Episode Summary: This segment is from an episode with Jason Angell who has created his personal and professional life centred around ecological living.

They discuss how Jason and his wife Jocelyn came about launching the Long Haul Farm, a community-supported agriculture farm which serves food to the community and trains new farmers. 

Jason and his wife also started The Ecological Citizens Project, which connects the work they’re doing to the wider Hudson Valley community.

They talked about the role of municipalities in helping communities live a more sustainable life as Jason is running for the Town Board of Philipstown.

Go here to listen to the full episode

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From Garrison, Philipson on the east coast of the US, Jason practises sustainable living and agriculture, including running a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program and diversified, free-range livestock program, and making, baking, canning, pickling, cutting, cooking, growing and mending various things.

From Langley in British Columbia, Canada, Jenn is a Minister, Coach, Writer and Community Connector, helping people help themselves.  

Brian is a Real Estate Title Insurance Professional and Goat Farmer in the US. 

Leekei is a fashion business founder, a business coach, an international development expert and podcaster from Paris, France.  

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The CarbonSessions Podcast is produced and edited by Leekei Tang, Steve Heatherington and Rob Slater.

I'm gonna let you describe a little

bit about yourself and all the

2

things you've been doing, and then

we're gonna start, uh, diving into

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some questions about those things.

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So I'll turn the microphone over to you.

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. Okay.

6

Sounds great.

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So good to be with you all.

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So how to summarize, I guess, my life

and what I do, uh, in a nutshell.

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So, you know, I, I would say kind of

when I think about where I am today, I

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generally think about how for about 10

years of my life I was working in the

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political arena and the policy arena.

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It was directing policy for the

working families party, which is.

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A very progressive party in New

York state, living in New York City.

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And I kind of had a mini, I wouldn't

say a midlife crisis cause I don't know

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if I was at midlife yet, but I had a

crisis in the sense of if a lot of the

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problems we face, whether they're climate

related or social inequity related, a

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lot of the problems we face can't all be

solved by policy and they require some

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level of personal life transformation.

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Uh, you know, what was my.

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Doing about that.

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And so my wife and I ended up moving

to Argentina for about two years and

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we ended up on a farm in Argentina.

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That was a beautiful place

run by a beautiful family.

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And we both got hooked into farming and it

became a way to kind of live some of the

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values we thought that were necessary in

order to build a more regenerative world.

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Jason Angel: And so we came back.

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And started a farm on family land

about 10 years ago now, and just

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got involved in a bunch of stuff.

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I mean, I think one thing about

climate activism, I think about

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is that it's not just about the

environment, it's about people.

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It's about how we treat the land.

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It's about a lot of different things,

and so, Since we started the farm, which

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serves food to the community and trains

new farmers, we've started a nonprofit

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called The Ecological Citizens Project,

which connects the work we're doing

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to the wider Hudson Valley community.

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And then a year or so ago, I must

have, uh, fallen down and hit my head.

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I decided to run for local town board and.

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That is because with the problems we

face, I've kind of learned as I've

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gotten older, there's no one solution.

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And so we really need as many

tools in the toolbox as possible.

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And so I just want to explore

what you can do at the local

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government level around that issue.

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So, um, that, that is it.

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That's, that's, that's my life.

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In a nutshell.

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That's great.

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Well, I know there's even more to it

than all that, but, uh, but that's a lot

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of exciting things that you're up to.

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So this farm is a place that you and

your family live and you're raising

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your family there at the farm.

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Can you tell us a little bit

about what a day is like for you?

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I'm sure it's very different in the

deep winter versus the spring versus

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the summer as the seasons change, but

give us some sort of context for life

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for the angel family there at, at the.

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and it's, and it's called Long Haul Farm.

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It is, yeah, it's called Long Haul Farm,

and we're located in Garrison, New York,

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about an hour north of New York City,

um, and life right now, I'm looking out

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at the fields and it's wintertime here.

