Part 2 Salsa Contest and More 

A favorite recipe you like to cook from the garden?

Salsa. Love to make salsa when you can make the ingredients

• tomatoes
• garlic
• onions
• cilantro
• jalapeños

and now garlic, I throw some garlic in there too! I really enjoy that. We had a little contest last year, actually the year before, where we brought in some different salsas from  my brother-in-law and my mother-in-law and I won!

It’s part of our awesome April! We’re holding our second annual Salsa Fiesta contest, and we’re gonna do it during earth week too!

We’re gonna put up our salsas, and we have a couple of folks, and we have a semi-pro salsa guy, and he through in a couple of his salsas and we’re all gonna test, maybe well get a couple of more. I said my crown is on the line, so I put in $50!! We’ll see who the winter is!

So who’s judging it?

My family, but I’m gonna be bringing in a couple of other folks… it’s part of Awesome April!

Do you want to say something about Earth Day? Cause it’s coming up, today is April 7th, so barely 2 weeks away from tomorrow! 

It’s part of our Awesome April that we got going on?!

What’s Awesome April?

We got the cards… this month … everything is lignin up, I relaunched my podcast… broadcasting a new one. Julie and I are going to 2 different schools, and the kids are gonna plant some seeds … teach the about gardening… 2 different classes in 2 different cities! During Earth Week, talk a little more about gardening, not dumping roundup

Some are in an ag environment, used to Mom’s and dad’s going out in the fields and maybe don’t even think about gardens and stuff so just trying to introduce it and not beat it over the their head,  and just have to be fun! It doesn’t have to be this huge thing! A giant productiong! Just put this in and see what happens?!

Plus I have got some other guests for the podcast, really just starting to branch out.

Julie’s gonna put some posts out on the Small Scale Life Blog; A fun month lined up,here gonnabe productive…

So how’d you find the schools, in 2 different cities!

Part of my job, my real job is to do some public ed around railroad tracks, we don’t want kids going out and playing and so I go out and do some safety, great crossing railroad safety, and I’ve gone to schools and we have a lot of teachers in the family, family members teaching at different schools… and they were like you could come back and teach about gardening. So i said ok that sounds like a great idea. It’s a great opportunity, one of the schools, kids living in apartments! It’ll be great and it’s lots of fun!’

That’s awesome and a lot of my guest have said, when I was a kid I didn’t garden, and if your students etc resist a little…

Boy scout groups/4 h/church groups they do this stuff, I imagine, i was never in 4h.

people… there’s ar real interest right now … we’re so crazy in our lives. …and look back and maybe they think my grandparents used to do this…comes back to 2009

my wife read to the kids Little house on the Prairie… and there’s some amazing stuff

not that I want to churn butter… but don’t want to have to rely on the grocery store all the time… It’s nice to see … I’m seeing a lot of little gardens popping up all over…

A lot of people are fearful or resistant to social media and the online world… 

It’s fun to see the kids lightin’ up and the kids get so excited and they really want to learn and they really want ot learn. They get excited when they have people in the classroom!

A favorite internet resource?

I would love everybody to stop in on the Small Scale Life !

And remember if you like it give Tom a 5 star review because that would help people find him!

there’s some really good stuff out there

Gary Peliarcheck

Rusted Vegetable Garden

he has a lot of really cool videos on YouTube

He really walks you through how he’s doing things… He has a whole channel set up for new gardeners and he just walks you through things…

There’s some Facebook groups, they’re always the know it all trolls but a lot of other people really helpful, a lot of people are in the same boat as you they have problems…. they have a  bug

I run a couple including the Small Scale Life Group  and Im in a bunch, another one that’s good is the Regenerative Ag Facebook group… chickens and ducks… multiple ways to go about it

2 Facebook groups

I’ve got the Small Scale Gardening FB Group that’s all about gardening stuff…

I put a lot of content out there, Instagram photos and I have a lot of family friends and others, who want to share… I found that with the Facebook page it was just me telling my story all the time…. other people they have a story tell to… I want to give them the opportunity to plug in, ask questions provide their information and that’s been kind of fun!

I run another one that’s called the Minnesota Wisconsin Regenerative Ag fb group, The Regenerative Ag group is it’s up to about 12-13k people, its a lot of permaculture conversations and  got animals and discussions and the whole shmear…

I thought, there’s people in my area, that want to talk about local agriculture  issues, but they might want to meet up? My thought was let’s build a network of people here in WI

that are all together that are all thinking the same way and maybe want to collaborate

• barn raising
• plant a bunch of trees

It’s called the Minnesota Wisconsin Regenerative Ag fb group. You don’t have to live in Minnesota or Wisconsin…

It’s true, my friend Katie who has that Facebook Group Course says that all the time.. the difference between a page and a group is that in a group people can talk to each other and so fi you are in the Organic Gardener Podcast group and you live in Kentucky and there are 6 other people from Kentucky you might decide to meet up… they can comment but Facebook

to develop a group of people who are interested in

… you;ll find that only  10% are really active but many are reading…

I know in my podcasting group they always talk about in 30 seconds you’re gonna get an answer if you post a question and it’s true!

