Tag Archives: sustainable farming

Amery Ale Works – creative, new micro-brewery with real local flavor

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Deep Roots Radio
Deep Roots Radio
Amery Ale Works - creative, new micro-brewery with real local flavor
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I can practically smell the hops from my farm – the brewery is so near!
It’s a big statement of trust and faith when an entrepreneur brings her funds, hopes and dreams to your community. Amery, Wisconsin, population 2906, couldn’t be happier that Jenna Johnson chose to build and operate Amery Ale Works, a new craft brewery, here.

I hope you enjoy this Deep Roots Radio conversation about Amery Ale Works. It launched to great reception, and Jenna continues building local relationships. For example, she’s reached out to nearby sustainable farmers who will grow the herbs and crops she’ll use to develop unique brews.


Listen in, or download, and then come on out to enjoy craft brews and good food at Amery Ale Works.

Sylvia

Peace Coffee: serving up great taste, social justice, environmental stewardship cup after cup

Deep Roots Radio
Deep Roots Radio
Peace Coffee: serving up great taste, social justice, environmental stewardship cup after cup
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Drink coffee? One, two, three cups a day? Now multiply that simple act by several hundred million people every day. It’s hard to imagine the mountain of coffee beans needed to satisfy that thirst. Now, consider that those beans could work not only to create delicious brews, but also to produce a fair wage for farmers half way around the world.

This is the reality for at least a small percentage of coffee harvested for the American market because of Peace Coffee, a firm headquartered in a city you might now automatically associate with the tropical coffee bean – Minneapolis, Minnesota. In this Deep Roots Radio interview, Peace Coffee CEO (and Queen Bean) Lee Wallace describes the business’s unorthodox beginnings in 1996 and its steady growth since then.

Yes, every cup of coffee you buy could help farmers move from poverty to a living wage.

I hope you enjoy the interview.

Sylvia

One of the varieties of Peace Coffee

Alison Martin, Exec Dir, The Livestock Conservancy on why we need to save our heritage breeds for tomorrow’s food and farming

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Deep Roots Radio
Deep Roots Radio
Alison Martin, Exec Dir, The Livestock Conservancy on why we need to save our heritage breeds for tomorrow's food and farming
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I hope you’ll enjoy this Deep Roots Radio chat with Alison Martin, Ph.D., Executive Director of The Livestock Conservancy. Ms Martin describes why we need to conserve the genetics, and the behaviors, of our old heritage breeds of cattle, goats and sheep, donkeys and horses, poultry and waterfowl. They are living storehouses of biogenetic diversity – strengths and traits we need to meet the food needs of tomorrow.


Sylvia

New calf, sights and sounds from Bull Brook Keep

Spring has arrived on Bull Brook Keep. We greeted our first calf, a little bull, yesterday morning. He’s now tagged #82, and he the cow are doing fine.
I’ll be at the CSA Fair at the Farm Table Restaurant in Amery, WI tomorrow afternoon, March 25, 12noon-4:00.
I thought you might enjoy some pics and videos, old and new, from the farm. This brief slide show includes a short video clip of the new calf.
I hope to see you at the Fair.

Sylvia

Rancher Gabe Brown on regenerative, holistic farming on any scale, and profitability even in transition

Deep Roots Radio
Deep Roots Radio
Rancher Gabe Brown on regenerative, holistic farming on any scale, and profitability even in transition
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I hope you enjoy this Deep Roots Radio interview with North Dakota rancher Gabe Brown on the principles of regenerative farming that will yield health and profitability even as you transition your operation – large or small.

Gabe will be in Amery, Wisconsin February 9th for a full day workshop in which he will describe how he, wife and son have worked to transform their 2,000-acre, diversified farm to a healthy, profitable business while improving soil and regenerating the landscape. In addition to raising and direct-marketing grass-fed beef and other livestock, Gabe grows and sells cash crops from his sustainable farm.

Go to hungryturtle.net to register for the workshop. I hope to see you there!

Sylvia

Dec. 3, 9-9:30AM CT. Live, why bees matter

We’ve heard about it again and again: the bees are dying off, whole hives collapsing or just disappearing. Recent news stories told us the transplants we buy at local greenhouses contain pesticides that’ll kill bees. And we know that without bees and other pollinators some of our favorite foods will simply not grow. At all!

Join me and co-host Dave Corbett as we chat with Erin Rupp, executive director and founder of Pollinate Minnesota. What do bees do in winter? And how do they communicate with one another? And just what do they mean to the veggies and fruits eat?

What: Deep Roots Radio interview with Erin Rupp, Pollinate Minnesota ED/founder
When: Saturday, Dec. 3, 2016, 9:00-9:30AM Central Time
Where: WPCA RADIO, 93.1FM and streamed live on www.wpcaradio.org
Why: Many fruits and vegetables depend on pollinators, like bees, to carry pollen from plant to plant so that fruit and seeds will grow. No bees, no fruit! Learn how Pollinate Minnesota is working to protect and encourage these critical workers in our food system.

Sylvia

Ben Hewitt on 21st Century homesteading for a meaningful, healthful life on 40 acres or in a 400-sq ft apartment

Deep Roots Radio
Deep Roots Radio
Ben Hewitt on 21st Century homesteading for a meaningful, healthful life on 40 acres or in a 400-sq ft apartment
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Author, homesteader Ben Hewitt

Author, homesteader Ben Hewitt

I hope you enjoy this Deep Roots Radio chat with author and modern-day homesteader Ben Hewitt. An engaging storyteller, Ben pulls you right into his books and their characters. His most recent publication is The Nourishing Homestead: One Back-to-the-land Family’s Plan for Cultivating Soil, Skills and Spirit. Ben, his wife Penny and their two sons grow 90% of their foods and build their lives on 40 acres in Vermont.
What they’ve learned over the years “is readily transferable to any place — whether you live on 4 acres, 40 acres or in a 400-square-foot studio apartment.

