The Urban Farm Podcast With Greg Peterson

Creator of Life Energy Awakenings, is a organic lifestyle and holistic health educator. Leanne is an inspired advocate for creating clean, deeply nourishing foods, and extends this into a full organic lifestyle. Over the last six years she has brought the message of “simplicity and stability” in our choices of environment, foods, and lifestyle. This has take the form of empowering health classes and activities. These classes include organic gardening, the wisdom of​ using pure essential oils , raw vegan foods, structured water and hydration, pet remedies, weight and emotional balance techniques.

Today on the Urban Farm Podcast, we welcome a Phoenix local successful farmpreneur, JD Hill of Recycled City with his experience on composting.JD grew up in St. Michael, Minnesota, and arrived in Tempe, Arizona eager to earn his degree in business from Arizona State University.Upon graduating with his first Bachelor’s Degree in 2008, he realized there were not many jobs in finance, and ASU opened its School of Sustainability, so he continued on, earning a second Bachelor’s Degree in Sustainable business.He founded Recycled City 2 years ago and has over 500 customers!

Stephen Ritz is a South Bronx teacher/administrator who believes that students shouldn't have to leave their community to live, learn and earn in a better one. Moving generations of students into spheres of personal and academic successes they have never imagined while reclaiming and rebuilding the Bronx, Stephen’s extended student and community family have grown over 25,000 pounds of vegetables in the Bronx while generating extraordinary academic performance.

We are continuing the conversation on the evolutionary and truly remarkable tower gardens with our guest today Troy Albright founder and CEO of True Garden in Mesa, Arizona. He started True Garden, a solar powered greenhouse that spans 5000 square feet, designed to drastically reduce water consumption by 90% and use 90% less space than a conventional farm.

She grew up gardening and farming. She had a farm and edible landscaping when she lived in Washington State. Then she moved to Arizona - Climate culture shock! After a couple of years, she gave up. She no longer had the energy to do it well. Until last spring, when she walked into True Garden in Mesa, Arizona, where she discovered the Tower Garden.

Today, we are meeting with Sheri Menelli, a fellow podcaster and an Earth Friendly Homeowner and member of the Secrets of Soil Society. Sheri has a green garden group and teaches people how to turn their lawns into a drought-tolerant landscapes. Sheri wanted to create a podcast because “I know if we just had a way to get out some of the information that we knew out to the public, we’d have less pollution in our water, healthier soil and less damage from droughts and floods.”

Christal is a writer, horticulturist, and cook. She spent many years in permaculture and interior scaping. Now, she blogs, with ongoing posts about how to start a garden from seed. She also includes recipes using techniques and ingredients that you can afford - all real food - good for you too!

Benjamin Fahrer is joining us today on the Urban Farm Podcast. Ben is the owner and operator of Top Leaf Farms and has over 18 years of organic farming experience. Prior to starting Topleaf farms a year ago, Ben worked with Josiah Cain, a well-known landscape architect known for vertical systems. Ben was called in to consult on a new project: To design and convert a living roof into a food roof.

The Snarky Gardener (AKA Don Abbott) is a gardener, blogger, author, educator, speaker, reluctant activist, and permaculture practitioner from Kent, Ohio. He became the Snarky Gardener, living in a rental property, when he had been a gardener for just a short time, but he had been snarky and sarcastic his whole life. In today's episode, Don discusses permaculture, Hugelkultur (a fascinating concept), and gardening while renting.

Today on the show we talk to Diane Kennedy of Finch Frolic Garden, a food forest habitat and demonstration site in San Diego County.  Diane is a former Senior Park Ranger, tour guide for the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, librarian, independent baker, and a long-time vegetarian, organic gardener, freelance writer, and activist.  Along with her daughter Miranda, she lectures, gives tours of her food forest, consults, designs and in all ways promotes permaculture. 

Peter Burke is the author of Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening. He has been teaching garden classes since 2006, when he started presenting workshops on Indoor Salad Gardening, Square Foot Gardening, Extending the Garden Season, and many more. He also started TheDailyGardener.com to support the need for specialized seeds for Indoor Salad Gardening. Peter believes that with nothing more than a cupboard and a windowsill, you can grow all the fresh salad greens you need for the winter months (or throughout the entire year) with no lights, no pumps, and no greenhouse.

Have any food-related resolutions for 2016? I sure do, and Haley Cloud is an amazing example for foodies everywhere. Today on The Urban Farm Podcast Haley talks about Living Raw By Grace and her experience with a raw food diet.

