How to Tell a Farmer’s Stories
Daniel James: [00:00:00] My main relationship this year is with the garden. That’s my sanctuary. That’s the safe space. That’s with everything going on. Like I said, it’s that Candide quote. I just, it’s not the best of all possible worlds, but I’m just gonna cultivate my garden and I’m gonna grow that.
And then for me, I’m lucky enough that I can make marketing content out of my garden. Some clients I have, I get their seeds, others are trying to learn about food. So there’s a dual purpose to it. But the biggest thing at the end of the day is I’m leaving enough space in my garden for a table.
I want a six person table that I can put in there, and then I’m gonna make sure when that peak time comes. I’m bringing friends of mine out there that I wanna say thank you to and sitting ’em in the garden and we’re gonna eat together.
Josh Wilder: Welcome to the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast. At Mother Earth News, for 50 years and counting, we’ve been dedicated to conserving the planet’s natural resources while helping you conserve your financial resources in this podcast we host conversations with experts in the [00:01:00] fields of sustainability, homesteading, natural health, and more to share all about how you can live well wherever you are in a way that values both people and our Mother Earth.
Hello. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends. I’m Josh Wilder, and with me today I have Daniel James, or DJ as he’s better known to friends and family alike. He’s a culinary anthropologist, visual storyteller and raconteur who tells the stories of our soil and those who tend to it.
Thank you for being here today.
Daniel James: Appreciate it, Josh. Thanks, man.
Josh Wilder: When you’re having a conversation with somebody and you think you might be able to help ’em, how do you describe what you’re able to do?
Daniel James: When I talk about what I do now there’s this huge gap between people and food and realizing that good food didn’t sell itself anymore, but stories did. I wanted to start a farm 15 years ago. Traveled the country, learned from everybody, got inspired in different ways and have family that did farming.
And so I became a storyteller [00:02:00] and I got into how I explained it easily to folks is I help tell the stories that allow people to connect to those farms. So that’s everything from, figuring out the brand story or what your story is individually, figuring out how you connect your journey to others and what are those events, what are the visual storytelling elements, photo, video, all of that.
But what are the in-person events too that form that connection? So that it helps bridge that gap. And it’s, I think everybody realizes it’s massive right now. It’s hard to reach your audience.
Josh Wilder: Yeah. So what do you tell people when they tell you that I’m a grower. I’m not a personality
Daniel James: A lot of the times, it’s a whole process too, but usually when somebody says, I am.
Yeah. Like you said, I’m a grower. I’m not a personality. You’re an artist. You still are. And that’s part of the gap for small farmers is how do we help them be seen not as starving artists, but craft artisans. And that’s an entire journey. But the way I [00:03:00] explain it to them is every farmer is an artist.
And part of the problem is they started seeing the storytelling more, just market and knowing the difference between marketing and storytelling. But they saw it just as marketing and that feels sterile because that is what most of that is, as opposed to storytelling and engaging in their own story, which you could farm for 30 years and still, not really figure that out.
But it is incredibly important, not just the story you tell others, but what’s the one you’re telling yourself? How are you getting up every morning and staying motivated to farm? And then you can, once you figure that out, then you can be able to start to distribute that. You figure out who your hero is.
Are you the hero in this story or are they the hero in this story? And then it becomes a lot easier when you’re just trying to express that. But it’s the same thing if you’re a grower, you are an artist, and you are a storyteller. You’re just telling it with these, items that you’re either raising or growing, and you just have to figure out an easier way to be [00:04:00] able to display that to the public.
Josh Wilder: Yeah, I have these conversations too, with authors, right? There are only so many ways you can tell someone how to grow tomatoes, but everyone grows tomatoes in a different context. They have different family members, they have different soil, they have, a different ecosystem and the way those affect and really, it’s those that conglomeration of different stories that gives people all the different options that they have to.
Find what will work for them. Have you had an experience where, you talk to somebody and you know you have a hard time finding their like aha moment. What sort of things do you do and talk to them to get them there?
Daniel James: A lot of the times, so we farmers in general too, and I’m gonna grossly over generalize or stereotype this too usually are very humble.
In a sense, right? Hey I’m not a [00:05:00] subject matter expert. I am just, that’s why they call farming a practice. And so part of this too is helping them to realize how big of a deal this is. I’ve done it in workshops too, where I used to talk about, I. Look at other farmers in pop culture and their stories and where they went to. Luke Skywalker was a moisture farmer on Tatooine and then went on to save the universe.
