Small Farms Radio

Welcome to the first episode of Wisdom of the Elders, a new series featuring conversations with pioneering farmers whose lives and work have shaped sustainable agriculture. In this episode, our director, Anu Rangarajan, travels to Maine to reconnect with Dave and Chris Colson of New Leaf Farm, where she worked in the early 2000s. Farming just four acres, the Colsons became early innovators in bringing fresh salad greens to the East Coast and helped influence a generation of small-scale growers. Together, they reflect on decades in agriculture: the risks they took, the values that guided them, what truly mattered in the end, and what simply didn’t. There is always something to learn from listening to your elders.

Cornell professor Rebecca Nelson joins us to discuss circular economies in agriculture—and the surprising potential of human urine as a low-cost fertilizer for small farms.

We begin by examining the value of a tree and high-quality nursery work. Then our agroforestry specialist Connor Youngerman goes to Yellowbud Farm to talk with co-founder Jesse Marksohn about their approach to selecting, breeding, and propagating trees for agroforestry.

What does it look like for farms to be healing spaces? Join us as we talk with Brett Grant about how he is creating space for education, healing, and collaboration at his farm in upstate, New York.

What does it take to grow mushrooms indoors? To answer this question, our agroforestry and mushroom specialist, Connor Youngerman, takes podcast listeners on a tour of Queens, venturing into nondescript buildings and ducking into basement hatches to discover the innovative world of indoor mushroom production. In this episode Youngerman learns how some growers in the big city are producing mushrooms from “spore-to-table” and every step in between.

How does a mushroom move through the city? This April we sent our agroforestry and mushroom specialist Connor Youngerman to follow a mushroom in New York City. With the help of farmers, chefs, and business owners, Youngerman explored the life cycle of urban mushrooms, and how several organizations are working to close the loop of food and food waste in the city.

What do you do when don’t have family to take over your farm? We talk with Donn and Maryrose of Northland Sheep Dairy in Marathon, NY about how they negotiated the transition of ownership with the previous owners of their farm and how they are making decisions about their own retirement based on their experience.

The West Branch Commons is a land access project in the Catskill region of NY that provides one of the most holistic approaches to supporting beginning farmers in the country. In the second part of this two part series we talk with Tianna Kennedy and Francis Yu, two farmer founders of this project about how this project came to be.

The West Branch Commons is a land access project in the Catskill region of New York that provides one of the most holistic approaches to supporting beginning farmers in the country. In this first part of our two-part series we talk with Sea Matais, one of the first farmers to access land through the project, and Rhiannon Wright, a collaborator and part of the team that helped get this project off the ground. Watch the documentary Tom and Sea https://youtu.be/I0YkC15W49M?si=oX2-DGZQKPxBe_5J

Who can call themselves a farmer? Depending on where you sit in the food system, you may answer this question very differently. In this first episode of Small Farms Radio, hosted by Cornell Small Farms Program, we hear a range of perspectives on this question from a diverse group of stakeholders. Why does it matter who is called a farmer? This conversation encourages reflection about who is served by different definitions of the term.