Digging into the invisible structure behind
The Urban Farm.
In This Podcast: Running any successful business or project requires some good help behind the scenes. This is true for The Urban Farm as well, and Janis Norton is one of the people who help Greg Peterson manage his dreams to change the local food system, create 10,000 seed banks in the local area, plant 100,000 fruit trees, and empower others to grow their own food. She shares about the surprise of finding her place in this non-stem field, the rewarding role of helping her community build its resilience, and opens up about some challenges of starting her own urban farm.
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Janis earned her degree in Sustainability from Arizona State University. Her previous experience in working classrooms, running youth programs, and Boy Scout Council Training and Camp leadership were all community and education focused. However, she did not realize how much she could do with the local food system until her Sustainable Food and Farms class. A class she took as a lark, since she had no interest in growing food. Soon after that class she became motivated to learn all she could about gardening and urban farming while using her organization and project management skills to help facilitate a couple of the Urban Farm’s larger events.
From that point on, she has been an active part of the Urban Farm core team as the Program Manager as well as the Podcast Producer. She is bringing her enthusiasm and cheerful attitude to her projects at the Farm especially the Urban Farm Nursery’s Fruit Tree Program and the Urban Farm Podcast, as well as partner projects like the Great American Seed-Up and the Permaculture Design Course in Phoenix.
Go to www.urbanfarm.org/jarvis for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.
Working together with other small farms to provide farm goods to a local economy.
In This Podcast: Not having enough eggs to keep her farm stand stocked, Deb Kolaras reached out to a couple neighboring small farms to add their products to hers. What has developed is a successful honor based farm stand that neighbors shop to find their fresh produce, eggs and cheeses. Using her marketing background she is focusing a local economy to support small farmers.
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Trading her digital marketing agency in Boulder, Colorado, for a small farm in rural Virginia, Deb and her husband set out to expand their backyard hobby farming into a slightly larger and more sustainable homestead. While restoring a 1907 farmhouse, they’re raising chickens & goats, and selling the food products at their roadside honor farm-stand.
Other local micro farms also sell produce and goods in Deb’s farm stand as she is working to help improve her local microeconomy by networking and supporting small farmers and producers in her county.
Her background is in business, but she’s always had a passion for making, building, re-purposing, and then harvesting the goods from those labors.
Go to www.urbanfarm.org/hopandhen for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.
Greg Peterson - 250th Episode Special
Interviewing Farmer Greg himself - about his life mission and creating The Urban Farm.
In this podcast: This is the 250th episode of The Urban Farm Podcast with Greg Peterson and the tables are turned as our guest host Jake Mace gets to take control of the interview. Greg tells us his story, how writing a mission statement for a college assignment affected him, and why naming your farm is so important to him. And, he shares more about the origin of The Urban Farm Nursery and of Urban Farm U.
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Greg has lived at the Urban Farm for almost 30 years. His 1/3-acre yard features an entirely edible landscape, including over 70 fruit trees, rainwater and grey-water harvesting, solar applications, and extensive use of reclaimed and recycled building materials.
Greg is a longtime permaculture advocate, flunked out of university in 1981 because he was bored, then went back twenty years later to get a bachelor’s degree and a Masters in Urban and Environmental Planning in 2006 and is a lifelong continual learner.
On his days off he hangs out in his garden with his sweetheart Heidi and their chickens, creating new projects and catching some rays.
Go to www.urbanfarm.org/FarmerGreg for more information, photos and links on this podcast and to find our other great guests.