There’s different ways that you can display that story. So finding the itself importance, that, and this comes into there’s, differences in like brand story and narrative marketing and some of those details, but that, that core brand story, like who are you and what do you sell and how are you different than others?
So a lot of the times what I will try to do is just interview and ask them questions. Why did they get into it? What motivated them? What was the before and after of their own experience? And you start to realize that journey that you went on in the first place. Usually for things like autonomy, for authenticity, whatever it is, others want that too, and they’ll connect with that.
And that’s something that if you miss out on that’s [00:06:00] missing out on the relationship that you can be forming. But a lot of the times that’s where I try to help farmers out with, is figuring out their self-perception first, and then figuring out how to put out that perspective to an audience.
Josh Wilder: Yeah, and I think honestly this sort of practice or exercise can be helpful for people that aren’t market farmers, who aren’t marketing or trying to sell something really like a big part of any, whether you’re just. Putting in a backyard garden, or you’re trying to set up, homestead is trying to figure out your purpose, your journey, and what the most important things are.
And a lot of that is thinking about who you are as a person, what your, what your, motivation is.
Daniel James: Yeah. I’ll be honest too I’ve started doing this recently. Sometimes, you know what you do for work bleeds into other facets of your life. But I’ve even started doing that recently.
Friends of mine that are just having a hard time right in their life. You should have a [00:07:00] therapist, don’t get me wrong. But it’s funny, I’ll interview people too and then derive from that, instead of your love languages, like what are your main narrative voices? There’s books out there too on there’s 12 archetypes for characters in all of storytelling.
There’s only eight plot points, for all of storytelling. But it’s funny how we see ourselves in that. So I’ve interviewed friends about their gardens too, right? Or like, why are you doing that? What is the motivation for that? And you can pull out of that story. You know what those main narrative voices are, and then you start to realize, oh, this is what I’m telling myself, in, in whether you’re a farm, whether you’re an individual with a backyard garden, as opposed to, Hey, this is the conflict.
The story just keeps going downhill and it’s getting worse and I feel like it’s gonna end, at a bad point. It’s no. You have to realize this is book number one in a trilogy, and you’re at the conflict point, which is great. That means you have a story. That means you can come out ahead, and it leads to something else.
And I even did it too where I had actually, I did this over the weekend. I did this with somebody close to me and then used AI in [00:08:00] storytelling sometimes. But I had asked them, who is influential to you? And then I had that person write them a letter just saying keep going. You’re doing great.
This is why it’s inspirational. This is why it’s important. But I think that’s a big part of it too, is that small farms in general have such a hard time, everything is against you, especially if you’re at that scale. So keeping yourself motivated, keeping that narrative too. Are you a guardian, right?
Are you an alchemist? Are you a, what are those? That frame of mind so that it makes it easier to translate to others. I am a steward of the land, whatever that narrative is, the most important person to tell that story to is your yourself, right? Because our perception of how we’re talking to ourselves every day, the stories that we’re telling ourselves about our life, that we have purpose in that.
People can tell that right away if you’ve figured that out for yourself. And if you don’t have that, then it becomes the amount of effort that goes into, we’ll call it, marketing, just compounds itself and [00:09:00] it’s untenable.
Josh Wilder: Yeah. It goes past motivation to inspiration, right? It’s, it’s important to know yourself and know what you’re trying to do, but it is about believing in yourself and believing in what you’re doing, because once it gets hard, if you can go back to that kind of, idea of as the essence of what you’re doing, that’ll help get you to the next step.
Daniel James: And that nowadays, and that’s a big problem in food system in general right now, is, everything’s farm to table.
I heard a comedian talk about this recently, right? What you think is farm to table. Like every restaurant I go into that came from a farm, you just don’t like that the table is bolted to the wall. And then you’re trying to find this authenticity in that and how to display that across two.
Others. And that’s, I think that’s one of the hardest things that, that people have to do. If you wanna be honest, as a farm, be like, I’m a masochist. I don’t know why I go out every day. And it is painful and I love it. I love that [00:10:00] though. Or whatever that story is, that feels very real to you.
