FarmHouse

This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we're talking to Carolyn Beans, a freelance science reporter with a focus on food and agriculture.

Beans is currently an MIT Environmental Solutions Journalism Fellow. Through the fellowship, she is writing a series on climate-smart dairy that is being published in Lancaster Farming.

"The fellowship is designed to support journalists who are working on stories that explore environmental solutions specifically for local audiences," Beans said.

The term climate-smart is a bit of a newer buzzword, but Beans said despite the new terminology, there are a lot of practical ways to implement it on farms, many of which farmers are already familiar with.

"What climate-smart means now is many of the things that a lot of dairies are already doing," Beans said. "Things like cover-cropping counts, things like no-till farming counts. More of the newer technologies to bring down greenhouse gases also count. Things like methane digesters, or even something like a liquid-solid separator."

The term itself can be a bit polarizing, but Beans said she saw conservation practices at all of the many dairy farms she visited throughout Pennsylvania.

"I think every single dairy farmer I spoke with had already done something to improve the sustainability of their farms," Beans said.

Beans didn't start out heavily involved in the agriculture industry. She always had an interest in plants, and at one point worked at a flower farm.

This led her to eventually studying biology and digging into the field of science reporting.

"Talking about food is a thing that everyone is interested in. We all eat. We all have some feelings about food," Beans said. "So it's a topic that allows me to cover a lot of science while just meeting people at a topic that I think they really care about."

Listen here:

You can find Carolyn Beans' series on climate-smart dairy here:

Pennsylvania Dairy Farmers Consider Return on Climate-Smart Milk

Could Measuring Greenhouse Gases Increase Returns on Pennsylvania Dairies?

Can Pennsylvania Dairies Profit From Carbon Markets?

Who Will Pay for Climate-Smart Milk?

You can find our FarmHouse episode with Emma de Long where we discuss the PA Flax Project here:

100% Women-Run Farms With Emma de Long

This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we're talking to Doris Mold, co-CEO of Annie's Project, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering women in agriculture.

Annie's Project was founded in 2003 and named after Annette Kohlhagen Fleck, a woman who married into farming in 1947 and went on to take care of the business side of the farm.

Annie's Project honors her legacy by providing women with the knowledge and confidence to manage farms and agribusinesses successfully.

The organization offers a mix of workshops, courses and online learning aimed at educating women in ag on the business end of running a farm. Topics include risk management, business planning, financial literacy, marketing and legal issues.

"Our mission is to empower women in agriculture to be successful through education networks and resources," said Mold, though she added that the courses are not limited to women participants. "We welcome all comers to Annie's project. So we do have non-women that participate as well."

Still, Mold acknowledged that female-only or nearly female-only classes do help many women feel more comfortable and open to engaging in the learning process.

Annie's Project also prefers, when possible, to use female educators.

"We think it is really important to model that women have knowledge in this area, expertise, and that we really want people to engage," Mold said. "It doesn't mean that a man can't engage with women. There's a lot of terrific men out there. But to really encourage that discussion and that people feel that connection, showing that women have knowledge, that kind of elevates that and says, 'Oh, well, if she knows this, I can learn this too.'"

Annie's Project may be focused on equipping women with the tools to make the best decisions for their farming operation, but its impact goes beyond that: It's making sure everyone, regardless of gender, is ready to take on the current and future challenges facing ag.

"It is going to take the best and brightest of all of us — not just 50% of the population, all of us — to solve the problems and take on the opportunities that we had ahead of us," Mold said. "We can be much better at what we're doing if we figure that out and work collaboratively."

This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we're talking to Rebekah Mindel, a flower farmer and floral designer.

Mindel owns Meadow Wilds, a full-circle floral design studio and flower farm in New York's Hudson Valley.

For Mindel, full circle means starting the plants from seed, harvesting and conditioning the flowers and using them in the final designs.

"Farming and design for me go hand in hand," she said. "I wouldn't want to do one without the other."

Mindel designs floral arrangements for events and wedding using flowers grown on her farm plus purchased florals.

Regardless of where the flowers come from, Mindel wants her designs to be inspired by nature and shaped by seasonality.

