Episodes
July 22, 2023
Troy Bishopp Part 2: Taking Risks and Being Realistic
Troy Bishopp web site TroyBishopp Instagram #lingergrazing On Pasture Grazing Chart link Grasstravanganza info: https://grasstravaganza.morrisville.edu/ Drop a review at www.choosingtofarm.com Join our Patreon! --- Send in a…
July 17, 2023
Troy Bishopp Part 1: From Guinea Pig to Linger Grazing
"My buddy Rock Langone, he runs my ice cream store up the road here. Him and I were the young farmers of the county, we were the chosen ones. We had high herd averages, you know, just got out of college. We were making milk,…
July 8, 2023
Karen Hoffman is Peaceful by Nature
"There was a guy in my office for years, who used to refer to people like me as hobby farmers. And it drove me crazy. One day I finally said, “You know what? These hobby farmers, if they are getting up every day, and taking …
June 24, 2023
Bobbie Jean Booth Becomes an Accidental Farmer
“I got involved with sheep and farming purely by accident. Aside from a semester Work Study program at UVM dairy, I had no background in farming and no interest in sheep. Then, one cold February while I was farmsitting, 6 ou…
June 10, 2023
Kate Osgood is All or Nothing
Kate Osgood of Birch Rise Farm in Sanburton, NH, along with her husband Ken and sons Hunter and Henry, loves to go all in on whatever they do. When they decided to move back to the east to raise their family, they didn’t kno…
June 7, 2023
Nick Weinstock Goes from Foodie to Farmer
Nick and his family have a productive history as small business owners, investors, and planners. After getting his construction management degree from Michigan State University in 2009, Nick returned to join the family cons…
May 9, 2023
Becky Harhaj Balances Calm and Chaos
From Becky: My husband and I moved our kids to a farm in rural southern Minnesota in 2016 to grow better food. We were already purchasing most of our meat from local farmers, but wanted to do it ourselves while giving our ki…
April 29, 2023
Hank & Heather LeTarte Listen to Their Customers
“We cleared eight acres and piled the trees by hand. Not the trees but the brush. We had 96 brush piles in one field. And we had no friends left, because we would say to them, ‘Come on over for the weekend. And we'll give y…
April 22, 2023
Carly Farmer Sticks With It
“I can't express enough how just beautiful it is to watch the growth. The growth of a farm year after year where you're putting your inputs in, which may just mean your animals, they’re just fertilizing and grazing for you. …
April 15, 2023
Matt Kovarik Thinks Outside the Box
“I think that you have to listen to what everybody has to say, and then just pick and choose different parts of their advice. That's complicated for some people; they just want a How-To Guide for starting their farm. It’s no…
April 8, 2023
Katie Steere Finds Her Dream Life
"I get a lot of people saying, you're living my dream life. I'm so jealous. I know it's a compliment. But I'm not living your dream life. I'm living my dream life. And I know what it comes with. I know all the s-h-i-t it com…
April 1, 2023
Brent Beidler Chooses Not to Farm
“I am very delightfully holding on to the things that I hold dear about myself that are a part of my life as a farmer, and not integrating that into my life going forward, where I'm not commercially farming. I really appreci…
Feb. 9, 2023
Driving Chat: Agritourism
Here’s a quick mini-episode I wanted to share about agritourism. I recorded it while driving home from the International Workshop on Agritourism last fall. Fair warning that it’s only lightly edited. I just came across this …
Jan. 28, 2023
Katelyn Duban Connects Rural Women
“From what I’ve learned, it's always best to learn from other people. Learn from people who have been doing this before. If you can find a mentor in the field that you are interested in, I think that's the best thing you can…
Jan. 11, 2023
Jessica Newman Starts With Why
“I really love the sheep. They're not stupid. Nor do I think they desire to die, as I've heard on more than one occasion. I do think they require awareness. They also are so instinct driven--which makes sense, based on what …
Oct. 1, 2022
Season 2 Trailer
Coming soon! The second season of Choosing to Farm is bringing you even more great stories of the journey into--and sometimes out of--farming. We'll talk about new models, new ways of being successful, and where new farmers …
July 12, 2022
Ep. 19 Keeping It Simple with Jascha Pick
“I didn't have mechanical background, I didn't grow up fixing tractors. I had never driven a tractor. I wasn't good with equipment. Grazing was very approachable. It just really appealed to me. You're outside, you're working…
May 26, 2022
Ep. 18: Learning and Leading in Business with Dallas Mount
“Go and work for a bad boss. Go and spend some time breaking somebody else's machines, losing tens of thousands of dollars on their payroll, before you're doing it on your own payroll. That timing is probably somewhere betwe…
April 30, 2022
Ep. 1.17 Is Choosing to Farm Enough? with Jenn Colby
“I think sometimes the choice to farm also means that folks choose not to have a life. They may not recognize it as that. Sometimes the choice to farm or ranch doesn't necessarily automatically set them up for that. Responsi…
April 23, 2022
Ep. 1.16 Margaret Chamas Part 2 and Listener Comments
We finish up our second part of the chat with Margaret and read some listener comments. Lots of gold to hear and respond to in this episode!
April 11, 2022
Ep 1.15 Margaret Chamas Part 1
“For a long time, it's been just like struggling to get my farm to the bare minimum of what I would consider acceptable in my head. There was no pride, no accomplishment, because before that I was failing. So I was simply no…
April 2, 2022
Ep. 1.14 Abbie Corse
“Since coming back, it's been sort of this really challenging and interesting evolution to understand how a working mother who is not farming with her partner can take over an operation that has traditionally been run by fou…
March 27, 2022
Ep 1.13 Ashlyn Bristle & Abraham McClurg
“The jobs that I worked were a pickle factory and a spinnery and an apple orchard, All of those were learning how to operate in a system watching how other people create systems and deal with the logistics of production. I t…
March 20, 2022
Ep. 1.12 Jenn Colby on Leadership, Introverts, and Being a Real Farmer
“It feels scary to work with a dangerous animal, but it's within our wheelhouse. To do something that is unknown--to reach out, to ask for help, to admit we don't know--to go into that sort of dark place outside of our circl…