Growing For Market Podcast

How does one go from Shakespearian acting to starting a company making regeneratively-grown heirloom-grain pancake mixes? Well, it involves an appearance on Shark Tank, eating pancakes five times a week for years, the pandemic, and so much more than we have room for here.  Listen to this episode for some great ideas on how to build a local foods brand, why they use popped popcorn for their pancake...

Jim Crawford founded New Morning Farm in Pennsylvania in 1976, starting and selling at multiple markets in Washington, D.C. He and his wife Moie are now semi-retired, having run the farm until they transitioned it to new ownership in 2019. They also founded the Tuscarora Organic Growers Cooperative that helped growers in rural Pennsylvania aggregate produce to reach the Washington, D.C. wholesale...

Romondo Woods of the Urban Youth Agriculture Farm in Detroit, Michigan, tells us about how he is producing food for the city, while at the same time giving children hands-on experiences at the farm. Romondo started the farm a decade ago and has been scaling up ever since in order to make it a growing source of produce for the city. In addition to letting kids know where their food comes from, they...

In this conversation, host Rebecca Kutzer-Rice speaks with Matt Dell, co-owner of Treadlight Farm, about their journey into organic flower farming, the transition from retail to wholesale, and the unique challenges and strategies involved in scaling their business. Treadlight Farm focuses on uncommon flower varieties, and Matt discusses how they built relationships with wholesalers, and the techni...

Corinna Bench learned digital marketing by doing the marketing for her family’s farm, Shared Legacy Farms. They grow certified organic vegetables for a 400-member CSA in Ohio, and Corinna offers classes and coaching for farm marketing through MyDigitalFarmer. Whether your goal is to get more people to your market stand or sell out your CSA by the New Year, don’t underestimate the importance of mar...

Rogue Farm Corps grew out of the age-old network of farmer-led apprenticeships, to help make the apprenticeship system compliant with modern labor laws and fulfil its educational component, while continuing to give people real-world farming experience on the way to starting their own farms. In the process they’ve added many opportunities in addition to traditional apprenticeships, forming a robust...

Pete Russell used his experience in the food industry to design Ooooby, a sales platform for farmers to sell directly to the public. Their goal is to put local, ecologically sound growers back at the heart of the food system. Ooooby integrates all the apps one would use to build an online farm store into their software to simplify the process for farmers and offer a seamless experience for the cus...

In this interview Leah Penniman tells us why and how she started Soul Fire Farm, along with what she would do differently for those starting out or starting over. She discusses her most recent book, Black Earth Wisdom, and the recent adaptation of her first book, Farming While Black, into a documentary movie of the same title. She discusses how, in 1910, about 14% of farms in the United States wer...

Despite growing up farming, Jenny Marks didn’t think she could make a living at it. So she worked in agriculture supporting other farmers, where she learned more about the business of farming; that led her to start her own Trademarks Flower Farm in New York State. Now, in addition to her own farm, she teaches the business of flower farming to other growers with her business Trademark Farmer. She’s...

Maud Powell, former co-owner of Wolf Gulch Farm in Oregon, shares her farming journey and the impact of climate change on her land. After experiencing drought and a devastating heat dome, Maud and her husband realized they had to leave their farm and find a new property with more water, despite having made decades of investment in the farm. In response, Maud started the Oregon State University Ext...

If you store vegetables for any length of time, you’re going to want to hear this interview with Sam Knapp of Offbeet Farm. Sam has practiced “storage farming” for years, growing during the summer for off-season sales from stored crops deep into the winter. In this interview, he tells us about how he figured out his own best practices along the way, as there was little available information on mod...

Dan Brisebois has over 20 years of market farming and seed growing experience as a founding member of Tourne-Sol Cooperative farm in Quebec, Canada. In this interview and discussion of his new book, The Seed Farmer, we hear how his interest in seed growing goes all the way back to the beginning of his farming career. Now, he can tell us from experience what it’s like to grow many seed crops, since...

You may know Lindsey Lusher Shute from co-founding the National Young Farmers Coalition, but what we talk about on the pod this week is her work with GrownBy: the only cooperatively farmer-owned farm marketplace app. During her decade as the Executive Director of the NYFC, one of the needs that was identified was a flexible way for farmers to sell a wide variety of products online. That need is wh...