People are looking for an emotional connection, right? And to be able to help you on your journey because you’re helping them on their journey. And I think that’s another big, a big point of that, when farms are trying to figure out these stories, the self story is a brand story and there’s great books on that stuff Donald Miller’s one that I found years ago and read through, and that really helped figuring those things out.
But you’re figuring out the, who are you? But even when you figure that out, and if you’re your own hero, that’s great, but as a farm, the customer should be your hero. You are their guide, and that’s where it helps in that, figuring out a narrative, figuring out a story. And then you’re implementing narrative marketing, which usually is like the journey that people are going on.
How do they go from you, the farmer, to what’s on their plate? And seeing that whole story and that whole arc, and again, this connects to anybody else too, if you’re growing a garden, nowadays too. I’m hearing more talk about like victory gardens and [00:11:00] some of these ideas coming back.
It’s funny, are you doing it for the rugged individualism in a sense of just for yourself and your family, or is this part of community and you’re doing it as a conduit to be able to connect to others? Because I do that personally. I grow a big garden. I make 10 gallons of pesto every year.
I freeze it. I’m not eating that. I’m gonna go ahead and every time I have people over for dinner, I give one of those out as a reminder about how we connect, how I made something for them, one of them to have that put time into that. I don’t even do gifts at the holidays anymore. I just give people pesto whenever I see them.
But how you’re connecting and for me, as an individual, that’s part of my, call it my narrative marketing. They know the journey of the garden where that is, but I want them cooking with it, eating something, consuming it, and that becomes something very relatable to them.
So yeah, and it’s it’s always so funny how much this connects from like the bigger picture down to this individual level, but if you frame it a [00:12:00] little differently right, and don’t see it as marketing. How am I selling myself or as the farm? How am I selling my product? As opposed to telling that emotional story where people are able to relate to something ’cause they’re going through the same thing too.
Josh Wilder: Yeah, and I think a lot of what I’ve realized and is helpful for me to put it in the context of education, right? Yeah. Because you could even say any sort of marketing. Is education, because you’re educating the public about a product, right?
Yeah. And if you get narrative storytelling into that, then you are, you really are you’re educating a community about a piece of that community.
Yeah. What you said about being a guide, like it’s about sharing your knowledge with your customers, sharing the story of where their food comes from, and sharing the food itself. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think a lot about, a lot of that is also [00:13:00] educating the consumer. Like I think obvi obviously that’s a big part of, farmer’s markets or farm to table restaurants, really any time that consumers get within, understanding distance of a farmer, education is a big part of that.
Daniel James: Yeah, I do. Usually what I try to emphasize is education is important. You can give people information. You can give them answers, but what is one better question that you can give them? Do you empower people to think for themselves or allow them to feel involved, emotionally invested? And usually that can be a simple question.
And when we talk about, this is mostly I like, visual storytelling, but part of that is, say you’re a small farm at the farmer’s market, what can you imagine them coming up to and wanting to ask you about? Because that’s getting them involved as opposed to just, regurgitating your elevator pitch more or less.
So I think that’s that involvement aspect. And how do you encourage that? How do you get people to take an [00:14:00] active interest? You and I have talked about this, but people that say I don’t have a green thumb, don’t wanna get into it, or whatever else like that. Curiosity is the most important thing.
’cause if they start asking. They’re getting involved on their own motivations as opposed to, trying to let’s put this into three seconds so we can keep their attention and it long enough to get some information across. Hope they retain that and maybe tell somebody else there’s not as much of a chance of that.
Josh Wilder: Yeah, for sure. I think, I think it’s really important for people to. Have an understanding of who their audience is, obviously, and who it is they’re talking to. I think that’s something that people don’t think about as much as they ought to. And it really, it, it really and you do it without realizing it.
You, it’s like you’ll say you talk to your grandma different than you talk to your best friend. Like you’re who you’re with and who’s important to you and who you want that message to go to is, it makes a big difference.
Daniel James: Yeah. And to your point too about, [00:15:00] just the information aspect too, there, you want to compare this to food, it’s gotta, how are you giving something that has is nourishing, right?
If some senses, if you’re just if you’re not telling a story you’re just giving people calories. Calories can still be seen as education, right? But I think there’s a more valuable version of that. That you can be able to provide to others so that, again, it’s not just let’s say food or what you’re selling, but like that’s actually nourishing somebody in a deeper way that they’re gonna appreciate and wanna come back for.