"It's about connecting with the season and the plant specifically and bringing that forward," Mindel said.

This focus on nature — plus a commitment to using as many local flowers as possible — means she can't always offer specific flowers.

"What I can promise is tone, texture, shape, color," Mindel said.

Mindel's favorites that she grows on her farm includes tulips and peonies. Another is one that grows well in the Hudson Valley.

"Lisianthus is a flower farmer favorite," she said. "It's such an amazing crop because it comes in so many colors and it can really help support the design by anchoring that palette through color. I love lisianthus. We usually always have that flower."

This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we're talking to Susan Jones, a pollination expert in McCormick, South Carolina.

Jones' passion for bees grew from an unlikely source: a farrier and third-generation beekeeper visiting her family's farm began nudging her to give beekeeping a try. He eventually gifted Jones her first two colonies.

Those first bees didn't make it through the winter, but that brief window of time was enough to get Jones hooked, especially when she saw the difference having pollinators made on her garden.

"My garden went from OK to on steroids with pollination with the bees. I was just dumbfounded that there was such a difference. Then when I didn't have bees the next spring, it was like, why am I even bothering to garden?" Jones said.

In the two decades since, Jones has evolved from a hobbyist beekeeper to an educator and advocate. She is currently the Apiculture and Pollinator Specialist at the South Carolina Governor's School for Agriculture and has served as the director of the Master Beekeeping Program of South Carolina.

Her journey has afforded her plenty of opportunities to spread the word about pollinators and how we need to start protecting them, especially in the face of a recent uptick in colony losses.

"I do a talk that shares the coordination between how pollinators need us, yet we need them, and they face so many different obstacles. I think it's a death by a thousand cuts. There's no one single contributor to these losses. There are so many," Jones said.

Part of the problem, she explained, is that because these challenges stem from various sources, there needs to be a collaborative effort to address the issue – and that's not happening.

"The problem is all the different factions, whether it's environmental, whether it is pesticides and chemicals use or whatever it is, none of these entities are really talking and collaborating with each other," she said.

Jones also owns Susan Marie's Bees, a honey production operation with 20-25 colonies, which she says helps continue to inform how she teaches about bees and allows her to stay connected to the strong beekeeping community in South Carolina.

"The joke in beekeeping is if you ask 10 beekeepers a question, you get 12 different emphatic answers, and nobody seems to agree," Jones said. "But I have found over the years that women in particular are detail oriented and they're good observers and they are great problem solvers." And that, according to Jones, is what makes a good beekeeper.

Year-Round Gardening With Edible and Pollinator-Friendly Perennials

Choosing the Perfect Pollinator-Friendly Plants for Your Garden

Attract Pollinators to Your Garden By Planting the Native Plants They Pref

This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we're talking to Alyssa Adkins, a produce farmer in Freeport, Maine.

Adkins and her partner Nathan Broaddus own Farthest Field Farm where they grow produce and make their own jarred products.

The farm specializes in peppers and hot sauces.

"My partner and I decided to start with value-added products," Adkins said. "There's so many CSAs to choose from, there's so many farmers selling vegetables at farmers markets. So it kind of made sense for us."

The farm sells five varieties of hot sauces as well as salsas and other products.

Adkins does have a bit of a culinary background. She used to be a registered dietitian and worked in restaurants.

This background — plus her own personal canning experience — led her to recipe development. For all of the jarred products, taste and flavor are the most important elements; the spice is secondary.

"We don't have any sauces where we're melting your face off because we want you to taste things," Adkins said. "We want you to taste what we grow. We put so much work into these hot sauces."

Adkins are Broaddus bought the property for Farthest Field Farm in 2022, and their goal is to work the land in a way that's best for their business and for the environment.

Adkins wants to rebuild the soil and pollinator habitat. To accomplish this, the farm is no-till and uses organic methods.

While the farm is not currently certified organic, Adkins said it can sometimes work in their favor.

"We have found that when you're not organic certified people ask you more questions," she said. "We like that. We really like that people are engaging with us in that way."

Adkins also engages people by hosting events on the farm

"We see how interconnected farms are to everything that is around them," she said. "We call it a community farm and we want it to be that in the fullest sense from the tiniest little microbes in the soil to the humans who might come here for events."

