The “Dog Days” of summer is such an interesting phrase. But what exactly does it mean? It refers to the hottest and most humid days of the summer. The Farmer’s Almanac tells us it begins July 3rd and ends August 11th. The term conjures up images of sitting on a front porch sipping lemonade, sweet...
We visited St. Petersburg’s Brick Street Farms in the dead of summer — the Florida heat and humidity were stifling. Good thing Brick Street farms indoors! Brick Street is part of the urban farming revolution that’s going on across this nation. People are growing food any and everywhere they can —...
You look at an empty shipping cargo container and see garbage. Shannon O’Malley looked and saw a farm. She and husband Brad Doyle first started experimenting with hydroponic indoor growing in Pennsylvania a few years back. Now they own booming Brick Street Farms in downtown St. Petersburg, FL. The...
Mushrooms are seemingly magical. They pop up from nowhere and are gone almost as soon as they appear sometimes. But mushrooms just keep giving. They start from agricultural byproducts, produce until they're spent, then the source material becomes compost for farming — and can still keep producing...
When Chip Carter caught up with firefighter and mushroom farmer Joe Iovino of Cactus Hat Mushrooms to film Episode 4 of Where The Food Comes From, he was also catching up with an old connection. From about age 12 on, Iovino was a member of "Coach" Carter's Tampa Bay youth soccer team. Here's a...
Four years ago, Tampa Bay firefighter Joe Iovino started growing gourmet mushrooms in his garage as a hobby. Today, he's pumping out a crop worth about $300,000 a year! Now Joe and family have just bought land for a new homestead and farm — but he says he'll never quit driving the firetruck.
Picture this: Long ago and far away (actually 1997, Tampa, FL) a group of boys ran onto a soccer field. Then life happened and those boys grew into men. What does this have to do with mushrooms? Absolutely nothing. Or does it? You met Joe Iovino in Season 1, Episode 4 of Where The Food Comes From...
South Carolina farmer Nat Bradford does it like his ancestors did — he and his family farm do it exactly the way his predecessors did 200 years ago, with the exact same seed stock and with the exact same methods on the exact same land. Watermelon, kale, okra, hemp, a wide variety of crops — so...
One of the real delights of filming the Farming Like It's 1699 episode with Nat Bradford and Family in South Carolina was meeting 9-year-old Natalie. She talked with us about her room, her life, and what it's like being a farm kid in 2022 who's working the same way her great, great, great...
Bradford Watermelon Company, out in the countryside near Sumter, SC is a true family farm established in 1840 with a rich history – but Bradfords have been farming this land for 200 years! While the farm grows many crops, Watermelon is King! In the 1850s Nathaniel Bradford, known in those parts as...