And knowing your audience is one of the biggest things. And sometimes with farms, it is kinda everybody that eats, it’s Ooh. Yes, to some extent, but trying to have a better idea of that is gonna save you time. So you can cast this really wide net, but you should be looking at, who you are trying to get to buy your material.
And this kind of falls into a whole ‘nother thing too. Every small farm now is a luxury brand by default, because it is rare, it is personal. It, [00:16:00] it’s this unique thing. But, sometimes you’re a farm that does have to sell to at a higher price point, and you gotta know what those people are looking for when they’re trying to buy.
And I also see the same thing on the other end farms that wanna feed their neighbors in the community and, missing the marks sometimes on how they’re reaching out to those folks, people that have food insecurity. It’s really about quantity and understanding that and empathizing with that.
So I, and I always say this too, but any opportunity where you’re engaging with. Consumers, and maybe that’s on social media, that’s not necessarily the best. But any in-person events or, the market stuff like that too. As much as you’re trying to provide them with a better question, you could be asking those people too for better questions, right?
Like what? I. How do I connect with you? What are you curious about? What do you wanna learn more about? And finding those things out, because a lot of the times we have that miscommunication gap. I used to talk about that with chefs and farmers was always my favorite.
Like, why aren’t more chefs and [00:17:00] farmers like collaborating? Then when you think about it, the chef, they’re working on the weekends, right? They’re working late. Some of them have extracurricular activities after they get off shift and they’re going to bed at four or five in the morning. Meanwhile, the farmer’s waking up at four, five in the morning to get to the farm.
So there’s a gap in reaching that market and being able to translate needs and wants. And a lot of the times the restaurants just think, oh, we can put your name on a chalkboard sign and that’ll help. You Never met a farm or very rarely, but where they say yeah, that chalkboard sign, somebody called me and said, I saw your name on the sign.
I wanted to buy your stuff. So those gaps in and that’s a B2B, or business to business. Audience, but that can get missed out on too. And the same thing with, consumers in general. You can really miss the mark and then if you do, it’s kinda like you’re still putting in all this effort.
And I don’t wanna underestimate this, it is so much time that goes into storytelling, but I find that if you spend more time on what you’d call the pre-production side, figuring out [00:18:00] what our story is, but also what our consumer’s story is. It gets a lot easier after that. It’s not so much a struggle of like day-to-day trying to like search around in your phone for a photo for an hour, and then what do I write about this and how do I tell, like figuring out what those narrative lines are, what your through narrative is, and then being able to put that out so you have a better chance of actually connecting with your audience.
And that’s the fun thing about the storytelling too, is that I think it. You have an idea initially, but it actually helps you refine out who your audience is by seeing who engages back with that story. It’s not a stagnant thing. You don’t just come up with a story and it’s done. It’s an ongoing narrative, right?
We’re all on a journey somewhere, and that’s goes back to that, but that’s what I help these farms do in general is figure out what their journey is. And honestly, my self story that I tell myself, I am Gandalf. That’s what I do. I just sit there and like instigate problems, put them in the situation of it, and then watch them as they go off [00:19:00] on this journey and then, make notes.
Josh Wilder: That’s great. Yeah. A lot of what we’re talking about is that story and narrative and the word that gets thrown around here a lot is edutainment and oh. Merge between education and entertainment. ’cause really that’s the key. It is, it’s, you can, you don’t want to be dry, but you don’t want to be, all saccharin. It’s a spectrum and finding that balance, and it’s gonna be different depending on what you’re talking about. When you talk about your journey, I, that just sounds the goals that we have to get to, information to people, and then you think about the audience and obviously a big part of that is the platform.
And your audience is gonna be different, like for a farmer. There are reasons that some people choose a CSA over a farmer’s market over getting their local food from a restaurant, yep. And to think about why you’re in that space and why they’re in that space and where that relationship [00:20:00] happens and why that’s a big part of it.
Daniel James: I can give two examples. Would you, how’d you say it? Edutainment. Yeah, edutainment. So on one end, I always thought it was funny early on when I was doing all of this, I had thought at one point, oh, it’s so hard for imagining an accountant and a farmer talking, and the farmer is sitting there going.
I could never be an accountant. I could never relate to that. There’s no way I could do that. And the accountant’s sitting there, they going God, a farmer, I could never farm. I wouldn’t know what to do about that. The funny thing is both of them could do either job, but there’s a gap in being able to relate to each other.
