The Collaborative Farming Podcast

A conversation I envisioned since the beginning of this podcast, I talk with Brent Lackey of the Kentucky Center for Agriculture and Rural Development about cooperative development, step by step. Mentioned in the show... Understanding the Capper Volstead Act KRS 272 on Cooperatives Cooperation Works! Development Network Thank y'all so much for listening. This podcast is brought to you by Certified Naturally Grown & Growing for Market Magazine. It's also brought to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work for a few bucks a month at notillgrowers.com/support. Please rate/review, follow us on Instagram @collaborativefarming or @notillgrowers, share this podcast with your farming friends, and let us know who/what you'd like to hear on The Collaborative Farming Podcast. Remember, many hands make light work.

As a follow up to last week's Aliments Farmhouse Food conversation, Hannah and Natalie from Ferme Agricola share a bit about what it's like being a member of a producers cooperative from the perspective of the farmers. Thank y'all so much for listening. This podcast is brought to you by Certified Naturally Grown & Growing for Market Magazine. It's also brought to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work for a few bucks a month at notillgrowers.com/support. Please rate/review, follow us on Instagram @collaborativefarming or @notillgrowers, share this podcast with your farming friends, and let us know who/what you'd like to hear on The Collaborative Farming Podcast. Remember, many hands make light work.

Aliments Farmhouse Food is a multifarm cooperative of seven farm members co-markting their produce, meat, dairy, and more through a home delivery CSA to some three to four hundred members throughout Ottawa, Canada. I talk to farmer member and general manager Leela Ramachandran about how it all began and has grown over the last few years, leveraging the low overhead of direct to consumer delivery to reach beyond traditional markets, the balance between standard boxes and efficiency vs customization and complexity, the roles and responsibilities of the farmer members and staff, logistics, and a whole lot else. Mentioned in the show... Aliments well designed website My previous conversation with Aliments farmer member Agricola TrackPod (app) for delivery optimization Thank y'all so much for listening. This podcast is brought to you by Certified Naturally Grown, Growing for Market Magazine, and Veggie Cropper crop planning software. It's also brought to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work for a few bucks a month at notillgrowers.com/support. Please rate/review, follow us on Instagram @collaborativefarming or @notillgrowers, share this podcast with your farming friends, and let us know who/what you'd like to hear on The Collaborative Farming Podcast. Remember, many hands make light work.

Do you grow enough diversity for a full-diet CSA? Or just stick to what you grow well? These are two extremes of the spectrum, but...  what if you could do both? Mikey and Erin of Boxcar Acres provide a multi-farm, full-diet, full-choice CSA in Henry County, KY. They aggregate and distribute veg from their own farm and several others, along with protein, dairy, honey, and value-added goods, all full-choice at a flat rate. We get into how their entire farming career has been characterized by collaboration, how the full-diet CSA works, the challenges of the model, and we get a bit candid about what it may mean to put the 'member' back in CSA member. Mentioned in the show... The past episode with Valley Spirit Farm A really amazing short video/post, For the Hog Killing, if you're a fan of Wendell Berry... New Roots CSA & Fresh Stops Demo how their Google Doc order form works Thank y'all so much for listening. This podcast is brought to you by Certified Naturally Grown, Growing for Market Magazine, and Veggie Cropper crop planning software. It's also brought to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work for a few bucks a month at notillgrowers.com/support. Please rate/review, follow us on Instagram @collaborativefarming or @notillgrowers, share this podcast with your farming friends, and let us know who/what you'd like to hear on The Collaborative Farming Podcast. Remember, many hands make light work.

Talking cooperative compost company with Nathan and Michael from Tilth Soil, folks. Tilth Soil and Rust Belt Riders have been collecting and diverting food waste from landfills and, as a result, have been making some of the most amazing composts and soils around. When I heard they had officially organized as a worker cooperative, I had to get them on the line to learn more. Not only am I excited to learn more about a worker-owned compost business, I personally want to see more regional high-quality composters across the country. So, let’s do more of that? We talk about their humble beginnings, how they’ve always maintained collective decision making and are now formalizing those processes, how they have left and taken ideas about collaborative effort and growth from other industries, and philosophize a bit about the world changing nature of simply making some good ol’ compost. Mentioned in the show... Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows (book) Dr. Elaine Ingham's Soil Food Web Course The Evergreen Cooperative Model Slack for company communication The Knowledge Project Podcast The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber (book) On Farm Composting (free ebook) The Compost Handbook by Robert Rynk (book) Community Composting Systems by James McSweeney (book) Financial Intelligence (book) The Community Composter Coalition Thank y'all so much for listening. This podcast is brought to you by Growing for Market Magazine and Veggie Cropper crop planning software. It's also brought to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work for a few bucks a month at notillgrowers.com/support. Please rate/review, follow us on Instagram @collaborativefarming or @notillgrowers, share this podcast with your farming friends, and let us know what you'd like to hear on The Collaborative Farming Podcast. Remember, many hands make light work.

