Episodes
Sept. 5, 2024
Kate Sabino Learns From Experience
It was in the middle of high school that I really started to carve out an interest for myself in and seek experiences in
agricultural production of some fruit and veg, some small livestock. I remember having a conversation w…
Aug. 27, 2024
Carrie & Brent Wasser Balance Relationships
I remember…doing some chores one day with the pigs and thinking, “I don't need anything other than this. Everything is whole and complete as I do this work here with these animals. –Carrie You start with lambing and move th…
Aug. 20, 2024
Sarah & Kenny Jensen Stay Upright
We might not see the payoff of the things that we're doing here…but the legacy we're leaving for someone to walk in behind us, that's really important. —Sarah For me, especially having a job for so many years where there wer…
Aug. 3, 2024
Emily Virzi & Rose Thackeray Pivot From Italy to Vermont to Union Brook
“I think a lot of people seek out farm and food jobs because they're looking for something profound and they don't even know what it's going to be until they get there.”—Rose “Every year on the farm is so different. It reall…
June 22, 2024
Hannah & John Doyle Front Load Hardship
“Raising animals is heavy. Even when it goes really well, it's heavy. And when you have losses, like we have had in the last couple of years, it changes the math -- even the finances of it. Okay, yeah, we lost money because …
April 29, 2024
Robert Friedman Raises Poultry Intentionally
I came into farming really, as I got into it, being like--I'm a grower. That's where I want to grow my expertise; how to be a better caretaker for these animals, how to be more efficient with my time, with the land that we'r…
April 24, 2024
Justin Bramhall and Vanessa Rose Are Part of the Solution
The occasional summer I would go to Arkansas for a few nights when my family would make the trip out there from Dallas, Texas, they would only stay for a short period it was my aunt and uncle's Chicken farm. They were conve…
April 20, 2024
Bruce Hennessey and Beth Whiting Level Up Their Business
It feels good that we're providing this product for people's nutrition, for their families. They keep coming back to us and appreciating that. We are who we are; we're the face, we talk to them, we have them to our farm for …
April 13, 2024
Bruce Hennessey and Beth Whiting Climb Mountains and Diversify
I describe farming as really just one long extended expedition. It's very much like a mountaineering expedition where you wake up every day, you're working outside. You have problems, often new problems that crop up at least…
April 6, 2024
Haley Goulet Educates Her Community
Watching them [kids] come to the farm; at first, it can be quite challenging. There is definitely an arc of sort of comfortableness just with being outside doing chores, hard manual labor. That takes a minute for a lot of ki…
April 3, 2024
Toby & Melissa Malandrinos Pick Their Battles
I remember being seven or eight years old and drawing… having construction paper, big rolls of paper all over the living room floor, drawing pictures of where my cows and my sheep and my chickens would go on my future farm.—…
March 27, 2024
Zan and Kimberly Walker-Goncalves Circle Back to their Roots
We had bought this house in Brattleboro. We'd bought the truck. We bought the sheep. We bought dogs. We did all of this long before COVID hit, but then we were like, okay, this is our pandemic project.—Kimberly Kimberly and …
Feb. 15, 2024
Nicolle Ferrier Breeds Fowl for the Future
I've wanted to quit about a hundred gazillion times, a lot- a lot. But I want to do what I love. So that is the key, right? To do what we love. And this is what I love to do. It comes with difficulties and it comes with rew…
Feb. 7, 2024
Jon Turner Helps to Heal
There is a legacy throughout my family of having at least one member who served in all major conflicts back to the Revolutionary War. The other side of that coin is they were all farmers, homesteaders and innovators of their…
Feb. 7, 2024
Jenn Colby Finds Her Purpose
Your humble host has been through some stuff the last few years. At a recent food system gathering event this fall, the call went out inviting folks to tell their stories of transition and transformation. How we went from th…
Jan. 13, 2024
Ridge Shinn Thinks Big Picture
We could actually look into the animal, the live animal, see intramuscular fat and tenderness. We also had these tools, linear measurement tools that we could actually physically measure the animals and began to find almost …
Jan. 6, 2024
John Roberts Part 2: Finding a Purpose Serving Farmers
I'm excited that the pandemic--for all its negativity--also said, “Hey, wait a minute. We need to concentrate on food resiliency”. We need to encourage these small diverse farms because the big operations, the five huge com…
Jan. 6, 2024
John Roberts Part 1: Falling in Love with Farming
We'd rebuilt the milking parlor, which hadn't been operating. We've done all of this sort of stuff. When we came to close the sale we had two years of numbers to show that we actually knew-vaguely knew--what we were doing. W…
Dec. 23, 2023
Tricia Park Uses Holistic Management to Drive Her Decisions
“My husband had been fascinated by Scottish Highlanders. We would drive by this place and you'd have to stop, get out of the car and like look through the woods to see them. And I was like, they're just big, shaggy horned be…
Dec. 13, 2023
Erin Meding Grows a Farm
“I did not grow up in a farming family. I grew up in a small town in the Midwest…there's no one in my family that has ever farmed. I'm pretty sure most of my siblings think I'm crazy.” Erin and Charles Meding purchased their…
Oct. 21, 2023
Cameron Pedigo Farms for the Right Reasons
“I'd watch the deer, how they would interact with the cows and turkeys and, you know, other animals. I've always been a keen observer of nature. That started young. That's kind of like the foundation. I didn't realize that's…
Sept. 30, 2023
Chris & Samantha Kemnah Find Less Labor in Dairy
“Neither one of us came from a farm family or any kind of money in our background. We've just kind of done it on our good credit. We've leased the farms that we've been on. We are hoping to be able to buy the farm we're on n…
Aug. 15, 2023
Brad & Emalee Buttrey Find Real-Life Challenges
“We did have the sense to look and say, you know, God created ruminant animals to take advantage of grass and low input. You know, if we've got a grass base, and we take care of that, that's as low input as you're gonna get …
Aug. 9, 2023
Nicole & Jeremiah Vernon Talk Time, Family and Vulnerability
“I have a specific memory of the first time we ever did sheep, I was so mad at my parents, we were going to kill the sheep. And then fast forward like an hour into it. And I came running into the house holding a sheep tongue…