But I thought that accountant has a dog, and I’m sure they look at their dog and they could relate to. That farm that my dog could be a farm dog. And so then I thought, oh, it would be great to help people relate to the farms. Like just have the farm animals do voiceover, right? Two cats.
One with the voice of Julia Childs and the other is Mrs. Doubtfire, and they’re arguing about how to make a salad, right? Or Doug from up, it’s a farm dog giving the tour of the farm and calling everything a squirrel from fat squirrels, which are cows [00:21:00] flying squirrels and chickens. Yeah, that’s just straight entertainment, right?
That wouldn’t really teach anybody about anything. But it’s finding that relatable moment that I have a pet. I have an animal, and like my closest connection to possibly animals is this domesticated animal. And those are out on those farms too. They usually have jobs or tasks, right? So that’s just straight entertainment.
Fast forward. I did an event last year. It was a 100-person Hobbit-themed dinner because I talked to a farm and they’re named after a Shire Folk Farm. They’re named after that narrative. And I thought, oh, that’s funny. Like in pop culture. You have, hobbits Tolkien used to write a lot about the industrialized world, versus the natural world.
And that seems like a strong parallel to what we talk about in the food system in general. So I made a big dinner event. Had a chef that I work with and all built, rebuilt out the set for Bilbo’s birthday basically, but that’s taking pop [00:22:00] culture, and I did all of that, a whole farm to table dinner. It allowed us to do marketing for the farms because we had a marketing table, a food stylist, videographers captured the whole thing.
But in reality, it was so that I could give this two minute speech about small farmers, as the small folk in this world. In, in the world of the big people and trying to be able to struggle against that and their relationship to the land and the things that they cultivate. Good food, good people, but finding those parallels.
So that was my version of trying to take, how do we take entertainment and tie that into this experience that people had where yeah, they’re dressed up. Yeah, it’s a fantasy world, but they were able to sit down together, eat together. All of this stuff was from these local farms. I did what I could to sell the idea of the farms on that day.
But that wasn’t the main goal, right? And that’s thinking about what is the main narrative, right? The main goal is us getting together and having these shared experiences and remembering that it, maybe you do need to do a [00:23:00] spectacle in some kind of way, but it allowed people to connect into that.
And it wasn’t all, it was just hobbit, no shoes, right? Feel the ground, touch the ground eat that food, eat it around other folks that are, same thing very much. Connecting to each other and make it a memorable time ’cause it’s so important to us getting together. So I, and I think there’s a balance.
Those things take a huge amount of effort to put together, but that’s how far storytelling can go, you can tie in these different elements of meeting people where they are. What is the beachhead? ‘Cause that’s another thing, honestly, is the fact of when we try to get into, here’s my whole story and everything about me.
Ooh. Oh boy. Imagine that first date that is way too much. There is a progression to how you introduce, what is that beachhead? What is that thing that allows somebody to ask you a question or get engaged, feel comfortable enough to be vulnerable? And I do, I talk about that a lot.
Farmer’s [00:24:00] markets, people that walk by farmer’s markets. If you don’t know food, this ga the problem. We have that gap between people in the food system. It is intimidating to walk by and you’re afraid of what question you’re gonna ask. Am I gonna sound dumb, or am I gonna, so taking away some of that is really just how you relate to others or finding out where they’re at.
Meet ’em there, and then take ’em on that journey. That’s the M.O. of the whole thing.
Josh Wilder: Yeah. When you’re working with someone and you’re trying to get them to get down to that beach head. What’s an exercise that you do with ’em? What’s one of the worst projects maybe that you do with them to get to boil it down?
Daniel James: Clients in general. The way I start off is I just do a full interview. I do an hour long interview and just try to find out, just like I was meeting them. It’s part of, you know what this all connects back to too. I want a dinner guest. I want to, I wanna talk to them in that way.
And so when I’m trying to help people find out what their beachhead is, [00:25:00] that actually comes little bit later. The first thing is they have to, know what their brand story is, right? Who are they? Why are they doing this, as opposed to just, what am I trying to sell? And it’s some of the problems too, when you make, and you know this stuff too, but like when you’re making movies or trying to do a shoot, it’s really important that pre-production is so important to get to the point before you’re, the camera is on, let’s say, or you’re engaging with that other person. So for them, my exercise is taking them through a full interview.
