Growing For Market Podcast Andrew Mefferd, Katie Kulla

Jaymie Michelle Thurler tells us how she went from a dairy farming background to start Rutabaga Ranch, a certified organic bio-diverse market garden in Brinston, Ontario. At Rutabaga Ranch, they have a farmstand, sell at two farmers markets, have a CSA and sell to local restaurants. Jaymie conveys a lot of farm wisdom with humor, including advice on how to find a farm, how to stay married, and how some peculiar local ag laws led to them starting their on-farm store in a silo, which ended up being much more successful than they ever imagined.

We cover a lot of ground in this interview, including how Sarah and Tom decided to leave their careers to start a flower farm, how Grateful Gardeners is the only cut flower farm we know of to be incorporating aquaponics, and what the heck aquaponics even is. We talk about the ups and downs of raising money from investors to help establish a farm- and how this is routine in Silicon Valley but in farming, not so much. We discuss how outside investment could accelerate the development of local farms; however one of the barriers to attracting investors to farming is that the returns are not typically as high as from the tech sector. So investors have to have a desire to help advance regenerative farming in addition to the capital to get investment to work in farming.

This week we hear from Joshua Hughes, who is the Fresh Moves Logistics Coordinator for the Fresh Moves Mobile Market, one of the many programs of the non-profit Urban Growers Collective in Chicago. Host Katie Kulla talks with Joshua about the UGC and their work in general, but more specifically about how the organization is working to “close the food access gap.” Expanding access to food is something we’ve talked about before on this podcast and it’s something that motivates many farmers and organizations to think outside the box when it comes to marketing and distributing produce — UGC and the Fresh Moves Mobile Market represent some truly innovative thinking on the part of many people committed to evolving food systems.

Growers have long used deposits from ancient seas as a source of micronutrients- and over 50 years ago, Dr. Maynard Murray started researching the use of minerals- naturally dried and derived from mineral-rich seawater- as a source of micronutrients. Today on the podcast we talk with Chief Mineral Officer Michael Sileck about how Sea-90 Ocean Minerals continues the work of Dr. Murray today, through their naturally-dried, unprocessed and unrefined soil amendments.

REKO rings gained popularity during the pandemic as a way to keep selling direct to the public when markets were shut down. One of the obstacles to more widespread adoption of the REKO system- reliance on closed Facebook groups to communicate with customers- has been eliminated by Tyler Taggart and REKO Hub. They have developed software to facilitate REKO rings without using Facebook, plus the software is free for producers to use. Instead of charging producers, a small fee is charged to customers when they place an order through REKO Hub.

This week we talk with Hannah Rose Weber and Nate Lada, two of the owners at Green Things Farm Collective in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Green Things is a majority women-owned farm business that has evolved out of several businesses. Nate and his wife Jill first started Green Things farm in 2011 at a local farm incubator program. Then they purchased 64 acres where the farm is now settled. In 2020, Green Things joined with Ann Arbor Seed Company and the Land Loom to expand production, share management of running a diverse farm business and develop a model of sustainable, cooperative, and responsible farming. They offer seasonal vegetables and flowers to their local markets through various channels as well as beef.