Tag Archives: Deep Roots Radio

Founder/director describes growing demand and struggle for Beijing organic farmers market

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Deep Roots Radio
Deep Roots Radio
Founder/director describes growing demand and struggle for Beijing organic farmers market
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The annual Organic Farming Conference held every February in La Crosse, Wisconsin never fails to deliver, and surprise.

Expertly organized by the nonprofit Midwest Organic & Sustainable Education Services (MOSES), it attracts about 3,000 farmers and ranchers, researchers and policy makers, film makers, authors and chefs, vendors and advocates from the Midwest, across the country, and around the world. They brave the icy winds and occasional blizzards of deep winter to learn and advance sustainable farming practices, processing, and marketing. Why? For the health of the land and water, livestock and crops, and people.

Chang Tianle & Sylvia Burgos Toftness

I’ve attended this conference for several years, and now serve on its board of directors – an amazing privilege. This year, I had a pleasure to meet Chang Tianle, organizer/director of the Beijing Farmers Market, was well as a writer for Foodthink.

Although China is in the news every day, I know very little about it, or it’s capital city of Beijing. This Deep Roots Radio podcast provides some quick facts about the Peoples Republic of China. In the interview, Chang describes how the farmers market started, and how it’s growing despite struggles to compete with large corporations.

I hope you enjoy this interview.

Sylvia

 

About a Navy fighter pilot/organic farmer, a writer/singer/rapper, and a certified organic bourbon

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Deep Roots Radio
Deep Roots Radio
About a Navy fighter pilot/organic farmer, a writer/singer/rapper, and a certified organic bourbon
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Yeah, it’s an interesting mix of characters, values and place: Christian Myrah, a former Navy combat fighter pilot from a Norwegian farmer/warrior background, now distilling hyper-local bourbon and whiskey using corn and grain grown on his family’s Minnesota certified organic farm. Then there’s Dessa, a singer/writer/rapper/poet born and of the Twin Cities, member of indie hip-hop crew Doomtree, living half-time in New York City where she visits her Puerto Rican relatives, performing with the Minnesota Orchestra, and touring worldwide.

Dessa’s Time & Distance bourbon

Together, they collaborated on Time & Distance, a certified organic bourbon that’s as smooth as silk.
It does make sense when you consider that both continually strive to raise the bar for excellence in their respective fields, they seek out good food and farming practices, and collaborate with talent and resources close to home.
I hope you enjoy this Deep Roots Radio with Christian, founder and CEO of RockFilter Distillery, Spring Grove, Minnesota.

Sylvia

Historians describe Seed Savers Exchange’s web exhibit – The Rise of Heirloom Seeds

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Deep Roots Radio
Historians describe Seed Savers Exchange's web exhibit - The Rise of Heirloom Seeds
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I’ll never forget that first campout. It was the early 1980s, and my mom, my four-year old daughter and I slept in bunks at a Boy Scout camp just a stone’s throw from the Decorah, Iowa farm owned by the Seed Savers Exchange.

It was July – hot and sticky. And there were dozens of us from all across the Midwest gathered to learn about how to save heirloom seeds. Those more practiced came with seeds to share: seeds they’d grown out in their home gardens or farms. Seeds that they’d been entrusted with by a grandmother or aunt, an older neighboring farmer or a good friend.

That campout shifted my thinking about seeds completely because I learned that saving seeds isn’t only about growing food, it’s about perpetuating a cuisine, a culture, tradition, and food independence. I also learned that seed saving is amazingly political. I heard from people who’d traveled halfway around the world to let us know that there are gardeners and farmers who risk prison by saving seeds that have adapted to their side of the mountain, their climate and their culture.

Today, SSE is used by over 13,000 members around the globe, and works to grow out and preserve 20,000 varieties. Lots more people know about and participate in seed saving the world over, but the threat to open-pollinated seeds is as great, if not greater because of the consolidation of seed companies.

Deep Roots Radio logo

Connecting the dots between what we eat and how it’s grown

Fortunately, there are alternative seed sources, several of them featured in a Seeds Savers Exchange online exhibit called The Rise of Heirloom Seeds. In this Deep Roots Radio podcast, co-host Dave Corbett and I chat with SSE seed historians Sara Straate and Kelly Loud about this web project.

Sylvia

How Upstream Tea project brews city-country-upstream-downstream connections about our shared water

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Deep Roots Radio
Deep Roots Radio
How Upstream Tea project brews city-country-upstream-downstream connections about our shared water
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It’s quenching and destructive. It’s calming and controversial, and essential to life.

Water.

How we divert rivers, tap lakes, draw down aquifers, and taint our groundwater affects us all because water is a shared commodity. It’s fragile and it’s powerful. The questions, proposals and debates over how to use and protect our watersheds will grow – and grow quickly – in the near future.

Are there shared experiences, memories, and values that can help us enter into healthy conversation about this very hot topic? Yes, and one of them is Anna Metcalfe’s Upstream Tea project.

Upstream Tea cup

For the past two years, Anna has encouraged groups large and small — academic and practical, city and rural — to share personal experiences about water — oceans, streams, lakes, creeks, rain, flood, drought, etc. And it’s all done while sipping tea served in handcrafted cups inked with memories, values, hopes and fears about our shared water resources, our water sheds.

Anna continues looking for groups of individuals to share their stories and ideas. If you’re interested, contact her through her website. I hope you enjoy this Deep Roots Radio chat about Upstream Tea.

