Space & Thyme Miriam Schaffer and Hanna Williams

Welcome to Space & Thyme – the podcast! A podcast that looks behind the scenes at the visible and invisible players involved in farming and gardening and why this matters. Your hosts Miriam Schaffer and Hanna Williams interview gardeners, farmers, and people who work with the natural world in general. You’ll hear from those who work behind the scenes creating the structures and those selling the resources we use for the production of plants, food, and natural landscapes. This podcast delves into the specifics of their work and passion for the natural world in order express the value of and inspire appreciation for our farms, gardens, and our other natural resources.

For our first episode, we want to connect farming and gardening to the larger world and explore how we interact with other natural forces. In other words, we want to underline the space in Space & Thyme. We interviewed Brook Levan, biodynamic farmer, certified permaculture designer, and owner and operator of Sustainable Settings Farm and Ranch in Carbondale, Colorado. Brook sees his work as a means of interacting with the immense forces and networks that make up the cosmos. While some might be skeptical of Brook’s more philosophical viewpoint on agriculture, his dedication and overall approach yield products of truly exceptional quality.

Lou is a man who has dedicated his life to the practice of farming. It’s more than his job. He doesn’t just clock-in to a day of farming in the morning and then clock-out at night. His work, his passion, and his home are all bound to each other. It’s easy to assume that farming consists almost entirely of mindless manual labor, but listening to Lou helps clue us in to the dedication, discipline, and understanding that farming requires.

In this episode, we continue exploring how people working with natural landscapes connect to place. This time however, we focus on the craft of stonemasonry. We interviewed members of a local Boulder stonemasonry business called Z Stone, and asked them about what attracts them to stone work and why it is important. We trace some of the history of stone masonry from Medieval Japan to modern Colorado in order to explore both the historical significance of this work as well as the notion of a trade that masters teach to apprentices. Lastly, we take a look at how these kinds of trades survive in our modern communities.