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So life for us as a farmer in

the wintertime is a chance to

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step back from the growing cycle.

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You know, it's a chance to kind

of look at seed catalogs and think

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about things you're gonna plant.

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It's one of the most hopeful parts

of a farming season because it's all.

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imagining the next season

without weeds growing yet.

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So farm at this point of the

season, the farm is dormant.

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Um, and then over the course of the

season, our farm is, is a small farm,

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so we practice regenerative agriculture.

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You know, there's things to talk

about there, but it's a way of

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farming that is leaving the soil

better off than you found it.

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Um, it's not as related to

sustainable, which is the idea

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of keeping it the same place.

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Regeneration is really about the

idea of, of leaving it better off.

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Regenerative farming techniques.

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Um, we on about a half acre

of vegetable growing space, we

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have 50 families in our C S A.

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And then we do small scale, uh, livestock

including pigs, chickens, and turkeys.

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And then we also train new farmers, uh,

primarily farmers of color from low income

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urban areas on our farm during the summer.

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this is the chance to get fat a little

bit as a farmer, , uh, you know, have,

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have some wine by the fireplace and

then work it all off in a couple months.

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So . I like that.

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I like that.

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Um, the thing I'm curious of when you're

talking about like making the land better,

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that regenerative construct, like what are

some of the techniques used for in your

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farm that are helping improve the land

and leave it better than you found it?

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Better than?

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Good question.

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So, you know, some of the basics are

you're always adding back to the soil.

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So whether that be compost,

whether that be, uh, horse manure

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from the farm down the road.

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I mean, you're just

constantly feeding the soil.

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I mean, when you think about

it, your, your job kind of,

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becomes about feeding the soil.

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You know, a second probably

major principle is you're just

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never leaving soil uncovered.

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So like very large scale farms that'll

kind of plow in the crop and leave it

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there, you know, that releases a lot of

carbon in the atmosphere and so you're

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always keeping your farm mulch or covered.

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We practice really no-till and no

big machinery farming there really.

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Many fossil fuel inputs coming in.

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Uh, and so you're really trying to

use all of the different organic

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materials in nature to feed the soil

and regenerate it instead of kind of

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just constantly taking things out of it.

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I said that I had a question or

six, and now I have even more.

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But I wanted to go back to where you said

at the beginning, it's not just about

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policy, but it's about transformation.

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And then my second question is, how does

one just end up moving to Argentina?

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. Good.

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So , I mean, don't get me

wrong, I definitely believe that

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policy change and political.

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Is required for climate work

and, and building better society.

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I just think for me personally, you

know, I found myself writing white

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papers or draft legislation in New

York City consuming like every good

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New York City person kind of cut

off from nature, thinking about an

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apartment that we could afford or not.

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And I just felt like,

you know, it's hard to.

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Our lives and the way we live

from the work we're doing.

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It just didn't seem enough to be like, I

want to pass a good piece of environmental

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legislation, but I also want a second

and third home and to vacation, you

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know, in a warm place in the winter.

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So there was, to me a real calling

about, um, how to build a life

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model that aligns with some of your

political aspirations and values.

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Jen led us down a long wormhole of,

of trying to build a life that way.

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And so, to your second question

about Argentina, I don't know

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if there's a good answer.

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Uh, I kind of realized after 10 years that

it wasn't just about finding a new job.

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I kind of was like chafing

against my way of life.

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And so about a year before we moved, um,

Argentina sounded like a romantic place.

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My wife wanted to learn Spanish.

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She was writing her dissertation in public

health and needed to do that for a year.

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I was kind of trying to figure

out, I had kind of gotten the job.

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I.

133

and was still unhappy, so I was like,

Ooh, I'm kind of at a really blank spot.

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I don't know what the next step is.

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And so Argentina seemed

like a romantic place to go.

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We actually left two weeks after we got

married and we put aside a little bit

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of money, so we asked for no wedding

gifts, but we asked for contributions

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to like sustain us in this year.

