The Journalist-Farmer - AC Shilton

“I have editors in New York who call me at 7 [pm], or people who want to set appointments at 8 o’clock. And I always just explain, ‘I’m sorry, but I have to go work on my farm.’
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— AC Shilton

This week, I bring you the delightful AC Shilton, the investigative journalist of Netflix’s “The Innocent Man” fame who recently added farmer to her resume: Last year, the self-described city kid and her park ranger husband went all in on their bucolic fantasy, purchasing a 45-acre fixer-upper ranch in rural Tennessee.

Here, AC shares the real story of how she now divides her day between tending chickens and penning pieces for the likes of The New York Times and Outside magazine (spoiler: it’s not easy). She also dishes on learning to farm by the seat of her pants, prepping her farm for climate resilience, and why farming may be the perfect antidote to our modern scourge of arrival fallacy.

Here’s the rundown: 

• A day in the life of an investigative journalist–farmer

• What it costs to start a farm

• “This has brought me more joy than anything I could have ever imagined”

• Pastured eggs, honey and Dexter cattle

• Planning her farm with climate change in mind

• Learning to farm as city kids

• Arrival fallacy

• Rural loneliness, recent injuries, and advice for wannabe farmers 

Follow AC’s investigative projects, lifestyle writing and farming via her website, Twitter, and on Instagram. 

If you enjoyed this show, subscribe on iTunes so you don’t miss the next one (and don’t forget to leave a rating and review). The theme music is by Paul Damian Hogan.

Survivalists on Surviving a Natural Disaster - Carmen and Matt Corradino

“You bring up the point of climate change and more expected hurricanes…but where could we possibly escape that? If the climate is changing and the earth is changing at the rate that we expect it to be changing, there’s nowhere that I could feel completely safe. So, I see it as: the survival training that we’ve done, the survival training that we teach, is our insurance policy.”

— Matt Corradino

Today’s episode reads like it was lifted off the pages of a Hollywood screenplay: two renown survivalists find themselves in an all-too-real survival experience, after a natural disaster decimates their tropical island home. Yet that has been the past five months of reality for my guests Carmen and Matt Corradino, husband-and-wife survival skills instructors who live on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where they have been dealing with the devastating aftermath of hurricanes Irma and Maria. The category 5 storms, mere weeks apart in a slew of powerful storms churned up in the Atlantic this past fall, were two of the most intense hurricanes in recorded history. 

Though there may have been no one better prepared for such a “force of nature,” as Matt referred to the storms. Together, he and Carmen have nearly three decades of survival skills experience, including a five-year stint living in a primitive shelter while teaching at survivalist Tom Brown Jr.’s Tracker School in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. And for the past decade, the two have carved out a subsistence lifestyle in the tropical forests of St. Croix (now with their 3-year-old daughter Ilee), where they own Mount Victory Camp eco lodge and teach primitive and survival skills by way of their school, Caribbean Earth Skills. 

Hear from Carmen and Matt as they not only share survival lessons learned from the hurricanes, but the paths that led them to their way of life, and the contentment they've found in an existence deeply immersed in the natural world—even in the face of natural disaster.

Here’s the rundown of the show:

• The aftermath of Hurricane Maria

• Carmen and Matt’s homeschool group, and teaching survival classes post-hurricane

• The psychological impact of the disaster

• Survival skills and “experience” versus their now real survival experience

• Mount Victory Camp before the hurricane, and their subsistence lifestyle in the tropics

• Contentment in “poverty”

• Carmen and Matt’s childhoods, and how they came to the world of ancient skills

• Living and teaching in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey with Tom Brown, Jr.

• Why they moved to St. Croix and following your inner vision

• How you can help

• Climate change, more hurricanes and their plan for the future

• Carmen and Matt’s advice on how to be prepared for disasters (especially in urban areas)

• Carmen and Matt’s advice for getting into their way of life

Want to help Carmen and Matt in their rebuilding efforts? Contribute to their GoFundMe campaign. Learn more about their eco lodge (and plan a trip!) on the Mount Victory Camp website and check out their workshops and courses at Caribbean Earth Skills. Carmen and Matt also have a YouTube page and post regularly on Facebook: @MountVictoryCamp.

If you enjoyed this show, subscribe on iTunes so you don’t miss the next one (and don’t forget to leave a rating and review). The theme music is by Paul Damian Hogan. Want to chime in on this episode or have an idea for a future show? Connect with me via my Instagram page, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Resources

Tom Brown Jr.’s Tracker School
Tom Brown Jr.’s Field Guide to City and Suburban Survival
All Hands Disaster Relief