On November 10, 2016, Hewitt be in Amery, Wisconsin to share a great meal, and to describe his experiences and ideas about the tie between growing your food and quality of life, environmental consciousness and rebuilding local community.

He’s also written:
– The Town that Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food
– Making Supper Safe: One Man’s Quest to Learn the Truth about Food Safety
– Home Grown: The Adventures in Parenting off the Beaten Path, Unschooling and Reconnecting with the Natural World

Enjoy a local organic dinner, and conversation with Ben Hewitt
Nov. 10, 2015, 6:00-9:00PM
Farm Table Restaurant, Amery, WI
For tickets, www.hungryturtle.net

How long has it been??? What’s happening on this city-girl’s farm.

What happened?? Where did the summer go?
Well, if your life’s anything like mine, your Monday-Friday went to work and family. And your weekends, if you planned well and were able to add a dash of good luck, were spent doing lots of chores. You know – the laundry, food shopping, buying school supplies, banking, and repairing this-and-that. Hopefully you took some time for coffee with friends, and maybe dinner out with your sweetie.

A few 2016 calves

A few 2016 calves

The growing season started with the arrival of our spring calves. All our new little BueLingos were born out on our pastures and unassisted. This season also required that we up our game and manage our pastures for a slightly larger herd. This summer’s frequent rains helped keep the much-needed grass growing.
We began harvesting in July, and will take our final two beeves to the custom USDA processor in a month or so. (Those two animals will go exclusively for ground beef and summer sausage.)
Today, we get ready for an annual right-of-passage – tagging every calf, and castrating the bull calves. Once castrated, the male calves are called steers, and they’ll graze for two years to harvest age and condition. Until that time, all the cattle will enjoy the best of care: 365 days a year on grassy fields, sunshine and fresh air, a 100% grass diet, and the company and calm of their herd. It makes for contented, healthy cattle, and, ultimately, great-tasting and highly nutritious beef.
And that’s the heart of it: health and happiness – for the the cows, the land, and for you and me.
We all benefit from farming and living with a tiny carbon hoof print (TM)*, truly sustainable farming.
Thank you for visiting the farm and sharing the story of your food journey. I really enjoyed making frequent deliveries in Amery, Polk and St. Croix counties, and the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area.
I look forward to meeting you. Please visit. And until then, enjoy the cooling fall weather.
Sylvia

*tiny carbon hoofprint is a US registered trademark belonging to Bull Brook Keep.

Around the Farm Table’s Inga Witsher

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Deep Roots Radio
Deep Roots Radio
Around the Farm Table's Inga Witsher
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Inga is a pleasure to watch in her episodes of Around the Farm Table, and fun to chat with about why she visits and film sustainable, small, family farms all across Wisconsin. I hope you enjoy this Deep Roots Radio chat with her.

Sylvia

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin: Taking local, sustainable food to scale. It’s about the chicken crossing the road.

Deep Roots Radio
Deep Roots Radio
Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin: Taking local, sustainable food to scale. It's about the chicken crossing the road.
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Reginaldo (Regi) Haslett-Marroquin gets the big picture…the very big picture when it comes to understanding what’ll take to re-imagine and re-install a sustainable food system in America. No, not just sustainable; resilient. And, no, he’s not just about an abstract picture of the economics, agricultural theory, social linkages and ideal delivery systems. He’s very much about dirt under the nails: about working with Latino immigrants to develop an integrated set of systems to get and grow chickens, feed them, process and market chickens, package and transport chickens, and get them into the hands of everyday buyers – you and me. And while doing this create a web of capabilities that provide living wages, future growth, and ability to respond to changing markets. He’s fostered a working model in Minnesota. It’s exciting to hear what happening, what’s showing real results for a growing community.

I hope you’ll enjoy this Deep Roots Radio conversation with him.Resilient agriculture

Regi is the chief operating officer of Main Street Project, in Northfield, Minnesota, and designer of MSP’s Sustainable Food and Agriculture program. His work started, however, in much warmer place and very different circumstances. A native of Guatemala, Regi received his agronomy degree from the Central National School of Agriculture and studied at the Universidad de San Carlos in Guatemala. BA in International Business Administration from Augsburg College. He began working with indigenous Guatemalan communities in 1988. He has served as consultant to the United Nations Development Program’s Bureau for Latin America. He also founded the Fair Trade Federation and co-created Peace Coffee company. He has also organized several stewardship-certified cooperative forestry businesses in the Midwest and Guatemala.

About Main Street Project
Mission: To increase access to resources, share knowledge and build power in order to create a socially, economically and ecologically resilient food system.

Its strategy is to: change the current food system, which is dominated by major producers, by deploying an alternative, small-scale sustainable poultry-based system that’s accessible and economically viable for aspiring Latino and other immigrant farmers, and easily scalable to meet market conditions.
MSP focuses on building a sustainable food and ag economy that offers pathways out of poverty for low-way, primarily for the Latino workforce.
They’ve developed new models of sustainable production that provide opportunities for ownership and control – key to building rural family and community prosperity.

Enjoy.
Sylvia