Farming Forward with Eliot Coleman and Jack Algiere

of sustainable organic farming in the United States. Both men have inspired and influenced the way I grow food here at my own farm. Elliott is joining me from Harborside, Maine, where he is a farmer and author, an agricultural researcher, and a proponent of organic farming. He is famous for developing a unique year round method of cultivating organic vegetables

even during the winter time in Maine. Jack Algier is the director of agro Ecology at Stone Barns Center, where he works to train the next generation of young farmers. Something that we can all agree is vital. Jack is here with me in person, and we just returned from a tour of my gardens and greenhouses. Where do you think, Jack spectacular am I doing? Okay? You blew my mind. I've been here before and it is a gorgeous landscaping forest.

So glad to see it. Thank you. Well. We're both experienced and passionate gardeners and farmers, and now, more than ever before, people are getting into their own backyards to garden. The pandemic certainly encouraged packyard gardening in a way that nothing has ever before. I don't even think Victory Garden was as prolific as this kind of COVID gardening has become. Yeah, I think that's true. I think that's true. Everyone was stuck at home. I suppose that was the big difference.

But what I wanted to get from both you today and from Elliott, and I think we could ask Elliott to join us now, if you don't mind Elliott's in Harborside, Maine. You have been such an inspiration to me, Elliott and you know that, and we we worked together on so many wonderful articles and stories. I'm just the simple farmer out here in the woods. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, you have written at least four fantastic books for season harvest.

I have one right here, and this is Organic Vegetables from your Home Garden all year long and the New Organic Grower, another fantastic book that we rely on for really good information. You have done a tremendous service to so many home gardeners and your tools. We are you still are you both collaborating on tools for Johnny's. We have been working quite a bit on different tools over

the years, for sure. Yeah. Well those tools are in my headhouse in the greenhouse, and they are used by Ryan and Brian at the farm here and all the other guys. They fight over the tools because they are effective, they are sensible, and it's really great to have those tools, and and um you can get if if you're the listeners. Please note that Johnny's Seeds has a whole section of their catalog devoted to wonderful tools, many of which were designed by Elliott at first and then by both of you.

Now right, I'm solely an advocate, but I've certainly uh had our hand in our work to to work on slow tools and designing small tools for for a good farm. So you call them slow tools, these are non mechanical tools pretty much, right, Yeah, for the hand for the handcraft, Yes, and since my favorite way to garden is by hand. Even though I've been learning how to use all the machinery, I can drive tractors now, Elliott, yep, I can I can hey the fields Elliott bail the hey. But but

I do. I do like getting out there even without gloves onto my manicurist Dismay, and I can pick weeds for hours, and I get such a satisfaction out of doing that. What is it about farming that the next generation has to understand? What is it that's going on now that has to be either fixed or implemented, or repaired or just taught. So, Jack, what is the first thing we have to teach? Well, I think the first thing that teaches that no one needs to do this alone.

That's never what it was like. You know. The reality is there's so much to learn from a community of people around you, whether whether starting a garden or a farm. Um. You know, there's so much of this spirit of do it yourself. Um. But it's the community that that enriches the whole thing, and there's so much to learn from each other. In many ways, gardening is this, and farming for that matter, is a little bit of a spectator sport.

You know, people people watch and they pay attention and often learn more from the failures and the things that don't go right as we navigate that. And so I think people, uh, it's good to see what other people do and try those things and know that there's uh, there's never a truly perfect but there's also never a total failure, and there's so much to learn in that space. Without that, you can't have the longevity to really practice and be good at it, and you have to stay

with it. Yeah, and what what do what do you say, Elliott? One of the most interesting things about farming and its connection to the world we live in is organic farming has shown that if you understand how the natural system works and work along with it, you're gonna have food. That there's nothing complicated about it, that the mother nature

wants us to be well fed. And the systems are so basic and straightforward to people who understand that the natural world is the most magnificent system ever set up, and we just need to figure out how to plug into it. There's a line in a wonderful old book from Liberty Hyde Bailey, who was a classic horticulturalist at

the cornell and other places. And he's suggesting how you can learn about things and how to do this and was it very simple line He just said, go out in the backyard, look down and ask yourself, oh, why is that weed growing right there? He said, By the time you've answered that question, you've had a whole education

