Hey there, Ruminant Listeners! These days, I'm mostly podcasting over at Farming in British Columbia, and I wanted to share a popular episode on a topic that matters wherever you're farming! If you like this, come and join the party. A good number of the episodes will hold interest for those outside of BC...search for 'Farming in British Columbia' wherever you listen to podcasts.

In the summer of 2023, Bruce Lanphear, Professor of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University, resigned his position as co-chair of a recently formed Science Advisory Committee of the PMRA, which regulates pesticide use in Canada. Dr. Lanphear felt he could no longer lend his credibility to the agency following disagreement about the Terms of Reference provided to Lanphear and seven other scientists comprising the committee.

Lanphear has been critical of aspects of Canada's pesticide oversight regime. I invited him on the show to discuss the topic.

You can read about Bruce's resignation here and here, or check out this google search.

Hi Everyone! Herein: four audio segments I think you'll enjoy. Each comes from a 25-episode podcast series I'm in the middle of producing for my province's annual organic conference. 

So yeah, this is a teaser for the conference, but be assured that each segment in this episode stands alone as an interesting piece of audio on its own merits. 

More info on the conference here: https://bcorganic2021.eventbrite.ca

Rhys Pender is a winemaker, farmer, writer, and holder of a rare designation: he is a Master of Wine.  A while back, Rhys wrote this post for the blog WineAlign, in which he argues that North America's food and wine culture is poorly integrated, and that this is holding both facets of the culture back. 

I asked Rhys to join me on the podcast to talk about his piece. Herein, we discuss some of the barriers to achieving a more integrated food and wine culture, and why such an outcome would be better for that culture, and even for food security.

Rhys and his partner Alishan Driediger make wines that can be found on their website, littlefarmwinery.ca. He also has a project called Wine Plus+.

Culinary Herb Production, pt. 2: Veteran farmer Chris Blanchard built a thriving culinary herb business on his Iowa Farm, and thinks you can, too. In this episode, which features the second half of our conversation, Chris talks about how to harvest your herbs in a way that strikes a balance between high production and low labour costs. He took his inspiration from previous experiences managing intensive rotational grazing systems.

Chris also oversees Purple Pitchfork, an educational and outreach organization dedicated to helping farmers and their farm businesses. Chris will soon launch a podcast of his own, which you can learn about on his site. 

In our conversation, Chris references a culinary herb factsheet he has produced for Ruminant listeners. You can access it at farmertofarmerpodcast.com/ruminant

Veteran farmer Chris Blanchard built a thriving culinary herb business on his Iowa Farm, and thinks you can, too. In this episode, which features the first half of our conversation, Chris makes the case for focusing on herbs, and discusses the proper sourcing, and subsequent propagation, of herb cuttings. 

Chris also oversees Purple Pitchfork, an educational and outreach organization dedicated to helping farmers and their farm businesses. Chris will soon launch a podcast of his own, which you can learn about on his site. 

In our conversation, Chris references a culinary herb factsheet he has produced for Ruminant listeners. You can access it at farmertofarmerpodcast.com/ruminant

Part two of our conversation airs in a week. 

In  mid- to late-2014, journalist Nathanael Johnson wrote a series of blog posts at grist.org entitled Panic-Free GMOs.  This was no minor foray into modern ag's most divisive topic. Nathanael's research was extensive, and the series topped thirty posts. 

Here are some of Nathanael's conclusions, which we discuss in our conversation:

• GMOs are relatively well-regulated
• The effects of GMOs on the environment have been a mixed bag of benefits and losses
• There is a strong scientific consensus that GMO varieties of plants that have been approved for commercial use are safe to eat
• We should probably label GMO foods in the marketplace
• None of it really matters anyway

This is a long episode. I recommend you listen to the fifteen minute segment about Nate's approach to research and writing these articles, but if you prefer to skip ahead to our discussions of his conclusions, tune in at the 21 minute mark. 

Selling your farm goods to chefs can be lucrative, but there are idiosyncrasies to this type of marketing that a farmer should understand if she wants to keep and increase the business she gets from restaurants. This episode features part two of my conversation with two chef-owners of a high end catering business that has built its reputation for great cuisine on a devotion to sourcing and serving local farm goods.  

Cam Smith and Dana Ewart of Joy Road Catering in BC's Okanagan Valley really want to support your farm, but they but they also insist that you take the customer service you provide them seriously. Herein, they provide some no-nonsense advice for how to approach and maintain restaurant customers.

This episode: what chefs expect in terms of quality, how they like to be billed and when you should start to worry about unpaid accounts, and Cam and Dana's thoughts on the relationship between high-end cuisine and food security.