The Lancaster Farming Team sat down to try five hot sauces from Farthest Field Farm and answer some questions about agriculture, journalism and what makes for a good hot wing.

Click here to watch!

This week on the FarmHouse podcast, we're talking to Amy Marciano, founder of Sugar Mutts Rescue and Skymeadow Farm Sanctuary, a 501(c)(3) non-profit animal rescue in Greentown, Pennsylvania.

"I pretty much came out of the womb loving animals. It was just in my DNA," Marciano said. "There's a quote that I pretty much live by, it's basically you can't change the world by rescuing one animal, but for that one animal you change the world."

Marciano started her work in Brooklyn, New York, where she founded the Sugar Mutts Dog Rescue in a warehouse. After about a decade in the city, she moved her operation to the Poconos region where she was able to give her dogs more room.

She then expanded her rescue to include Skymeadow Farm Sanctuary, where she began taking in farm animals from owners who are no longer able to care for them or who have been rescued from neglectful situations.

"I mean you spend any time around any farm animal, they're just like dogs and cats. They really are, they have personalities," Marciano said. "They're intelligent. So that's something that's a gift to be around and to see that and know that they're safe."

In addition to traditional funding channels, Marciano helps fund Sugar Mutts and Skymeadow Farm by boarding horses on her property. She also owns two AirBnB rentals, the profits from which go toward funding the rescue operations.

Check out the on-farm Air BnB rentals available at Skymeadow Farms, which help generate income for the sanctuary:

Rental 1

Rental 2

The story of the wandering nativity sheep mentioned in the interview.

This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we're talking to Jennie Schmidt, a grain and grape farmer on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Prior to farming at Schmidt Farms full time, Schmidt worked as a registered dietitian.

"I was able to kind of meld my training," she said. "I always tell people that farming is the front end of nutrition. They're the same continuum."

Thanks to her knowledge in both fields, Schmidt was offered speaking engagements, at first with dietitian and nutrition groups. This then led to her speaking nationally at conferences held by groups such as the U.S. Grains Council and the U.S. Ag Export Development Council.

While she said she enjoys the opportunities of speaking engagements, Schmidt spends most of her time farming.

Schmidt Farms uses a lot of conservation practices and was doing so long before Schmidt joined the operation.

"My father-in-law was always very progressive in adopting new practices and very cognizant of leaving the farm in better condition than you received it," Schmidt said. "That's kind of our philosophy to be able to do what we need to do to make sure the land stays intact and the nutrients stay in our soils and not in the waterways."

Initially, the farm was a hog and beef cattle operation but transitioned out of livestock and into grain.

In the early 2000s, Schmidt contacted local wineries to see if they'd be interested in purchasing grapes in the next few years.

Ever since, Schmidt Farms has grown hybrid grape varieties and is now also growing some vinifera varieties.

"We probably have 12 different varieties now," she said, and the diversity in the crop allows for different types of wine.

While Schmidt never planned on being a farmer, she said it was the best decision she ever made, and she hopes to inspire others in the industry.

"I'm trying to be a mentor to either girls that are in FFA or 4-H or younger women who are starting out in farming, because I've had several female mentors who have helped me grow in what I do and in my leadership roles," she said. "I think that's just sort of the path of women helping other women — empower them to do whatever they want to do."

This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we're talking to Renee Wiatt, a family business management specialist at Purdue University who specializes in farm transitions.

Farm succession can be rife with challenges and hard conversations, but according to Wiatt, it's not something farm families should wait to tackle.

The process of transitioning the farm isn't a single event, but a process, that can last for years.

"If we look at data, on average, if we're transferring a family business within the same family, it takes about six and a half years from the start of succession to the end," Wiatt said.

While ownership transfer often happens upon the owner's death, Wiatt stressed that operational transition requires a more gradual approach. That can start with farmers documenting the whos, hows, whys and wheres of their operations.

"Another thing we can do is write down job descriptions," Wiatt said. "A lot of times farmers laugh at me when I say this. They say, I know what I do and I say, yeah, you know what you do, but does everybody else who works on your farm know what you do? No."

