheep shearing and more in this episode of Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good. Hear about the Lawrence, Kansas, food and farming scene. Amy talks about how they and fellow farmworkers started a totally volunteer-run gleaning program that donated 3,000 pounds of produce during its first season and involved multiple farmers, restaurants and food-access o...

Chicken keeper, gardener and author Frank Hyman talks about his gardens, chickens, books and more. Hear about Frank's books, Hentopia: Create a Hassle-Free Habitat for Happy Chickens  and How to Forage for Mushrooms Without Dying: An Absolute Beginner's Guide . Hear about the design of Frank's chicken pagoda—not just a coop—and some of the time-saving chicken-keeping projects in Frank's book and h...

Ohio farmer Stephen Mackell talks with podcast host Lisa Munniksma about microgreens, actually sustainable (profitable!) small-scale farming and food access. Hear about how Stephen found his passion for farming through the magic of starting seeds. Learn about the Mission of Mary Cooperative Farm in Dayton, Ohio, where Stephen started out as a volunteer farm manager and went on to build their commu...

Kentucky farmer Jann Knappage talks with Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good podcast host Lisa Munniksma about part-time farming, farmers markets, working behind the scenes in Extension, and food preservation. Get to know Cooperative Extension's Nutrition Education Program and the behind-the-scenes work that goes into bringing Extension programming to us as farmers and citizens. Jann explains the U...

Denà Brummer talks farming, gardening and building a life around food in this episode of Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good. Hear about Denà's journey from reading the recipes in Seventeen magazine to throwing epic house parties that were all about the food to studying culinary arts and growing her own food. And now she teaches others about these things! Hear about her new On The Grow business, ce...

In a Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good episode that's just a little bit different than usual, Barbara Lawson talks about gardening's place in moving through grief. Hear about how Barbara's business, Meet Me in the Dirt, eventually grew out of her own grief over her mother's death and the healing power of her own garden. She talks about healing gardens and shares a really special story about the t...

In the second episode of the two-part series with the farmers at Urban Buds City Grown Flowers, Miranda Duschack covers urban cut flower farming, supporting farmers through an 1890 land-grant university and the realities of being a part-time farmer. Hear about the history of the land that this farm sits on—it's been a flower farm since 1870—and how it came into Miranda's and Mimo Davis' hands. Mir...

St. Louis flower farmer Mimo Davis talks about growing flowers year-round, Black flower farmers, her work as vice president of the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers and more! Listen to this episode of the Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good podcast to hear about Mimo Davis' journey from being a social worker for homeless adolescent males in New York City to becoming a flower farmer in rur...

Farmers Marykate Glenn and Lindsey Melling join Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good to talk cooperative farming, sliding-scale CSAs, handcrafted herbal products and more. Hear about Marykate's and Lindsey's individual backgrounds, how they each became farmers, and how they came together for collaborative farming under the Mustard Seed Farm CSA umbrella. Learn how they farm individual pieces of rent...

Rachael Harrop talks about agriculture in Isle of Man, the Manx Wildlife Trust, rare British sheep and more. Get to know the Isle of Man, a Crown Dependency island in the Irish Sea, which is the only UNESCO Biosphere Nation in the world (but is more famous for its TT motorcycle road races). Hear about how Rachael started raising rare British Teeswater sheep, which she grazes in a community orchard...

Helga Garcia-Garza talks about the farmer opportunities offered by Agri-Cultura Network and La Cosecha CSA, dealing with crippling drought in the Southwest US, and cooperative organic farming. Hear about how the community-led Agri-Cultura Network began in 2009 with just three small-scale farmers who wanted to build capacity, aggregate products for larger markets and work cooperatively. Helga talks...

On this episode of Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good, Nathan Harkleroad, Program Director at Agriculture and Land Based Training Association, talks with us about his path to farming, the value of agricultural work, helping people get their own farms going and more.   A San Diego kid and product of Southern California's surfing scene, Harkleroad had no plans for a career in farming growing up. (He...

New York urban farmer Maya Marie talks about building your relationship to land, her Deep Routes educational project, irrigation and more. Hear about how various family members, educational settings and even Sesame Street have contributed to Maya's life path. She talks about farming Afro-Indigenous crops at East New York Farms, including trying her hand at growing rice and keeping the pollinators...