Learn more about Joy Road Catering here.

This is a short excerpt of The Ruminant's interview with Okanagan Chefs Cameron Smith and Dana Ewart of Joy Road Catering in BC's Okanagan Valley. Herein, Cam and Dana talk about the role chefs play in influencing food culture, and their response to the criticism that the work they do as high-end chefs is elitist.

Part 1 of our full conversation can be found here.

Part 2 of our full conversation can be found here.

Access The Ruminant Podcast at theruminant.ca, iTunes, and other fine podcast directories.

Krista M. Rome runs a website called Backyard Beans and Grains, and has published a great manual on selecting, growing, processing and storing various legumes and grains, with a focus on small-scale production. 

From her website: The Backyard Beans and Grains Project (BBGP) was started in 2008 as a response to the challenge of incorporating locally-grown staple foods into the diet. Whatcom County (and Western Washington in general) produces a large variety of vegetables, berries, dairy products, and to a lesser degree, fruits, fish and meat. The missing element, especially for vegetarians, those on low income, or those with dairy allergies, is a variety of storable, high-quality vegetable protein sources, i.e. dry legumes and grains.

Our research is conducted for the benefit of all regional farmers and gardeners who wish to grow dry beans and grains. We record detailed information about varieties, plant spacing, dates, labor inputs, yields, harvesting and threshing techniques, seed-saving, and storage.  

We have self-published an instruction manual, entitled "Growing Dry Beans & Grains in the Pacific Northwest", which contains information on growing, harvesting, and processing dry legumes and grains tailored specifically for Pacific Northwest growers.

In this episode, Krista takes me through the ins and outs of growing legumes and grains on a super small scale.

This epsisode features a recent presenation by Matt Gomez, founder of Soilmate, a new website that aims to connect eaters with the local farms, wineries, and farmers' markets. 

Matt gave this presentation to a group of young farmers at an event in Kelowna, BC in March of 2014. He's got an impressive pedigree as a digital marketer and passes on a lot of practical advice for making the most of your farm's website, social media accounts, and email newsletters. 

I've had it with trying to produce a show during the farming season so I cut out a lot of production & administrative BS by just cold-calling people to see what they have to say. Episode 3. 

Episode two of driving around and cold-calling people. Mainly farmers and extension specialists. A good mix of strangers and friends. Mostly to talk about the pandemic, but really to talk about anything food or farming related.

In which your host catches you up on things as quickly as possible, and then makes some calls.

Tristan Banwell, BC-based rancher and occasional co-host of the show, recorded this interview with Sarah Flack, author of The Art and Science of Grazing: How Grass Farmers Can Create Sustainable Systems for Healthy Animals and Farm Ecosystems.

From Sarah’s website: Sarah Flack is an author and consultant specializing in providing practical information on grass based and organic livestock production to farmers, organizations, institutions and individuals. She has a diverse background in sustainable agriculture, which includes both on-farm and academic experience. She is nationally known for her public speaking, workshops, books and numerous articles on a range of agricultural topics.

This ep: my interview with Alex Lyon, a UBC Postdoctoral Fellow focused on seed systems and plant breeding for diverse farm environments. Alex is involved in a number of projects that recruit commercial farmers to assist in the development of better seeds, and she joins me on the show to talk about them. 

Show sponsor: The Small-Scale Meat Producers Association of BC

This ep: a few perspectives from members of the LGBTQ community who farm

This ep: a few perspectives from members of the LGBTQ community who farm

Show sponsors:

BCS America

BC Small-Scale Meat Producers Association

In which your host tells you all about his experiences sourcing certain farm equipment using Alibaba, the massive, China-based gathering place for buyers and manufacturers. He'll take you through all the steps, from confusion to suspicion to curiousity to impulsivity, before cruising through anxiety and ending up at ambivalent satisfaction. 

Plenty of tips in here! All the Alibaba tips!

The specific supplier mentioned in this episode is Shijiazhuang Daoliangmou Trade Co., and my contact there is Ada Guo.

Show sponsors: BCS America and Dubois Agrinovation

My guest this ep is Stefan Morales, producer of the Working Together podcast. Stefan and I both care about food and farming. I brought my passions to farming; he took his into the non-profit and government sphere. We compare notes, things get mildly awkward, and a farmer's heart grows by a couple of sizes. Or: a guy with good insights about the workings of bureaucracy offers advice for reformers about how to engage with it.

Episode Sponsor: Dubois Agrinovation

This ep: my conversation with urban farmer Kevin Sturdy, author of a book getting a lot of buzz: You're Welcome: How to Crush Your Dreams By Grossing More Money on Less Land Than You Ever Thought Possible.

