This is my first nonprofessional assignment to create a story. I had no oversight, no editors, and, most importantly, I didn’t get paid a penny to generate this podcast. So, my motivation to complete it was solely generated by my fire within.

The myriad topics I could’ve chosen for my first blog post podcast were endless. Land stewardship is such a generic topic that I almost didn’t know where to begin.

However, I did have some professional tools at my disposal: iPhone 14. Others may have heard of it, but if you haven’t, it’s quite possibly one of the most easily accessible professional tools available. As mentioned in a previous blog, I showed how I use a specific application to record on my phone.

In this case, the choice was easy—low-hanging fruit, I suppose. I had a Home Ignition Zone Assessors training class coming up, and I wanted to get in the headspace of homeowners living in the intermix and the WUI.

My fellow board member, Adam Hensleigh, now president of the Fire Safe Council of Santa Cruz County, gave me a tour of his neighborhood. I didn’t know how it would go, but after 30 years of listening to radio reports and podcasts, I knew I had a lot of gathering to do.

The most critical element for me was to keep my ears open and listen to everything in the environment. Then, at some point, I needed to record those sounds so I could isolate them in the editing process.

I was also going to feature some from the training class, but the situation did not allow for a convenient recording, nor would the content be specific enough to place in as a stand-alone sound bite. I ended up pulling aside one of our trainers, who happened to also be a trained public information officer for CalFire. I had her just provide some nuts and bolts to augment what Adam had talked about on our walking tour.

In the editing phase, I had to compile and organize my sound files.

I placed natural sounds and sound effects in a folder, the interviews in another folder labeled, and then I sourced some royalty-free music to use as an intro and outro for the podcast. I wanted to make it sound as professional and polished as possible.

Both of my interviews ended up being over 25 minutes or so, and I knew I would never use all of that sound, so I listened to the interview and logged the best soundbites to use. In some cases, I slightly rearranged the placement of the sound but retained the meaning of what they were saying.

Overall, this process was very educational, even considering my history of working in the media. No matter how much you know, there is always something new to learn.