Sylvia

Podcast: How MN-based You Betcha! Box is boosting small business and down-home philanthropy via local gourmet foods

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Deep Roots Radio
Deep Roots Radio
Podcast: How MN-based You Betcha! Box is boosting small business and down-home philanthropy via local gourmet foods
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Katie Sterns, You Betcha! Box

Lots of businesses boast of a triple bottom line, but it’s a rare enterprise that can show results. Witness the You Betcha! Box, a new Minnesota-grown business that not only aggregates and promotes state-based small food businesses, but delivers great-tasting product while advocating for sustainability and contributing to local nonprofit-causes.

I hope you enjoy this Deep Roots Radio chat with You Betcha! Box founder and CEO Katie Sterns. It’s amazing what collaboration for good can do.

Sylvia Burgos Toftness

Jeremy McAdams: describes his nearly invisible farm – making mushrooms bloom from logs of woods

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Deep Roots Radio
Deep Roots Radio
Jeremy McAdams: describes his nearly invisible farm - making mushrooms bloom from logs of woods
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It’s signature America isn’t it? Rolling acres of grain, 8-foot high rows of corn, pastures of beef cattle and barns filled with mooing dairy cows. Oh, and then there are fields of grazing sheep and rooting pigs. You can see the patchwork from your airline seat 6,000 feet above the ground, and whizzing by your car window.

Oyster mushrooms growing in logs

But then there are the invisible farms – the ones that grow under cover and so slowly they seem still – the mushroom farms.

So still, in fact, that Jeremy McAdams launched his enterprise on a residential lot in the middle of Minneapolis!

In this Deep Roots Radio interview, co-host Dave Corbett and I chat with Jeremy McAdams owner/operator of Northwood Mushrooms in Clayton, Wisconsin. (Also marketing as Cherry Tree House Mushrooms) Why grow mushrooms in logs of wood? Why not plastic bags of compost and chips? And why certified organic?

I hope you enjoy this conversation. It brings mushroom farming into the light!

Sylvia Burgos Toftness

Brooks Geenen – describes his b&w photo exhibit documenting man’s impact on ag land

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Deep Roots Radio
Deep Roots Radio
Brooks Geenen - describes his b&w photo exhibit documenting man's impact on ag land
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Brooks Geenen’s black and white photos are dramatic and stark. His large-scale frames invite us to look at agricultural land – and how man’s shaped it – through his high-resolution lens.

In this day and age of smartphone selfies and Instagram immediacy, Geenen uses large 5-inch by 5-inch exposures taken through old bellows-camera technology. His approach and  equipment requires a deep understanding light, photo exposure, depth of field, exposure, composition, image development, and a great deal of patience and planning. It is anything but point-and-shoot.

I hope you enjoy this Deep Roots Radio chat with Geenen. His exhibit, called Continuum of Will, is on display from Dec. 7, 2018 to February 1, 2019 in the Farm Table Foundation gallery space in downtown Amery, Wisconsin. This exhibit is free and open to the public.

Brooks Geenen and his exhibit, Farm Table Foundation, Amery, WI

For a sampling of Geenen’s work, visit his website, www.brooksgeenen.com.

Chat with Erin Rupp, Pollinate MN: encouraging weeds, old-fashioned flowers, hedgerows for the sake of the bees

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Deep Roots Radio
Deep Roots Radio
Chat with Erin Rupp, Pollinate MN: encouraging weeds, old-fashioned flowers, hedgerows for the sake of the bees
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Uniform grasses, manicured farms, absolutely clean fence rows, monocultures as far as the eye can see, bare ground, all-hybrid plantings – these artificial landscapes are robbing us at least twice. Once, because they don’t supply bees and other pollinators with the food and shelter they need. And again because without pollinators, we humans won’t have the diversity of fruits and vegetables we need for our food supply.

So, what to do?

In this Deep Roots Radio interview, Erin Rupp, founder and executive director of Pollinate MN shares observations about the population declines of bees and other pollinators, and why this matters to us – gardeners, farmers and food lovers. She also describes the types of plantings and habitats needed to encourage pollinator growth and health.

I hope you enjoy the interview.

Sylvia

Mike Schut audio interview: The deep connection between food, farming, social justice and spirituality.

Deep Roots Radio
Deep Roots Radio
Mike Schut audio interview: The deep connection between food, farming, social justice and spirituality.
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The relationships between farming and food, health and nourishment, people and spirituality are tightly woven. They are interlaced and as old as time. Unfortunately, these deep connections have been ignored or denied in recent decades – much to the detriment of human and environmental health, local economies and community connections.

In this Deep Roots Radio broadcast, Mike Schut, Senior Program Director and Events Coordinator for the Farm Table Foundation, describes these linkages and their impact on food, sustainable farming, social and economic justice and spirituality in the United States.

I hope you enjoy this interview.

Sylvia

Success with Stockdogs Part 2 – Different herding breeds trained for different work

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Deep Roots Radio
Deep Roots Radio
Success with Stockdogs Part 2 - Different herding breeds trained for different work
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My Siggy is a Corgi, a herding dog. We practice rotation grazing on our farm because our commitment is to 100% grass-fed beef. Our practice is to move cattle slowly and calmly from pasture to pasture. No loud noises or running allowed! How do I train Siggy to work more gently with my BueLingo cattle?

In this second Deep Roots Radio installment, Denice Rakley, of Clearfield Stockdogs, describes how she trains herding dogs to bring out the special traits of their distinct breeds. She also stresses the importance of knowing the proven behaviors of the dog’s immediate parentage.

In Part 3, Denice will explain what to look for when acquiring your first stock dog or puppy.

I hope you enjoy this interview.

Sylvia