42: Dan Imhoff on how the wild got pulled out of farming, and making agriculture hospitable to wild nature

Dan Imhoff is an author, musician, and artisan food producer who has written for 25 years on ecological sustainability. His books include Farming with the Wild, Food Fight, and Building with Vision.  Dan is the president and co-founder of Watershed Media as well as president and a co-founder of the Wild Farm Alliance, a national organization that works to promote agriculture systems that support and accommodate wild nature. He lives on a small homestead farm outside of Healdsburg, California.  In this episode, Dan talks to Devon about how the wild got pulled out of farming, how to make farms hospitable to wild nature.  

36: Amy Franceschini on victory gardens in San Francisco, a Seed Journey to the Middle East, and the importance of not finding a common language

Amy Franceschini is an artist and educator who creates formats for exchange and production that question and challenge the social, cultural and environmental systems that surround her. An overarching theme in her work is a perceived conflict between humans and nature, and her projects reveal the ways that local politics are affected by globalization. In 1995, Amy founded Futurefarmers and in 2004, she co-founded Free Soil, an international collective of artists, activists, researchers, and gardeners who work together to propose alternatives to the social, political and environmental organization of space. In 2008, Amy worked with the City of San Francisco to transform the plaza in front of City Hall into a modern victory garden, and to build gardens in people’s back yards. She is currently sailing from Oslo to Istanbul as part of Seed Journey, bringing seeds found in Norway and other points in the northern hemisphere to their center of origin in the Middle East and connecting with seed savers, farmers, bakers, activists and others along the way.  Amy grew up on a farm in the Central Valley of California. In this episode, Amy talks with Chelsea about her victory gardens project in San Francisco, a Seed Journey to the Middle East, and the importance of not finding a common language.

Photo: RS 10 Christiania by Martin Høy

35: Jezra Thompson on Berkeley’s School Gardens and Kitchens and the unique learning environment they provide

Jezra Thompson is the Program Supervisor of the Berkeley Public School Gardening & Cooking Program, where she leads a team of garden educators and works with schools and community organizations to provide hands-on, place-based education to all students. She is a food system planner who focuses on community development, land use planning, and education.  Jezra has worked on healthy food access and education at DC Greens, the California Farmers Market Association, and the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, and she writes for Civil Eats.  In this episode, Delicious Revolution intern Rebecca Murillo talks with Jezra about the ways school gardens and kitchens provide a unique learning environment and an opportunity for students to be their own leaders in the world.

34: Kristyn Leach of Namu Farm on finding roots and community through plants, adapting Korean vegetables to California, and figuring out farming without fossil fuels

Kristyn Leach runs Namu Farm at the Sunol AgPark east of the San Francisco Bay.  She grows vegetables for San Francisco restaurant Namu Gaji and seeds for the Kitazawa Seed Company. Kristyn grows both traditional and whimsical produce, focusing on Korean varieties and using organic, biodynamic, and permaculture practices without any fossil fuels. She discovered the foods of her Korean heritage further on in her life, as she was adopted as an infant and grew up in New York, where she later became a part of the urban gardening movement. Her fascination with shiso led her back to her roots and connected her with her Korean roots. In this episode, Devon talks with Kristyn about finding roots and community through plants, adapting Korean vegetables to California, and figuring out farming without fossil fuels.  

DR Special #1: Kathleen, Trainee at the Homeless Garden Project

In this special episode of Delicious Revolution, Chelsea speaks with Kathleen, a trainee at the Homeless Garden Project, about her experience.  This episode is a companion to episode #30, our interview with Darrie Ganzhorn, the director of the Homeless Garden Project.