in botany, horticulture and everything else. And so if you're a gardener and you want to grow a corner a plant or a tomato plant, you need to figure out how to create conditions that are as amenable for that plant as the conditions that the weed your feet naturally chose because they were perfect. That's good advice, very much. If we want to just start a garden in our backyard, Okay, we have a twelve by twelve foot piece of ground that is sunny, we can fence it and we can

grow a few vegetables and some herbs. What's our first step, Jack, Well, the first thing, of course, you have to the grass is its own ecosystem, and you need to change that. Just removing that and getting to the bare soil and being able to enrich that space compost and preparation, any kind of um. The idea is to go from that ecosystem that grass the two a more excited environment for the vegetables. Actually, should we cut the grass out, like

get a sod cutter and cut the grass off. I use a flat shovel and I and I basically use a like a sod cutter on a twelve foot patch. It's not very big, so it's just enough to get two inches just under the kind of shave that off and even roll it right off like a sad would come off, and that that way, you're not getting rid of all the top soil. You want as much of that top soil as possible, and you don't really want

to destroy the soil. So that's why just cutting it off the top um, applying compost, apply compost, homemade compost or bought if you can. I mean, the reality is and a lot of preparation there is setting setting up a home garden. You can do it as simply as just opening up that ground. And you can if you're

making composts to apply that on there. We like, uh, you know, manure composts, either cattle or horse manures type leaf composts that to me are just the vegetables love that rather than just leaf Now, how should you dig the garden? How deep you should should you dig that twelve foot square patch? Use a fork? Use of fork, There's always depends on how deep the top soil is, And of course you want as deep atop soil as you can for a good vegetable garden. So fork helps

to break that up and allow the compost to fall in. Um. We we avoid using like really heavy rotor tailor type cultivation, but just enough so it's open and just make that top bed for the seeds. Know that the seeds need that really special top surface to be putting in. And uh, Elliott, do you have a different methode. Well, I'm gonna agree with Jack. It's just that after I take my flat spade and the go two inches on or the surface of that sod, I'm just going to turn it over.

And by turning it over, I am going to prevent it from re growing. But the most fertile part of your lawn is the top two inches. And in the old days, when people wanted a good fertile type soil to mix into a greenhouse or to make a potting mix, they would use what they called loam, And loam was made or created by taking the top two or three inches off a fertile pasture, turning it upside down and

letting it rot for a couple of years. Well, you don't need to do that, because if you turn the two inches, they're upside down, and then add to it the compost that Jack is recommending, you can almost grow in it directly and as far as deep. People today find all sorts of ways to loosen the underneath. But I remember a British gardener I ran in two years ago. He just took his spading fork, pushed it in and pulled back on the handle, and that just lifted and

loosened the soil underneath. Did allow a way for a lot of the composts to fall down in there. And you know we were talking about the tools and tool design and stuff like that. Well, most of the tools I design is because when I'm working on something, I think I'm congenitally lazy, and the whole time I'm doing it, I'm trying to figure out there must be an easier way to do this. And so when I saw this old British gardener say no, you just pushed the fork

in and pull back slightly on the handle. I thought, dang, that's genius, and that will keep old people like me gardening well into their dotage because it isn't that hard to do. That's that And what about year after year? What what do you do to keep your garden soil beautiful? Once you once you started this twelve by twelve foot patch, what do you do next year? Well, you want to cover it over winter. Studies of shelling that if you have plants growing there, you're going to get better growth

next year. But you want to make sure you can get rid of those plants easily next spring. And you could do the same. You could skim that top two inches off and turn it over. And especially if you had some clover that you sad in uh September at the end of the gardening season, that would be a great deal because it would have extracted some nitrogen from

the air to put there. And if you don't have things growing there, just spreads some hey on it, and that organic matter just sitting on top will keep the soil organisms happy and the soil organisms. This is the wonderful thing about what's going on out there. These are the guys who run the show. When I first started, the fact that impressed me more than anything else, was reading one of the early soil microbiologists who explained that there are a million live organisms in a teaspoon of

fertile soil. That number is considered far too low today, yeah, because we can we can count better. But there is this whole biological world. And now as we're paying attention not just to the soil but to the human microbiome, we're finding out that there is a great companionship between the soil microbiome and the human microbiome and keeping people alive and healthy. So you just want to protect all those wonderful free workers that you have. And the nice

thing about it, their favorite food is organic matter. So that's why when you're buying probiotics, they say you're taking antibiotics, and they tell you the doctor tells you to take probiotics. You're taking in three hundred thousand units of probiotics of something or other. Microwns right, very very high. Elliot was saying, the ground just needs to be always covered as best to can it, and in fact that's covered with plant material growing plants, you mean, or even just the decomposing plants.

