Episode 4-436 – Farm to Fork Fondo RunRunLive 5.0 - Running Podcast

The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-436 – Farm to Fork Fondo  (Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4435.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Intro: Hellos and welcome to the badly delayed episode 4-436 of the RunRunLive podcast.  Today’s show is about farming.  It’s about growing things.  It’s about the late summer harvest of ideas and endurance.  We have a chat with retired professional cyclist Tyler Wren who has started a post-pro life around supporting local farms in Vermont called farm to fork fitness.  I ran into him because I’ve been doing a long bike ride at least once a week and thinking about the impact that the current apocalypse has had on these local farms and families.  With the restaurants closed it impact specialized growers adversely.  The specialized stuff, the local stuff, is the good for you stuff.  I’d hate to see even more of them disappear.  To see even more beautiful tracks of rural land turned into vacation condos.  In section one I’m going to muse on what my running has taught me in the month of July as I push through the heat and humidity.  In section two I’m going to talk about the history of agriculture.   Because, that’s our theme.  I’m doing fine, just busy with work and training and my wife needing me to do pointless man-things like paint the house.  It all stacks up and, you, my unfortunate friends are made to suffer the vacuum of my attentions.  I’m healthy.  Ollie is healthy.  We’ve been getting in a lot of miles in the trails.  I’m starting to move into some fairly good volume as I target running the Wapack and back with Eric and anyone else who wants to come next month.  More about that in the outro. … My own garden is hit and miss this year.  I planted a lot of squash but it seems to have gotten a late start and I’m only getting a few.  Whereas in other years I’ve gotten piles of zucchini and summer squash, this year only a few have battled through.  The root borers are into the stalks now and that usually kills anything left. My berry patch has been less than spectacular as well.  I have a very mature and robust patch of red raspberries.  These are hybrids and have multiple sets of large berries.  But I’ve also got a bunch of the native black raspberry canes that are muscling their way into my garden like unwanted ruffians at a genteel social event.  Both of these typically overwhelm me with berries. Not this year.  We seem to have a boom in wildlife.  Something ate most of my red raspberries. I think it’s the birds.  I’m getting the Black ones now but they are getting poached as well.  In other years I would pull several pints a week out of the patch. This year I have salvaged barely enough to flavor 2 bowls of oatmeal. My tomatoes are just coming on now.  A few weeks late.  I’m keeping an eye on them because I have a chipmunk problem as well.  The chipmunks won’t necessarily eat your tomatoes and squash but they will bite into them.  The rodents also burrow around a bit as well.  Ripping up the plants in general.  They got my curly parsley.  I had it growing in a pot in my garden and something burrowed into the pot and ate the root.  Left the parsley.  Ate the root.  Then the next day they came back and ate the parsley.  Not sure whether that was the chipmunk or some other kind of rodent.  It was a very precisely executed crime.  I suspect on orders of the rodent syndicate. Understand that my garden is heavily fortified.  This isn’t my first rodent rodeo.  I’ve got a 4-foot fence with chicken wire buried into the ground.  That keeps the Woodchucks and rabbits out.  Speaking of rabbits and woodchucks, I’ve given up on trying to trap the woodchucks and rabbits in the yard this year.  There are so many of them.  There’s only one reasonable solution. I’m going to have to get a falcon.  Yup.  I’ll stand out there