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Episode 018.
How close in proximity do you get to your customer base? What would you do if the world economy went bust? Are you connected with a local customer base, and can you survive independently?
Michael Foley is a farmer, local food activist, and writer. He is the author of Farming for the Long Haul: Resilience and the Lost Art of Agricultural Inventiveness. He takes a historic look at farming, (with a global perspective) and discusses what he considers “good economics” especially regarding small farming.
Are you a homesteader? Do you take it seriously, or is it just a fun hobby? Michael may give you a new perspective of what it means to be self-sustaining.
Are you doing what you love in your business? Do you feel guilty for how EASY it is for you? I think you’ll relate with Michael’s story regarding writing and teaching. Listen now!
- Find out more about Michael: https://www.anothermadfarmer.org/
- Find out more about Green Uprising Farms: https://greenuprisingfresh.wordpress.com/
- Find out more about the School of Adaptive Agriculture: https://www.school-of-adaptive-agriculture.org/
Find out the business events secrets for growing and strengthening ANY company: http://brianjpombo.com/secrets/
Full Transcript
Michael: That’s something that I’ve emphasized. I work with a lot of young farmers both through the school and through farmers market and through something we created called, the Farmers Guild, that direct sales are really what you’ve got to do at least as part of your market, if your going to make it.
Podcast Intro: If you’re someone who refuses to go along to get along, if you question whether the status quo was good enough for you and your family.
If you want to leave this world better off than you found it and you consider independence a sacred thing.
You may be a prepper, a gardener, a homesteader, a survivalist, or a farmer or rancher, an environmentalist or a rugged outdoorsman.
We are here to celebrate you whether you’re looking to improve your maverick business or to find out more about the latest products and services available to the weekend rebel.
From selling chicken eggs online, to building up your food storage or collecting handmade soap.
This show is for those who choose the road less traveled the road to self-reliance for those that are living a daring adventure, life off the grid.
Brian: Michael Foley is a farmer, local food activist and writer. Formerly a political scientist, he now runs Green Uprising Farms in Willets, California with his wife and oldest daughter. He is also a co founder of the School of Adaptive Agriculture, a farmer training program and Willits.
He is the author of Farming For the Long Haul – Resilience and the Lost Art of Agricultural Inventiveness.
Michael, welcome to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.
Michael: Thanks, Brian. Thanks for having me.
Brian: Yeah. Besides what we read out on your bio, what else can you tell us about yourself and let people know a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Michael: I actually just stepped down as manager of the Willets Farmers Market, which I did for nine years. And that put me in touch with lots of local produce vendors and a few, a few meat producers and I to know the sort of alternative agricultural community.
That doesn’t mean bunch of hippies and liberals by any means, though.
There are some people in this community who think of the farmers market that that way. But in fact, a lot of the people producing out there are second, third generation residents of this place and old school in a lot of respects, they just understand the worth of direct sales.
That’s something that I’ve emphasized. I work with a lot of young farmers, both through the school and through farmers market and through something we created called Farmers Guild. And that’s something that I emphasize with them that direct sales are really what you’ve got to do, at least as part of your market. If you’re going make it.
Brian: Oh, that’s great advice. What else can you tell us about the Farmers Guild?
Michael: Well, the Farmers Guild, it started out as a pretty much a social organization among young farmers. So some of us old folks played a role in it, and it’s gone back to being pretty much a social organization.
But for a while it was an organization where all of us traded ideas and learn from one another and sometimes we had worked parties on weekends to help one another on one another’s farms. So it was good source of solidarity for people who were doing, especially market gardening, but also, you know, the kind of farmers market sales.
Brian: I mean, I read that you had just written, Farming For The Long Haul.
Can you tell us a little bit about that book?
Michael: Okay, well, that book grew out of, I don’t know, 50 years of interest in farming and reading about agriculture, reading anthropology and history. And the book is kind of unusual in that respect among farming books, because it really goes back into a lot of that history and anthropology, but the reason it does so is to think about what farming in the future is going to look like.
Our industrial scale farming is just a blip on the screen. Though there been other experiments in large scale farming.
Roman senators, for example, had huge, huge latifundia, that were farmed by slaves, and it destroyed Roman soil, just like we’re destroying American soil with our industrial scale farming.
Our farming systems not gonna last, it’s not gonna last through the end of petroleum. And we’ve got to look for something else.
And so the book explores what we can do to make ourselves more resilient now, while still making a living farming. What we would look like in the future, what we would look like in the future, from my point of view looks a lot like what we looked like in the past.
And I spent a lot of time emphasizing that a lot of farming cultures for successful for hundreds, even thousands of years.
By and large people were prosperous, and they didn’t have all the gadgets we have, but they were prosperous, they ate well, and they lived well, most of the time, all those years.