So instead of the hey going to the compost step is just gonna lie on your garden for the winter, and and you're gonna scoop off what didn't decompose in the spring throat on your compost seep, and the gardener is ready to go. So both of you became gardeners at a very young age. Jack seventeen years older. Eighteen years old, you had an eye opening ex curious tell us about that. Well, I was working in um. You know, we had a family farm in Rhode Island, and I

was working at some greenhouses UM. And you know, I loved to work in these spaces, the big old redwood glass houses. Uh. Well, you know, old farm families that were there, and I was loving and learning more. I had grown up with organic production on our own farm, and once I got into do more work in these greenhouses,

that was my first exposure to chemicals UM. And what was a real surprise to me was that a lot of the stories that that my mentors there, my teachers that were there, were telling me was that, well that there the ideas of organic are the old days, and actually the management going forward is going to require something

really different because the consumer it wants something different. And I thought that that was a really surprising thing to hear them say like they were following a trend that was being set by people who really didn't know what the consequence was. And I thought, you know, will be good be to really direct this this idea here towards

growing food and doing it naturally. And you know, fortunately, I would say a lot of that eye opening was that there were not a lot of people talking about how to grow, especially in greenhouses organically, which is a very rare thing. UM that it was really Elliott's new organic grower and learning about what he had done in methodology, and I thought, this was this is something that I

can apply and it was so intuitive. I was able to really apply it multiple places through the years and and honestly it's been it's just evolved and grown and really valuable. And so you call yourself an agrow ecologist. What does that mean exactly? Well, it's a big word for farmer UM. What it really means is, you know, in the systems that we work in UM, they're not just about food production. You know, these these systems are about stewarding land and caring for our communities. There's a

cology associated to it. So part of this is about not just food. Is that the food is this product of a very healthy, interactive work and kind of ecosystem that takes a lot of people besides just the grower. Now does does your kind of farming include animal farming? So do you need you need the animal waste from cows and horses and chickens to enrich your soil? Is it important? It is very important. It's very important to have animal manures in an annual space. So the idea

is that everything is moving right. In fact, the more that I've been able to do this and test and try, because again a lot of this stuff takes confidence to try a new method, to try something different. But we're always in that place sort of always curious of trying something different. And there were some old methods that had been you know, in Europe and UK for for a long time where they were doing these lay herbal Le type rotations where it was pastures to vegetables to grains

and you know a mix of all these systems. It seems very idealistic in some ways compared to what we have in place, but we had the opportunity to start doing it. And what I realized is that and maybe this even in your own backyard. Um, the garden in the same place all the time isn't really necessary. In fact, if you have the animals and you have the grains, that everything is doing a kind of service. So by essence that the animals need to be involved just for

the sake of the manures, move them around. Yeah, and even if the garden is in the same place that there's good composting, so to say. Start Stone Barns, which was this beautiful rolling hill of cattle pastures. The first thing we did was build the compost system, build a greenhouse, and everything kind of expanded from that place. And I've been watching this development ever since it started. Um, David Rockefeller giving the giving the property over. It's just Stone

