[FOCUS] Regenetive Farming and Living a Life of Ecological Authenticity

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I'm gonna let you describe a little

bit about yourself and all the

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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