The Collaborative Farming Podcast

And we're BACK with the next and perinneal season of The Collaborative Farming Podcast. In this episode, Cody & Mel of Speedwell Farm & Gardens and Helen of Farmette Flowers, making up two thirds of The Treehouse Farm Collective, talk about their shotgun wedding farming collectively for land access and their model that respects both their pre-existing individual farm business autonomy while reaping many of the benefits of farming closely with others. Shout out to collective members Nelson and Matt who were present in spirit. Thank y'all so much for listening. This podcast is brought to you by Growing for Market Magazine. It's also brough to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work at notillgrowers.com/support. Please rate/review, follow us on Instagram @collaborativefarming, share this podcast with your farming friends, and let us know what you'd like to hear on The Collaborative Farming Podcast.

Remember, many hands make light work.

BONUS EPISODE of The Collaborative Farming Podcast, a quick conversation with Col Gordon of Inchindown Farm and Farmerama's LANDED podcast series which explores the colonial roots of the small family farm and how understanding the past can change our farming future. It's some of the best three hours of farm podcasting out there and you can listen to it here. Cannot. Recommend. It enough.

Also mentioned in the show... The Agrarian Trust Land In Our Names Soul Fire Farm Harris Tweed

Today, we revisit Eric & Jill of Green Things Farm Collective in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I couldn't think of a better way to end it than with one of the first farm collectives we spoke with last year…

If you remember, I talked with Jill, Hannah, & Michelle of Mega Beauty Farm—there's and inside joke there you're only going to get by going back and listening to that one… also check out Eric & Nate on The No-Till Market Garden Podcast. Go back and listen to them because they'll give a lot of context to this conversation.

Jill and her partner Nate owned the farm for years before forming the collective January of 2020. We talk about how her feelings of it being their own farm to now including other owners have evolved, how they're doing meeting their financial goals they set, how they've structured their work to make time for communication, & Eric talks about how no-till farming has contributed to the farms success over the last year.

Maybe we'll make it a tradition to check in with them every season to see how things are going?

Thank y'all for listening. This podcast is brought to you by Growing for Market Magazine, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Barn 2 Door. It's also brough to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work at notillgrowers.com/support. Please rate/review, follow us on Instagram @collaborativefarming, and let us know who you'd like to hear on the next season of The Collaborative Farming Podcast.

Remember, many hands make light work.

We've heard about land trusts, conservation easements, maybe community trusts before, but what if there was one modeled with the farm and the farmer in mind? The mission of Agrarian Land Trust is to build local agrarian commons to hold farmland to ensure its sustainable and productive stewardship for generations to come. Director Ian McSweeney is going to tell us how agrarian commons work, why they're an important model, and where to begin.

Mentioned in the show... Guidebooks & Resources Agrarian Commons GuideFaithLands Toolkit Somali Bantu Maine Find Agrarian Commons in the US

This podcast is brought to you by Growing for Market Magazine, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Barn 2 Door. It's also brough to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work at notillgrowers.com/support

Rob Smith is the director of Viva Farms in Burlington, Washington. Viva farms is an incubator farm and offers not just access to land and infrastructure that beginning farmers may struggle with, giving them time to build their market before investing in those decisions, but also opportunities for a real on-farm education and on-site aggregation/distribution. If you're interested in incubator farms and want to learn more about the programs Viva offers, because we barely scratch the surface here, visit their farmsite.

Also check out the Farmer to Farmer land link program.

This podcast is brought to you by Growing for Market Magazine, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Barn 2 Door. It's also brough to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work at notillgrowers.com/support

Ira Wallace and Mary of the Acorn Community and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange in Mineral, Virginia, folks. In disclosure, they are sponsors of the show, but that's not why they're here. They're also an intentional community growing not just food, but also seed crops for Southern Exposure and—on top of that—manage the seed business which contracts with over 70+ seed producers. We get into how the community began, shout out to Twin Oaks who Farmer Jesse interviewed for No-Till Market Garden, community life and decision making, and details about their awesome seed company.

Also mentioned in the show: The Federation of Egalitarian Communities On Conflict & Consensus

This podcast is brought to you by Growing for Market Magazine, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Barn 2 Door. It's also brough to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work at notillgrowers.com/support

Sarah Mock, author of Farm and Other F-Words, talks about some of the systemic failures in our present agricultural system, how our affinity for small family farms is actually counter-productive, and a vision for a path forward to producing Good food, Good jobs, and Good ecology: the Big Team Farm (f-yeah). Order her book RIGHT F-ING NOW and follow her awesome substack.

This podcast is brought to you by Growing for Market Magazine, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Barn 2 Door. It's also brough to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work at notillgrowers.com/support

Double-header with Valley Spirit Farm and The Berry Center in Henry County, Kentucky #represent. Valley Spirit Farm is a two-family partnership farming together "over the fencerow" sharing resources and marketing across seperatly owned, but complimentary enterprises. The Berry Center, alongside a farming program and archive of Wendell Berry's work, is connecting farmers across Henry County with a program in the spirit of the Burley Tobbacco Growers, Our Home Place Meats, of which Valley Spirit is a part.

A few of my favorite works by Wendell Berry... Think Little (essay) It All Turns on Affection (reading) Art of the Commonplace Unsettling of America Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front (poem)Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry (documentary)

This podcast is brought to you by Growing for Market Magazine, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Barn 2 Door. It's also brough to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work at notillgrowers.com/support

Narendra Varma is the co-founder and executive director of Our Table Cooperative, a multi-stakeholder cooperative farm in Portland, Oregon. If you don't know what a multi-stakeholder coop is, neither did we. But, you're about to find out, as well as why it's an important model which addresses some of the structural, systemic, and cultural barriers small-scale farmers face outside of production. Check out their awesome website and follow them on Instagram.

Mentioned in the show: Dynamic Governance w/ John Buck

This podcast is brought to you by Growing for Market Magazine, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Barn 2 Door. It's also brough to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work at notillgrowers.com/support

Hilary Martin is a member of Digger's Mirth, a five member collective farm at the Intervale Center in Burlington VT, and talks about how the collective has evolved over its thirty year history from an informal to a somewhat more formal structure, how the Intervale has fostered collaboration between farms and markets, and the balancing act of staying conservative and comfortable or making changes and the potential conflict it might entail. Follow them on Instagram and check out this cool profile at the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems.

This podcast is brought to you by Growing for Market Magazine, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Barn 2 Door. It's also brough to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work at notillgrowers.com/support