Essential Personnel - Six US Farmers Talk COVID-19

Series 2: Farming During COVID, Episode 1

In the two weeks since the last Talk Farm to Me episode, we have all been living a life we had never imagined. My college-age kids are home, taking classes on Zoom. My husband is working remotely. We are keeping our distance and washing our hands incessantly. We watch devastating global news and skyrocketing numbers of infections and death. It's overwhelming.

In the midst of all of this, I reached out to a slew of farmers from across the US and had such interesting, inspiring and meaningful conversations with six of them -- some small, some large, some produce only, some meat and produce, some older, some younger, some new to farming, some lifelong farmers. It's so interesting to hear how they are dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic in their own communities. They are creative and so, so essential. I hope you enjoy meeting them as much as I did.

As we are all finding ways to work differently, podcasting is no exception. I usually meet face-to-face with farmers. For this episode, because no one wants to meet face-to-face, and because these farmers are all far from me and from one another, I interviewed them over the phone. I thought I would note that this presents some tricky tech and a lot of coordination and cooperation. Each farmer, except one, recorded his or her own side of the conversation and sent it to me. I also recorded as a back up, which was fortunate because one of the farmer's recording device did not work. I recorded my part in my pick up truck, which is a pretty quiet studio -- and a place where I don't have to ask my entire household -- including the dog -- to remain silent. Just thought I would mention it.

I know we are all guzzling so much COVID-19 news all the time, that it'd be nice for a break. I think you will find some rays of light in hearing from these farmers. But if you need a total break, please catch up on the other Talk Farm to Me episodes. Each of those farmers -- Jennifer Grossman, Peter Mauer, Vincent Cuneo, Luke Snobeck, Cyndi Wright, Lester Bourke, Joe and Jackie Evans and Sherry Shaver and Tyler Shaver -- have a powerful story to tell about what they do. And if you are in their area, reach out to them please. Cyndi and Lester's farmstead at Dirty Girl Farm is open for business and has the most delicious cheese and meat available. Joe and Jackie Evans have eggs galore for sale, you just have to go and pick them up. And if you give Sherry some notice, you can have fresh trout for supper, cleaned and deboned.

Talk Farm to Me is a great way to keep up with farmers, but I encourage you to reach out to these essential people in our communities to appreciate them and to eat what they grow.

Stay safe. Be well. Take a long walk.

XOXO Farm Girl

PS I will update this post soon with a full transcript of the episode. For now, just have a listen. A gallery of the farms is below. Gorgeous.

Farmstock Farm -- Kingston, New York

Footprint Farm -- Starksboro, Vermont

James Ranch -- Durango, Colorado

Soul Fire Farm -- Petersburg, New York

Ten Mothers Farm -- Cedar Grove, North Carolina

Whitehurst Heritage Farms -- Brenham, Texas

All photos below were provided to Talk Farm to Me by the farmers themselves. The photos from Ten Mothers Farm were provided by them, Scott Kelly and Farmers Friend. Thank you, all.

SHOW NOTES

MUSIC

All of the music in this episode is by Lobo Loco.

All Night Long (ID 774) and Spencer Bluegrass (ID 1230)

www.musikbrause.de Creative Commons License (by-nc-nd)

SPECIAL THANKS

Always thank you to the amazing farmers who said "Yes!" to an interview. You are so smart and generous and interesting. And essential doesn't even begin to cover it. Essential you are.

TRANSCRIPT

The following is a full transcript of the show, in case you prefer this format or can't find your headphones or have hearing that is limited in any way. If you can, listen to the farmers. But, if you can't, this is here for you. Please forgive any typos or misspellings.

Talk Farm to Me, Season 1, Episode 6

Essential Personnel - Six Farmers From Across the US Respond to COVID-19

Farm Girl (00:10):

Welcome to Talk Farm to Me. I'm your host, Farm Girl. On Talk Farm to Me, the farmer takes center stage and we find out what they do and how they do it. And no matter how you spend your time, I'm pretty sure you have more in common with farmers than you think. So sit back and relax and I'll bring a farmer and maybe a cow or two right into your living room for a chat.

