Urban farmer and seed advocate Florentina Rodriguez talks seeds, seeds and, you guessed it, seeds.

Hear about how Florentina started her Flora Seeds, all thanks to seeing the need for a community seed library in her village of Yellow Springs, Ohio. Her interest in seed education and in helping people save, share and grow seeds grew from there. As more people started becoming more aware of the vulnerabilities of our global food system, they also started paying attention to where their food comes from, which invariably leads back to seeds, seed keeping and seed sovereignty. Florentina explores the multiple pathways that bring people into having an interest in seeds, ranging from food security to political resistance and cultural interests.

Learn how the Yellow Springs Community Seed Library works and how people can “check out” and donate seeds. Florentina explains how she checks in with seed library users to be sure they are getting along with their seeds and to improve the system for everyone. She tells us, too, about some of her favorite seeds that have been contributed to the seed library. (Have you ever heard of elephant dill?)

With sights set on having an even larger impact than what a seed library offers, Florentina is also working with seed commons—communal resources of seed collections, seed keepers and seed protectors on a regional level. She talks about farmers, gardeners and community people who are building these networks to exchange seeds, share skills and continue specific seeds’ stories. Florentina also discusses how university and government interests are impacting the spirit behind seed commons and why it’s important to have both regionally based community seed commons and university/government programs but not necessarily the two combined. She also makes the case for when and why you might want to work with folks in your region to start your own seed commons.

Listen to the end to hear about Eden’s Harvest urban farm in Dayton, Ohio, which is a certified native wildlife habitat and center for growing food and educating neighbors and local students about food and farming.

Flora Seeds on Instagram

Email Florentina

The Utopian Seed Project

From Oregon, Michele Thorne talks with show host Lisa Munniksma about support and resources for livestock farmers and meat consumers from The Good Meat Project, the challenges of farming on rented land, the finding value in “failure” and more.

Hear about all the ways that Thorne engages with the food system through what she refers to as “choice, trade and destiny.” She talks all about The Good Meat Project, a nonprofit building pathways toward responsible meat production and consumption for consumers, producers, processors, and food professionals. Learn about how they bridge gaps and break down barriers between all of these stakeholders in the food system and how you as a farmer can plug into the free resources and education the organization offers. Also hear about the Real Burger of Earth Day promotion happening in April each year—bringing together and promoting grassfed-beef producers—and a number of other promotions and learning communities meant to uplift all “good meat” farmers.

Thorne talks about her background in gardening and then keeping livestock, beginning with inheriting ducks and chickens and progressing through just about every type of poultry there is, plus pigs. We cover the ecosystem services animals provide to the land and to the farmer and the value in that over and above the eggs, meat and milk they provide. Thorne talks, too, about how her farming mindset changed after evacuating her property from wildfires with 200 animals in tow. Conversation turns, of course, to land access and the challenges associated with that, as so many farming conversations do.

Thorne gets vulnerable about failure and how we can learn from it — a lesson that endures in farming and elsewhere. She talks about how her experience in farming and her decision to back away from making a living farming helps her in her work with The Good Meat Project now.

Listen to the end to hear about Food Slain, the podcast that Thorne hosted for a few years focusing on food chain issues, from the adulteration of honey to the U.S.’s food-labeling laws. Hear about her thoughts on starting in our backyards to understand and ultimately change the food system for people, animals, the environment and the economy.

Real Burger of Earth Day website

The Good Meat Project website

The Good Meat Project on Instagram

Donate to The Good Meat Project

Food Slain podcast

Homesteader Hillarie Maddox talks about returning to the land, building community and mental health for farmers.

Hear about Hillarie’s upbringing visiting her family members’ original homesteads in South Dakota and how her life came full circle, back to the land herself on Whidbey Island, in Washington. She talks about how she and her husband are balancing their differing interests in landscaping versus gardening on their property, ultimately arriving at a food forest approach.

Learn about Heavy Nettle Collective, a diverse group of farmers, creatives and healers who are growing food, producing local events and building community together. This group has formed organically and changes in response to the needs of the people coming together — having grown from 5 to 20 — and they are slowly bringing the group into a more formal structure.

While everyone contributes their own strengths to the collective, some of Hillarie’s gifts are facilitating community and wellness. Since launching her wellness experiences through an REI business incubator program, Hillarie has been offering nature immersion, movement and breathwork to reconnect people to themselves and the world around them.

Hillarie offers a thoughtful definition of the concept of community and illustrates how that looks in her own life. Get her best advice for how to actually build the community that so many people talk about wanting.

Hillarie Maddox on Instagram

Hillarie Maddox on Substack

Black Girl Country Living podcast