And we're BACK with the next and perinneal season of The Collaborative Farming Podcast. In this episode, Cody & Mel of Speedwell Farm & Gardens and Helen of Farmette Flowers, making up two thirds of The Treehouse Farm Collective, talk about their shotgun wedding farming collectively for land access and their model that respects both their pre-existing individual farm business autonomy while reaping many of the benefits of farming closely with others. Shout out to collective members Nelson and Matt who were present in spirit. Thank y'all so much for listening. This podcast is brought to you by Growing for Market Magazine. It's also brough to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work at notillgrowers.com/support. Please rate/review, follow us on Instagram @collaborativefarming, share this podcast with your farming friends, and let us know what you'd like to hear on The Collaborative Farming Podcast. Remember, many hands make light work.

Narendra Varma is the co-founder and executive director of Our Table Cooperative, a multi-stakeholder cooperative farm in Portland, Oregon. If you don't know what a multi-stakeholder coop is, neither did we. But, you're about to find out, as well as why it's an important model which addresses some of the structural, systemic, and cultural barriers small-scale farmers face outside of production. Check out their awesome website and follow them on Instagram. Mentioned in the show: Dynamic Governance w/ John Buck This podcast is brought to you by Growing for Market Magazine, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Barn 2 Door. It's also brough to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work at notillgrowers.com/support

BONUS EPISODE of The Collaborative Farming Podcast, a quick conversation with Col Gordon of Inchindown Farm and Farmerama's LANDED podcast series which explores the colonial roots of the small family farm and how understanding the past can change our farming future. It's some of the best three hours of farm podcasting out there and you can listen to it here. Cannot. Recommend. It enough. Also mentioned in the show... The Agrarian Trust Land In Our Names Soul Fire Farm Harris Tweed

Today, we revisit Eric & Jill of Green Things Farm Collective in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I couldn’t think of a better way to end it than with one of the first farm collectives we spoke with last year… If you remember, I talked with Jill, Hannah, & Michelle of Mega Beauty Farm—there’s and inside joke there you’re only going to get by going back and listening to that one… also check out Eric & Nate on The No-Till Market Garden Podcast. Go back and listen to them because they’ll give a lot of context to this conversation. Jill and her partner Nate owned the farm for years before forming the collective January of 2020. We talk about how her feelings of it being their own farm to now including other owners have evolved, how they’re doing meeting their financial goals they set, how they’ve structured their work to make time for communication, & Eric talks about how no-till farming has contributed to the farms success over the last year. Maybe we’ll make it a tradition to check in with them every season to see how things are going? Thank y'all for listening. This podcast is brought to you by Growing for Market Magazine, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Barn 2 Door. It's also brough to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work at notillgrowers.com/support. Please rate/review, follow us on Instagram @collaborativefarming, and let us know who you'd like to hear on the next season of The Collaborative Farming Podcast. Remember, many hands make light work.

We’ve heard about land trusts, conservation easements, maybe community trusts before, but what if there was one modeled with the farm and the farmer in mind? The mission of Agrarian Land Trust is to build local agrarian commons to hold farmland to ensure its sustainable and productive stewardship for generations to come. Director Ian McSweeney is going to tell us how agrarian commons work, why they're an important model, and where to begin. Mentioned in the show... Guidebooks & Resources Agrarian Commons GuideFaithLands Toolkit Somali Bantu Maine Find Agrarian Commons in the US This podcast is brought to you by Growing for Market Magazine, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Barn 2 Door. It's also brough to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work at notillgrowers.com/support

Rob Smith is the director of Viva Farms in Burlington, Washington. Viva farms is an incubator farm and offers not just access to land and infrastructure that beginning farmers may struggle with, giving them time to build their market before investing in those decisions, but also opportunities for a real on-farm education and on-site aggregation/distribution. If you’re interested in incubator farms and want to learn more about the programs Viva offers, because we barely scratch the surface here, visit their farmsite. Also check out the Farmer to Farmer land link program. This podcast is brought to you by Growing for Market Magazine, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Barn 2 Door. It's also brough to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work at notillgrowers.com/support

Ira Wallace and Mary of the Acorn Community and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange in Mineral, Virginia, folks. In disclosure, they are sponsors of the show, but that’s not why they’re here. They’re also an intentional community growing not just food, but also seed crops for Southern Exposure and—on top of that—manage the seed business which contracts with over 70+ seed producers. We get into how the community began, shout out to Twin Oaks who Farmer Jesse interviewed for No-Till Market Garden, community life and decision making, and details about their awesome seed company. Also mentioned in the show: The Federation of Egalitarian Communities On Conflict & Consensus This podcast is brought to you by Growing for Market Magazine, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Barn 2 Door. It's also brough to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work at notillgrowers.com/support