Barns to build this amazing, amazing facility. And uh, Elliott, what was your job there? I know that you had an involvement early on with the Stone Barns. Yeah, well, they weren't looking at what they could really do. I think their vision of greenhouses and stuff was limited because at the start they had a twenty by thirty ft greenhouse planned and they were gonna have a huge restaurant

there and everything. So I suggested the half acre greenhouse that Jack has now And if you want to see how well organic greenhouse growing can happen, it's just need

to go there and visit Jack's greenhouse. I keep wanting to go to all the universities that still have professors that say organic is impossible and take them by the scruff the neck and drag them over there and show them screen house, because it's absolutely magnificent and it it shows that the the wisdom of the past, which wasn't quite as constrained as a thinking was back in nineteen when I started in this game. Uh. I have a

book on my shelf that's absolutely delightful. The title is Roman Farming and it was written by an old Latin professor, and you go through this thing. Oh yeah, green manures, oh yeah, cover crops, crop rotations, growing legumes, making composts. It's all there. It's all been known since the dawn of agriculture. And you know you have to say, oh, yeah, it must have been. How did people feed themselves for all those years? Because there are naturals something like that

that work. Strangely enough, regardless, these principles are so simple, they're they're just nature principles. That can be applied to our relationship in the landscape just productively. But the greenhouse systems, for some reason or another, which is completely avoided bringing that kind of methodology into the space, into the into covered spaces. Yeah, because the covered space seems to want to just be like sanitized, and and that's couldn't be

farther from the truth. Is biologically rich and healthy because of it. Yeah. Now, Martha, the greenhouse that I recommended to the Barns, which is the one that I I built, is called an open top greenhouse, and it has all sorts of little roofs across it and they open to the point that they opened completely, so if you wanted to let it rain in there, you can have all of those things open completely and let it rain. And

what that gets you is much more natural conditions. And we have done that here in a simpler way because we have plastic greenhouses, but we've made them movable so we can move them like a big sled off of where they've been sitting for a year and and to another spot. And that was an idea that started in Europe about eighteen ninety because prior to them, in order

to keep their greenhouses functioning well. The greenhouse growers would have a huge crew of employees taking out eighteen inches of soil which bovels at wheelbarrows and putting it another field outside, and they were renewing the soil for an awful lot of work. And one of them, obviously as naturally lazy as I am, said, well, gee, why don't we just moved the greenhouse. And so back in eighteen

ninety the first movable greenhouses, these were ass houses. They sat on railroad wheels on railroad rails, and you could actually move a hundred by forty ft glass greenhouse that way. But they quickly found out that this was the most in the easiest way to sort of re naturalize an area that you have de naturalized by putting a cover over it. So the the greenhouse that Jack has does that by having a top that opens completely so the real sun and and the real rain and everything, and

treat it as if we were outside. I did something. I did something along those lines. I don't have a greenhouse that moves, but my vegetable greenhouse was an in ground greenhouse, sort of modeled on your instructions, Elliott. So I put in the foundation of the of the greenhouse was was filled with really really good soil, all my composted best soil, eight ft deep. And then we started to plant in that, and then uh so years what

years went by? And then I decided, well, I was getting a lot of weeds and things, and I decided, well, I'm going to now do raised beds. And I got I made raised beds you saw them, um, and filled them with a new, brand new, organic, beautifully made composts, and we have had such amazing vegetables now again because of this rejuvenation. So I'm thinking now maybe in three years, I'm just gonna build a second maybe six inches higher on top of those boxes and feel more stuff in there.

Does that sound like a good idea? That there are a lot of old studies that have found that the deeper your top soil, the better plants grow. So deep and the top soil you're doing exact And guess what I grew this year? A seventeen pound Swiss chart. I have a picture of it. I waited it was seventeen pounds with with the one little you know root, but the root wasn't so big compared to the plants itself. Seventeen pounds and it was absolutely edible. A white a

white Ford hooks was charred. Oh, I'm quite sure it was a little just because it got extra large, didn't mean it was going to be tough or anything. Yeah, it was delicious. So I think that. I mean, I'm so I'm so pleased with myself. You know, when something like that happens to a gardener, you just get so happy. And my carrots are so nice and long and straight. I think it's because of the new raised beds. You know, they're not meeting anything any little little hard soil under there.

They're just just growing right in that beautiful compost. So we were I'm having fun with my in the ground in the box uh covered covered garden. One of the things that we've been doing for years in there is that when you keep adding compost, maybe just to to offer this too, that minimal amounts of composts each time is really valuable because what you're doing is just feeding the soil. Right. I think this is this idea that you need to add more for the sake of the plants.