Raingutter grow system book Larry Hall from MN he started it, it’s really interesting what people are coming up with, it’s really creative…

Another site is Growing North with Pam Tallon she’s up in Thunder Bay, Canada about Greenhouses in the Northern hemisphere.

I’m gonna invite everyone to join the  Organic Gardener Podcast Facebook Community!

A favorite reading material-book, mag, blog/website etc you can recommend?

Definitely, still looking at Square Foot Gardening… Mel Bartholemew, it featured one of the guys was a local guy from here in St Lewis Park, MN so it was fun to bump into that guy! I still look at that book full ofreally good information.

I also like Curtis Stone‘s The Urban Farmer: Growing Food for Profit on Leased and Borrowed Land a relatively new book it has a lot of detail on how he runs his business.

Then there’s

Bret L Markham I know Bret, very detailed guy, He has a lot of good info

• on composing rotation
• timing
• pests

probably the most expensive of the three.

Mini Farming: Self Sufficiency on 1/4 acre

If you have a business to you have any advice for our listeners about how to sell extra produce or get started in the industry?

I don’t have even on the blog or podcast, I’m not selling anything yet, I don’t have any affiliates yet, I’m just finding that voice, documenting what I’m doing…

there’s a couple good books out there… 
Platform by Michael Hyatt is a really good one for getting started blogging.

I love Michael Hyatt he was huge in my website building. That’s a great book!

Michael Hyatt his site is great for  staying focused and being consistent. A lot of good information on that site. A big thing about blogging is on consistency, people get busy, so I find it best if you put a post on Tuesday.

find your site

podcasting I haven’t and a lot of guests yet… I like your schedule calendar….

I got that schedule-once from my podcasting group, when I first joined some people were like if you want to practice sign up with my calendar and I was like wow! That’s awesome it costs me like $9 a month and it’s amazing. It’s funny when they call me to sub, I’m always like IDK let me look at my calendar cause people can just book their own times… and also if they call me to sub or go to a workshop or something I can block out the whole day on my phone easily…

for selling produce that kind of things, try craigslist, put up an add…

gage price points, if people start calling just say, oh, gosh sorry, we’re sold out… It’s a good way to see if your asking too much or your too high, it’s one way to gage interest and

people put eggs out there… I haven’t checked it yet, but you can start to develop a list, take their info, and then when you do have some product

I listened to this woman on Biz Woman complaining the other day who has a business where she just talks about eggs and she said when I first started out I think I made like 40¢ an hour for the first couple of years, but now she’s making 6 figures!!!

kitchen’s pretty small, so I have a

turkey boiler a flame

turkey burner

cook in a pot’

water bath canning out there one night and it was midnight and my son had these friends over and one kids like oh your dad’s out there … doing more crazy stuff!

You have so much energy! I don’t know how you do it all!

My wife thinks I’m crazy sometimes.

As we are peaking an hour and 40 minutes since we got back on the phone!!! The only complaint I really get is fix your sound… I drop my sound a lot, trailing off after my sentences and looking out my windows… my listeners don’t complain about it being too long but they do complaining about sound…

Final question- if there was one change you would like to see to create a greener world what would it be? For example is there a charity or organization your passionate about or a project you would like to see put into action. What do you feel is the most crucial issue facing our planet in regards to the environment either in your local area or on a national or global scale?

I thought about this one… Im really big into staying local… though my various projects,  I’ve seen what a group of local people can do, they start small. Everything’s too big. I can’t go to Washington and fix what’s happening there. I can start to do things in my yard, I can make a cool garden and people will stop by and say, “what are you doing there?”

you’ve created a world back here

Im not using any fertilizer

this is a bee friendly yard

your doing it

then you get people to come into your world

then they start to ask question

then they’ll try it

then maybe you can go help them do it

some of the bureaucracies and charities

you can do something small

you and your neighbors there

small

really small person

doing small things

im impacting

get behind it

see your doing things

envisoin Th. envision

a lot of people

immediate neighborhood

movements start by one or two people getting active…

keep making organic stuff…

That was awesome! IT reminds me of some of my guests, Joe the Mason (who’s in the Organic Gardener Podcast Facebook Community) and then also Bill McDorman who said don’t worry about Monsanto the best thing you can do is save your seeds, and worry about them we’ll take them all back! 

As long as the

Also listeners I want to remind you just because it says organic, the best dirt I could find was at my local store.

Get to know your local egg person, meat person and you’ll find out more!

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