20: Matt Gordon on Rogue Farm Corps and Cully Neighborhood GardenMatt is an urban farming rockstar in Portland, Oregon. He not only is in charge of Cully Neighborhood Farm's CSA, but also the chapter coordinator for Rogue Farm Corps, a non-profit dedicated to training the next generation of farmers through hands-on farm internships in Oregon. Check it out!

Justin is dedicated to making the world a better place and it shows in all that he does. In today's episode, Justin shares how he has reached out to 36,000 students in 30 states through Compass Green, a school garden on wheels. From three years as a monk in India to living and working on a schooner in Hawaii, to working as Co-Director of Programs in Japan for the David Lynch Foundation, he has always pursued work for the betterment of humankind and the environment. In 2009 and 2010, Justin helped found the Green Belt Team for teaching Biointensive sustainable farming in developing nations, and set up the mini-farm site for their internship on California’s Mendocino Coast.

18: Bill McDorman on Playful Plant BreedingToday on The Urban Farm  Podcast we have Bill McDorman to talk about seeds and playful plant breeding! Bill McDorman is Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance, Ketchum, Idaho. He got his start in the bio-regional seed movement while in college in 1979 when he helped start Garden City Seeds. In 1984, Bill started Seeds Trust/High Altitude Gardens, a mail order seed company he ran successfully until it sold in 2013. He authored the book, Basic Seed Saving, in 1994. In 2010, he and his wife Belle Starr created Seed School, a nationally recognized weeklong training. He served as Executive Director of Native Seeds/SEARCH from 2011 to 2014.Bill McDorman is Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance, Ketchum, Idaho. He got his start in the bio-regional seed movement while in college in 1979 when he helped start Garden City Seeds. In 1984, Bill started Seeds Trust/High Altitude Gardens, a mail order seed company he ran successfully unt

David Burns and Austin Young talk about the placement of fruit trees throughout urban spaces as a means to cultivate community and food security. Fallen Fruit is a collaborative art project that began in Los Angeles in 2004 with mapping public fruit–fruit that grows on or over public property. Our projects include diverse site-specific artworks that embrace public participation. Fallen Fruit’s art works encourage the public to experience their city as a fruitful, generous place, inviting people to engage in sharing and collectively explore the meaning of community and collaboration through public participation and exhibition projects. 

Today on The Urban Farm Podcast we Jim Dennis from Farm Phoenix, a featured farmer here to expand on his urban farming journey. Jim was raised on a farm that had one foot in the past and one in the future. Leaving that place, he spent a long time in cities and the corporate world, and eventually returned to his roots. Jim’s business is to help people learn the ways of gardening and adapting to a sustainable lifestyle.

15: Casey Hay on Gardening as a Tool for Special EducationToday on The Urban Farm Podcast we have Casey Hay to talk about gardening as a tool for special education and student partnerships! One of Casey’s personal missions is to educate our up-and-coming generations with knowledge that is attainable for all learning styles. She currently works in a self-contained Special Education classroom at Curry Elementary in the Tempe School District. She has introduced the "Kindness Matters" garden project, which she originally created in 2013, to the school Special Ed program. This program builds self-confidence and pride in the students by walking them through all the steps of planting and maintaining a garden from seed, also providing the opportunity to connect general education and special education students together. 

James is the author of two nonfiction books, including My Backyard Jungle: The Adventures of an Urban Wildlife Lover Who Turned His Yard into Habitat and Learned to Live with It. In his writing he explores what it means to be human in the natural world. His work has also appeared in print and online in The New York Times, The Atlantic, National Geographic and Conservation as well as numerous other publications, and he has appeared on a variety of national public radio shows. Jim currently serves as a creative and environmental writing professor at the University of South Carolina.

Table top farming of edible insectsKatharina grew up raising chickens, cows and horses on the border of Austria and Hungary. Noticing the dramatic state of our food system while living in Hong Kong, she is now determined to ‘design nature for humans’ and her first product that she is developing with her company Livin Farms is the world’s first tabletop device for edible insects. Katharina is a Fulbright alumna and an award winning industrial designer.In this podcast: Think bugs are disgusting to eat? Think again! Did you know that mealworms are edible AND one of the best sources of protein out there? It sounds crazy, but when you listen to this podcast with Katharina Unger from Livin Farms, you might just be converted. Listen today as award-winning industrial designer Katharina shares her latest project: the world’s first tabletop device for edible insects.Go to www.urbanfarm.org/katharina-unger for show notes and links.  You can check our library of other awesome podcasts and to sign up for weekly