Tilth Soil was born out of a desire to keep some of the millions of pounds of food waste that is discarded every year out of landfills, with their mission to “feed people, not landfills.” Hear about how their sister company, Rust Belt Riders, started out hauling food waste in bicycle trailers, and has subsequently scaled up to trucks in order to handle just some of the scraps generated in Clevelan...

Driftless Seed Company is part of an encouraging trend we are seeing with regional seed companies producing seed in and with adaptations to their specific region. On this week’s podcast, we have Cody Egan and Dylan Bruce of Driftless Seed Company, telling host April Parms Jones how they went from farming and working for a seed company to founding one. Dylan had to leave part way through the interv...

Farming and parenting can each be demanding jobs by all by themselves, so it can be a real challenge to do both at the same time! Katie Kulla talked to over 25 farmers about their experiences and how they strike a balance between the two, and it’s all in her new book, Farm Raised Kids: Parenting Strategies for Balancing Family Life with Running a Small Farm or Homestead! The book will be available...

We’re so excited to be welcoming Rebecca Kutzer-Rice to the podcast team as one of our co-hosts, we wanted to make sure and record an episode to properly introduce everyone to her! Growing for Market Magazine readers will recognize Rebecca from her articles in the mag, including many about flower growing written from her experience running Moonshot Farm, a specialty cut flower farm in East Windsor...

On this week’s podcast we talk with with Addie Candib, who oversees American Farmland Trust’s programs and policy advocacy in the Pacific Northwest. You might be familiar with American Farmland Trust from their “No Farms No Food” message that shows up on bumper stickers throughout rural America. But their work is much bigger than just that campaign, as we will learn from Addie. In addition to thei...

On this week’s podcast we talk with Rowan Steele, farmer, farm advocate, and Manager of the Headwaters Farm Business Incubator Program for the East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District. Headwaters Farm is located just east of Portland, Oregon. As manager, Rowan supports experienced, conservation-forward farmers get their farm businesses off the ground. On this podcast we’ve interviewed s...

On this week’s podcast, we talk with Bazile Panek about what farmers can learn from Indigenous knowledge in agriculture. Panek, CEO of Good Sky Guidance, shares his work on Indigenous knowledge, cultural revitalization, and environmental initiatives. He discusses the importance of conserving wild rice and the threats it faces, adapting to changing weather patterns and the use of controlled burns i...

In case you’re wondering — this sounds cool, but why are we talking about falconry on a farming podcast? That’s part of what we’re going to talk about today, but the short answer is that one of the services Alina and other modern falconers offers is agricultural abatement — that is, using falcons and raptors to protect crops from bird damage. This is something that Oregon’s wine industry is beginn...

Good marketing makes your web presence stand out so customers can find you. Nina Galle, co-author of Ready Farmer One, The Farmer’s Guide to Selling and Marketing, and head of marketing at Local Line, discusses how to optimize your farm’s online sales and marketing so you can reach a wider customer base and increase sales. Galle shares how online sales can also help boost in-person sales at farmer...

Nina Planck tells us about doing farmers markets as a kid growing up on Wheatland Vegetable Farms in Northern Virginia in the 70s and 80s, and how that experience led to her starting a series of farmers markets in London, England. We talk about how growers can optimize their own farmers markets, emphasizing the need for them to expand their offerings beyond fruits and vegetables to include meat, d...

There are a lot of regulations that cover farm products, and running afoul of them can be costly or even put you out of business. Alexia Kulwiec, Executive Director of the Farm-To-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF) is on the podcast this week to talk about how her organization protects the rights of farmers to sell directly to the public. This is especially important since, with a patchwork of s...

Jeff Poppen, longtime farmer and owner of Long Hungry Creek Farm in Tennessee, discusses his farming journey and the principles of biodynamic farming which led to his new book, Barefoot Biodynamics. Jeff shares his approach to farming, including the use of compost, cover crops, and crop rotations. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the specific needs of the soil and the benefits of inco...