Bytable Podcast - Know Better Live Best

Listen as Conor Crickmore tells us about his journey from IT to farming, tips for those who want to grow their own food, and the importance of being connected with your food system.

Bio:

Conor left the city, moved to the country and started what would later become a world class farm from nothing and with no experience. He left a IT job in a cubicle to create a homestead on a river where he could catch and grow his dinner. It did not happen quickly as it was very hard those first couple of years for Conor and his wife Kate. Conor and Kate were driven by finding a connection to nature and their food and to make a better life for themselves and their two kids born on the farm. What they ultimately created was one of the most successful small scale vegetable farms in the world.

After a decade of building their farmstead, they now teach others their high production, low till farming methods. Conor found that the current landscape of tools did not work well within his style of farming and thus he became a designer and manufacturer of farm tools. Other farmers agreed, and the tool company, Neversink Farm Tools, was born.

Conor and his family now wish to share their farm with the community through dinners in their newly renovated barn and through videos of farm life they create. They hope to inspire others to either make the leap themselves to a country life or at least to eat great food in a beautiful location with family and friends.

When you buy seeds to plant in your backyard garden, do you wonder where they came from? Brijette Peña, owner of San Diego Seed Company, joined us to share with our listeners the importance of knowing where your seeds come from. The idea is simple: If good seed that is adapted to our climate is produced locally, then we can add one more layer of support to our regional food systems!

Brijette Peña, Owner of San Diego Seed Company:

In the end, for San Diego Seed Company it’s about supporting those that support us by growing nutritious local, food.

Website: https://www.sandiegoseedcompany.com/

In part two of our conversation with award-winning author and journalist Charles Fishman, we discuss how we can all do our part to help conserve water and inspire change in our communities and government.

Bio:

Fishman’s book, “The Big Thirst: The secret life & turbulent future of water,” has become the best-selling water book in a generation, and is changing how people think about water, and how they confront the challenges of climate change. “The Big Thirst” does something few water books do — it restores a sense of wonder about water, along with a sense of urgency.

Fishman’s message is both blunt and optimistic. Everywhere in the world, climate change will make water problems that already exist worst. And many places that don’t think about water will suddenly have too much or too little. At the same time, the next decade will see a revolution in water akin to the revolution we’ve seen in computing, in medicine, in communication, in the last 10 years. Around the world, how people use water, how they get it, what they pay for it, and how they think about it — all will change. Because it must change.

Fishman is a former reporter for the Washington Post, and was a reporter and editor at the Orlando Sentinel and the News & Observer in Raleigh, NC. Since 1996, he has worked for the innovative business magazine Fast Company. Fishman’s work has won numerous awards, including three times receiving UCLA’s Gerald Loeb Award, the most prestigious award in business journalism.

He is the author, most recently, of “One Giant Leap: The impossible mission that flew us to the Moon” — a groundbreaking history of the race to the Moon in the 1960s that was an instant New York Times bestseller.

Fishman is the author of two other New York Times bestsellers, “The Wal-Mart Effect,” about Wal-Mart’s impact on how we live; and the #1 NYT bestseller, “A Curious Mind,” about the power of curiosity, with Hollywood producer Brian Grazer.

Fishman grew up in Miami, Florida, and graduated from Harvard. After a stint in Mexico City, he now lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, also a journalist, their two children, and their two Labradors. A two-foot wide creek runs through his backyard.

Books:

The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works--and HowIt's Transforming the American Economy

One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon

When you turn on the tap or buy a bottle of water, do you ever wonder about where that water comes from and all the work and energy that is required to bring that water to you?  Are you curious to know what you can do individually to help conserve the world’s water supply and what you can do to help your community avoid a water crisis?

Listen as award-winning author and journalist Charles Fishman teaches us about our strange and complex relationship to one of the earth’s most vital resources, water.

Fishman’s book, “The Big Thirst: The secret life & turbulent future of water,” has become the best-selling water book in a generation, and is changing how people think about water, and how they confront the challenges of climate change. “The Big Thirst” does something few water books do — it restores a sense of wonder about water, along with a sense of urgency.

Fishman’s message is both blunt and optimistic. Everywhere in the world, climate change will make water problems that already exist worst. And many places that don’t think about water will suddenly have too much or too little. At the same time, the next decade will see a revolution in water akin to the revolution we’ve seen in computing, in medicine, in communication, in the last 10 years. Around the world, how people use water, how they get it, what they pay for it, and how they think about it — all will change. Because it must change.

Fishman is a former reporter for the Washington Post, and was a reporter and editor at the Orlando Sentinel and the News & Observer in Raleigh, NC. Since 1996, he has worked for the innovative business magazine Fast Company. Fishman’s work has won numerous awards, including three times receiving UCLA’s Gerald Loeb Award, the most prestigious award in business journalism.

He is the author, most recently, of “One Giant Leap: The impossible mission that flew us to the Moon” — a groundbreaking history of the race to the Moon in the 1960s that was an instant New York Times bestseller.

