Growers Daily

Today we are announcing Growers Daily, a new daily show with Farmer Jesse. It will come up at our YouTube Channel, or obviously on this feed. You can support our work over at Patreon (you rule) Join the Discussion at our forum The Instagram page parties pretty hard sometimes as well. Pick up a copy of The Living Soil Handbook or Pre-order Dan's new book The Seed Farmer. Also you need a hat. For sure. Subscribe and follow and we'll see ya back here Monday!

Emma Busby used to be the former Chapter Coordinator for the Southeast TN Young Farmers and has since moved on to be a board member of the Alabama Sustainable Agriculture Network. We met back at the '23 TN Local Food Summit whose focus that year was "cultivating cooperation" and she had some really interesting work and insights to share, particularly some work she facilitated with a group of small-scale farmers around coordinated crop planning (CCP) and building aggregation systems from the ground up rather than the top down. Folks who support Collab Farm Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply is your one-stop shop for cover crops, soil amendments, tools, and more. Save 20% on your first order now with code: NOTILL24. Apply for a commercial account for year-round savings and dedicated support! Visit Groworganic.com/notill Harnois Greenhouses are engineered to face any North American climate, ensuring unparalleled brightness, agronomic performance, faster return on investment and lasting durability. Harnois Greenhouses, a leader in turnkey solutions for local growers. Farmhand enables you to offload your administrative tasks, send and manage communications, and sell more to your customers. Learn more and book a free test drive at farmhand.partners/notill High Mowing Organic Seeds has the professional quality seeds and supportive grower reps to get you from seed to harvest. Visit highmowingseeds.com to request a catalog and use code NOTILL25 for 10% off your order of $100 or more!

For over 40 years, The Food Bank has served as the primary source of food for the Hunger Relief Network in the Miami Valley of Ohio. The Food Bank, the only one of its kind in the area, relieves hunger in the community through a network of partner agencies by acquiring and distributing food. The Food Bank provides the structure for more than 100 member food pantries, community kitchens and shelters that serve as the charitable hunger relief network. This might seem like a funny match for The Composter, but The Food Bank has a robust community garden run by James Hoffer, and he began their composting operation in 2019. I really love the addition of the compost cycle in with food recovery and production. It just makes sense. James talks to us about their in-vessel continuous flow composting unit that they purchased through Green Mountain Technologies, the compost scene, and so much more. Follow Jayne & Earth Care Farm on Instagram Support the folks who support The Composter You can learn more about Viably, formerly Komptech, and their portfolio of compost solutions at thinkviably.com. While there, request a complimentary consultative meeting to discover how Viably can help your compost operation deliver what is possible. The OSC Pack Pact is a collective action campaign that works to reduce single-use packaging in the natural products industry. Receive a discount code to shop select products from leading natural products brands that you love. Click the link in the show notes to join the Pack Pact! Compost use and selection decisions involve many factors and are not one-size-fits-all. The U .S. Composting Council's Seal of testing assurance, STA program helps you make the best decisions for your application. Learn about the three Cs of the STA program, clarity, consistency, and confidence and enroll at compostingcounsel.org Green Mountain Technology's mission is to help organizations around the world realize the economic and environmental gains that can be achieved by a well-designed composting system. Learn more at compostingtechnology.com

Gabriel Bravo is one of the founders of the company Semillas Plantae and farms with Mima Picado at El Tablazo Farm in Costa Rica. In this episode, Gabriel talks about how Semillas Plantae is structured with 4 partners who operate the seed company and how they distribute their seeds. Gabriel explains how they source seeds from outside of Costa Rica and trial them to see what can grow in their bioregion and how he is always on the hunt for Costa Rican heirloom varieties and the stories that come with them. We also discuss what it is like growing seed in the tropics where there is a very humid season that is a nightmare for growing dry seeded crops and a dry season that is much better suited for seed production. We then have a more technical seed growing conversation about growing cilantro for seed and producing seed for biennials such as carrots in a climate with no cold winter to help with vernalisation. Follow Semillas Plantae on Instagram and check out their YouTube channel Follow Dan on Instagram, get his newsletter, & follow Tourne-Sol Cooperative Farm PRE-ORDER Dan's new book, The Seed Farmer, from notillgrowers.com to further support our work Folks who support The Seed Farmer Podcast The goal of the Culinary Breeding Network is to improve communication between plant breeders, seed growers, farmers, chefs, produce buyers and others to improve quality in vegetables, fruits and grains. Learn more and check out upcoming events! Are you a farmer looking for educational resources in Canada? Check out Young Agrarians! They are a farmer-to-farmer educational resource network for new and young ecological, organic, and regenerative farmers. This February, join thousands of farmers like you from across the U.S. for three days of community building and farmer-led learning at the 36th annual Marbleseed Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Truelove Seeds is a farm-based seed company offering culturally important and open pollinated vegetable, herb, and flower seeds. Check out their podcast, Seeds & Their People, wherever you're listening to The Seed Farmer Podcast!