Like you did, you added a whole bunch more to start it fresh. In our system, we are actually continually adding slightly less all the time, because because there's so much release, if you put a lot on sometimes you'll end up a level. I was told that don't plant your lettuces right away in the new composts, plant hardier plants. I planted that switch chart which is not which is a hardy vegetable that grew so well, and the lettuces. Let other things grow first and then start your more

tender vegetables, and that worked. To that point, mellow compost, like old aged compost, is really good to apply in those ways. First of all, just because you are just feeding the soil. You're not you don't try to like we feed the plants heavily with it. But to your point, diversity and rotation in these spaces is really important because when we grow the same plant over and over again, it just draws the same thing. So changing that and the other thing that we've been doing in this space.

Elliot's this idea. Part of it is that protecting from the extreme of nature rather than just trying to grow hot winter, because allowing it to get cold in the winter, um and some of our houses completely frozen and others just at that cold temperature, everything flourishes in that way, and it's really low energy, which is the other thing greenhouses can be very nowadays, and greenhouses are going to continue to be more and more valuable, especially these types

of on soil type extension houses, because the reality is climate change with stronger storm cells and that sort of thing. These houses are are actually giving us alternate options instead of just total exposure. So we're going to get into a little bit of territory now that I've been studying lot of and that that's the c e A, the controlled environment agriculture. Uh, these gigantic greenhouses that are appearing all over Europe, in the Middle East, Dubai has acres

and acres and acres underglass. Russia has thousands of acres underglass, growing everything all winter long. Um, some of its hydroponics, some of it's in the ground. What do you think about this? Are they using too many chemicals or how do you compare that to the kind of in ground

growing that you're talking about. Well, if you want to see really good in ground growing, as I just mentioned, what endo Jack's greenhouse that is an excellent soil that start with, and they are adding just the right amount of compost every year and they're also running a crop rotation, so if you can't change the soil, changing the crop and having a different stimulating effect on the soil micro organisms. I have been Dutch greenhouses that it just blew my mind.

You're driving along the highway and for miles you can see nothing but glass houses. That it was. It's become such an incredible industry there, and the produce is wonderful. The ones that especially that are growing in in real soil.

The ones that aren't growing in soil. I was never as impressed by the flavor and quality of what came out, but that would be that after almost sixty years of being an organic farmer, I my test buds have been prejudiced, right, But what do you think In America there are a lot of young companies growing um growing in greenhouses hydroponically. Do you think that they will succeed using nine less water,

many of them recycled rainwater waters. Border is a big focus on on in these greenhouses because of because of the shortages that California is experiencing now Mexico is experiencing. What do you think about all of that? They less water figure is always bandied about, but my water costs me nothing. It falls out of the sky and uh, and I don't have to put energy into moving what water I do use around unless obviously it's a it's

a very dry year. But the energy input to grow in those huge greenhouses, and especially where they want to grow all winter when there isn't enough sunlight and they have artificial lighting LEDs are using. Yeah, that makes me

a little Uh. There's a professor at Cornell Dixon to Spooner who was one of the early people, uh pushing the idea of uh these huge plant greenhouses, who I believe wrote an article eventually said where he said he never thought they could recover the energy that was used in excess of what it would have been necessary to grow the crops out of doors. So if we are looking at using less energy, some of those systems are probably not the direction to to go in. Many of

them are using solar panels. Many of them are you know, trying to create their own energy. Right, even with solar panels, it turned out it didn't work. So I've always been interested in in simple, no energy systems. And so we grow and harvest as late into the fall as we can. A lot of root crops that we store for the water, and we store them in a roots seller, and root crops the happiest place for them to be is in

a dark, cool, moist uh area. And that's what you get for free by digging a hole in the ground and putting walls on a roof over it. And so this is costing absolutely nothing, and it cools down by we opened the vents and with the cool air in in the fall. I mean that the idea to me of where we should be looking in agriculture is for systems that work with what the natural forces are giving

us and try and enhance what they do. And all of our carrots and beets and cabbage and Ruda vegas and all those we sell them every week, all water from this uh hole in the ground that on its own is maintaining ideal conditions, and that isn't we invented. Obviously. Root sellers have been around forever, but it has always appealed to me as a simple technology that we need to uh investigate more thoroughly. Well just to say that there is some pretty incredible technology that's being learned in

