Farmer To Farmer With Chris Blanchard

J.M. Fortier is the author of the award-winning book, The Market Gardener. At his farm in Quebec, J.M. and his wife raise 1 ½ acres of produce in permanent raised beds, grossing over $100,000 per acre. His biologically intensive farming practices have inspired readers around the world to imagine human-scale food systems, with a focus on intelligent farm design, appropriate technologies, and harnessing the power of soil biolog. We talk about how J.M. and his wife came to their farm in Quebec, how they developed their approach to farming, and get into the nitty gritty of farming practices at Les Jardin de la Grelinette, including the proper use of the broadfork, J.M.’s approach to record-keeping, minimum tillage, and where to find the best waves for surfing in Montreal. The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.

Karl Hammer is the founder and president of Vermont Compost Company. Vermont Compost collects food waste and manure in central Vermont, and adds it to grass, tree bark, and chickens on the farm to create a compost that serves as the basis for potting soils that have created raving fans all over the United States. Karl is a font of knowledge about all things soil, plant, and long-eared equine, and we tap into just a corner of that here with the history of Vermont Compost Company from Karl’s start as a young boy shoveling manure in Vershire, Vermont to its modern-day national distribution, with plenty of detours into soil, society, and the potential for great compost to catalyze the recapture of carbon on farmland. The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.

Clay Bottom Farm’s Ben Hartman is the author of The Lean Farm, a book on minimizing waste and increasing efficiency on the vegetable farm. He has farmed full time for the past ten years with his wife, Rachel, in Goshen, Indiana, where they’re both making a living on less than an acre of production, selling 90 percent of their produce within ten miles of the farm. Of course, we talk about applying the lean methodology on the modern market farm, including the basics of creating value, establishing pull with customers, and the 5S pillars of the lean cycle: sort, set in order, shine, standardize, and sustain the cycle. Plus, we get into some cool details about how Clay Bottom Farm keeps produce cold at CSA drop sites, how they design a CSA share, marketing and pricing strategies at farmer’s markets, and how a stupid little sticky note makes them thousands of dollars each year. The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.

Eatwell Farm, in California’s Sacramento Valley just over an hour from San Francisco, is 105 acres of deep, flat, fertile ground. There, Nigel Walker conducts a symphony of employees, cover crops, lavender chickens, vegetables, fruits, and herbs, to provide for a CSA of 550 shares a week as well as the Ferry Plaza farmer’s market. Nigel describes his systems for training and delegating to employees to create pride in their work and profits for the business, and we dig deep on the cover crop and chicken management system on his farm that allows him to grow vegetables year-round without fertilizer or pesticides. The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.

Rebecca Thistlethwaite, author of The New Livestock Farmer, currently lives and raises livestock near Hood River, Oregon. She and her husband ran TLC Ranch near Watsonville, California, where they raised ten thousand broiler chickens, five thousand laying hens, and 300 hogs each year on twenty acres of irrigated pasture for many years. We discuss ways farmers who are focused on livestock and farmers who have livestock as a secondary enterprise can make the most of their critter-based efforts. Along the way we get into the importance of matching the scale of your livestock enterprise to the equipment and infrastructure you have on hand, the considerations of selling meat through different outlets and in different ways, and how to make the most of your water, feed, and fencing. The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.

Collin Thompson manages Michigan State University’s North Farm near the village of Chatham in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The North Farm hosts a two-year residential incubator program in the extremely short season of the Northwoods, with their last frost in the first week of June, and the first frost right about now, in the second week of September. We talk about the ins and outs of running a market farm as part of the University, practical successes for overwintering crops in high and low tunnels for early spring production, and ways Collin has worked with and around the 190 inches of annual snowfall in Chatham. We also had a chance to get into the culture of root cellaring in the north, and I had a chance to take a nice rant about food safety and barrel washers. The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.

For more than twenty years, Mushroom Mountain’s Tradd Cotter has been working to think like a mushroom as he worked to build a business based on his mycological adventures. Since 1996, South Carolina’s Mushroom Mountain has produced edible mushrooms and served as a laboratory for Tradd’s explorations into the use of mushrooms for everything from mycoremediation to personalized antibiotics. Tradd and Chris explore Tradd’s low-tech and no-tech strategies for growing mushrooms, including the fundamentals of mushroom production and strategies for fitting mushrooms into a vegetable operation, getting into the psychology and physiology of the fungal kingdom. The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.

Anton Burkett started Early Morning Farm in 1999 with three acres, three friends, and a rototiller. Since that time, this farm in the Finger Lake region of upstate New York has grown to 100 acres and 1,500 CSA shares. Anton and Chris talk about how he has managed this rapid growth year over year. Anton has a thoughtful approach to issues of scale, and we talk about how he’s leveraged his CSA to solve the land-access problem, his approach to personnel management and hiring, and how he’s strategically managed machinery investments and reinvestments as his farm has grown. The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.

Adam and Mel Millsap own Urban Roots Farm, a four season micro farm set in the West Central neighborhood of Springfield, Missouri. We talk about their family and neighborhood involvement as they grow about a third of an acre of intensive produce, including three mobile high tunnels. Adam and Mel share their experiences managing the extremely wet weather in southern Missouri this summer, and how they care for the natural landscape in their urban environment. The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.

University of Vermont Extension Professor Vern Grubinger does not fit the conventional extension agent mode. For twenty-five years, Vern has worked to develop a co-learning community among the professional vegetable- and berry-growers of Vermont. In this episode, we talk about the challenges facing Vermont vegetable farmers, from soil fertility basics and phytophthora to human resources, food safety certification, and costs of production – and about how a healthy food system, from marketing to education, is all about relationships. The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.

