This week on The Main Course Katy and Patrick sit down with a bevy of guests from the worlds of food, sustainability, and the arts. Alec Bradford of Leaping Waters Farms talked hybridization and animal husbandry. Next Patrick's father Joao Carlos Martins, famed pianist and conductor, regaled the group with a stories of his career plus a joke or two. Next Craig and Amy Good of Good Farms, Angus ranchers from the Flint Hills of Kansas, talked about their 48 years in the biz. Mario and Theresa Fantasma of Paradise Locker Meats discussed raising animals hormone and antibiotic free, and the current expansion process they're undertaking. Finally Chef Jacques Gautier & Jimmy Carbone of Jimmy's #43 hyped their upcoming Pig Island event on Governors Island: a pork-lovers dream come true. Don't miss this incredible who's who of folks in the good food movement. This episode was sponsored by Hearst Ranch: purveyors of fine grass-fed beef on the California coast.

Photo 1: Alec Bradford & Eric Ripert, Photo 2: Craig Good

Learner has been farming and gardening on Orcas Island for the past 7 years, where he is now homesteading, grazing French Alpine goats for milk, cheese, and meat, growing his own vegetables and seed, processing seaweed and other wildcrafted food and herbs, hunting, and bartering with his surplus. He is the director and founder of Food Masters, an organization working to increase sustainable food production and food security on Orcas Island, and to build community around a culture of local food. They strive to share information about growing, gathering, hunting, preserving, and preparing food, saving seed, and making medicine. Learner believes that by preserving and increasing knowledge about how to feed ourselves, we contribute to the health of our community, our land, and the future generations that will inhabit it. F.E.A.S.T. is a community supported and community-taught sustainability education program for youth also directed by Learner. The program focuses on teaching positive, simple solutions to some of the largest global problems we face. The F.E.A.S.T. program seeks to empower youth with sustainable living skills such as blacksmithing, permaculture design, wild harvesting, organic farming, animal husbandry, bee-keeping, alternative energy, mycology and more.