Fishman is the author of two other New York Times bestsellers, “The Wal-Mart Effect,” about Wal-Mart’s impact on how we live; and the #1 NYT bestseller, “A Curious Mind,” about the power of curiosity, with Hollywood producer Brian Grazer.

Fishman grew up in Miami, Florida, and graduated from Harvard. After a stint in Mexico City, he now lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, also a journalist, their two children, and their two Labradors. A two-foot wide creek runs through his backyard.

Books:

The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works--and HowIt's Transforming the American Economy

One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon

Listen as we discuss Mushroom Mountain, which Tradd Cotter owns and operates with his wife Olga, to explore applications in various industries including food production, mycoremediation of environmental pollutants, and natural alternatives to chemical pesticides.

About Tradd:

In 2014 Tradd published the best-selling book Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation (2014), that is still one of the top ten releases with the publisher, Chelsea Green. Tradd has won numerous awards for his work including the prestigious Clemson University Entrepreneur of the Year Award (2013), the EPA GRO-U Fellowship Award (2011), and an expert lecturer on all topics related to fungi in agriculture and medicine.

His primary interest is in low-tech and no-tech cultivation strategies so that anyone can grow mushrooms on just about anything, anywhere in the world. Mushroom Mountain is currently expanding to 42,000 square feet of laboratory and research space near Greenville, South Carolina, to accommodate commercial production, as well as mycoremediation projects. In 2018 Mushroom Mountain started a daughter company, MYCOMATRIX, that develops novel medicinal extracts for consumers and cobranding into consumer products. Currently the Cotters have opened Blue Portal, a psilocybin research and mediated session center, that is available in Jamaica and soon Costa Rica. Tradd, Olga, and their daughter, Heidi, live in Liberty, South Carolina.

Links:

Listen as Shawna teaches us about her Anti-Inflammatory lifestyle and how she has found pain relief from severe spinal osteoarthritis through diet and an active garden lifestyle.

About Shawna:

Shawna was diagnosed with severe spinal osteoarthritis in 2015 and has found pain relief through diet and an active garden lifestyle. Telling her dramatic story and experience, Shawna inspires and educates audiences to make smart anti-inflammatory diet, food, and health choices. Her goal is to help people stick with a positive lifestyle plan in order to relieve and overcome chronic inflammatory pain and conditions. Shawna dreams of inspiring more people to be active and pain-free so they can discover a healthier and more fulfilled lifestyle.

Website: https://shawnacoronado.com/

Listen as we discuss how chickens and ducks can be utilized to improve your garden, the importance of eating pasture-raised eggs and poultry, and Lisa’s hopes for the future of agriculture.

The author of several books including Fresh Eggs Daily: Raising Happy, Healthy Chickens Naturally (St. Lynns Press, 2013), Gardening with Chickens (Quarto, 2016), and most recently 101 Chicken Keeping Hacks (Quarto, 2018), she has appeared on Home and Family on the Hallmark channel, P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home on NPR, Good Morning Maine, Great Day Houston, Good Day Columbus, and San Antonio Living among others, and has been featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

In addition to writing books and handling her social media, Lisa hosts a “country lifestyle” television show on NBC in Maine and New Hampshire called Welcome to my Farm. From the farm  in central Maine where she and her husband reside, and she’s carrying on her family tradition raising a mixed flock of chickens, ducks and geese, and growing vegetables and herbs while inspiring others with her natural, fun and accessible approach to integrating gardening and backyard chickens for a more productive flock and a more bountiful harvest.

Learn more about gardening and chickens by visiting Lisa’s website https://www.fresheggsdaily.com/

Listen as Dr. Dominic D'Agostino teaches us about the ketogenic diet, nutrition, the link between healthcare and agriculture, and what he and his wife have learned while working on their sustainable and regenerative farm in Florida.

Bio:

Listen as we discuss the problems facing dairy producers and our rural communities and how we can all work together towards building a better food system

Bio:

Sarah has a PhD in Rural Sociology from UW-Madison and a Masters in Rural Development from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. She has served on the National Dairy Board and the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board.

Listen in as we discuss the history of monopolization and corporate influence in our agriculture system, the decline of the family farm and rural America, the rise of private funding for agriculture research at public universities, his work on the new film Right to Harm, and my favorite part - how we can work together to fix our food system, support our farmers, and how if we each work on our little piece of the world we can work together towards a better one. 

About John:

John was raised on a small dairy farm in southwest Missouri and received his BS, MS, and Ph.D. degrees in agricultural economics from the University of Missouri. He worked in private industry for a time and spent thirty years in various professorial positions at North Carolina State University, Oklahoma State University, University of Georgia, and the University of Missouri before retiring in early 2000. Since retiring, he spends most of his time writing and speaking on issues related to sustainability with an emphasis on economics and agriculture. He is author of six books which are available through Amazon.com via http://johnikerd.com/books. In 2014, Ikerd was commission by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations to write the regional report, “Family Farms of North America,” in recognition for the International Year of the Family Farming. He currently resides with his wife, Ellen, in Fairfield, IA. More complete background information and a wide selection of writings are available at http://faculty.missouri.edu/ikerdj/  or http://johnikerd.com.