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And, and after about three months in

bu, ours we're like, we don't have jobs.

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Cities are really made

for people that work.

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I mean, you know, and we're like,

we're only gonna be down here for like

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three months if, if we don't move.

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And so we ended up being at BU Riss.

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Then moving down to Patagonia

where a friend had just traveled

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through to an amazing town and

my wife just happened to find a.

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Uh, uh, uh, a little

cabin for rent on a farm.

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It sounded a little bit dicey.

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I mean, she had learned Spanish,

they, like they mentioned circle

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dances, and we were like, ah.

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I don't know.

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It sounds a little dicey, but, but

it is only $200 a month that we moved

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down there and it was just, This

family had been running a sustainable

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farm for 20 years and I was kind

of riding, thinking in the morning,

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volunteering for them on their farm in

the afternoon and that that routine of

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kind of mixing the intellectual work.

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uh, with the physical work

just made me a lot happier.

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And I feel like sometimes we all,

or people who get highly educated,

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get trained to think of physical

work as something below them and

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we get isolated from physical work.

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And I just found that I wanted

a life that blended both the

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intellectual work and the physical.

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And so we came back and, um, and

started the farm about 10 years ago.

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Amazing.

164

Thank you.

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Yeah.

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You said you had six.

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You wanna keep pepper in him, or

leaky, and I can pepper him next.

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, . Well, I'll ask one more.

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There'll be half of my six.

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Um, so what is lighting you up now?

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Uh, especially about climate.

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Especially about carbon.

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Especially about climate.

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Okay.

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What's lighting you up now?

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So, great question.

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I mean, so the, the project that's

probably taking the most of my time right.

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Is through our nonprofit, which is called

the Ecological Citizens Project, and we

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launched a program called the Regenerative

Communities Program a couple years ago.

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And the basic idea is that the

farming world is very white.

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It's very old, it's aging out.

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We need new farmers and we need

farmers across the spectrum.

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And so we started training

farmers on our, our farm.

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Three years ago, and then working

with nearby cities to gain access

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to municipal land where the farmers

we train are, are going to those

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sites and they're creating what we're

thinking of as public food gardens.

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So a community farmer grows food

on those sites and, and anybody

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is welcome to come and harvest it.

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So it's kind of, you know,

a return to a commons idea.

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And so what's really, uh, taking a

lot of our energy right now is we

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are sustaining that program through

foundations and philanthropic giving.

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You know, if you wanna change the

world, you probably can't do it

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only on philanthropic giving alone.

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And so we got a grant from New York State

to try to develop community owned solar

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in peak scale, where by changing the

ownership structure, you have control

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over the profits off of the solar system.

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And so we're trying to steer those

profits towards paying urban farmers.

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So, you know, not to

go deeply into it, but.

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You know, food like everything

else, obviously in a capitals

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economy is a commodity.

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And so even as a small farmer, like

we find as a small farmer, you know,

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if you're trying to be economically

viable as a small farmer, you are

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growing microgreens for restaurants,

or you are bringing your produce

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to the farmer's market where people

are willing to pay the most for it.

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And all of a sudden your

food is not necessarily going

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to people who need it most.

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Um, and so if we start thinking

to ourselves, Well, what if in a C

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food commodity world, the people who

can't afford it don't get to eat it?

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That's just too bad.

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It's a commodity, right?

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But if we start to think about building

a new energy system and who owns it

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and where the profits go, which is what

wakes me up in the middle of the night,

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it's kind of transformative, right?

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And if a farmer is paid by a revenue

stream off of solar to grow, , they've

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kind of taken a bit of food out of

the commodity system and you can

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now treat it like a human right.

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You can treat it like food should

go to people who need it most,

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regardless of ability to pay.

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I believe even if we could do it in

the city of peak scale, a small city

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demonstrate that you can build solar

and, and redirect the profits from

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it, then I think, you know, it can be

really impactful for other communities.

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