She encourages farmers to start documenting month by month, season by season, the things they do that other people might not know about, as well as the locations of tools, paperwork and names of businesses or people associated with that work.

Wiatt acknowledges the conversations around farm transitions can be intimidating, especially when families are involved, and therefore advises keeping the business of the farm separate from home life.

"We do not encourage those planning conversations to happen at dinner table, at family gatherings, at family holidays. We want those to be really thoughtful and mindful conversations outside of the family setting," she said.

It's beneficial when the farmer can start these conversations, she added. Family members may be curious about the future of the farm but often hold back from bringing up their concerns to avoid potentially uncomfortable subject matter.

"I like to put it this way: As the incumbent, as the owner, it's a lot easier for them to say, hey, would you like to join my party than the potential successor to say, hey, I heard you're having a party, can I join?" Wiatt said.

More Info:

Purdue's Code Red farm planning resource

This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we're talking to Dr. Nicole Irizarry, a large-animal veterinarian who owns Kissel Hill Veterinary Services in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Irizarry opened her own mobile vet practice in the fall of 2023 after working in a large-animal group practice for seven years.

She currently serves clients in about a 25-mile radius with most of her clients being horse owners. She also works on cows, sheep and goats, plus a few other species like donkeys and mini cattle.

"I definitely used to have a favorite species," Irizarry said. "Now I really don't know that I do. I like different things about the different species."

In recent years, there has been a shortage of large animal veterinarians. Since studying at Penn State and Cornell, Irizarry knew she wanted to work on the large animal side, and many of her classmates initially did as well.

"I think there's a little bit more of a problem with retention than recruitment," Irizarry said.

The lack of a work-life balance and the demand for being on call can often lead to burnout in the large-animal field.

While Irizarry lists business hours on her website, she often has days where she isn't home until after 9 p.m.

"For (my work-life balance) I am never a 50-50 split," Irizarry said. "I am either 100% or 90% in on my business. Those things are fine with me. I think it is what I signed up for. For some people it would be a step too far, and that's totally fine."

Irizarry didn't grow up in agriculture, but she grew up always wanting to be a vet. She graduated vet school in a class of 100 — 82 of whom were women.

Of the women in the class, 11 went into a career with food animals, but only three — including Irizarry — are still active in that field.

"I am still here," Irizarry said. "I am persistent about being in this area, in this profession, as a veterinarian that works in a broader agricultural community."

This week on the FarmHouse, a podcast by Lancaster Farming, we're talking with Andrea Davis-Cetina, who owns Quarter Acre Farm, a certified organic produce farm on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Davis-Cetina grew up in Maryland but moved to California after studying sustainable agriculture at college. After working in landscaping and gardening, she was able to secure a lease on a quarter acre of land in Sonoma, where she then farmed for a decade, selling at farmers markets and to restaurants.

It was the issue of long-term land access that fueled Davis-Cetina's decision to move back to the East Coast in 2018. Davis-Cetina's family had settled on the Eastern Shore, and she says farming there is surprisingly similar in some ways to farming in Sonoma.

"The climate is different, but it's not that different as far as the length of the growing season, the amount of sunlight, those types of things," said Davis-Cetina. "And then also the clientele that I had grown accustomed to working with out in Sonoma was very similar to the clientele on the Eastern Shore."

Quarter Acre Farm's Maryland location started its operations in 2019. Davis-Cetina grows certified organic vegetables, fruits and herbs. She has always farmed sustainably. "I want to leave a piece of land better than I found it," she said.

She also realized the economic benefits of being certified organic.

"Once I had that organic label at the farmers market, it totally increased my sales. It made for a lot quicker transactions," said Davis-Cetina. "This label that is highly regulated, it adds that level of trust that people who don't know you or aren't really familiar with your operation then go like, 'Well, you must know what you're doing.'"

In addition to selling her produce at the Easton Farmer's Market, Davis-Cetina also sells prepared foods, including guacamole and pico de gallo made from the tomatoes grown at Quarter Acre Farm.

Davis-Cetina's husband, a chef, helps her prepare the food and accompanies her to the market where he also cooks tacos and similar fare on-site.