Ep. 21 Farm-Raised Kids w/ Author & Farmer Katie Kulla of Oakhill Organics & Growing for Market

Katie Kulla is the author of Farm-Raised Kids. A brand new book from Storey Publishing. Katie is also an illustrator, one of the hosts of the Growing For Market Podcast and farms with her husband at Oakhill Organics on Grand Island in rural Dayton, Oregon.

In this episode, we do discuss Katie's brand new book but we also talk a lot about Katie's experience growing seeds and how that experience has changed over the years. Katie's early seed experience was mostly growing seed contracts on her market farm. Katie liked how seed crops occupied a different time and space than growing vegetables for CSA or farmers markets. And also how seed crops often generated more $ per square foot than vegetable crops. Then when Oakhill Organics moved to offering a full diet CSA, they moved out of seed contracts and shifted to growing seed for food such as grains, beans, and popcorn. And now that the farm plays a smaller role in Katie's life and she is focusing on other interests such as writing books, Katie is still harvesting seed whenever it is easy to do so from the crops in her fields. 

This brings us to  Farm-Raised Kids, Katie's new Book. We talk about the dream and the actual reality of having kids on the farm. How there is an idyllic vision that children can just chill out and hang around the fields but having kids on your farm is actual work and farms can also be dangerous places for little ones. Katie talks about how it is still an amazing opportunity for kids to grow up on a farm. How they pick up so much knowledge about different crops and food bit by bit over the years. And how kids wind up learning real skills like how to handle knives and breaking down just about any vegetable. Katie also explains how satisfying it is for kids to put their hands in gooey fermenting seed tomatoes or getting to hit dry beans with a stick to thresh them or just getting to sink their arms in buckets of clean seed.

In the deep dive, we talk about growing dry beans for seed because Katie's family just loves eating dry beans and there is really no comparing the flavour with store bought beans. We talk about how bush beans are a lot easier than pole beans, how farming in the Willamette Valley with its dry summers means you can dry seed outdoors without cover in your backyard but how Katie might still bring seed indoors if she was still growing commercial seed contracts. And how she still wishes she'd invested in a good set of screens. Katie also has a reminder that you should make a point of not eating all your dry beans and make sure to keep some as seed for next year's crop!

Mentioned in the show...

• https://www.katiekulla.com/

• https://www.instagram.com/katiekulla

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