Living The Simple Good Life

Florida Small Farms Alternative Enterprises Conference Lynne and I share our excitement about our media coverage of the 2010 Florida Small Farms Alternative Enterprises Conference on July 31st and August 1st in Kissimmee, Florida. We introduce the conference keynote speaker, Mr. Will Allen, founder and CEO of Growing Power, Inc. of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We talk about Will Allen’s expertise in urban agriculture and his great achievements in the development of national and global community food systems. We talk about the conference organizers and hosts, the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and Florida A&M University and their Small Farms Focus Team, and their educational and research support for Florida’s approximately 48,000 small farms. Our guest interview is with Dr. Robert Kluson, PhD. Extension Agent, UF/IFAS Sarasota County Extension Service. Dr. Kluson provides us with an excellent overview of this year’s conference and the support and value it provides to Florida’s small farmers and Florida’s communities. Growing Power, Inc. - Will Allen Reminder: Florida Small Farms Alternative Enterprises Conference Small Farms & Alternative Enterprises Website Small Farms YouTube videos Simple Good Life Network Contact Information: Email: ShowTalk@SimpleGoodLifeNetwork.com Listener Voicemail Feedback Line: 727-238-7276

In this episode we share more of our simple good life journey and our continued search for our small farm homestead. Our search for property has us looking in a new direction far from the NW Georgia mountains that we love so well, for the beauty of the heartland rural folks, as well as the beauty of the Georgia mountains. Maybe the saying about living in Florida is more than a saying, “you get sand in your shoes and plenty of sunshine on your head, and it’s hard to leave.” But for us long term Florida residents we thought we were ready to dump the sand out of our farm boots and heed the call to NW Georgia . That is, until our GPS and compass seemed to stop working, when we reached the NW Central Florida communities of Chiefland and Trenton, only one hundred and fifty miles north of our home in St. Petersburg, Florida. We tell about a little five acre farm homestead in Trenton that we have found, that is available and meets almost most of our criteria and requirements, except a major one that could be a deal breaker. But, more than that little farm has caught our attention and our affection. We have encountered in that area several communities of rural folks who have impressed us with such a positive impact that we are close to a decision to stop the wagon train short of the Georgia mountains and establish our small farm homestead in Trenton, Florida, and be honored and blessed to join in community with these great heartland rural folks. The highlight of this episode that you won’t want to miss is an interview with Rick Burnham, Editor of the Levy County Journal, a small local rural paper from Chiefland in Levy County Florida. In this interview Rick shares with Lynne and me and our listeners, what we think is a big part of what is about to stop us in our farm searching tracks, and say no to the call from the Georgia mountains. Levy County Journal Reminder: Florida Small Farms Alternative Enterprises Conference Simple Good Life Network Contact Information: Email: ShowTalk@SimpleGoodLifeNetwork.com Listener Voicemail Feedback Line: 727-238-7276

In this second episode of Living the Simple Good Life, Lynne and I share more of our journey and our personal story, as we continue on the path to pursuing a simple good life (as we define it for our lives), through becoming Christian agrarian homesteaders, sustainable small scale farmers and new media podcasters. Barry and I use this second episode, early on in our podcasting endeavors, to share with our listeners our life’s purpose and mission, which can now be of even greater scope and effectiveness, with the addition of our podcasting. I speak from my heart and Barry’s heart too, I know, when I say, “it’s not only our desire, it’s our passion to be a genuine source of encouragement and support for younger individuals, couples and families who are pursuing Christ-centered, home and family based, sustainable agrarian lifestyles, it’s our prayer for each and every one of these podcasts and it’s our life mission for this stage of our lives and our ministry.” Lynne and I share with our listeners more about our search for small farm property. We continue on with our conversation from our first episode and talk more about our search and trips to NW Central Florida, we tell about our second and third trips back to that area and back to the small farm property we discovered on our first trip. Barry knows that I am popping at the seams in excitement and eagerness as I reveal the names of Trenton and Chiefland Florida, two great little rural farming communities that we left unnamed from our last podcast. Lynne and I both give our listeners some general information about Trenton and Chiefland. Lynne talks about the Trenton town slogan: “Welcome to Trenton A Community of Friends”, and we discuss that it is more than a slogan, and that on our repeated trips there that we are coming to learn, that it truly describes the folks who live in the Trenton Florida area. We first discovered the Trenton slogan on the old city water tank located in a park in historic downtown Trenton.

This was the first episode introducing the Simple Good Life Network and Barry and Lynne Morgan. Newlyweds, we just celebrated our forty-third wedding anniversary on June 17th. Lynne and I have served for over four years, in Christian rural ministries, in the southeastern United States. During our rural ministry service, both of our hearts have been gripped and burdened for small farm families and the largely forgotten rural needy. Our husband and wife ministry team experiences ignited in us both, a strong love for the people and for the rural communities we encountered. Our experiences have fueled a burning passion that Barry and I share for living the simple good life through becoming sustainable small scale farmers ourselves. Lynne and I discuss the novelty of our new podcasting business and the fun we are having in the learning process and in the production and delivery of our very first ever podcast. We credit Cliff Ravenscraft, our great podcasting and new media consultant and coach, for setting us up and getting us started in podcasting. Lynne and I talk about our new, under construction and developing home on the web at SimpleGoodLifeNetwork.com. We again credit Cliff for his web expertise and help with our website. You can learn more about Cliff Ravenscraft at www.Podcastanswerman.com or through his podcasting show network at GSPN.TV. I get Barry and me talking about our forty-third wedding anniversary and I share about a small farm property searching excursion that Barry and I made to a rural area in northwest Florida, as part of our anniversary celebration. I leave unnamed for now, the names of the two pretty and pleasant little rural communities we visited, but I do talk about a delightful encounter we had with Nancy, a department manager in a rural picture perfect, smaller Winn Dixie grocery market, that was located in the larger of the two communities. I talked about the upcoming Florida’s Small Farms Alternative Enterprises Conference, to be held on July 31st and August 1st , in Kissimmee, Florida, and that Lynne and I would be attending and report back in future episodes. Conference Info: Simple Good Life Network Contact Information: Email: ShowTalk@SimpleGoodLifeNetwork.com Listener Voicemail Feedback Line: 727-238-7276