Deriving out what those, main narrative languages are, what their story is. And then for each, I could give it like an example, but for each type of business, everything from a baker, trying to source locally to a small farm, trying to sell eggs, that market differentiator is incredibly important for them to just be able to stand out amongst the rest of them.
Then you’re looking for that beachhead. But if that makes sense you have to really refine everything [00:26:00] down first and figure it out. Take the mess. That is an entire life story. Refine that thing down. And then once I have that as a character, then I can let them know, if I know what their main narrative is, their character archetype, let’s call it and that they’re the guardian.
So every interaction they have with somebody else, I want them to see themselves as, the guardian of their land. And of the, that narrative of holding onto these heritage food ways. And then that’s how they’re gonna be able to meet people as that person and see themselves in that way.
And then same thing, send them on their journey or be. Whatever kind of guide they’re gonna be. But yeah, usually it’s, I call it the accordion process. You’re taking everything and you wanna smush it all down to be as clear and simple as possible. And then that’s where it starts to open back up with, where their beach head is.
Josh Wilder: That’s great. Let’s talk about your journey for a second. What can you think of what exactly it was that got you [00:27:00] very interested in food systems?
Daniel James: Yeah, it was these bigger stories. That’s what kicked it off for me. It was Seeing Food Inc and Omnivores Dilemma and some of these other things that I was reading and same thing.
It wasn’t my end all be all. It just, it got me so curious. And my grandfather was an immigrant farmer that came to this country. I did not care really. I thought, I needed to do well in life to not be a farmer. Which is a historical global story for a while, and it’s led us to some of these problems.
But, I decided at one point in college I wanted to grow basil. And then it just, it didn’t stop. And part of that was wanting to find a fulfilling life. I wasn’t getting fulfilled by the career paths that I was on just prior to this. And I didn’t think I was going to, enjoy that.
And I wanted to find. Purpose in some sense. And connecting and relating. I set out in my early twenties on a trip that was, went way longer than it should have, but it was like nine months, 25,000 [00:28:00] miles farming cross country. And in that decade I feel like a lot of people did that, like through wooing or otherwise.
But I think I was trying to find out what kind of life I wanted to live, what was a rich life, what did that actually mean to me? And more importantly, like. How was I going to feel a sense of community? I’m military brat, grew up moving all the time. So it was this kind of, to be honest, projecting in a sense.
And then I traveled around being like, I think I wanna start a farm. Think I wanna have that relationship. And I think I want to use that to cultivate community. And food is just a conduit. I think it’s the best vehicle for that, for connecting people. And you just can see over time, I would notice people aren’t getting together and eating much anymore, let alone cooking together.
And once I started doing a lot of those things, then you started to realize, oh, this helps me have a better understanding and appreciation for where my food comes from, where the source is. And I mentioned this before, but I think before I was just, using food as a way [00:29:00] to get calories.
And now food is such an empowering vehicle for all these other things in my life, including feeling like I belong somewhere. I. And when you talk about narratives and stories, that’s one of my main things. We can, this isn’t a therapy session, but like when you get into, I don’t feel like I belong anywhere.
Always an outsider, all this fun stuff. Food is my vehicle for being able to connect with others and for me, the natural world, which keeps me sane in what I find to be a very crazy world. And one of my main narratives I pull from Voltaire Canid, in that all these terrible things happen.
And at the end of it, it comes out, it is not the best of all possible worlds, but we must all cultivate our garden. And I took that a little too literally. Now I have a huge garden. I have a company that does a storytelling for it, but I think it is one of the biggest things and. And that’s a lot of what I do is I help people cultivate their narrative garden.
And then because I wanna see those things proliferate. [00:30:00] And I noticed that when we lose all of that, we lose culture, we lose community, and everything feels so sterile and pointless. So I think there’s a bigger point to all that, but that’s how I got into it.
Josh Wilder: I think that’s great. No I think that’s excellent.
I think that’s a great place to leave it. I’m, I wanna go shoot more plants. Yeah,
Daniel James: exactly. Gardening it’s starting to hit spring, so it’s that time too. Oh yeah.
Josh Wilder: We actually have baby chicks hatching in our office right now.
Daniel James: You have baby chicks in your office? We have a
Josh Wilder: live, yeah, we live stream it this morning.
Yeah,
Daniel James: that is too
Josh Wilder: funny.
