Greenhorns Radio

This week’s featured guest is Sonoko Sakai. Soba noodle maker, advocate, cooking teacher, writer, film industry veteran-the diversely talented Sonoko Sakai has perhaps had an atypical career path, but it’s one that has provided multiple outlets for creativity, seeing the world, and having a voice. Born in New York but raised in many places. For the past 10 years ago, Sakai has focused on culinary arts education, studying soba making in Tokyo, teaching workshops, collaborating with chefs, and fueling her passion for the sustainable production of heirloom grains in Southern California. Sakai’s 2nd cookbook Ricecraft will be published in the Fall 2016 by Chronicle Books.

This week’s featured guest on _Greenhorns Radio_ isMatt Alward. Matt was born and raised in Berkeley, CA where he grew up working construction with his father. After graduating High School he drove up the Alcan Highway and ended up in Homer, Alaska. He supported himself with construction work and eventually apprenticed to one of the more respected fishing net builders on the west coast. In time he took over the business and founded Bulletproof Nets Inc. which has grown to 14 employees, a business partner, and is on the leading edge of innovation in design and materials in purse seine nets. His commercial fishing carrier began more than two decades ago. Matt purchased his first commercial salmon seine boat in 2004 and has been fishing salmon in the summers ever since. He and his wife Renee raised three children in Homer, all of whom have worked or are still working on the family commercial fishing boat. When not out fishing or home building nets, Matt is on many boards and committees in fisheries and marine trades; his current positions include Vice President of United Fishermen of Alaska, Vice President of Homer Marine Trades Association, Treasurer of North Pacific Fisheries Association, Director on Cook Inlet Aquaculture Association board, finance committee Co-Chair for Seafood Harvesters of America, and a member of the steering committee for Maritime Works: An Alaska Careers Partnership. He puts time into these organizations to help influence policy to protect and insure sustainable, accountable fisheries and the marine trades that go along with them for now and generations to come.

Suzanne Hunt founded Hunt Green LLC in 2007 in Wash­ing­ton DC and pro­vides strategic advis­ing on energy, agriculture, transportation, and the environment. Her clients have included pri­vate equity firms, UN bod­ies, gov­ern­ment agen­cies, clean tech start-ups, For­tune 500 com­pa­nies, and non-profits. In the spring of 2015 she moved the business to the Finger Lakes region of New York State to support the ongo­ing sus­tain­abil­ity prac­tices at her family’s seventh gen­er­a­tion farm and winery (Hunt Country Vineyards and Italy Hill Produce), and to assist with the implementation of long-term sustainable energy solutions in the Finger Lakes region. Suzanne has helped a number of the region’s most respected wineries install large geothermal heating/cooling and solar power systems and is working with local banks, businesses, and other partners to accelerate the shift to distributed renewables across the region and state. She is focused on the critical connections between on-the-ground realities and national and international policy efforts.

This week’s featured farmer isLisa Murgatroyd. Lisa and her husband Jesse are owner operators of First Light Farm CSA in Petaluma, Ca., a 150-member organic CSA, farm store, and Pick-Your-Own bouquet patch. They also sell at farmer’s market and wholesale to SF Bay area grocery stores. Lisa is also founder of Chica Bloom Farm and a founding member of North Bay Flower Collective, as well as former Advisory Board member of the Farmers Guild. Lisa has worked in the food movement for more than a decade launching the first farm-to-school program integrated into state curriculum The L.I.F.E. programin Lopez Island, Washington and many other food and education projects connecting people with the land and each other around building a bright food system future. Additionally, she is an organization development consultant recently finishing her M.A. in organization development at Sonoma State University.

Today’s featured guest is MaddieO’Laire. Maddie grew up in Dallas, Texas- a far cry from the Alaska wilderness. She booked a one-way ticket to Homer, Alaska in 2010 and immediately fell in love with the landscape, do-it-yourself mentality, groovy people, and cute, scruffy fishermen. After her first winter, her feelings about permanently living in Homer solidified when she met a commercial fisherman and carpenter named Mike. They married in 2013 and built their homestead on 5 beautiful acres in Homer. In 2014,Maddiestarted direct marketing wild- caught Alaska sockeye salmon to her family and friends in Texas. The business grew quickly and now she ships wild-caught Alaska sockeye salmon all over the country. She ships directly to individuals and also partners with CSAs and co-ops to bring wild salmon to large groups more affordably. She hopes to grow these partnerships before this year’s salmon season, which runs from early June- late July.Maddieis passionate about healthy living, sustainable seafood, and helping other producers develop markets for their products. She graduated from Loyola University in Baltimore with a B.A. in Communications and Business.

This week’s featured guest is Linda Behnken has been commercial fishing off Alaska for 30 years. She crewed on longline and troll boats for 9 years before buying her own boat in 1991. She lives in Sitka, Alaska but has fished the waters from Sitka to the Bering Sea. She now fishes with her husband and two sons on their 40 foot boat, Woodstock. Linda holds a masters in environmental science from Yale and combines this schooling with the at-sea experience of fishing to inform her work in fisheries management. Linda is the executive director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association and served nine years on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. Her work is dedicated to promoting sustainable fisheries and thriving fishing communities through research, innovation and advocacy.