Kevin claims that by following his guide, you can gross 250K on a half-acre urban farm.

Episode Sponsor: Dubois Agrinovation

Many thanks to professional thespian Kirk Smith, who co-produced this episode with me.

The Ruminant's first ever holiday special! Fellow Canadians, don't @ me. The original version of this piece was produced for Canadian Thanksgiving, for radio.

This episode I speak with Karl Hammer, founder of Vermont Compost and all-around soil fertility expert. We focus on the use of wood chips as a soil amendment, and Karl also shares his thoughts about managing soil fertility on bio-intensive market gardens.

Show Sponsors: BCS America and Dubois Agrinovation

In our conversation, Karl refers to research done by Laval University and Cornell University on this subject. Go google for it! But here's something to get you started.

This ep: Ruminant co-host Tristan Banwell interviews Farmer and Author Steve Gabriel about his book  Silvopasture: A Guide to Managing Grazing Animals, Forage Crops, and Trees in a Temperate Farm Ecosystem. 

Bonus content (more conversation) should show up in your podcast feed, otherwise: get it at theruminant.ca  Tristan and Steve discuss what to do with tree biomass you remove from your silvopasture system, a good approach to pruning, and current gaps in the knowledge of this topic.

Show sponsors: Dubois Agrinovation

This episode my guest is Mark Renz, an extension weed specialist at the University of Wisconsin. He joins me to talk about weed management in the pasture.

This ep: I wanted to learn more about maintaining and increasing bug biodiversity on my farm so I contacted the Xerces Society, a non-profit that protects wildlife through the conservation of invertebrates and their habitats. They connected me with Eric Mader, co-Director of their Pollinator Conservation and Agricultural Biodiversity program. Eric is my guest in this episode.

I grabbed this episode's artwork from The Pacific Northwest Bumblebee Atlas

Steve Solomon is back to talk about what's turning his crank in the garden these days: foliar feeding. Steve is the author of numerous gardening books including one of my faves, The Intelligent Gardener.

My guest today, Pascale Deffieux Pearce, is a vice-president with Brinsea, a producer of egg incubators for the farm and home. She joins me to talk about ins and outs and pros and cons of hatching your own eggs, or those of your hens'. 

This episode: Part 1 of 2 of my conversation with Dan Brisebois, editor of the seed production blog Going to Seed and co-author of Crop Planning for Organic Vegetable Growers. In this part, Dan talks about the basics of vegetable seed production and suggests how to begin incorporating it into a small scale farm business. In part two, Dan discusses marketing strategies once you're ready to sell your seed.

Have you read The Third Plate by chef Dan Barber? Great Book. This episode explores one of the legacies of that book: a brand new seed company, representing a collaboration between chefs and plant breeders, that aims to improve the flavour and performance of our plant varieties. My guest is Michael Mazourek, plant breeder at Cornell and a partner in Row 7 Seeds. 

This ep: Jean-Martin Fortier returns for a quickie. We talk about fame, semi-fortune, cocaine, compost tea, the tool he's most obsessed with at the moment, and a few other tidbits. 

One of JM's recent projects is an online course. He's pretty amped about it. It's called The Market Gardener's Master Class. We discuss that too.

Linda Chalker-Scott is an extension specialist at WSU with a penchant for horticultural myth-busting. 

One of her targets has been the use of compost tea as a disease-preventer/pest-abater/all-around garden panacea. Seeing as your podcast host is about to start a compost tea regimen on his own farm, this seemed like a good topic to ask her about.

The US chicken industry is dominated by just a few very large, vertically integrated companies. They directly control every stage of chicken production from hatching to distribution, except that they outsource the riskiest stage--raising the birds from chick to mature bird--to independent farmers. In this episode, guest Patti Anderson of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future describes this system, explains how it traps many farmers in debt, and tells us about the most recent effort to make the system more just for farmers.

After that: the farmer questionnaire!

Some links related to the chicken conversation and the proposed rule changes:

Patti suggests this blog post for a summary of the rule changes

A recent op-ed in Civil Eats about the tournament system

Here's an official summary of the proposed rule-changes

Episode 92, about farmer mental health, really resonated with lots of listeners. This episode features a follow-up conversation with Javan Bernakevitch, a farmer and permaculturalist who emerged from his own depression with insights that he now shares with others. 

Learn more about Javan at http://allpointsdesign.ca

Also this episode: I talk about The Ruminant's brand new gift registry. 

This ep: First I speak with Andew Mefferd, author of The Greenhouse and Hoophouse Grower's Handbook (superb!), about making the most out of caterpillar tunnels. After that, Cornell Extension Specialist Judson Reid joins me to talk about avoiding and managing toxic levels of soil nutrients in greenhouses.