Farm Girl (00:50):

In the past two weeks since the last Talk Farm to Me episode aired, the global cases of the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, have skyrocketed. Globally, tallies have soared from 126,000 to nearly 490,000. Related deaths have gone from 4,600 to more than 22,000 and rising. The numbers are hard to get your head around. In the United States, schools are out, kids are home, parents are home, restaurants and other businesses deemed non-essential are shuttered. Nationally, the number of cases has grown from 1,300 two weeks ago to nearly 70,000 today. It's staggering. Stock market has plummeted and it's sinking deeper on a daily basis. Since the January 21st discovery of the first U.S. coronavirus case, the country has turned itself on end. Supermarket shelves are bare, items like bread, sanitizing wipes, and toilet paper are hard to find at all. Business meetings and college courses are taking place over Zoom as are social gatherings with friends and neighbors. For many, fresh vegetables and healthy cuts of meat are hard to come by, if they are available at all.

Farm Girl (02:17):

This week I connected with six amazing farmers from across the United States, from New York to North Carolina, and Vermont to Texas, and then west to Durango, Colorado. What I found was heartening. Farmers are working together, filling holes left by restaurant closures and bare supermarkets. They are connecting with other farms and with desperate customers. As they respond to community needs, many of them point out how true food security comes when we have a strong local and regional food system. They are hoping that consumers will realize that a local food economy might the most secure way to get food even during normal times. Farmers are, for the first time, being publicly heralded as essential workers and more than ever they're customers, new and old, are recognizing the importance of their work. This entire conversation is at the heart of why I started Talk Farm to Me. Farmers are essential. They need to be recognized and valued by you and me and by society and society systems.

Farm Girl (03:40):

Vegetable farmer Vera Fabian, together with her husband Gordon, runs Ten Mothers Farm in North Carolina. Ten Mothers is named for an old Indian saying that garlic is like 10 mothers for its medicinal properties. Vera and Gordon's farm, now in its fifth year, runs on a CSA model. CSA stands for community supported agriculture. Customers buy a share in the CSA and the farmers provide them with harvests on a regular basis. The share allows the farmers to purchase seeds and to have some predictability to their business.

Vera Fabian (04:23):

We grow over 60 different types of vegetables on a very small space. We grow for 180 CSA families each week. We deliver to mostly people's porches in Hillsborough, our town in Chapel Hill, Carboro and Durham. It's been pretty overwhelming actually. We've been getting phone calls and emails from people asking if they can get into the CSA, asking if we have anything available right now that they can come and buy. Just constant communication from people wanting local food. The irony is that we had already sold all of our CSA shares a month ago and we've been emailing our CSA members just to reassure them like, "Hey, we're here. Spring is here, we're busy, the plants are growing, CSA is on and here are things that we're doing to make sure that the farm and your food supply is safe."

Farm Girl (05:16):

Most of the local restaurants have closed except for some offering curbside takeout. Ten Mothers Farm normally sells to some restaurants, but quickly offered their available vegetables to the community instead.

Vera Fabian (05:30):

We usually sell a little bit to restaurants, but we're figuring out a new plan now that most of our restaurant accounts are closed. Basically, this past week we had some vegetables that we had been planning to sell to restaurants and like I was saying, people had been reaching out, so we just quickly sold all of that direct to customers. We've never experienced this kind of demand.

Farm Girl (05:51):

Vera and Gordon are having to turn customers away, but they are thinking creatively to help them connect with food from other farms.

Vera Fabian (06:00):

I have never felt so motivated to grow more food for more people, but I'm also like, "I don't know, we only have so much capacity. I can't grow food for all of these people that are reaching out." So we are trying to do what we can quickly to send those people to other farms who maybe do need customers right now because they're losing restaurant business or farmer's market business. We're also trying to figure out ways to potentially work with other farms to sort of offer their products through our CSA.

Farm Girl (06:35):

With restaurants closed or operating on a limited basis, farms and chefs are working together to find business and to help the community.

Vera Fabian (06:44):

We're talking to a few of the chefs that we work with. Some of them are trying to figure out creative ways to keep some people employed. One of them is going to be cooking meals for hospital workers and so he's going to be looking for local produce for those, which is amazing. Just last night I was on a conference call with other farmers who are trying to figure out how to do prepared foods added into their CSA boxes, which is really cool, working with chefs, who would otherwise be out of work to prepare, whether it's an added value item, like a sauce or something or actual family style meals, which I thought was a really great idea.

Farm Girl (07:26):

Farms like Ten Mothers farm in North Carolina are responding to a global crisis on a local community level. Vera and Gordon are under a lot of pressure. They feel a tremendous responsibility to provide essential nourishment to their neighbors.