So that’s an important point. I am underlined in the book, but I look at all kinds of innovations. I mean, after all, traditional farmers without any scientific training came up with all the cultivated crops we have today. All of them, and multiple variations on them.
That’s where the embeddedness comes in, you know, they, you didn’t need a plant breeder, trained at a university. And you didn’t need a plant breeder employed by Monsanto. You did it yourself. And some farmers are still doing it themselves, especially in poor parts of the world, but also increasingly here in this country.
Brian: So what led you to write the book to begin with?
Michael: Two things. One of them was frustration at the business advice young farmers for getting it was scale up, scale up, borrow. If you have to borrow be because you’re scaling up just go full tilt.
And I knew from my reading of the recent…that is the last 50 years of American farming. That’s a recipe for disaster.
That’s how millions of American farmers lost their farms.
So I was upset with that.
And I wanted to present an alternative point of view. A lot of the book is actually about the economics of farming or what should be the good economics of small farming. And then the other thing is, like I said, I’ve been looking at and thinking about and reading about and as a political scientists actually doing some research about farming around the world for 50 years.
I started teaching a class on the history of agriculture with, at the School of Adaptive Agriculture. And realized I had all this knowledge, some of it tucked away in notebooks that I’d forgotten about. I really want to share it. So those are the two impulses for the book.
Brian: Very cool. And I saw that it’s published by Chelsea Green Publishing. Did you reach out to them? Did they reach out to you? How did that work?
Michael: Yeah, I was unknown, in the farming literature world. You know, I did academic publications that nobody’s interested in. And so I got this thing started in summer of 2017. And I got far enough that my wife said, you know, you got to put this out.
Chelsea Green Publishing was my first choice of publisher, I looked up what they required a prospectus with two or three finished chapters and an outline and various things. And so I put that together and set it off. And they said, Yes, we talked a little about the timeline. How long was going to take me and I, of course, committed to a quick a timeline. Though I’ve met it, and we went from there.
Brian: Did you enjoy that whole process? Would you do it again?
Michael: Yeah, I enjoyed it.
I’m one of these people who find it easy to write. And I’m sort of embarrassed about that because so many people find it so hard, but it’s satisfying to me the way cooking is satisfying to me.
There’s some similarities. Yeah, I enjoyed the process and I enjoyed digging out stuff that I once knew and didn’t know quite and learning a lot of new stuff and I always like doing that.
Commercial Break: Okay, we’re going to pause the conversation right there. What you’re listening to right now is a special edition podcast. These episodes all have to do with the Mother Earth News fair in Albany, Oregon of 2019 at the time I’m recording this, we have learned so much about how to take advantage of events and I want you to be able to use this information in your own business.
Go to BrianJPombo.com/secrets.
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When you go to this page, you will either see our latest programs or if you make it there early enough, you will see an email address, capture page, put in your email address and we will be sure and update you. As soon as we get these out there, you’re not going to want to miss this.
If you get in early enough, you can get a special deal. These are principles that never go away.
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They’re talking about how to use events, books, and speaking all to build your business.
That’s BrianJPombo.com/secrets.
BrianJPombo.com/secrets and now back to the conversation.
Brian: So you’re slated to present at Mother Earth News Fair in Albany, Oregon, right? What will you be covering?
Michael: Well, the first talk is called the future of farming is homesteading. And it emphasizes one of the points of the book and that is that if we want to survive economically, our farming ought to feed ourselves, at least to some large extent, like it used to.
As recently, as you know, the 1950s American farmers were feeding themselves.
So that in hard times, you got something to fall back on. Wendell Berry tells a story about Kentucky in the 30s when the population actually grew, because people who were out of work went back to the farm because they knew that there was food there, at least then they could help out and make more food.
And he wonders what would happen today?
I think this was 2008. So the you know that prices of 2000 what would happen today because most of those farms don’t exist anymore, and they don’t produce for themselves.
So that’s why I say the future of farming is homesteading, not in the sense that we won’t be producing for the market. But in the sense that yeah, we’re going to have to learn to produce for ourselves and most homesteaders, my senses don’t produce enough for themselves.
It’s an ideal but none of us do. That’s a threat. And the second one is about the real economics of farming, and makes that point. And also the point that, you know, we have to sustain our land if we’re going to sustain ourselves economically, we have to start learning to farm from the resources available to us, instead of buying in all these external inputs and fancy tools, and that are all the rage, even among very small market gardeners today, because we’re not going to have the income to do that sort of thing.
And we have to meet a bottom line right now, we have to meet a bottom line. So the more we can minimize our expenses, the better off we’re going to be.
Brian: What do you hope people will walk away with after watching either of these presentations?