those kind of environments. My personal feeling here is that we need to spend more time on the on the soil, and we have, we have a lot more to learn about what Elliots just saying that. The reality is it needs to be complementary. If there's new technology that's coming on, there's lots of ways for that to be actually supporting the local farm and regional food and farming that's happening in those spaces. I don't see it as a full

replacement for sure. And in fact, maybe the one thing that I've heard is that looking at places like sealing this valley where we're sending you know, tens of thousands of pounds of let us across the country to us here for a place to be able to do that in a in an environment here, I can see the short term value of food security and all these things

that they're talking about. But again, the huge amount of energy I think is overlooked, how simple what Elliott's talking about is, and how it's how easy really it is with enough support for us to produce more like we've been doing, and that is really important. Well, the food production in America has encountered a lot of problems. We are a nation of meat eaters. We are a nation of people eating maybe a lot of the wrong food. So many of us are searching for organics in the

grocery stores. Are the things that are labeled organic? Organic? What should we suggest to everyone and what do you think the consumer really should be offered in the grocery stores. There's a wonderful old Italian saying, what you don't pay for at the food market, you pay for it the doctor.

And I've always thought since that came from hundreds of years ago, it is a concept that people have realized that even if exceptional food does cost more, and we're not talking about fancy wines or something, We're just talking about food that has been carefully grown so it contains everything that food is supposed to contain, which means that the grower has been paying attention to creating an ideal soil. And the trouble with what was put in as the regulations for U. S d A Organic is that they

focused on what you shouldn't do. Okay, you shouldn't use these chemical fertilizers, you shouldn't use these chemical pesticides. But and I was told this by someone who understands how you write rules in Washington, that that was the only way they could do it because there was no way that type of rules that lawyers write could be specific enough on the positive things that the grower is supposed to be doing to make the soil absolutely perfect to

make the most nutricious vegetables. And so that's what you're small growers are focusing on. All these delightful young people we meet a lot of them, some of them work for us, who have gotten inspired by the idea that food that should be grown to be as nutritious as possible, and they're the ones turning out a wonderful food today, and very often that isn't available in the supermarket, but

it's available at farmers markets and farm stands on farm. Well, Elliott, what you said about your farmers being inspired, that's that's the important thing here. So few people are being inspired because they are not in contact, which is another thing that that part of this whole thing comes from this desire and sort of comp compelled senses to want to eat that and too to know where it's coming from.

I mean, so few of us have the privilege of actually being able to have access to gardens, and the less farms there are and the less people are involved in like good artisan food and good farming locally, the less opportunity for all of us to get that connection.

So even if it's not like we should, you know, don't feel bad if you can't buy all organic product, but I know that you're you can visit places and you can connect to food and farming in your local area, because that's that's what will change the grocery store and that's what will change are eating habits. It's it's very simple. We don't connect enough to our food and there are not enough people in our local towns and communities that

have have been empowered to celebrate that with us. And when we're inspired as as I certainly wasn't as Elliott was, as all of the farmers that have worked with us over all these years, and the chefs and the florists and the leather makers, and when they when they start to catch on to what's going on, um, so does the rest of the community. And an access becomes available when it's getting shipped in and who knows where it came from and we're just looking for that time, how

many weeks ago tomatoes picked. There's too many questions, too many questions to actually have answers too, So the local food system is transparent, it's traceable, and it's actually beautiful. Yes, but again it's hard for people who are working in an all has to find the farmer's market, um and find time to go to the farmers market. Farmers markets are once a week in most neighborhoods. That's not enough time. It's hard for farmers to find those guys in the

office I went to. I was up in Maine this weekend at my my house in Seal Harbor. I went to the farmer's market in Bar Harbor. And I love going to that market. I love seeing what is being grown locally. I have so much fun on on a first name basis with all the farmers and and it's so nice to see the activity there. I think if everybody could experience that and start shopping that way, as you suggest, it might be very very good for for our health first of all, of course, and also for

our environment. Uh. Teaching kids where things come from is another way teaching agriculture and school would be a very good initiative. You know we I I learned how to sew, and I learned how to draw architecture. I knew how I learned automotive techniques in school, but I didn't learn gardening. But I didn't learn gardening. And now wouldn't it be great if there were a gardening course in you know,

a required course in grammar school. Certainly whenever there's kids were For many many years at Stone Barns we had tens of thousands of kids from schools coming and uh, you know, getting questions like who put this carrot in the ground, you know, really not knowing, and how quickly somebody who has really has no idea how natural it is, because it is really it doesn't take You don't have to buy all of your food from the farmer's market tomorrow and totally change your life, although if you can.

