Creative Destruction - Honest Conversations About Farming, Business, And Life

Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/theurbanfarmer Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support The last few episodes have focused on stuff. The tools of farming. Today we are talking about the flip side of tools, the opposite of the physical. The mental side of things, in particular hustle. The best tools and the right stuff without the business sense, hustle, and effort won't mean anything. The tools make the job easier. Just owning them doesn't mean anything. You have to do the work. And it's that hustle to do the work form preparation to production to sales that can give you the advantage over people who just have the money and the stuff. As Stephen C Hogan said. "You can't have a million-dollar dream with a minimum-wage work ethic." Because if you do, where's that going to get you. Left with an unsuccessful business and collection of expensive stuff. A lot of success isn't quantifiable with a dollar sign, instead being measured in pure blood, sweat, and hard work. And the beauty of it is that no

Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/21 Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support THIS EPISODE IS A REPLAY OF PREVIOUS PUBLISHED EPISODE. Stefan Sebkowiak of Miracle Farms joins me to talk about the what's lacking in organic systems - biodiversity. And why organic is good, but creating a polyculture is a lot better. Stefan started out his journey purchasing a conventional non-organic orchard. He worked on converting it over to organic and realized that something wasn't right, something was missing. The system was lacking the biodiversity that you see in nature. So Stefan converted over his organic orchard into a permaculture, polyculture based system. He removed a lot of apple trees and replaced them with other fruit trees and support species. He added more diversity to the system giving him more products to sell, more wildlife, and ultimate a healthier, more resilient system. A lot of commercial orchardists say that polyculture won't work. Stefan has show that on a tree by tree basis he is getting

Mycologist and author Peter McCoy of RadicalMycology.com takes on the question - In a perfect world, what would be your ideal recipe for a substrate mixture that is fairly universal in terms of species of mushrooms that would grow on it? To learn more about Peter and see all of the ASK Peter episodes visit permaculturevoices.com/peter. Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support.

Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/135 Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support Busy versus effective. Two different ways of getting stuff done. Think of busy as the pinball in a pinball machine, a lot of bouncing around randomly, getting some stuff done, but not in the most linear way. Where effective is like the bowling ball headed down the lane, a straight shot targeting a specific pin. Both lead to results, the busy route does a lot more moving per unit of work done. Usually these two routes are mutually exclusive. Busy people aren't effective, and effective people aren't busy. The danger in being a busy body, is just that, you are just busy; you are doing a lot of work, maybe the right work, maybe not, maybe in the right order, maybe not, and the cost of being busy is a loss of time. Whereas the effective person does what they need to do when they need to do it based on the time that they have available and the priority of the task at hand. This saves the effective person time, allowin

Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/theurbanfarmer Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support Part three of our series on Small Scale Farming on the Cheap - What's the least you could spend to start a farm? Last week in Episode 23 we started going through the equipment needed, or perceived to be needed, when you start a farm along with the costs and advantages associated with that equipment. Given that this is Part 3 it probably makes more sense to listen to Part 1 and Part 2 first. Last week we left of the talk on equipment wrapping up with the tiller. We'll start today with a little bit of warmup on macro business talking before jumping back into the list discussing hand tools. Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/theurbanfarmer Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support

Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/52 Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support THIS EPISODE IS A REPLAY OF PREVIOUS PUBLISHED EPISODE. I welcome Frank Golbeck of Golden Coast Mead on the show today. Frank story is a great example of someone who went after their dreams in a smart and systematic way. He isn’t any different than any of us. He didn’t start with a huge some of money or some other advantage. But the difference between Frank and a lot of people is that took on the scary unknown, the hard part starting. Fast forward ahead a few years and the dream has become a reality. Things still aren’t easy, but they are very real and Frank is enjoying every moment of it. No matter where you are at in your life, I think Frank’s story is inspirational and highly copyable. Hopefully something in here will resonate with you and will inspire you to start that thing that you always wanted to do. Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/52 Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support THIS EPISODE IS

Mycologist and author Peter McCoy of RadicalMycology.com takes on the question - If I grow mushrooms on soil contaminated with oil or heavy metals, will the mushroom be safe to eat?   To learn more about Peter and see all of the ASK Peter episodes visit permaculturevoices.com/peter

Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/134 Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support Imagine it's your first year in college and you get an offer to go be an apprentice on farm. You've never farmed before. And you've never really thought about farming before. Taking the offer means that you would need to drop out of college to commit to the apprenticeship. And so would you future wife, because you're also engaged. She isn't from a farming family or background either. So it's you two, in college for something that isn't ag related, dropping out out college to take an apprentice ship on a farm. What would you do? Most people would say tell me more. Well, this is a farm raising chickens on grass. And this farm is located in Swoope, VA and it's run by a farmer named Joel Salatin. What would you do? Would you and your wife drop out of college to accept the invitation to be apprentices or not? A lot of people would say yes. But it's 2016. What if you got this same offer in 1996 when very few pe

Homesteader Justin Rhodes of AbundantPermaculture.com talks about creating Permaculture Chickens live on stage at PV3. To learn more about Justin and see all of the ASK Justin episodes visit permaculturevoices.com/justin. Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support.

Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/theurbanfarmer Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support Part two of our series on Small Scale Farming on the Cheap - What's the least you could spend to start a farm?. Last week in episode 22 we covered the base principles costs and equipment associated with farm startup. We established the point that tools are simply one leg on the stool of success. The tools should never hold you back. It's never going to be just the tools that make you successful. Yet, good tools can make job easier. That show focused on the concepts and the ideas behind the why. Today's show focuses on the what. What do you actually need and how much does it costs. This episode is the first of a few digging into that question. Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/theurbanfarmer Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support

“These side issues, the longer they go on and we don’t face reality, the more people that are going to die, and the more trillions of dollars it is going to cost, so time is not on our side.  We need to act.  Most people want to act.  Institutions are holding us up.  Only ordinary people can lead and act.  And it is time to move.” Allan Savory This interview was conducted with Allan Savory several years ago at PV1. For more from Allan listen to Rhodesia to Long Beach. 50 Years of Struggle, Persistence and Success with Allan Savory (PVP055)  

Joel Salatin's talk on Stacking Fiefdoms from PV1. "The whole idea is to create customized fiefdoms so that people are autonomous and have the authority to run their own fiefdom within your own umbrella, and you can't believe how many things you can get done that way." Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/89 Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support THIS EPISODE IS A REPLAY OF PREVIOUS PUBLISHED EPISODE.

Mycologist and author Peter McCoy of RadicalMycology.com takes on the question - I have heard people say that I should always cook mushrooms before eating them? Is that true? What are your thoughts? To learn more about Peter and see all of the ASK Peter episodes visit permaculturevoices.com/peter. Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support.

Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/javan2 Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support Today we will try to break down the holistic context into bites that are more digestible and present it in a way that might be easier for some people to understand.   This is a tough subject to take on, and I think even Allan Savory would admit that, even stating in his book “the concept of holistic goal develop slowing winding its way through many wrong turns and dark passages.  It would prove to be more difficult to articulate than any other aspect of Holistic Management and it continues to evolve to this day." Kudos to Allan Savory for coming up with this framework, it’s his shoulders that we are standing on during this episode. Let’s get into it and try to deconstruct the holistic context, with my co-host Javan Bernakevitch. Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/javan2 Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support

Homesteader Justin Rhodes of AbundantPermaculture.com takes on the question - If you are processing broilers on a homestead level, what type of equipment do you think you need? To learn more about Justin and see all of the ASK Justin episodes visit permaculturevoices.com/justin. Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support.

Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/theurbanfarmer Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support Farming... is it expensive to start, or not? A lot of people want to get into farming, but they stall out when it comes to the money side of things. The common cause of that stall out is land. Land is expensive to purchase. So most people immediately dismiss the idea of farming because they can't afford land. But people like Greg Judy, Joel Salatin, and us on this show, have shown that you don't need to own land to farm. There's a lot of land available to farm. Land you don't need to own, and land that you can gain access to through options like leasing.. If you can lease land either for free or inexpensively and if you are in a market where you can move product, then the potential upside to small scale farming is pretty attractive given the low start up costs and low infrastructure requirements? How low? Very low compared to other businesses. In his book Curtis gives an initial start-up estimate f

There are some wonderful examples of communities of practice growing around farmer-to-farmer extension of permaculture design principles in poorly served regions. How can the global permaculture community organize around the idea of putting permaculture at the heart of rural development, displacing the business-as-usual development programs that promote unsustainable farming systems, by making better use of resources that already exist – resources like the world-wide network of permaculture training centers, and the ubiquitous cell phone? Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/a5

Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/cd5. Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support THIS EPISODE IS A REPLAY OF PREVIOUS PUBLISHED EPISODE.   Today's show is about time. Specifically how precious our tiem is, and how we ought not to waste it. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. This is one of the most common regrets that people have at the end of their lives. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people don't honor even a half of their dreams and die knowing that it is due to choices they had made, or not made. How many people listening to this have unfilled dreams? How many people are really living their lives the way they want? How many people are listening to this as they drive drive to or from a job that they really don't like and in a perfect world wouldn't be doing? A type of job that they only go to pay the bills because they have k

Mycologist and author Peter McCoy of RadicalMycology.com takes on the question - I'm new to mushroom foraging, what are some of the unwritten rules of the game? To learn more about Peter and see all of the ASK Peter episodes visit permaculturevoices.com/peter. Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support.

Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/133 Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support If your listening to this show then you probably have a garden or have had one at one point and time. And for most of you gardeners summer is your primary gardening time. And for most of North America that's a good time to garden because it's relatively easy. Plants like to grow because day lengths are long and temperatures are warm.. at least for most of North America. But what if you live in a part of North America, that doesn't fall under under the previously mentioned "most" category... That's where my guest today, Market Gardener Brian Kowalski finds himself living in Newfoundland... Summer as he describes it is something like this... "May is still cold here, ground is just unfreezing, June is cool, average temp is around 4-5 Celsius (40F), but usually sunny with warm days (10-14C, 57F) but May and June night time temps are generally below 4C. July or August will be normal summer weather, 20-30 C, 85F with n