Digging in the Dirt - Archives

My guest today is Tianna Kennedy. She has been farming in the Northern Catskills for over a decade. She is the executive director of Catskills Agrarian Alliance, a multi-stakeholder food sovereignty project working on many food related issues in the NY Catskills foodshed. Tianna, Amanda Wong and Walter Riesen also own and operate Star Route Farm, LLC, a diversified vegetable and small grain farm growing exclusively for mutual aid. The CAA evolved from The 607 CSA, an 800+ person multi-farm Community Supported Agriculture Project supporting 45 farms and food businesses in Otsego, Schoharie, and Delaware counties. Tianna is a member of the Watershed Ag Economic Viability Committee and is Treasurer for Draft Animal Power Network. In 2022, she was awarded a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition by Rep. Antonio Delgado. She started the Catskills Chapter of the National Young Farmers’ Coalition. She is also a founding member of Delhi’s Bushel Collective and the Schooner Apollonia, a Hudson Valley Sail Freight venture.

My guests on “Digging in the Dirt" Monday afternoon are two committed environmentalists, renowned American landscape Artist April Gornik and McArthur fellow Carl Safina. Their respective organizations, The Church and the Safina Center are doing wonderful work in their own creative ways. They are coming aboard to talk about the April 1st 2024 Creativity Conference to be held at the Church. which is located in Sag Harbor long Island.

My guest today is a highly successful insurance agent Maureen Gallagher. I wanted to get Maureen's perspective on the the rise in Extreme weather events and the effects they have on the Insurance industry covering the losses incurred.
Maureen Gallagher is the Risk Management Group Agency President. Gallagher specializes in insurance placement, risk management consulting and expert opinions. She began her career almost 50 years ago and has held the titles of insurance underwriter, broker, claims consultant, expert witness, keynote speaker, historian, and teacher. She has been featured and profiled in numerous publications and was named by Crain’s Detroit Business as one of the “Best and Brightest” and as one of “Detroit’s Most Influential Women.” Risk and Insurance recognized Gallagher as a Workers Compensation and 2020 At Large “Power Broker” which identifies the best brokers in the country.

Extreme weather

Hurricane insurance coverage

Flood coverage

Insurance costs

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My guest today is a young woman who is very concerned about climate change and the water crisis in the west, in particular and elsewhere generally and it appears so are many others, because she has over 45,000 Followers. Teal Lehto who posts TikToks about serious stuff, in a surprisingly hip and engaging manner in rapid fire delivery to get all the facts in … in just minutes . Using humor and a bit of salty language to reach her young viewers.

My next guest Joe Magazzi small business man here in CT would be helpful to everyone looking to do the right thing by our gardens organically. Joe is a good friend of mine and WPKN. Joe owns and operates Green earth Ag and turf up in Branford Ct. and he’s on line at Grow it naturally. Com. Where his company sells Proven & Easy Organic Products for Plants, Turf & Trees. I personally rely on Green earth to get quality products for my own garden.

My guest here today on DITD is Vincent Kay a lifelong resident of Connecticut. Vincent happens to be one of Connecticut's top garlic growers. So I contacted him to buy seed and come to find out he worked for Pacifica Network News as well as NPR and as News Director at WPKN radio in Bridgeport From 1996-98.
Now after 38 years he operates the State's largest commercial beekeeping business and is the sole proprietor of Swords into Plowshares Honey, producing Connecticut's finest wildflower honey, and providing crop and orchard pollination services and in addition to all this grows a whole lot of garlic.

My guests on this segment are Thomas Iezin Marketing Communications, and Assistant Operations Manager of the Park City Compost Initiative And Andrew Tyrrell, the Operations Manager for Park City Compost Initiative where they want to create a non-profit commercial composting site for Bridgeport and the surrounding cities and towns. Andrew Is a Master's Composter.
Park City Compost started composting their neighbor's food scraps in 2019 and it now has over 100 participants from which they collect weekly food scraps, create compost with it and give it back to the community. They have diverted more than 30,000 pounds of food waste and spread 15 cubic yards of compost throughout Bridgeport.

Woody Tasch is the author of Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered Chelsea Green Press
SOIL: Notes Towards the Theory and Practice of Nurture Capital, and
AHA!: Fake Trillions, Real Billions, Beetcoin and the Great American Do-Over (Slow Money Institute). Tasch is former chairman of Investors’ Circle, a nonprofit angel network that has facilitated more than $200 million of investments in over 300 early-stage, sustainability-promoting companies. He is the founder of Slow Money and most recently Beetcoin.

Daphne Dixon is Co-founder and Executive Director at Live Green Network in Ct. Daphne along with Alyssa Murphy went on a coast to coast EV road trip, going from one United States coast to another
in a Ford Mustang Mach-E all-wheel drive EV. In the middle of this trip Daphne came on Digging in the Dirt to fill us in on what was going on and now she is back to give her final report and assessment of what happened on this unique trip and talk about the future of electric vehicles.

I’m pleased to welcome back to “Digging in the Dirt… Gardener, author, educator, podcaster blogger and frequent collaborator with Joe Lamp’l of the Joe Gardener TV show… Craig LeHoullier.
In addition Craig wrote one of the great books on tomatoes, It's called Epic Tomatoes. Beautiful to look at and a very good resource for all of us tomato geeks.