Vera Fabian (07:43):

I'm sure that a lot of farmers have been feeling this the last week or two. It feels like a big responsibility. As a farm right now, we're seeing unprecedented demand and interest. I feel very fortunate and I also feel a big weight to really seize this moment because it feels like a door has opened for local farms and I want to get it right. Everybody's so scared and confused right now, including us farmers. So just this moment where I think that as farmers we have to try to be leaders. It feels like people are looking to us for solutions and I'm seeing this with our customer base, just people really want comfort and a sense of abundance and hope in this moment. And I feel like small local farms can really offer that. And it feels like we have a responsibility to offer that right now.

Farm Girl (08:46):

But this is more than just triage, more than just getting food to people during this particular crisis.

Vera Fabian (08:54):

There's no question that this is going to change how we get food to people. Our hope as farmers has always been to be able to feed more people closer to home. And it feels like maybe this is a time where that might shift and in a way that may last. We'll see. But it feels like people are seeing sort of the weak points in our food supply chain and how vulnerable it is. It really feels like maybe this could be a moment where local food becomes the new normal. I think that we may come out of this stronger in the end. We'll see. It's hard to say and it's hard to say that when it feels like we're in the midst of something tragic, but I think that I can see people really reflecting on their lives and the planet in ways that may lead to some positive change.

Farm Girl (10:05):

On a 57 acre farm in Brenham, Texas, sandwiched between Houston and Austin, farmer Michael Marchand is dealing with similar issues. Whitehurst Farm supplies eggs and chicken, turkey and beef, as well as produce to high-end Houston and Austin restaurants.

Michael Marchand (10:26):

Part of our business is chef-owned higher-end restaurants that appreciate how we grow, what we grow. Our cost is obviously higher to raise animals and to produce produce the way that we do, so they're going to have to pay up to be able to have access to our products. Obviously, now this week, that whole model has shifted. 90 to 95% of our revenue came from restaurant customers.

Farm Girl (10:55):

Michael has a business background. As an entrepreneur, he instinctively structured his farm with the idea of risk in mind. Even though most of his business was to restaurants, he maintained an email list and connected with his community on social media. That proved a smart backup plan.

Michael Marchand (11:14):

When I say retail, that's customers ordering direct from us on our website. So we very quickly converted over from mostly restaurant sales, a little bit of CSA and retail online sales to, at this point, exclusively retail sales. Now that's 98% retail today, 2% restaurant at this point. So, literally, in a week the landscape shifted, but we were able to very quickly and easily just go from wholesale to retail because we had the foundation of an email list of contacts, of people that know us.

Farm Girl (12:01):

Michael's experience as an entrepreneur has also helped other farmers who have found themself with no business outlets.

Michael Marchand (12:09):

One of the farms a couple of hours away from us, he was selling exclusively to restaurants in Houston. He would contract with them ahead of the start of a season, grow what they wanted. He now obviously lost all of his business, so what we're trying to do is to say, "Hey, what's available? We can help you move it other way." Because he doesn't have an online presence. He didn't have a retail presence or retail list. I never thought that I would be someone that would call other farmers to say, "Sell me what you have. Let me take what you have and I'll move it for you." I personally like having to think outside the box and be self-sufficient. I like being able to very quickly say, "You know what? We need to shift and we need to do these things to be able to supply to people in our community."

Farm Girl (13:02):

Michael points out Texas' dirty, little secret. Local farms are scarce. Houston is a food desert, basically. It holds lessons for the entire country.

Michael Marchand (13:15):

The situation in our area is extremely grim when it comes to local production. We're a big country with a lot of people and I think one of the problems that we have, which is a good problem, is there is abundance. There's abundance in our country. It's fairly easy to get food. If you run out of something, you can stop at a gas station and find produce or things like that. But what that has delivered to us as a society is a complacency.

Farm Girl (13:47):

Michael has noticed that consumers are thinking differently. They are finding value in locally available, well raised, healthy food.

Michael Marchand (13:56):

We're not selling the same commercially produced, confined animal meats. We're selling pasture-raised meats. It's a different product altogether. But consumers are used to paying very low prices for chicken, for meats, for a lot of the vegetables that they get. But I think what's happened now is someone that didn't want to pay 75 cents or a dollar more for a dozen of eggs, they're now rethinking, "Okay, where am I going to get food and do I have a relationship somewhere where I can get some food?" And all of a sudden that dollar to them that maybe seemed big or they didn't want to pay more, obviously now they're willing to pay it. And so I think real quickly, people's concept of eating and locally produced foods has had an immediate and drastic shift.