This week’s featuredguestDuane Hyde.Duane Hyde has served as the Land Conservation Director at the Southeast Land Trust of New Hampshire for the last 1.5 years. He came to the Land Trust after working for nearly 13 years at the New Hampshire Chapter of The Nature Conservancy where he served as the Chapter’s Director of Conservation Programs and the acquisition agent and grant manager for the Great Bay Resource Protection Partnership. Prior to his work in conservation Duane was a professional town planner for almost 10 years and served as the Durham, NH town planner for 3 years. Duane holds a BS in Natural Resources Management from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning with a focus on environmental planning from Virginia Tech. Duane serves on the Board of Directors for the New Hampshire Land Trust Coalition and is the chair of the Coalition’s Outreach and Education Committee.

This week’s featured farmer is Mike Sommer. Mike Sommer is an organic farmer in the Treasure Valley in Southwest Idaho. He is the production manager for his family’s farm, Purple Sage Farms, and directs the employees, plans crop production and manages sales. Mike works side by side with his father, Tim Sommer, who grew up in the same town working in agriculture since the 1960’s. Tim has been growing fresh herbs and specialty greens on the farm in Middleton since 1988 and he helped create the organic certification program in Idaho, making Purple Sage Farms one of the oldest organic farms in the state.

Tim and Mike operate twelve, 3,000 sq. ft. greenhouses, and 38,000 sq. ft. of terraced outdoor vegetable fields where they grow everything from Basil and Rosemary to Arugula, Red Russian Kale, broccoli and beets, planted directly into the ground and irrigated by a well with drip lines and sprinklers. Animals are also a small but important part of the farm. A small herd of sheep grazes on 40 acres of pasture and they provide meat for family, and the manure and bedding from their winter feeding and lambing area is turned into compost for the crops.

The majority of their products are sold to Southwest Idaho wholesale accounts like restaurants, grocery stores and produce distributors but they also do some direct sales to retail customers at the Boise Farmers Market each Saturday in Boise and through an organization called Idaho’s Bounty Cooperative which has producer and consumer members in Southwest Idaho that have come together to improve the local food system by providing sales and logistics for farmers and by improving access to local food for consumers by providing a website and pick-up locations where they can purchase it.

Mike began helping on the farm as soon as he could count and the work he did there through middle school and high school helped pay for a part of his college education. He graduated from the University of Montana in 2009 with a Bachelor of Arts in Biology and an emphasis in botany and brought much of what he learned back to the farm in fall of 2009. Since then he has added many new aspects to the farm such as winter crop production, vegetable production, herb drying, blended herbal teas, kombucha brewing with herbs from the farm, medicinal herb production, farmers market sales and plant pressing, and many more new value-added products like fermented vegetables and pesto will be coming soon after construction is completed on the farm’s new commercial kitchen.

Mike serves his local food community by being a founding member on the board of directors for the Boise Farmers Market, serving on the board of Idaho’s Bounty Cooperative for the past 3 years, and participating in local agricultural organizations like Idaho Preferred, Idaho Center for Sustainable Agriculture, the Treasure Valley Food Coalition and Ag in the Classroom. The farm also participates in grant programs with the Xerces Society and Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticides to improve pollinator habitat and use ecology and biodiversity to decrease weeds and pests and increase fertility. Many times throughout the year Mike and Tim host tours of the farm for groups of chefs, teachers, students, other farmers and anybody else who has an interest in local, small scale, organic agriculture and food and are able to share what they have learned with many others.

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This week’s featured farmer is Mike Miles.Mike started the Anathoth Community Farm in 1986 as a center for the study of nonviolence, community, and sustainable living. His love of farming came from spending summers on his grandmother’s dairy farm in Michigan. Anathoth Farm was built from the ground up and comes right out of the pages of Mother Earth News: buildings with solar heating and hot water, composting toilets, greenhouses, and a 10,000 watt photovoltaic grid tie. Produce and maple syrup have been staple crops from the beginning with animal husbandry arriving on the scene about six years ago. After becoming aware of management intensive grazing and permaculture, Mike became a soil carbon cowboy. Steers, chickens, pigs, and cover crops are the tools he uses to build soil microorganisms while producing the tastiest, healthiest meat there is. Together with his wife Barb, Anathoth sponsors educational events on the farm to promote good health,sustainability, and justice for all.

“I gotta save the world with my agriculture then I have to save the world with my activism. I’m a hopeless ‘save the world’ kind of guy.” [21:00]

This week’s featured farmer: Mark Ressl

Mark studied architecture in New York City focussing on restructuring the relationships among designers, builders, clients, and communities. He also travelled through the Midwest on foot studying historic routes and community redevelopments of post industrial America. Last year he joined the Long Spoon Collective, a group committed to making social change through mutual altruism. The LSC recognizes that the resources we need to build sustainable infrastructure and a viable society are already in our community if only we learn to share effectively.

This year, Ressl spear headed the collective’s Food Share project. The Saugerties Food Share is a bi-weekly “free farmers market” located at the collective’s model off-grid community garden. The community garden acts as a distribution center for extra produce from local gardens. Additionally it is an educational center to learn growing, foraging and processing techniques. Currently Ressl is leading the project of recruiting local residents to transform their lawns into gardens which will all contribute to the food share next year. Ultimately the goal of this work is to create active participants in a local, fossil fuel free, moneyless food infrastructure.