Michael: I hope they’ll be inspired to find new ways to make what they’re doing more satisfying, both personally and economically to themselves. Yeah, you know, they’ll either find new value in what they’re already doing, or they’ll do more of it and build more resilient farms and homesteads and gardens out of what they’re but they’re doing.
Brian: Well, that’s great. And what do you hope to get out of this?
Michael: Again, I’m a little embarrassed to say this, but I I like to teach I, I just do. I like to. I like to talk to people.
My style tends to be a lot of talk, but also a lot of interaction. I like to try to draw people out and get to know people and hear from them. That’s always something I get out of these things.
Brian: Have you done this before at the Mother Earth News Fair?
Or is the first time?
Michael: No this is my first time.
Brian: Oh, great.
Michael: Yeah.
Brian: Have you done it at any other expos or anything of that sort like this?
Michael: The only thing that I’ve done so far is we launched the book at EcoFarm, the EcoFarm Conference in California, which is, you know, the major sustainable farming conference that was in January.
And so I did a round table kind of thing there where I sort of laid out the basic argument and then opened it up to discussion. We had a great time.
Brian: Who are you most hoping to reach? Like if there was an ideal person that you think you can touch either through your speaking? Or one on one? Who would that be?
Michael: I think my target audience. So people I was thinking about as I was writing, where these young farmers and aspiring farmers that I know, and that I work with, in some cases taught but also just worked with on some local projects.
Brian: Very good. Very good. So we have a lot of business owners, executives who listen to the show, do you think it’d be worthwhile for them to plug into events like this?
Michael: Well, I think it depends a lot on the business. I mean, you have you have featured some businesses where yeah, it clearly makes sense. But yeah, it definitely depends on the business. everybody’s gotta, you know, judge their market find their audience.
Brian: Yeah. Good point. So how did you end up becoming speaker here was that set up through your publisher did you reach out to them, did they reach out to you?
Michael: Yeah, Chelsea Green Publishing presented it as an opportunity to me. So I went through the application process with Mother Earth News. And then I think Chelsea Green gave them a little nudge to and then they put me on the program.
Brian: Well, fabulous. But is there anything I haven’t asked you that you think you’d like to say?
Michael: Oh, boy, um, I guess there’s two things.
One of them that I spent some time on is being aware of what I call the whole farm, or what I’m beginning to call more and more the skin of the farm.
And there were a lot of uses that underpin the economy of the farm that need to be revived.
I ran into some biodynamic farmers who described the wild outer edges of their farmers skin. And I like that concept, because it’s porous and it lets good things in and protects the farm, but it’s also a resource and traditional farmers used the water wild edges of the farm, and a lot of them had woodlands or wood lots.
Some practices that we don’t know much about it all in the United States like coppicing, cutting trees down to their base, letting them grow up long straight poles, or ones that can be used for basket weaving or for pole construction or anyway. Just various practices of managing the wild that can be useful economically.
And good for the wild and good for the farm.
So that’s one piece.
The other pieces that I really emphasized the importance of community.
I think community is kind of the social skin of the farm, that the people in your community are your natural customers. And increasingly, as the crises of the century unfold, they’re going to be our principal customers, they are not just our customers, but our support.
I mean, I can’t tell you how many times people have said, keep the change, you work so hard at farmer’s market. Or given me exorbitant fees for, you know, for something simple, or people come out to help raise money.
The local community helped us raise money for drilling a well.
And that and then our farmers helping one another. Some friends, homemade hoop house, huge thing blew up in a storm, they were ready to quit farming and a bunch of local farmers came out, help them rebuild it.
One of the guys who’s an engineer or former engineer and a volunteer at the school, helped them redesign it so it wouldn’t blow up again.
Brian: Wow.
Michael: That kind of, you know, that kind of helping one another mutual aid some people call it which is common among the Amish and used to be common and American farmer, kind of country.
Yeah, that’s really important. And it’s important to the bottom line, I keep emphasizing, you know, it’s not just good feeling, which is important.
We don’t want to be depressed. But it’s also good for our bottom line. It’s supporting us.
Brian: Those are great points. Really good.
So, what could a listener do? Who want to find out more about you maybe get their hands on your book? Where’s the best place for them to go?
Michael: Okay, for the book, I would say, go to your local bookstore. Free Shipping, just like Amazon.
Avoid the giants if you can.
You can also go to Chelsea Green Publlishing.
I have a website called AnotherMadFarmer.org. And that’s where I rant and carry on and give information about where I’m speaking and post some reviews.
Brian: Yeah.
Michael: And so they can go there that comes from a poem by Wendell Berry’s that I like the, Mad Farmer Liberation Front. Then this the website for the farm itself Green Uprising, just look up Green Uprising Farm, to find it.
Brian: We’ll put the link in the description for it.