Marvin Hayes from the Baltimore Compost Collective is one of the most passionate compost advocates out there, spreading his compost fever. It became apparent that his love and respect for the compost process is only matched by his celebration for empowering the young people of Baltimore through compost. Mentioned in the show... The Institute for Local Self-Reliance Follow Jayne & Earth Care Farm on Instagram Support the folks who support The Composter You can learn more about Viably, formerly Komptech, and their portfolio of compost solutions at thinkviably.com. While there, request a complimentary consultative meeting to discover how Viably can help your compost operation deliver what is possible. The OSC Pack Pact is a collective action campaign that works to reduce single-use packaging in the natural products industry. Receive a discount code to shop select products from leading natural products brands that you love. Click the link in the show notes to join the Pack Pact! Compost use and selection decisions involve many factors and are not one-size-fits-all. The U .S. Composting Council's Seal of testing assurance, STA program helps you make the best decisions for your application. Learn about the three Cs of the STA program, clarity, consistency, and confidence and enroll at compostingcounsel.org Green Mountain Technology's mission is to help organizations around the world realize the economic and environmental gains that can be achieved by a well-designed composting system. Learn more at compostingtechnology.com

Sara Mock has written two books that I absolutely love and have had a profound effect on how I view my own farming outside of just growing better carrots, Farm and Other F Words and Big Team Farms, about how we can begin to chart a path forward by… you guessed it… working together. She has a substack, People Eat the Land, and a much better podcast than this one, The Only Thing That Lasts. Folks who support Collab Farm Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply is your one-stop shop for cover crops, soil amendments, tools, and more. Save 20% on your first order now with code: NOTILL24. Apply for a commercial account for year-round savings and dedicated support! Visit Groworganic.com/notill Harnois Greenhouses are engineered to face any North American climate, ensuring unparalleled brightness, agronomic performance, faster return on investment and lasting durability. Harnois Greenhouses, a leader in turnkey solutions for local growers. The OSC Pack Pact is a collective action campaign that works to reduce single-use packaging in the natural products industry. Receive a discount code to shop select products from leading natural products brands that you love. Click the link in the show notes to join the Pack Pact!

Last winter, I went to Covington, Kentucky for the Acres USA EcoAG Conference. It was my kind of nerd fest. I listened to researchers sharing their newest findings, learned from farmers, and my ultimate favorite, connecting with people about compost. It's where I first learned about James White's research from Rutgers on the rhizophagy cycle. It blew my mind hearing and seeing how plant roots are actually consuming microbes. I heard practical farming techniques from John Kemph and spent time with lots of farmers. Today, we are going to chat with one of these farmers, who I actually met in the elevator at the conference. Tyler Zimmerman is a third-generation farmer with 2 ,800 acres in North Dakota. Tyler transitioned the farm to no-till regenerative practices. He's a wealth of information about soil health and so very practical. We dive into his techniques for making vibrantly living compost and the tall task of spreading that on such big acreage. Follow Tyler's process and progress on Instagram Follow Jayne & Earht Care Farm on Instagram Support the folks who support The Composter You can learn more about Viably, formerly Komptech, and their portfolio of compost solutions at thinkviably.com. While there, request a complimentary consultative meeting to discover how Viably can help your compost operation deliver what is possible. The OSC Pack Pact is a collective action campaign that works to reduce single-use packaging in the natural products industry. Receive a discount code to shop select products from leading natural products brands that you love. Click the link in the show notes to join the Pack Pact! Compost use and selection decisions involve many factors and are not one-size-fits-all. The U .S. Composting Council's Seal of testing assurance, STA program helps you make the best decisions for your application. Learn about the three Cs of the STA program, clarity, consistency, and confidence and enroll at compostingcounsel.org

