The Urban Farm Podcast with Greg Peterson

Emphasizing simplicity with self-discovery.In This Podcast: Growing up between two worlds and two lifestyles, Justin Ehrlich realized working behind a desk was not his calling. The Asian influence in his youth, and the environmental awareness he gained from his father’s business, blended naturally into a calling to be an acupuncturist.  He now seeks to help educate and empower about the connection Chinese medicine has with nature and how true healing can take place.Drawn for most of his life to many of the mystical practices that originated in ancient China, Justin has been a California state licensed acupuncturist since 2002 and a student of the Jade Purity branch of Daoism since 2001.After many years of questioning the nature of reality, then using these practices to work through his own struggles, heal old wounds, and find a deeper connection to the Divine, he can attest to how powerful and transformative this path can be.Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2018/04/24/346-justin-ehrlich/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

Inspiration through film.In This Podcast:She’s had a “greenie” intuition as a youth but spent part of her adulthood pursuing a publishing career and a side venture as a tango dancer, but Antoinette Wilson found herself living in a permaculture-based community for a year and it changed her life.  She partnered up with another community member to write and make documentaries about the lifestyle they were experiencing, and even made some short films about others who were doing their best to have better impacts on their space.  These documentaries and short films are inspiring others to take steps toward change too.Tasmania-born and New Zealand-bred, Antoinette began her professional career in book publishing and dreamt of managing the editorial offices of Random House New York by the age of 40. Instead, just before her 40th birthday she took on the management of the harvest and labour at a CSA in rural New Zealand. She had begun studying towards a Permaculture Design Certificate and was committed to living a low-impact lifestyle.During a 2015 documentary project exploring simple living, she realized the extraordinary capacity of film to educate, and teamed up with Jordan Osmond in Happen Films. The pair write, direct and produce short films and more recently their new feature film, Living the Change: Inspiring Stories for a Sustainable Future. The self-taught filmmakers live in a 20sq/meter (folks that is 215 square feet) unplumbed but luxurious room on the end of a shed in a friend’s 3-acre food-forest and have a passion for sharing stories that educate and inspire about how we can all live beautifully on earth.Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2018/04/21/345-antoinette-wilson/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

Bonus Episode 15: Seed Saving Class February 2018.A chat with an expert on seeds. In This Bonus Podcast: There is always a bounty of info available in conversations with Bill McDorman. This is the February 2018 episode of a Seed Saving Class - patents, descriptions, regional adaptation, open sourced seeds, and so much more.Join the class! Register anytime for the next event. Register Here for the Seed Saving Class with Live Q&ABill McDorman is Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance, Ketchum, Idaho. He got his start in the bio-regional seed movement while in college in 1979 when he helped start Garden City Seeds. In 1984, Bill started Seeds Trust/High Altitude Gardens, a mail order seed company he ran successfully until it sold in 2013.Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2018/04/17/bonus-15/ for more information and links on this bonus podcast, and to find our other great guests.

Making simplified gardening even easier.In This Podcast: New at gardening, the lackluster results of their first garden could have turned them off, but Jennifer Pratt and her husband decided there was an easier way.  Using their need for a simpler method of spacing seeds in the garden, they designed a guide to do the measuring for them.  This new tool is so easy to use that even Mel Bartholomew called to tell them how much he liked it. A kickstarter program has helped launched this simple idea into a new business for them.Jen is an entrepreneur and inventor. After a frustrating first attempt at growing a family garden, she and her husband saw the need for a tool that would simplify the process of both planting and tending their vegetable garden - and felt that the proper spacing of seeds was the ticket.  And they were right! Now, after crowd funding, patents and a few more gardens under her belt, she’s here to tell us her story and share more on the tool that is changing the way people grow food.Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2018/04/14/344-jennifer-pratt/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

Bonus Episode 14: Seed Saving Class January 2018.A chat with an expert on seeds. In This Bonus Podcast: There is always a bounty of info available in conversations with Bill McDorman. This is the January 2018 episode of a Seed Saving Class - discussing Grain School, original peanuts of South Carolina, inspiring gardeners, broccoli in Alaska and so much more.Join the class! Register anytime for the next event. Register Here for the Seed Saving Class with Live Q&ABill McDorman is Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance, Ketchum, Idaho. He got his start in the bio-regional seed movement while in college in 1979 when he helped start Garden City Seeds. In 1984, Bill started Seeds Trust/High Altitude Gardens, a mail order seed company he ran successfully until it sold in 2013.Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2018/04/12/bonus14/ for show notes and links on this bonus podcast, and to find our other great guests.