Farm Girl (14:54):

In some ways, the day-to-day of farming has prepared Michael for this crisis or any crisis for that matter.

Michael Marchand (15:03):

I kind of feel like farming is kind of a crisis of the day business anyway. And so this is not, to me, vastly different than most days or weeks.

Farm Girl (15:21):

From Texas, let's head all the way to upstate New York, North of Albany, in Grafton where the snow is still six inches deep. Soul Fire Farm grows vegetables, fruit, medicinal herbs, raises bees, chickens and sheep on 80 acres. More than that, Soul Fire Farm has a mission to end racism, injustice and oppression in the food system. It is also a training farm that has engaged some 15,000 aspiring farmers over the past 10 years from black, Latino, and indigenous communities in 36 States and three countries. I spoke with farmer Leah Penniman, one of the co-directors of the farm about their food justice mission and the work they are doing to support the farmers in their network. They are farmily, as they call it.

Leah Penniman (16:12):

Especially in this time of community crisis, we're finding ourselves in full triage mode in trying to respond to the needs of our community members. Almost as soon as the World Health Organization declared a pandemic, we started hearing from the farmers that we've trained as well as the farmers in our network asking the questions you would imagine. "Now that restaurants and farmer's markets are shutting down, how do we keep our businesses afloat and find new supply chains? How do we make sure that we're handling produce effectively so that it's safe for consumers? How do we make sure that people who can't get food or whose grocery store shelves are empty, that we can support them?"

Leah Penniman (16:49):

And a few ways that we've stepped in just in the past week and a half have been first to organize these twice a week skill shares across the country for black, indigenous and people of color farmers and we have those on Sunday and Thursday evenings. And then the last thing we're up to is since so many of our on-farm programs are canceled, we started a Friday afternoon show called Ask a Sista Farmer, which is a gardening show on Facebook Live where people can call in to get tips and advice for growing food. And so those are, just this week, new initiatives that we've been building in response to this real yearning for people to quickly localize their food systems.

Farm Girl (17:28):

Leah and her whole team at Soul Fire Farm are keenly tuned in to the needs of the most vulnerable in our communities and some of the inherent ironies and injustices in our food system.

Leah Penniman (17:41):

Anytime we have a crisis, it's the people who are already vulnerable in the population who are going to be most impacted. Latino and Hispanic farm workers do 85% of the hands-on work in the food system, yet only manage about two and a half percent of the farm. So, literally, there would be no food. Our food system would come to a screeching halt if it wasn't for these folks doing the day in and day out labor. Yet, they're not protected under labor laws. So that means if someone... They're forced to still work because they're considered essential workers, right? They don't have paid time off. If somebody gets sick, they lose income. So there's a disincentive to stay home if you're not feeling well. And this is of course exacerbated in a time of pandemic.

Farm Girl (18:23):

What Leah and her team and network at Soul Fire Farm have known forever, that our food system has some fatal flaws, is now becoming apparent to others.

Leah Penniman (18:34):

I think in these times where we see the infrastructure of empire, that corporate infrastructure, really showing its cracks and even crumbling in some cases. What we've been talking about and doing all along in terms of mutual aid and small scale regenerative local economies. Folks are quickly realizing that that's essential. And looking to all of us to guide and lead in these times. All of these ways that farmers have of surviving in the day-to-day with our local economy, these are the structures that now society is needing to lean upon.

Farm Girl (19:11):

As a farmer, Leah has always thought of herself and her farmily as essential, but hearing national rhetoric about farmers essential status is welcome. She just wants it to mean something real.

Leah Penniman (19:25):

I have to say there is a gentle pride, right, in being considered an essential worker. I would love to see that reflected in wages, benefits and legal protections and not just cute memes, right, on social media. This is an example for the times of the direction that society needs to be going in and I hope that we can each day rather than succumbing to despair or giving in to hopelessness, that we can rise to the occasion and move towards life.

Farm Girl (20:02):

A little further South in Kingston, New York, two couples are raising small children and a wide range of produce and herbs on their two-family farm, Farmstock Farm. They sell their produce mainly to local Hudson Valley restaurants until those restaurants recently closed under COVID-19 safety protocols. Like other farmers around the country, farmer Ashton Zubal and his team have had to rethink a few things for their own farm and for neighboring farms as well.