But the reality is even just going and visiting helps change the frame of mind, which is that's the shift that needs to happen. Well. Alice Waters has been very instrumental in teaching us how to grow things and enjoy the organic um. Many people on the West Coast or trying to do that. You have R. S. Elliott has have spearheaded the whole movement here on the East Coast. It's very important for us to pay attention main organic farmers and Growers Association. That's a very fantastic group working

hard too. And what's what what groups around here jack in and around uh New York City. Well, there's there are lots of community gardens across New York City that are doing incredible things. Some of the some of our friends in the South Bronx and Brooklyn are doing huge amounts of work and big gardens down there. Um, down even in Battery Park. It's a beautiful garden we worked with down there. And so there are places there there's growing.

I see. There are other organizations uh no FA in all the states in the Northeast, with the exception of MAFKA, UM you know that have great resource lists of where the farms are and where that's happening. If you're you know, Connecticut Grown and all these groups, you know there is a strong community of farmers, small farmers in local community

and local artisans that are out there. Um. But again, one farmers market a week doesn't satisfy that, and it doesn't we were all kind of contributing to either that happening or not happening. Right. How were you introduced to farming and organic farming originally? Elliott? What made you go

in this amazing direction that you've really devoted your life. Ship. Well, two of the same people who at one point or another inspired you, Uh, Scott and Helen Nearing wrote a book and Living the Good Life Hippies looking for the Best Wife. Right, we were that, right, Yeah. I was fascinated by that book and and I came and met them and we became friends. And a couple of years later, when I decided I was going to do this for real. Uh,

we stopped by and they sold us. Uh. The land were on for what they paid for twenty years before, because they took pity on a young couple who had enough didn't have enough money to really buy land. And it made it that much more of an adventure because it was all covered with spruce and fir forest. So we had to cut down a lot of trees and roll out a lot of rocks. But and this is an important story, what we started with was that very sandy soil covered with trees and rocks with a pH

four point three. And we've been able to turn that surely by adding organic matter into the unbelievably productive farm we have at the moment. So my attitude about the world running out of food is No, it isn't. You just have to realize that Mother Nature's systems are incredibly productive and you just have to plug into them. And organic matter and compost or two of the the most important inputs. Well, I'm very glad that you're so optimistic.

I hope that you're right. I hope that we can return more more to nature and and uh and get more incredibly nutritious food growing all over the world. I mean, it is so important for us. And yes, I love that book, Living the Good Life. I even wrote a sequel to it, called Living the Good Long Life. I don't know if I ever sent you a copy of that, Elliott, But you're you're doing a good job of living the good long life. Uh. What good food helps, and loving

the work you're doing helps. Since that's what you're doing all day, every day, it's important that you enjoy it. And so your daughter is running the farm now, she has a taken over management. She's doing a wonderful job of it. Uh. And she had her own farm and in Colorado for a number of years before she moved back east. And and then she worked as a consultant with people like Wigmans and remal greenhouses and is keeping

the farm incredibly productive? That is such such good news. Well, we have so many really serious problems facing us as a nation, as a world. We have climate change which is very evident. But what are your words of advice to all of us, Jack, What what can we do like right now to start helping solve these problems. Well, just to first, the thing to know is that everybody is a contributor to this planet. I mean, we are all.