Dan Kaplan has managed Brookfield Farm in Amherst, Massachusetts, since 1994. Brookfield Farm was one of the first CSAs in the United States, and currently supports 525 shares of produce, plus an additional 200 winter shares. Our conversation reflected on the growth of CSA and local foods from Brookfield Farm’s founding in 1984 to now, including how Brookfield has embraced a contemporary way of looking at its CSA shares without losing the core of its CSA community. Dan reflects at length on shared risk – and shared loss – as the core value of the CSA concept, binding the producer and consumer in a way that no other marketing model does. We also discuss Dan’s popular crop-planning spreadsheets, and his aspiration to time travel. The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.

Dave Paulk farms at Sassafras Farm on the western side of Chesapeake Bay, near Leonardtwon, Maryland. Sassafras Farm is based around its four acres of vegetables, although Dave has many more acres in cover crops and grains on his 46 total tillable acres. Dave and his wife, Jennifer, started the farm in 2011 after Dave retired from the Navy. Dave and I talk about how his career in the military – and just having a career before he started farming – has shaped the development of his farm and business, from hiring and training employees to planning and making use of a wide range of resources. The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.

Jim Crawford raises thirty acres of vegetables at New Morning Farm in Hustontown, Pennsylvania. Jim started New Morning Farm in 1972, and has gained a reputation for an excellent operation with great employee engagement. In this episode, we talk about New Morning Farm’s marketing strategy (including the Tuscarora Organic Growers Cooperative, which Jim founded with neighboring organic farms), investment and debt, the H2A guest-worker program, irrigation, and controlling pests in sweet corn. The value Jim places on knowledge sharing and collaboration shines through in this episode. The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.

Alex Hitt and his wife, Betsy, started Peregrine Farm in 1982 in Graham, North Carolina, near the booming “research triangle” of Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh. Today, they use four acres of tilled ground to raise produce and flowers for farmers market, restaurants, and grocers. Alex and Chris talk about how and why the farm went through some radical changes early on, how the Hitts financed the farm by selling shares in the farm (not CSA shares, but actual investments in the farm), practical record keeping strategies, soil solarization, scale-appropriate equipment and tools, and Peregrine Farm’s strategy and practices for bringing a partner  into the operation as a succession plan for the farm. This episode is jam-packed with information and inspiration for making a living on a very small acreage. The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.

  My guest for this episode is Kat Becker, who farms with her husband, Tony Schultz, at Stoney Acres Farm. Stoney Acres is located on the edge of the north woods in Wisconsin, at the border between zones 3 and 4. Managing 150 acres, Kat and Tony raise ten acres of vegetables and fruit, rotationally grazed cows, pork, maple syrup, small grains, and mushrooms. And they host on-farm pizza night every Friday night during the warm season, featuring their own farm ingredients – including the wheat – baked in one of their two wood-fired ovens. We talk about the challenges of managing this diversity, how pizza has helped them integrate into their community, family dynamics, and Kat’s transition to focusing on the farm full time. The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost Company.

Linda Chapman owns Harvest Moon Flower Farm in southern Indiana. Harvest Moon is a 2 - 1/2 flower farm run by Linda and a very small crew. They market flowers through farmers markets, a business subscription program, and weddings in the Bloomington and Indianapolis markets. In this episode, we talk through some great practical flower farming information, from weed control to bouquet construction, as well as Linda’s labor situation and plans for transitioning the farm to a new generation. The Farmer to Farmer Podcast is generously supported by Vermont Compost.

Pete Johnson of Pete’s Greens farms ninety acres of vegetables – with three under cover, and an additional 130 acres in hay and cover crops, in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, with sales through a CSA and farm stores, as well as through wholesale markets. Pete shares his strategies for extending the season with roots and greens storage, in addition to winter growing. We also get into Pete’s efforts to develop new weed control strategies on his large-scale farm to help mitigate risk with a changing climate, managing employees and projects, and scaling equipment for your operation.

Nick Olson and his wife, Joan, own Prairie Drifter Farm in Litchfield, Minnesota – out on the edge of the prairie. They raise about six acres of vegetables 90 minutes west of the Twin Cities, selling most of them through a CSA and the rest to stores and restaurants. Nick has also coordinated the Farm Beginnings courses for the Land Stewardship Project for a number of years. We talked about how his experience with that program influenced the decisions that he and Joan have made on their farm over the past six years, covering topics from holistic management to relationship management. I had a lot of fun talking to Nick, and I learned a lot. I think you’ll find the conversation as valuable as I did.

Annie Salafsky and Susan Ujcic share the story of how two women – one from suburban Chicago and one from suburban New Jersey – started and grew Helsing Junction Farm in western Washington. Annie and Susan have raised produce for their CSA since 1992. Chris and Annie and Susan discuss improving nutrient density, farming in a business partnership, using online customer relationship management software to improve logistics, and how they’ve built Helsing Junction around their families and personal needs.

Greg Garbos brings his training and experience in conventional engineering to his work as a small farmer and with small farmers. He is the owner and cofounder of Four Season Tools, a greenhouse and horticulture supply company that also provides farm design consulting, as well as the owner and founder of City Bitty Farm, a grower of microgreens for Kansas City area restaurants. Greg and I dig into using intentional decision-making as a basis for developing a farm around sound principles.