Once again, Severine Von Tscharner Fleming is digging into the Greenhorn archives. In this episode of the "Young Farmer Policy Podcast," von Tscarner Fleming talks to Luke Gran, Beginning Farmer Coordinator at Practical Farmers of Iowa, which is a farmer driven research and education group out of Iowa. This program has been sponsored by White Oak Pastures.

Henry Lau is 17 years old and in Grade 12 at Windemere Secondary School in Vancouver, British Columbia. He belongs to the Windermere Organic Garden, a student-led initiative that provides food for the school cafeteria while focusing on the importance of organic practices and educating students about food and agriculture. The garden has a 16x20 foot greenhouse, 13 garden beds, an aquaponics system, and an industrial-sized composter. When senior students started the project 5 years ago, Henry knew nothing about gardening, but the plants starting to pop up in his teacher's office caught his eye. He found that agriculture was an art, and watching something as small as a seed turn into a meal was an amazing experience that gave him a better appreciation of food. He credits his experience with the garden to a great deal of personal growth and admires that it can be an open and peaceful space for everyone at the school. Henry feels fortunate to live in a community dedicated to food security and the growing green movement, and when he graduates, he hopes to continue studies in food and nutrition while working in the local community garden and tree orchard. This episode was sponsored by Jones Family Farms.

In August, Jeremy and Trish bought a three acre piece of land just outside of Spearfish, South Dakota. What was historically a truck farm providing veggies to the mining communities in the Black Hills, it probably hasn't had vegetables on it for the last twenty years. Trish is currently working in New Mexico and Jeremy is learning to build utility bikes in Oregon, but they will both be moving to South Dakota in January to get things going, building bee hives, planning crops, and working out business specifics. They plan to sell from an on-site farmstand, through the Spearfish Farmers Market, and eventually through a CSA. They are also both enthusiastic about bicycles and are planning to develop and use human-powered farm equipment on site in addition to building cargo bikes in the winter to diversify income. Neither of them come from a farming background, but they started gardening in a friend's front yard three years ago and have been getting more and more wrapped up in the food system since, especially the thought of using food to build community and land health. They are excited to get Cycle Farm off the ground and say they picked the farm's name because it's short, replete with double meanings, and will be easy to come up with some sort of bicycle-vegetable logo. This episode is sponsored by Hearst Ranch.