agri-Culture

Our stay at Clockwork Cottage was one of the quiet delights of our UK trip in August of 2023.  The Peak District in England is well known as being a day-hiker’s destination filled with rolling emerald fields, ancient stacked stone walls, and sheep, sheep and sheep.  There are those amazing things, yes, and found aplenty, but for the Backyard Green Films crew the hills were alive with the breeze blowing through the grass, and the so...

Steve Montgomery of Lamppost Farm is our guest on today’s podcast, coming to you from a stop on the Devon Congress pre-tour - Columbiana, Ohio style this time.  Steve and his family raise Devon Cattle, Coopworth Sheep, pigs, turkeys and a partridge in a pear tree (okay, no partridges, but there are more chickens than you can safely count).  Their goal is to make and teach connections between living things, but the annual flock of L...

Andrea Tibbets of Clover Brooke Farm is our guest on today’s podcast.  We usually see her at the New York State Sheep & Wool Festival (Rhinebeck), but since at that fine event we see her running the Camelid Barn and running the Leaping Llama contest and running the Spitters’ Club and…well, just plain running, we decided it was way past time to visit her home turf.  For a walk.

One of the most peaceful things you can do, we found...

It’s another stop on our Devon Pre-Tour run.  This time, we’re bringing you the sights and sounds from a delightful and delicious visit to Lakota Ranch in Remington, Virginia.  Lakota is the home of Jeremy Engh, President of Red Devon USA, Dr. Jerry Engh, the founder of the herd itself (and Jeremy, for that matter), and Patty Engh, who runs them both, we’re fairly sure.

 We had a visit that included pasture rotation avec spicy herdi...

Don’t you love talking to people who know their stuff?  While crashing the Kilnsey Show in Yorkshire on our UK trip last August, we came across Clive Richardson, Field Officer for the Jacob Sheep Society.  It was a spontaneous tailgate conversation, but we magically ended up with not only someone who raises some of the most interesting-looking sheep you’ll ever lay eyes on, but he was a truly well-spoken and well-researched man.  H...

It’s the Devon Congress 2024 - Coming soon to an east-coast back road near you (if you live on the east coast and are there in April, that is).  This April, people are coming from all over the world to celebrate the Devon Cattle breed and all of its many shapes and sizes.  And if you live in the U.S., 400 years of Devon history is something even more amazing to celebrate.

Red Devon USA is the host organization for this amazing road ...

It’s time for the mashup!  The Dutchess County Sheep and Wool Growers’ Association once again hosted 30,000 (plus) attendees at the New York State Sheep and Wool Festival, and we were there to see (and interview, and livestream, and…everything) all of it! Maybe lots of it.  Part of it.  Okay, so we got what we could again this year, but this is the kind of wonderful occasion that we still haven’t seen most of, no matter how much we...

Here at Backyard Green Films, we’re getting ready to celebrate the 400-year anniversary of the Devons coming to America with our Plymouth to Plimoth documentary.  In preparation for this event (and our film!), we spoke with Tom Begley, Deputy Director for Collections Research and Public Engagement at Plimoth Patuxet Museum.  Doesn’t the site of the Pilgrim connection seem like a wonderful podcast for today’s Thanksgiving holiday?  ...

Our podcast guests today are Jeri Robinson Lawrence and daughter Irina Lawrence Mathias.  This hardworking mother/daughter team has contributed a few soundbites in between Points A, B, C and X in the rush of the New York State Sheep and Wool Festival every year, but as they’re the ones that everyone needs something from at all times, a relaxed moment has been hard to come by with these two.

So we went to the mountain (so to speak, a...

You know how there’s always someone who not only goes the extra mile, but looks good while they do it?  And does it with a genuine smile, to top it off.  That’s Christine Hulse, from Hulse Hill Farm.  Just outside of Cooperstown on a little slice of heaven, this tireless woman has set up shop (and her farm shop).  She excels at all things she puts her mind to:  She runs a blissful farm stay B&B and is a hostess extraordinaire; ...

On today’s podcast, transport yourself to the lonely, glorious green pastures of the eastern side of Scotland.  We have a lovely conversation with Jillian McEwen of Lunan Bay Farms, and among many of our topics, we spoke of the joys of farming on the shores of the North Sea, the differences between her Cashmere and Boer goats (two of her three varieties), some out-of-the-box ideas to diversify goat farming, and the ways goats can c...

Elara and I met Phil Pass last month on our travels in Scotland at the House of Tartan in Crieff. We struck up a conversation with him and noticed that they had a Go Fund Me campaign that said Keep Scottish Bonnets Alive in Scotland. He described what it was for and so we grabbed our camera and mics and said this is too important and you need to tell us all about this.

THE STORY:
We've just lost Scotland's la...

As we continue the Tartan & Tweed tour in the United Kingdom, Elara follows up last week's interview with Barry's partner Chris Sander. Chris takes Elara on a tour of the farm and their prized rams and ewes. Chris discusses the different colors of the Leicester Longwool and his affinity for the black color.  

The group is getting ready for a couple of shows in Buck County and Dorset over the weekend. If you n...

We're excited to announce that we're in the midst of our Tartan and Tweed Tour 2023!  The one stop we couldn't miss along the M-1 was a visit to Leicester, home of Robert Bakewell - the man who transformed agricultural practices as we know them today.

Our conversation is with Barry Evans, custodian of a flock of one of the most famous examples of Robert Bakewell's efforts:  The Leicester Longwool Sheep....

The big UK trip is almost here, and we’re prepping for the Edinburgh Castle Tattoo with a visit to the National Western Stock Show, and the Scottish Highland Cattle show.  Those bagpipes and tartans get us every time, no matter what the event.

In today’s podcast, we grabbed a moment in the cattle barns with Audra Hall of Clearwater Spring Highlands in Brighton, Colorado.  Audra was somewhere between the fluff and fold cycle that goe...

Today we have a (Elara-has-had-too-much-coffee-and-dirt) podcast interview with Andrew Conroy, B.S., M.S., PhD, who is a two-time Fulbright Scholar, professor at the University of New Hampshire, and man who can claim way too many other accomplishments to mention here.  

Dr. Conroy has wrote the book on oxen (Really.  He wrote more than one, and you can follow the link below to buy them for yourself).  On more than one continent, he ...