In almost every interview on The Seed Farmer, my guests and I wind up talking about tools. And one tool that podcast guests have mentioned more than any other tool is the Winnow Wizard. We use the Winnow Wizard at Torne-Sol Farm to clean seeds, so I understand the love that folks have for this machine. But I really wasn't expecting it for it to just keep coming back, interview after interview. And since it has kept coming back, I thought we should spend some time with the person who designed the seed cleaning machine, Mark Luterra. Mark currently works at Adaptive Seeds in Sweet Home, Oregon, but he started his seed journey at Wild Garden Seed, where he designed and built the first Winnow Wizard to make his seed cleaning days easier. He then went on to build another 104 machines that have been shipped all over the U.S. and Canada. He's now transferred production of the Winnow Wizard to Oppen Works in Wisconsin. In today's episode, Mark tells us what the Winnow Wizard does and how it works, and we do a deep dive into seed cleaning. And of course, the Winnow Wizard plays the key part in the seed cleaning stories, but Mark also explains how seed harvest and screening are equally important steps to get your seed clean. Mark also reveals some secrets of using a shop vac for seed cleaning. During the discussion, we go through four seed cleaning scenarios and how Mark would tackle each of them. Mark then wraps up the conversation by telling us about his next seed project aimed at small-scale seed farmers. Follow Mark on Instagram and check out his Substack Follow Dan on Instagram, get his newsletter, & follow Tourne-Sol Cooperative Farm PRE-ORDER Dan's new book, The Seed Farmer, from notillgrowers.com Folks who support The Seed Farmer Podcast The goal of the Culinary Breeding Network is to improve communication between plant breeders, seed growers, farmers, chefs, produce buyers and others to improve quality in vegetables, fruits and grains. Learn more and check out upcoming events! Are you a farmer looking for educational resources in Canada? Check out Young Agrarians! They are a farmer-to-farmer educational resource network for new and young ecological, organic, and regenerative farmers. This February, join thousands of farmers like you from across the U.S. for three days of community building and farmer-led learning at the 36th annual Marbleseed Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Truelove Seeds is a farm-based seed company offering culturally important and open pollinated vegetable, herb, and flower seeds. Check out their podcast, Seeds & Their People, wherever you're listening to The Seed Farmer Podcast!

Andreas Ruiz runs Regenera Organico, a small-scale composting operation in Chile, nestled in a densely populated neighborhood. He shares the journey of starting his business, influenced by expert guidance and community collaboration. The conversation delves into the innovative solutions they've implemented, like waterproof compost coverings, and the unique challenges of utilizing fish waste. They also explore emerging trends in organic waste legislation, highlighting the importance of composting for sustainable waste management and the bonds within the composting community.

Ian McSweeney & Kristina Villa, co-directors of The Farmers Land Trust, are responsible for creating and supporting farmland commons, a vehicle for preserving farmland and ensuring its dedication to regenerative agriculture in perpetuity while respecting both the farmers and the communities they feed. I mean, what's better than that? If you like what you hear, are a farmer or a landholder, and want to know more, you can reach out to them at the thefarmerslandtrust.org Folks who support Collab Farm Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply is your one-stop shop for cover crops, soil amendments, tools, and more. Save 20% on your first order now with code: NOTILL24. Apply for a commercial account for year-round savings and dedicated support! Visit Groworganic.com/notill Harnois Greenhouses are engineered to face any North American climate, ensuring unparalleled brightness, agronomic performance, faster return on investment and lasting durability. Harnois Greenhouses, a leader in turnkey solutions for local growers. The OSC Pack Pact is a collective action campaign that works to reduce single-use packaging in the natural products industry. Receive a discount code to shop select products from leading natural products brands that you love. Click the link in the show notes to join the Pack Pact!