Michael: Okay. Yeah, good.
And then there’s then there’s the School-Of-Adaptive-Agriculture.org. Those are words separated by hyphens, or you could just type adaptive agriculture.org and get the website and see all the things we’re doing.
We’re doing a wonderful workshop series right now. That’s been really fun to see develop.
Brian: Fabulous. Well, that’s great. Hey, thanks for spending time with us, Michael.
I know you’ve had a busy week. And we’d love to have you back on the show.
Thank you for being on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.
Michael: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me, Brian. It’s been delightful.
Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Good conversation with Michael.
He’s a very interesting person, has a lot of great insights. Afterwards, it kind of hit me he’s really in the field of economic emergency preparedness, if you think about it.
And I relate with that, because my original interest in homesteading kind of came from a similar background. He has deeper thoughts about homesteading.
And he’s kind of a historian in that field, type of person we really haven’t spoken to up until now, I wanted to point out some of the ideas that he put out there.
The first one was, what brought him into writing a book to begin with, and that’s that his wife pointed out is that he’s got all this knowledge, he learned all this stuff, he might as well put it out there for other people to be able to consume. And that’s a great point.
I think a lot of people, they learn how to do things, they get out there and do them and they don’t take that extra step to teach it to pass it along.
And Michael already has a background as a teacher.
So writing a book really was a natural step for him.
Made a lot of sense, especially since he already found it. So easy to write. I mean, he said he’s embarrassed that he finds it so easy to write that he finds it so satisfying, and that he likes teaching. He likes to teach people he likes to talk to people. I think this is very, very common.
You’ll hear the same thing said in a lot of our other interviews that we’ve had with speakers from the Mother Earth News Fair, especially the part about being embarrassed about it.
I think that’s pretty common. If I were to guess where that comes from, I know for myself, I’ve always seen those speakers, teachers that are out there that enjoy the sound of their own voice, you know, they’re really into it, they really enjoy it, and it kind of leaves you feeling a little icky afterwards.
I don’t think any of us want to be that person. And so when we say that we enjoy talking to people, and we enjoy speaking in front of people and writing and all the rest.
We don’t want to sound egotistical, I think as long as you’re careful. Not to enjoy things too much not to get too much into it, you should be able to have a good time.
Enjoy yourself be happy that you have the inclination to be able to talk to large amounts of people to be able to express your thoughts in words, either physically or on paper.
That’s a great thing because it allows you the chance to be able to live beyond yourself and really pass your ideas on to the next person, something real magical about that we’ve been talking about learn, do teach from all the speakers because they’ve all gone through a similar process.
And that kind of brings me to the idea of publishing a book.
I like hearing his process of how he went about doing it. He wanted to get the book out there, he found a publisher that he thought matched him and that’s really important to do.
Chelsea green Publishing is one of the big ones in this space. Everyone I know that it’s been publishing with them seems to have good things to say about them, but it’s important They’re a match for you, you look at the other things that they have published, talk to maybe other authors that have published with them and whether they appreciate the services.
Then go through the process that it takes to get published. Michael’s willing to do that.
So he ended up with Chelsea Green. They in turn, linked him up with speaking opportunities, including the Mother Earth News Fair, and the rest is history. Everything works.
Well, when you’re working with people that are on your side.
The last thing I wanted to point out about what Michael said was his big point at the end about community and about community customers, it ties again, some of the first things he was talking about in regards to the farmers market.
And that direct sales, one on one relationship with people.
It’s like he says, not just for good feelings good for the bottom line. It’s a practical thing.
So whether you’re talking economic or ecological apocalypse, obviously in those situations, it’s good to have some self sufficiency with a homestead or something similar.
And it’s good to have that reliability of personal relationships, personalized customers that you can work with.
Everything online is an echo of physical reality. And a lot of times, people get caught up with the online world as if it’s more real than the real world.
When in reality, everything starts at the real world. And if you get in with a real relationship with your customers, one on one, even at a distance over the telephone is a good start.
But in person, maybe at events like the Mother Earth News Fair, maybe locally at a farmers market or what have you, you’re really hitting on that advantage that the big guys can do.
This is what the Amazon.com’s of the world cannot produce.
They cannot have that one on one relationship, use that advantage.
Use it, because it’s always good insurance in the long run, regardless of what happens on a global scale.
Even if you’re having a bad year as a business, if something bad happened within your business that’s lowering things, having that security to depend on those one on one relationships.
Those are the things that never go away. As long as you don’t burn those bridges.
You’re always going to have those connections out there, don’t take them for granted. And I really do thank Michael for coming on the show.
I hope to find out more about his ideas and concepts and theories as we go ahead in the future.
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I’m Brian Pombo and until next time, I wish you peace, freedom, and success.