4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 7 October 2025
⏱️ 34 minutes
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Muriel "Aggie" Murch and her husband, Academy Award winning film editor and sound designer Walter Murch, have lived on Blackberry Farm in Bolinas for some five decades, along with their children, chickens, and horses. The two just celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.
They both have newly published books, and are out on the circuit telling their stories that stand at the intersection of the organic farming movement and the independent filmmaking movement of the 1970’s.
Director Francis Coppola, Walter’s longtime collaborator, describes his new book, Suddenly Something Clicked, as "a vast encyclopedia of cinema and everything that can be touched by it."
Director Phillip Kaufman said this about Harvesting History While Farming the Flats: "Blackberry Farm is Aggie Murch's Walden Pond. She made existence sustainable, rebuilt life over and over, helped spirits enter the world and gently helped them leave. She’s got the gift."
We have known and admired the Murches for some four decades and asked if we might do a story to celebrate this moment of love and publishing and graciously they said yes.
Produced by The Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva, in collaboration with Nathan Dalton, Brandi Howell and Hannah Kaye. Mixed by Jim McKee.
Special Thanks to City Lights Bookstore and Peter Maravelis.
Funding for our stories comes from listener contributions to The Kitchen Sisters Productions, The Robert Sillins Family Foundation, The Every Page Foundation, The Susie Tompkins Buell Foundation, The Buenas Obras Fund, The TRA Fund, Barbara & Howard Wollner, Michael Pollan & Judith Belzer, Bonnie Raitt, and you.
Our deep thanks to our community for your spirit and for supporting the stories.
The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent podcasts that widen your world.
Thank you for subscribing and thanks for listening.
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| 0:00.0 | Radio Topia. Welcome to the Kitchen Sisters present. We're the Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson, and Nikki Silva. |
| 0:10.8 | If you sit here, Walter planted these redwood trees. We've got two groves, and they're over 40 years old now. |
| 0:21.1 | There is a whole world that lives in there. |
| 0:24.5 | You can hear it. |
| 0:26.8 | This is Aggie, or Muriel Merch. |
| 0:29.7 | And we're sitting on the terrace, on the little deck, |
| 0:32.9 | outside of the hayloft, |
| 0:34.9 | which is where Walter and I live when we come back to the farm. |
| 0:39.3 | The name of my book is harvesting history while farming the flats. |
| 0:45.3 | See? There is one of the beds. |
| 0:49.3 | It's a very lovely place to be, to sit here and see what we've done and what worked and what didn't work. |
| 1:00.1 | One day I was having lunch at the Pine Cone Diner, in Point Race, with Aggie Merch. |
| 1:06.5 | Every ten minutes or so, someone would walk up to her and chat about KWMR, the new community |
| 1:12.4 | radio station that she had just spearheaded in town. |
| 1:15.8 | Or the remarkable apple cider she had just pressed from the trees in her orchard. |
| 1:21.6 | Or just to say hello because she was the midwife at their birth. |
| 1:25.7 | It was Aggie who caught them when they came out of the womb. |
| 1:30.5 | Muriel Aggie Merch, a tea-powered force of nature. |
| 1:34.9 | Nurse, midwife, horsewoman, farmer, writer, radio producer, mother, wife. |
| 1:42.4 | If you want a glimpse into one of the most intriguing of marriages at one of its |
| 1:47.2 | most intriguing moments, Aggie and her husband, Academy Award-winning film editor and sound |
| 1:53.1 | designer Walter Merch, just celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. And here they are, each with newly published books out on the circuit |
... |
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