In our 50th episode of  Hobby Farms Presents , Maseualkualli Farms' Pantaleon Florez pays the podcast another visit to update listeners on what he's been up to since episode 16. Listen as the Lawrence, Kansas, farmer and food-systems thinker shares changes to the priorities he's working toward and much more. Listen in as Panta discusses the important work he's doing with the local Farm2School and...

Indigenous urban farmer and herbalist Angela Kingsawan talks about gardening in Milwaukee, translating ancient knowledge into modern reality, connecting health care with healthy foods, and more. Learn about Angela's early introduction to land stewardship and multicultural approach to herbalism and food production. She tells us about her long-term plan for Yenepa Herbals as a local tea company usin...

Denzel Mitchell talks about urban farming in Baltimore, bringing up new farmers, the heirloom Baltimore Fish pepper and more. Hear about how food and farming have been part of Denzel's whole life, from his extended family's 600-acre homestead in Oklahoma to his college English professor's homestead. His experience running farms in Baltimore—the city and the county—helped to prepare him for his cur...

Pittsburgh apiarist Christina Joy Neumann talks with Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good host Lisa Munniksma about beekeeping, sustainability in the honey industry, and more. Learn about the evolution of Christina's Apoidea Apiary and how she sees her career in architecture and her work with bees as intrinsically related. (Think about bees as natural architects!) She shares her fascination with bee...

In this episode, shepherd and Diné fiber artist Roy Kady talks about the importance and traditions of the Navajo-Churro sheep breed, flock management, fiber arts, and more. Recorded on Winter Solstice (in the Northern hemisphere), Roy explains the importance of solstice in Diné lifeways. Learn about the Slow Food USA Navajo-Churro Sheep Presidium, a group created to support and promote endangered...

Celina Ngozi is a Black/Igbo agrarian and the founder of Ala Soul Earthworks/Dry Bones Heal Bottomland, joining Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good today to talk about her food-sovereignty work and earth-based practices. Hear about the Central Texas land that has been in Celina's family since 1876 and how she, her mother and other members of their family are coming together there. Learn about heirs...

In this episode of Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good, Dr. Mehmet Öztan talks seed justice, selecting seeds for saving, the Seedy Talks speaker series, and more about his work as an underrepresented minoritized farmer in West Virginia. Hear about how Dr. Öztan went from receiving a PhD in civil engineering to starting Two Seeds in a Pod heirloom seed company with his wife, Dr. Amy Thompson, all be...

Master Composter Reingard Rieger, Ph. D., breaks down composting, urban gardening and Seattle's Master Composter Sustainability Steward program in this episode of Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good.  Learn about Tilth Alliance's Master Composter Sustainability Steward program, which trains 30 to 35 volunteers each year to go into the community and educate others about composting, soil health, recy...

New Jersey farmer Jeff Tober talks farming for ecological and community health, pasture-raised pigs, farm planning, and more with host Lisa Munniksma in this episode of Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good. Hear about how a potato growing in a compost pile in the Philadelphia suburbs sparked a curiosity in Jeff as a young person that put him on a winding path to farming and eventually to the Pinelan...

Kentucky farmer and community organizer Tiffany Bellfield covers family land and legacies, pollinator habitats, Community Farm Alliance, and more on this episode of Hobby Farms Presents: Growing Good. Hear about the deep history of Ballew Estates, the land that Tiffany's great-grandfather, Atrus Ballew, who was born an enslaved person, eventually bought and Tiffany now stewards with her cousin, Ji...

This episode features Arwen Donahue, her life on a Kentucky farm and her new book, Landings: A Crooked Creek Farm Year . Arwen tells us about her and her husband, David Wagoner's, Three Springs Farm. You'll hear about how they searched for their niche and revived themselves from burnout in small-scale farming, from 18 years of having a vegetable CSA to growing food for a local restaurant group. Le...

Listen in on this conversation with land steward, Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance Executive Director and Hopi Tribe member Lilian Hill as she talks about dryland farming, traditional foodways, farming systems and more.  Hear about Lilian's family and community heritage and how she connects with traditional agriculture methods, foodways and food sovereignty work. She tells us about her an...