Ashton Zubal (20:35):

Our main client base, we mainly did restaurants, but we do have a website where people can go on and order the groceries and come pick it up from the farm. The traffic to our website's skyrocketed and so we're now trying to reach out to more people who may not have an idea of where to sell the overgrowth of their food.

Farm Girl (21:00):

Being new farmers hasn't been easy. Three of the four farm stock farmers were in the fashion business in New York City previously, but in some ways constantly learning and adjusting has prepared them to deal with this crisis.

Ashton Zubal (21:15):

I would say the last three years of just trying to figure out how to commercially vegetable farm has kind of prepared us for this. I feel like we wasted no time getting our website... Like, our website was in order but getting other people's stuff, it just seemed like I felt like we knew what to do immediately. It was kind of exciting and now we're really fired up.

Farm Girl (21:37):

After all their work to shift careers and to struggle getting their farm up and running, Ashton is feeling that their work is being validated in a way that is really important.

Ashton Zubal (21:48):

You hear of farmers being essential business to stay open through all of this mess is kind of like... Also it's like one of those, "Yeah, this is one of the reasons why I did this." Where it is important and every day that we go in right now we feel that it's important because people need local fresh food. I personally think that it's kind of on the, might be arrogant to say, but I do think, up there with the nurses and things like that because food distribution is getting hit real hard right now.

Farm Girl (22:24):

Farm stock farm, despite its small size, has a lot to offer folks who need food. They are getting creative by banding together with other local farms.

Ashton Zubal (22:34):

We're getting everyone we can together to try to create some sort of grocery list for people. It's March so there's really not a wide range that a local farm can give you. But we can give you the essentials for sure.

Farm Girl (22:50):

And Ashton has some big ideas about how our food system can be stronger going forward.

Ashton Zubal (22:56):

I think it's a time for people to see how important it is to, in my opinion, localize food, regionalize food distribution, really look to the small farms. I see this as a really good time for farmers to connect. How can the farmers in a region be co-oped in a way, or be connected somehow, both with resources and distribution. In the United States how we don't have a food system is pretty weird. Like it's still the Wild West, you know? It's pretty crazy on food distribution and the system itself, how people get their food. I think it, right now, is really showing the downsides to the food distribution.

Farm Girl (23:53):

Several hours North in Vermont, just a half an hour south of Burlington, vegetable farmer Taylor Mendell and her husband Jake run Footprint Farm. They are in farm country in a state that values a strong local food network. Footprint Farm runs a CSA from April 1st through late December and also serves local restaurants, caterers for events, and some farm stands. They grow 50 varieties of vegetables on a small scale and are making plans to combat the uncertainty.

Taylor Mendell (24:28):

Day by day. We have plans, loose plans, in place for if this lasts for two weeks, if it lasts for a month or if things are different for the entire summer. And our biggest concern is making sure that our employees can get here and can be safe while the outbreak is active. I'm trying to decide if we should change our crop plan so that we're not growing so much salad mix that was intended for wholesale suppliers, if we should switch that over to something that works better for home delivery or CSA-style. We're at capacity for our spring CSA. We closed membership back in February, but we have now a waitlist that's growing daily and our plan is to wait until just before we're planning on starting in two weeks and determine where our other markets are at and if it feels like restaurants aren't opening up or caterers don't have events to cater, then we will definitely open up our CSA to more families.

Farm Girl (25:47):

Like other farmers around the country that operate in a way that's connected to their local communities, Taylor is feeling the weight of her role and her role is expanding from farmer to community leader.

Taylor Mendell (26:00):

It feels like this really heavy weight of responsibility to feed people and there's also a lot of discussion about rationing. I'm getting phone calls from people asking for crazy amounts of greens. You know, 10 pounds of spinach for a family, and it feels like, "Well, should we honor that or should we be splitting that up and sending it to a grocery store so that more people can have access to food right now?

Farm Girl (26:33):

Taylor and Jake have had conversations with other farmers about the challenge of getting more young people to take up a career in farming. It's a tough job and it's hard to make a living, but in some ways the recent crisis has highlighted the importance of their jobs in a way that might attract more to become farmers or to address the state of the nation's food system.