Coming Friday, March 2: the first episode of the next season of The Ruminant Podcast. To tide you over, I've produced a microsode. I hope you enjoy it!

The microbes that colonize us when we're in the womb and as infants have lasting impacts on our health later on. My conversation with Claire Arrieta, author of Let Them Eat Dirt.

Marie-Claire is the co-author with B. Brett Finlay of Let Them Eat Dirt: Saving Your Child from an Oversanitized World. 

After that, I talk about lego for farmers.

Farming is tough work. The unpredictability of the job and the pressure to present a curated, bucolic version of the work can easily lead to various kinds of mental health problems: despair, feeling overwhelmed or like a failure, or even depression. In this episode, co-produced with Jessica Gale of Sweet Gale Gardens, we discuss the prevalence of mental health problems among farmers, and how to address them. 

Mentioned: Professor Andria Jones-Bitton's work The Market Gardener (JM Fortier) The Urban Farmer (Curtis Stone) Sustainable Market Farming (Pam Dawling)

Patric Kuh, James Beard award winner, Food Critic for LA Magazine, and author of Finding the Flavours We Lost: From Bread to Bourbon, How Artisans Reclaimed American Food, joins me to talk about his book. 

I ask Patric about the cynicism surrounding bearded Brooklyn craft pickle-makers, whether it's okay for food artisans to sacrifice a little bit of quality for efficiency, and how small-batch producers can remain competitive against their large-scale industrial competitors. 

First, my conversation with Simran Sethi on her book Bread Wine Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love, which describes the increasing threat to the biodiversity within our food system, and how a better appreciation for the diversity of flavour that's all around us could help reverse the problem. 

Then: I review two great tools for market gardeners made by Two Bad Cats

This ep: a conversation with Sophie Egan, author of Devoured: From Chicken Wings to Kale Smoothies--How What We Eat Defines Who We Are 

Then, Robin Turner of Roots & Shoots Farm provides tips for setting up a good pick-up point for your CSA.

Likes or shares from The Ruminant's Facebook Page are most appreciated, as are retweets

Have you ever been to The Ruminant website?

A new season of The Ruminant Podcast begins in January 2017. For now, I hope you enjoy this ode to gettin'er done around the farm.

This ep: Jessica Gale of Sweet Gale Gardens is back with suggestions for taking good care of your cut flowers throughout the season: soil fertility management, pruning tips, deadheading, and harvesting. 

After that: Dr. Charles Levkoe joins me to talk about the politics and practice of farm internships as a source of labour on farms. Charles and colleagues are hosting a one day workshop on the topic as a precursor to Food Secure Canada's 9th National Assembly in Toronto in October.

foodandlabour.ca is where you can find out more about the workshop, and register. Or, download this PDF.

Or go here to learn about the overall conference.

This ep: we introduce a new segment called Farm Sounds. This time: when the tradeoff that comes with a gain in efficiency on the farm doesn't feel worth it.

Plus another installment of The Farmer Questionnaire.

This ep: I've spliced together the best clips from a couple of webinars about leasing farmland. One was given by me, your host; the other by Blake Hall of Prairie Gold Pastured Meats. The webinars were produced by Farmstart, and can be found here. 

Also: The Canadian Organic Grower Magazine co-Editor Amy Kremen returns to talk about the latest issue. 

My guest today is Tom Philpott, Food and Agriculture Correspondant for Mother Jones. Tom joined me to talk about his recent piece on the use and abuse of antibiotics in US poultry production, and the efforts of one major poultry producer to wean itself from this practice. 

This ep, Susan Kerr of WSU extension returns to talk about the right way to build a healthy herd; Hermann Bruns returns to talk about a 30'x100' mobile hoophouse design that has worked really well for him. See the companion post about his design here.

This ep is a shorty. Matt Coffay returns to talk about setting up standing orders with restaurants. Approximately 1/3 of Matt's sales are to restaurants, and the majority of those sales come from standing orders of just a few products--salad mix, tomatoes, pea shoots, etc. Which means: no fresh sheets! Predictable supply management! And a happier Matt. 

This ep, Lydia Carpenter of Luna Field Farm on Landscape Scale Hog Management. Then: flower grower Jessica Gale of Sweet Gale Gardens returns, this time to talk about selling flowers to florists and into the wedding industry. 

The image featured with this episode was grabbed from this greeting card website.

This ep: Jennifer Cockrall-King, author of Food and the City: Urban Ag and the New Food Revolution and the just-released Food Artisans of the Okanagan, joins me to talk about how farmers can get the right kind of media attention from journalists like her. 

I learned a lot. You will too.