Sarah Mock, author of Farm and Other F-Words, talks about some of the systemic failures in our present agricultural system, how our affinity for small family farms is actually counter-productive, and a vision for a path forward to producing Good food, Good jobs, and Good ecology: the Big Team Farm (f-yeah). Order her book RIGHT F-ING NOW and follow her awesome substack. This podcast is brought to you by Growing for Market Magazine, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Barn 2 Door. It's also brough to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work at notillgrowers.com/support

Double-header with Valley Spirit Farm and The Berry Center in Henry County, Kentucky #represent. Valley Spirit Farm is a two-family partnership farming together "over the fencerow" sharing resources and marketing across seperatly owned, but complimentary enterprises. The Berry Center, alongside a farming program and archive of Wendell Berry's work, is connecting farmers across Henry County with a program in the spirit of the Burley Tobbacco Growers, Our Home Place Meats, of which Valley Spirit is a part. A few of my favorite works by Wendell Berry... Think Little (essay) It All Turns on Affection (reading) Art of the Commonplace Unsettling of America Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front (poem)Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry (documentary) This podcast is brought to you by Growing for Market Magazine, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Barn 2 Door. It's also brough to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work at notillgrowers.com/support

Hilary Martin is a member of Digger's Mirth, a five member collective farm at the Intervale Center in Burlington VT, and talks about how the collective has evolved over its thirty year history from an informal to a somewhat more formal structure, how the Intervale has fostered collaboration between farms and markets, and the balancing act of staying conservative and comfortable or making changes and the potential conflict it might entail. Follow them on Instagram and check out this cool profile at the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems. This podcast is brought to you by Growing for Market Magazine, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Barn 2 Door. It's also brough to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work at notillgrowers.com/support

Lane Selman of the Culinary Breeding Network joins the podcast to talk about bringing the celebration of Sagra to the States, Wild Garden & Smarties Seeds, the power of open-pollinated peppers, her raddicio expedition (check out this rad zine), NOVIC!, and the Gusto Italiano Project from Uprising Seeds. If this woman has a super-power, it's bringing the right people to the table in the spirit of collaboration to solve specific problems in small-scale ag. Follow her on the 'gram and give it up for Lane Selman. This podcast is brought to you by Growing for Market Magazine, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Barn 2 Door. It's also brough to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work at notillgrowers.com/support

In our first episode of The Collaborative Farming Podcast, we talk with Chris Bodnar of Close to Home Organics, a part of the Glen Valley Organic Farm, in Abbotsford, BC in Canada. We get into their simple and adaptapable cooperative model, the history of modern cooperatives, and the long-term implications for family and finances... and rhubard pie. Follow them on the social. This podcast is brought to you by Growing for Market Magazine, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and Barn 2 Door. It's also brough to you by growers like you. If you got something from this podcast, or any of our podcasts, you can support our work at notillgrowers.com/support

New series from No-Till Growers coming June 2nd about collaborative, cooperative, and collective farming. Brought to you by Barn 2 Door, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Growing for Market, and growers like you. Many hands make light work.

Andrew Adamski, or walkie talkie callsign gopher, is one of the farmer owners of Full Circle Community Farm in Wisconsin, the land of coops in the US. He came back to his generations old family farm in 2017 after college, along with his now wife heather, to not only continue the family farming tradition, but diversify both its production and membership. He talks about his returning to the farm, their simplified and flexible business structure, using what he learned about ecology to develop the farms ownership/membership model, and that you don’t have to have it all figured out to begin to include other members of the farm in the decision-making process. Heather, his wife, is the manager of the Slo-Farmers Coop, a farmer marketing cooperative of eight small farms providing a free choice, direct to consumer CSA, and we get into how that evolved over time, took off during covid, and how keystone farms can leverage their production capacity to not only sell more produce, but make space for beginning and specialty farmers, as well. They, and I mean the now five farmer owners of fun circle community farm, were awarded the marbleseed farmers of the year award in 2024. If your interested in hearing more about what they are doing, both Andrew and Heather will be presenting at Marbleseeds 2025 conference happening February 20th through the 22nd. Folks who support the show... 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 ASAP (Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project) will offer the Business of Farming Conference on Saturday, February 22, in Asheville, North Carolina. Find out more at asapconnections.org 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!

Kelly Maynard is a cooperative development specialist at the university of Wisconsin center for cooperative development and we're going to get into some practical advice and tools you can use when thinking about going into cooperative farming, yourself, or yourselves, as it were. This is the second coop development person, or forth depending on how you define that role, I’ve had on this season to, if nothing else, drive the point home that there are people out there who’s life work it is support the development of your “working together” ideas. Not only do you not have to farm alone, you don’t have to build cooperative systems alone. Mentioned in the show... Farm Commons resource on FSA farm ownership loans Farm Commons and UWCC toolkit on sharing labor Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making UWCC recorded webinars, see Tools for an Effective Board and Decision-Making Tools for the Board Room 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 ASAP (Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project) will offer the Business of Farming Conference on Saturday, February 22, in Asheville, North Carolina. Find out more at asapconnections.org 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!