We all have an opportunity to do something, and you should really take that to heart because it's not just the producers. It's not just chefs making food for you. Your choice matters every single day, and you can help direct that from a farm perspective. It's also probably valuable to remember that farms are not just producing food. They're the farmers. The people that are on that land are caring for that land. And if you want to do something for the planet, let's care for the land. Let's

care for the planet. And so are kind of stewardship work. Like I said, it's it's part just for the ecology of things, it's part just for making sure that people

have access. But we have to change the attitude from factory farming to more responsible farming right well, factory farming has has wrote on the coattails of non renewable resources and all kinds of input driven systems and all sorts of things that had not been calculated, and we hadn't calculated the damage done to both the ecosystems themselves in

the planet, but also our societies. So we're not including everyone right now, and we're not actually protecting the place that is going to provide for us in the future. So that's why farmers are so valuable, and that's why you need them in your community, and you need artisans and all of the other stacks of people that help. And so when you support your local baker, that's that's

choosing the right philosophy around how they bake. Or you're going to your farmer's market, or you're buying pickles from this person, you're buying root vegetables, or you're actually showing up at the farmer's market in the rain. Any of those on horseback. I on horseback, I mean, you know, well, I take sacks along with me and hang them on the saddle. I guess we can't be too I mean,

even if it's impossible. Even if the change that we're asking for is impossible, we should be driven to try to make it better and encourage one's children to plant and to grow uh, and go one's grandchildren. My granddaughter Jude has basil plants on her little terrorists in New York City. She's picking her lettuce. She had four climbing bean plants. She was so proud. They germinated and grew really fast. I showed her how to put strings and tie them around the railing so that the beans would

grow up. Uh, And she's so proud of herself. And I think we have to teach our all children the the validity of growing one's own food and teach them how to grow. It's just important. There is no garden too small. First of all, like just growing a basil plant in your window is enough to have a feeling. But the other thing is that a farmlike Elliott's or a farmlike ours, where the footprints small comparatively to what you're talking about for a massive scale, but we're feeding

a lot of people. And if there are more and more spreading, if that spreads and people are asking for that in our communities and recognizing why it's so good for the soil, Why it's so good for the carbon, why it's so good for water and bio diversity, um and protected places. People will have more access to that kind of land and that kind of food, and health gets health. That's the idea. And Elliot, what's your what's your secret for living the good long life? Enjoying what

you do? My favorite story was when I learned we we grow the best tasting carrots anybody ever eight by planting them just after the middle of August and then sliding a greenhouse over them and leaving him in the ground and harvesting him November through February. And these are sold in our local markets as candy carrots. And by staying in the cold ground over winter, this is an

unheeded greenhouse, they just get sweeter and sweeter. And my wife was delivering at the local food co op early one morning a load of our vegetables, including carrots, and the produce manager, when he saw her pull up, came out and said, Oh, I'm so glad you're here early. There's a man waiting in the parking lot and we're out of your carrots. I hope you brought ut them. His daughter refuses to go to school without one of

your carrots in her lunch box. And I found out that our carrots had become the trading item of choice in local grade school lunch boxes. Now we became very popular with the parents because we had little Johnny a little Mary eating vegetables. But it was just a case of focusing on growing the most flavorful, tender version of whatever we were after. And to develop case budzs like that early on in your children is such a such a gift and uh and and to be able to

satisfy them is such a such a treasure. Really, Yeah, it's not a chore, right, it's not a chore. That's part of this is that to show how much you have to love what you grow and love what you eat, enjoy it, and and that if we future looks like that, we're in good shape. Well. I hope all of you listening have gotten some words of wisdom from these two great gardeners. I hope that you, if you haven't already, start a garden, grow delicious, delicious things for you and

your family and experience the great joy of gardening. I have found that I have become more and more of a gardener and less and less of anything else since. Uh, with the gardening, I just that's all I want to do is garden. I want to grow, grow, grow, and it's uh. And and give away. I love giving everything I grow away. It's so it's so pleasurable. So thank you so much Elliot for taking the time out of

your busy farming day. And Jack, I know you have to get back to those huge greenhouses and uh and cut some lettuces for dinner at the Stone Barns restaurant for tonight. Right. That's it's still still a lot of light we do eight o'clock is still it's still light out at eight o'clock. It's still light at eight o'clock. Yeah.

But if anyone who's listening to this podcast us, please come visit us at Stone Barns and keep your ear out for our upcoming podcast and and uh and you will love what you learn at either the beautiful farm of Elliott Coleman up in Harborside, Maine, or at the Stone Barns complex right in Pocantico, New York. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Thank you, Martha. Thanks Martha,