Daniel James: No, I that’s great. That’s the kind of workplace I’d wanna be that sounds like Oh, that’s great. A happy workplace. Yeah. So are these aren’t for broilers, I’m assuming.
Josh Wilder: No. They’re layers. Yeah, they’re Okay. Cool. They’re all different heritage breeds and Yeah. And then we filmed something on how to trap neuter and release cats this morning.
Also for like barn cats or what? Just feral cats. Yeah. To conserve the [00:31:00] bird population.
Daniel James: Oh, fair enough. That is a connecting point for a second there. I was like, what you guys. Getting into that sounds actually, that sounds like an interesting one. What’s coming up then? What’s next?
Josh Wilder: Oh, we have a, we’re actually doing a whole course on birding later this year.
We have a you’re actually a part of a greenhouse gardening course we’re putting together, which we’re excited about with Leah Webb. That’ll be exciting.
Daniel James: Yep. Yep. Down in North Carolina. I think that’s gonna be a good one. And I’ve been keeping up with her. I think there’s just it’s funny seeing how many people are coming out of the woodworks right now too, and wanting to learn about like, how do I garden?
How do I build this? And to me it’s the same thing with the garden by the way. When you’re like, I just wanna have all this food. That’s the main part of the story, planning it out. You guys have courses, I believe on that, how to plan out your garden.
Josh Wilder: Oh yeah. Nicky Schauder.
Her book’s coming out and you helped us put together the course with her last year
Daniel James: hey, I was gonna ask that too. I never, individual gardeners, I don’t usually have, but have you ever had [00:32:00] somebody that you feel like did a really good job of, what I wanna grow in my garden is the product, let’s say that end thing that’s coming out of it.
But what is the narrative of my garden? What does it represent?
Josh Wilder: Yeah. Yeah. I’m trying to think. There’s been a couple of them. I know I’ve talked to Amy Rose full about this. Yeah, she’s definitely has thought a lot about like narratives and her, traditions and she’s absolutely a storyteller.
I’m sure you know this.
Daniel James: Oh yeah.
Josh Wilder: But yeah, I think, it’s, I think those kind of gardeners like that. Is really where like community stories come from. Those don’t generally get used for, what they would consider marketing, which, marketing has a well, has a, can give people a bad taste in their mouth.
But it’s really, like I said, it’s education, it’s storytelling it’s
Daniel James: right. If you think of it as a story, it doesn’t sound, I think marketing just sounds very sterile. Yeah. But I do think it’s funny. Like I was saying, this year, especially. And I [00:33:00] think in the next couple years to come. I was thinking about this last night a little bit too, like they call it Victory Gardens in World War ii.
People, they, domestic produce and all this fun stuff, but it’s tied into a war effort. What’s gonna be the new name for what comes this year and next year? It’s kinda like this next wave of a Back to the land movement, what is the Victory Garden going to be called in this iteration?
Because Yeah, I know we thought,
Josh Wilder: we talked a lot about it during the pandemic, a lot of people called resilience gardens. I heard that a lot.
Daniel James: Resilience gardens. It’s so funny because the name always, it has a lot to do with, is it punching up or punching down? Resilience, is like a defense posture as opposed to victory sounds like a a win. Yeah. So it’s funny seeing that, like what is the motivation to, to do that?
And to be honest with you it’s the same thing. Like you, you do have to convince people to treat themselves well some of the times. And then how do you entertain? Because right now we’re working with. Three second attention spans and short form things [00:34:00] that have so much nuance in them that it’s, people want black and white answers, but truth lies in the gray.
So where do you meet them to deal
Josh Wilder: with that? In person events do a lot, I think and I know you know that, but but they’re hard to do. They’re hard to get people out to. They’re, there’s a lot of challenges, but frankly, in person events I think is where when you can get people together, they can find commonalities.
And that’s really what gray areas are, so that’s, I think that’s key. Yeah, I would love if there was a digital space that gave the same thing. Trust me, I’ve tried to find it.
Daniel James: Yeah, I know. It’s that question too. Would you rather have a million viewers or five ambassadors, and I would pick five ambassadors every time.
But that emotional connection for somebody to, for something to actually sink in this world of just, we’re over inundated with information. So yeah, doing something tangible, doing something in [00:35:00] person. And the goal at the end of the day, we’re storytellers trying to reach people on digital platforms to have tangible experiences.