Spreading the word about healthy and sustainable eating.In This Podcast: It is easy to notice the conviction of purpose as we hear an update from Ocean Robbins about the principles behind this year’s Food Revolution Summit. He also shares some news about some dietary trends, how food system and food choice awareness is making a difference in many parts of the world. Visit www.urbanfarm.org/summit for more detailsOcean is the CEO, Co-founder and Co-host of the 450,000+ member Food Revolution Network, and the co-host of the Food Revolution Summit since it started in 2012.  He has facilitated more than 50 week-long gatherings and 100 day-long workshops for leaders worldwide.  He is the co-author of Choices For Our Future and The Power of Partnership, along with the most recently released Voices of the Food Revolution: You can heal your body, and your world, with foodThe annual Food Revolution Summit has already reached 800,000 people; teaching what’s really going on with our food, and presenting information to help us take action for our health, and for a more ethical and sustainable world. The 2018 Summit will take place April 28-May 6 this year, featuring John and Ocean Robbins interviewing 24 of the world’s top food experts.Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2018/04/10/343-ocean-robbins/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

Using your doctor as a valuable resource.In This Podcast:Having a background in construction, he was not your typical med student, but Dr. Ken Berry used his real-world experience to become a better doctor. Then when he realized he was becoming physically unfit while following the very advice he had been giving his own patients, he questioned his teachings and sought out better answers. He now helps people communicate better with their doctors and offers advice on diets to fight obesity and Type 2 Diabetes among other chronic illnesses.Ken is a Family Physician, Speaker and Author of the self-published book Lies My Doctor told me.  He has been practicing Family Medicine for over a decade. He is board certified in Family Medicine, and has been awarded the degree of Fellow, by the American Academy of Family Physicians.  Having seen over 20,000 patients of all ages during his career, he is uniquely qualified to write on both acute and chronic diseases. More and more, he has focused on the chronic diseases caused by the Standard American Diet and Lifestyle, and has made it his mission to turn the tide on the epidemic of Type 2 Diabetes, chronic inflammation and dementia. Ken has four children, 3 dogs, 2 cats and 7 peacocks. He, and his beautiful wife Neisha, live on their farm in Holladay, TN.Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2018/04/07/342-ken-berry/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.Ken Berry on Discussing Health with Your Doctor.

Bringing awareness of the beauty of nature.In This Podcast: Connecting with nature is so natural to Mary Reynolds, that when life got  busy and bogged her down to the point that she forgot to make it a priority, she actually felt ‘squished’.  Mary’s story of winning the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show was told in the movie Dare to Be Wild. Here we learn more about her special relationship with nature and how she hopes to teach and inspire others to develop their own connection, for the good of all.Mary grew up on a small mixed farm in Wexford, in the south of Ireland and eventually set up her own company designing gardens in Dublin. A few years later, and having lost the will to live from constantly creating modern gardens, she realized that she could no longer continue shaping land in the same way and thus re-imagined her work to become nature rather than human centered.She brought her new, still relatively unformed ideas to be showcased at the Chelsea flower show in London where she achieved a gold medal, unusual at the time for a first-time effort. Since that time, Mary has built up quite a cult following in the world of garden design and is considered unique in her field.  She eventually decided it was time to rethink the whole relationship we had with land and re-examine what it truly means to design in harmony with nature. This led to her book ‘The Garden Awakening – Designs to Nurture Our Land and Ourselves’Special note: Her story is told in the film Dare to Be Wild, available on NetflixGo to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2018/04/03/341-mary-reynolds/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

Telling a story of young environmentalists reaching for their dreams.In This Podcast: Becoming a scriptwriter had been a goal she set to the side while she worked her way into corporate finance law. However, when Vivienne DeCourcy heard the story of a young award winning garden designer’s journey, she found her way back. She shares how searching for a garden design consult then filled her need to connect to nature and introduced her to an amazing woman with an amazing story. This is the background of how the film Dare to Be Wild was completed. Vivienne came from a long family line of market gardeners, academics and rebels, yet somehow found herself having lived for 20 years in a Chicago high rise practicing corporate finance law. She really missed the landscape of her childhood - between Dublin and West Cork, and after getting breast cancer in her early thirties, she left corporate law, followed a childhood dream and started writing scripts.  She went back home and bought a small hill farm where her love for natural landscape, writing, and trying to make the farm hers, came together and gave her the opportunity to write the script for Dare to be Wild, released spring 2016.DARE TO BE WILD, is a romantic adventure based on the true story of two young environmentalists, whose quest is to show the world the power of wild nature as they reach for their dreams - one garden, one vast desert, at a time. SPECIAL NOTE:  This film opened on Netflix APRIL 1st, 2018.Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2018/03/31/340-vivienne-de-courcy/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

Optimizing the diet for backyard poultry.In This Podcast:Watching a bakery business fail, spending time in the navy on a destroyer, and then selling macaroni & cheese, might not seem like the background of a person managing part of a large poultry and egg business.  However, this is the path that led Frank Bergin to Eggland’s Best and helping them decide to offer their best proprietary feed to urban farmers.  He shares with us the reasons he joined the company as well as some significant statistics they found in their research and why they opted to put their feed on the shelves.  Frank is currently General Manager of Strategic Ventures & Innovation for Eggland’s Best, LLC. He has always wanted to run a food business since he was a teenager working in his family’s summer bakery.  After spending seven years as a US Naval Officer, the next eleven years he helped grow iconic brands like Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Jell-O, Cream of Wheat, Post Cereals, Balance Bar and Ritz Crackers. In his final role with Kraft, Frank led the turnaround and rebirth of the Back To Nature natural/organic business.He went onto pursue his passion for building smaller, more entrepreneurial businesses and since joining EB in 2010, where he has help the company’s revenue triple. It was in looking for new ways to keep that remarkable pace of growth going that Frank and the Eggland’s Best team hit upon the idea of selling its proprietary feed directly to backyard chicken farmersGo to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2018/03/27/339-frank-bergin/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.