Ep 202 Hulse Hill Farm: Mr. Whipple – Please Don’t Squeeze The Cashmere

The Heirloom Expo. For a while now, this event has been held in Santa Rosa in the heart of a big community of artsy, crunchy, healthy people that like good food (and good wine, as all of you who have been to Napa and Santa Rosa can attest). People from around the world come to swap seeds, listen to experts in the field, and find interesting new things to grow. If you go to their Facebook page, you'll find that the mission of the Heirlo...

16 Syys 201948min

Where we learned that Pennsylvania is not only the home of Penn State, but it has green pastures, wonderfully gracious and generous people, and steak to die for (sigh). Dirt that made you want to take your shoes off and run wild. And Elara got to ride in the grain truck -- Rick the combine. Oh. Any by the way, there were big, beautiful, fluffy, majestic Scottish Highland Cattle in various colors everywhere -- one of our absolute favorite animals so far. As far as breeds go, ...

9 Syys 20191h 23min

Temple Grandin is one of the most well-known and professionally-respected names in livestock production today, and has become a pop-culture icon. And for good reason. You might know many things about her. She brought awareness to the general public of the issues relating to autism. She has such a great story that they made a movie out of her story (Claire Danes in the role). She is an author with numerous books to her credit.&nbs...

2 Syys 201930min

Yak Butter Tea -- Three words you never thought would go in a sentence together. And they do, albeit briefly, in this episode of the podcast. We visit the National Western Stock Show in Denver, Colorado to meet up with Steve and Anita Hill, who hail from Sunny Hill Ranch, a self-sufficient farm specializing in raising yaks 100 wild miles outside of Anchorage, Alaska. At the show, we got to see these very hairy and very different anima...

26 Elo 201940min

Our food is alive - or can be. And it's often better for us if it is alive, as the popular rise of probiotics has shown. Science is now discovering that the human microbiome is an amazing place, and that each human being is a world unto itself for the creatures that inhabit it. Even if the little critters do tell us how to think sometimes (yes, that's a real thing). Christopher and Kristen Shockey, fermentistas extraordinaire, sat down with u...

19 Elo 20191h 21min

Of all the sheep we have seen, this one has to be the most unusual. With bold spots and two horns or four (varied shapes, but reaching up toward the sky on the top set, curling in loops on the bottom set), this animal looks very much like something you would see on the tram tour at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. It is thought by some to be the sheep mentioned in Genesis 30, hence the origin of "Jacob" in the naming of the Jacob American Sheep. That Bibli...

12 Elo 201953min

Agricultural events - one of Elara's favorite things to do. Big or little, all shapes and sizes, there is usually no shortage of things to do, see, smell, pet, ride, eat and buy (but not necessarily in that order). A smaller fair of 10,000 to 40,000 people is a much difference experience than a large, elbow-crowding, junk food bonanza of 500,000 to 2 million. Both types of experiences have something wonderful to offer, but at a smaller fair ...

5 Elo 201945min

Of the breeds we have covered in the podcast, this has to be one of the most endangered ones yet, in terms of population size. With 400 individuals but only 250 breeding animals, the Newfoundland Pony is at a crisis point, if they are to be saved from extinction. They came to Newfoundland over the last four centuries and numbered 9,000 in the 1930's, but the exports to France for horse meat in the 1970's and the rise of the machine age took the numbers down to the very, very low s...

29 Heinä 201927min