Yeah. It’s an oxymoron. Trust
Josh Wilder: me. Yeah,
Daniel James: I know. It’s so much fun. But you gotta meet ’em somewhere. And that’s what I mean. This is where you meet them. This is not where you interact and fully develop that relationship. This is just the wider net. And then it’s, yeah, this is
Josh Wilder: speed dating.
Daniel James: We try to stop doing that with clients in general.
Most of ’em are a little bit older, but it is so funny how often I’ll make analogies to dating apps in general. And I’m like, look, these four, like I do this with those four photos. It’s I. A picture of you where I can see your face, I need a picture that gives me context. Give me a better question to start the conversation.
Otherwise, this is at the farmer’s market booth. People just walk by and go swipe left, because they’re, would you like to try it? Swipe left, creepy. It’s, it’s hard to be human sometimes or have those human relationships and. Make it something real, but it does, [00:36:00] it feels an awful a lot like dating some of the times.
Let’s, why don’t we take ’em out somewhere exciting and fun? I don’t know.
Josh Wilder: Yeah. And if anyone’s out there dating, I’m sure they know how bad it is out there. I’ve heard there’s actually a romantic recession. Have you heard this? No. Why? Which is the most people over 40 are single, that there ever have been.
Daniel James: Oh, it makes sense to me, but yeah, I just never heard of that. A romantic recession. That’s really funny. Yeah. Same thing I’m trying to do, I try to do dates where it’s like, Hey, do you either want to cook together or garden together? And I will tell you mix results on that one. I was gonna say,
Josh Wilder: do you get garden together ever?
Daniel James: Yeah. Yeah. Some of the times most of the time it’s just develops into friendships, but a lot of the times it’s the fact that I. You used to go out to see a movie somewhere do, and you don’t get to interact. You don’t get to do something nowadays. It’s like, how do you find something creative to do together?
Mostly because then that tells you a [00:37:00] lot about, people’s thought processes, how they engage, how they interact, whatever you’re just trying to figure out. But it does sometimes feel a little adolescent. It’s like, all right, we’re gonna draw a picture. Let’s see, what everybody comes up with and hopefully that can tell me more about you.
But no, not a whole lot of success on that one. But same thing, that’s my main relationship this year is with the garden. That’s my sanctuary. That’s the safe space. That’s with everything going on. Like I said, it’s that Candide quote. I just, it’s not the best of all possible worlds, but I’m just gonna cultivate my garden and I’m gonna grow that.
And then for me, I’m lucky enough that I can make marketing content out of my garden. Some clients I have, I get their seeds, others are trying to learn about food. I, so there’s a dual purpose to it. But the biggest thing at the end of the day is I’m leaving enough space in my garden for a table.
I want a six person table that I can put in there, and then I’m gonna make sure when that peak time comes. I’m bringing friends of mine out there that I wanna say thank you to and sitting ’em in the garden and we’re [00:38:00] gonna eat together. See where it comes from. I did that last year too and I had a poet in town who, she’s great.
She does these like live poems, like at the farmer’s market and I had her write an ode to my tomatoes so that I could at the dinner, recite my ode to the, just to say thank you to them. They’re sentient, so just tell ’em they did a great job this year. I’m sorry about the blight. We fought through that.
There was a bit of a drought too, but they did good. And I just wanted to say thank you and for the other people at dinner, it might’ve been a little weird, but That’s okay. It wasn’t for them, it was for the tomatoes. Yeah. No, it’s not just stories for me. It’s not stories for my friends. I talk to the food too.
Josh Wilder: Hey, they love it. Yeah. So we’ll see where that goes. I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes too. And like I said, it’s it’s always a pleasure.
Daniel James: Thank you. Always enjoy talking with you. I will look forward to the next time too. Alright, thanks all.
Josh Wilder: [00:39:00] Thanks for joining us for this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends. To listen to more podcasts and get connected on our social media, visit www.motherearthnews.com/podcast. You can also email us at Podcast@OgdenPubs.com with any questions or suggestions. Our podcast production team includes Kenny Coogan, Alyssa Warner, and myself, Josh Wilder.
Music for this episode is the song Hustle by Kevin MacLeod. The Mother Earth News and Friends podcast is a production of Ogden Publications.
Jessica Anderson: Until next time, don’t forget to love your Mother.
