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Originally published on 2015/12/31 Christmas Eve! (with a replay the following December 29, 2016) I am replaying this episode because I have a guest coming up who talks about Jenny’s problem of dealing with fire ants. If you haven’t signed up for Jenny’s email I can tell you I love getting their updates it’s always so fun to watch their family grow! On the Jenny Jack Sun Farm located one‐hour southwest of Atlanta in beautiful Pine Mountain, Georgia, Jenny and Chris Jackson, along with two apprentices, grow a generous variety of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers on 5 acres running a successful CSA. Recently, heritage hogs have been added to the mix, including a rare breed called Red Wattle. Tell us a little about yourself. My husband and I have been running the farm full time for 8 years now. We met at the http://www.uga.edu (University of Georgia). I studied horticulture and he was an education major. I was interested in the idea of farming in college but I wasn’t really exposed to small diverse farms until after I graduated. I knew I wanted to study plants and how they grow and how to grow them, but I didn’t have a clear path until we traveled after we graduated college. We went to Hawaii to work on different organic farms. Did you go through the https://wwoofusa.org (WWOOFer program)? Yes, a friend that had traveled extensively told us about https://wwoofusa.org (WWOOF). That’s an acronym for Willing Workers on Organic Farms. You can do that pretty much anywhere in the world. We decided we wanted to go to Hawaii, but we knew it was expensive there to go as a tourist. By https://wwoofusa.org (WWOOFing) you can work in exchange for a place to stay and food. By that I mean in a tent. Tent life as a WWOOFer But a tent’s probably ok for Hawaii? Yes, it’s an ideal place to camp for several months, so we stayed there for 5 months working on 3 different farms. We didn’t get an in depth education because as a https://wwoofusa.org (WWOOFer), you work about 25 hours a week, so that way you have time to explore the area your in. So it was a good introduction. When we came back to Georgia after Hawaii we found a longer term apprenticeship. That’s where we really started learning what we would apply at our farm. Awesome! I think that’s great advice. I love to hear about experiences like that, I think it’s a good way to learn because One: it’s a lot of work so you can one learn how to be effective and efficient and two: also you can learn if you are ready to do all that work before you make a good commitment. I just had a guest who said you need to learn how to manage one acre effectively before you learn to manage 20. One of my very first https://organicgardenerpodcast.com/?p=1374 (guests Todd Ulizio) did an apprenticeship and he recommended it because he said you have 0 risk but get all the knowledge. Tell me about your first gardening experience? I was fortunate because I grew up in the garden, my parents had a big garden, although I didn’t fully appreciate it as I was younger or help as much as I probably should have, at least I had exposure. took for granted that you could harvest it and eat it so fresh! Also we had a babysitter who was a serious gardener. When I wasn’t at home with my parents from the time I was a few months old, she had us in her garden just watching her as she tended her plants. So I feel really lucky that I was exposed to it my whole life basically. What does organic gardening/earth friendly mean to you? Well basically, there’s so many toxins in our environment today, and a lot of them come from agriculture, so when I started learning about the health hazards of conventional fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, number 1 I didn’t want to expose myself, or my husband or my workers to that, but when you’re growing for other people you want to make sure it’s as healthy and safe as possible too.... Support this podcast