Taylor Mendell (26:57):

There's no roadmap for this. It feels really important to be a farmer. I think usually our conversation revolves around should we continue to encourage young people to be farmers because it seems like a kind of impossible career to be successful in, to be able to make a living off of a farm without outside income? And all of a sudden in the last week, our conversation has completely changed to feeling like we definitely chose the right career. All of a sudden our jobs are considered essential. In government policy, in writing, farming is an essential piece of society and so it feels good and in way to be recognized like that and to be so appreciated. It's been a really interesting thing to see them start to get interested in food production and how does it work? Why are my grocery stores shelves empty? Why can't you just send more food over? And I think the more people can start to understand what the production and distribution system of food looks like, I think it can only be better for all of us even though it's happening through an unfortunate way.

Farm Girl (28:26):

Finally, we head out West to Durango, Colorado near the Four Corners where Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona intersect. There, James Ranch, a five-family farm, has been in operation since the 1960s. James Ranch farms 100% grass-fed and finished beef and dairy cows. They also grow produce, flowers, and trees, and raise chicken for eggs. Just last year they opened an on-farm restaurant and market. It's the biggest community facing farm of its kind in the area. They butcher 150 beef cows each year and have a herd of 30 dairy cows. Other area farms are cow-calf operations, shipping beef and veal out of the area. Farmer Dan James runs the cheese-making part of the farm business with his wife. Dan is working on his own farms operations, thinking about how the community can come together and looking for the silver lining in the COVID-19 cloud.

Dan James (29:30):

Our community is not unlike lots around the country. It sounds like everybody's just trying to be out and about as little as possible. The restaurants have all shut down. The shutting down of restaurants has really made the biggest impact to our farmers. There's probably 10 other small farms in the area, and when I say farms I mean veggie, and they're just spinning because their restaurant commitments, which for most of them is at least 50% of their sales, now they have no guarantee of crop. And so, that's one of the biggest things that a community can do is to try to somehow organize this distribution of these products because the community's support of those people hasn't gone away. It's just the avenue of distribution has, right?

Dan James (30:20):

So how do we as communities pull together to organize ourselves as consumers and get that information to the growers and get it to them quickly because right now is seed planting time, right? And growers are not excited about speculating on... It's expensive. It's expensive to plan and to maintain and all of that. And so, really, that's where our local focus has been, is to try to come up with systems for that. There are plenty of CSAs out there and it could be just an expansion of CSAs, but there's a challenge there as well because stock market's down, people are losing their jobs. So shelling out $600 for a CSA upfront, that also is not super feasible for lots of people.

Farm Girl (31:15):

Dan is an optimist. He has a big supportive family and community and he seems determined to see his and their way through this crisis. Through all the bad news, he sees the upside.

Dan James (31:29):

A silver lining is that the market side has taken off. We've certainly seen an uptick in the sales in our small market. One of the things that I've always been harping on to get this small grower thing to take off is we've got to get people cooking again, right? And so this could be a beautiful thing to get people in the kitchen and be like, "Hey, I can do this."

Farm Girl (31:54):

And he knows that his farm, James Ranch is an important part of the equation.

Dan James (32:00):

If you have farmers in your community, that food security, that, "Wow, the James Ranch is just down the road," and when they come out and they talk to us and we can meet with them and sort of calm the hysteria a little bit from the food security side and let them know that, yes, our larder is full and we'll be okay.

Farm Girl (32:32):

Our farmers are proving nimble amidst the panic. They shift quickly to find customers when restaurants close. They work with chefs to offer creative additions to local CSA shares. They help other farmers find new customers. When grocery store shelves run bare, farmers sell to us directly. We are secure in our communities because of our farmers and a future of safe, clean food in our backyards is available to us. The silver lining of this pandemic is demonstrating itself within communities where farms and farmers are abundant. In communities where small farms are less prevalent, signs of a crumbling and mismatched food system is evident. As we spend time at home, take a moment to contemplate your food system. Is it working? Who's there making it work? How can you play your part?

Farm Girl (33:39):

It's been great to have you along for this episode of Talk Farm to Me. Special thanks always to our farmers for talking farm and doing what they do best. For more information about this episode, including a look behind the scenes, head on over to talkfarmtome.com. This season's music is by Lobo Loco. You can find more episodes as they come out on talkfarmtome.com or subscribe to the whole season wherever you get your podcasts. Either way, please share your feedback right on the website or give us some love on iTunes. I'm your host, Farm Girl. Stay tuned for a new episode every two weeks when I bring a new farmer and maybe a cow or two right into your living room for a chat.