Welcome back to the Port Pearls Almanac. This is Andy, and today we have our longest episode to date.

We're joined by the one and only Chris Newman of Sylvan Aqua Farms

to discuss everything and anything around small-scale agriculture and cooperative business models.

We jump into what sustainable ag looks like both for landscapes and also for labor,

and we discuss lessons learned around building resilient

food systems based on his experiences. Further, we explore some of the more nuanced discussions

around food, decolonization, land back, permaculture, much more. This was a really fun and

insightful conversation, which is also why it ended up being over two hours.

It's a rare opportunity to chat with someone like Chris who has a diversity of unique experiences in this space and the willingness to dive into the messier parts.

Now, if you're in the D.C. area, go check out Sylvan Aqua Farms and their available food.

If you find his work inspiring,

support their mutual aid program to feed people in their community. That all said, take a listen.

Let us know what you think.

Silver Aqua Farms started about 10 years ago, actually almost exactly 10 years ago, as a diversified livestock ranch in the model of, say, polyface farm.

We spent about 13, 14, 15, 17, 7, 8, we spent about five years trying to do it, the traditional

small farm, farm to table kind of way and just realized the math

doesn't pencil out if you're not born with an inheritance, with a bunch of land, with a market,

if you're not using free labor.

A couple minor things, yeah.

Small, fundamentally broken things.

So we kind of came to the realization around 2017, 2018, something like that, that we had to

try to do something different.

...