Normally you could expect a “Cover Crops for the Month” post in the first week of the month, but October’s will be next week. I have been teaching at several events in middle Tennessee, and want to tell you about those, and include the slideshows for those that want a second look, or those who wish they had been there.
We had a day and a half at Jeff Poppen’s 250 acre Long Hungry Creek Farm, where a very laid back outdoor Southeast Regional Biodynamic Farming Conference was going on. It’s in Red Boiling Springs, TN. Jeff is also known as the Barefoot Farmer, for reasons that are obvious once you meet him. Jeff began making biodynamic preparations and using the biodynamic farming method in 1986. Jeff and colleagues ran a community-supported agriculture program from 1988-2022, and they have offered internship opportunities since 1997.
Jeff Poppen’s logo
Not all the participants practice biodynamics (I don’t), and the conference was quite eclectic. I gave a presentation about growing Asian Greens to a very lively, question-filled group. Here’s the slideshow:
Ira Wallace and I also hosted a Q&A session on Seed Saving and Community Living. We did answer two short questions about seed saving, but most of the interest was in community living. The questioners were thinking about cohousing, or cooperative farming, or intentional communities, and had very considered questions.
We stayed two nights in the eccentric historic Armour’s Hotel with many theme-decorated rooms. Mine was about Red Hats. Definitely an experience.
A room at the Armour’s Hotel, Red Boiling Springs. The hotel’s photo.
Then we went to the Nashville Food Project on Sunday. Nashville Food Project is a community food project that brings people together to grow, cook and share nourishing food. They do community gardens, food recovery and community meals including thousands of after-school meals for kids, meals for nursing homes and all sorts. They have a lovely building for meetings, meals, cooking and everything related.
In their gardens, they grow organic food intensively and share resources with others interested in growing their own food.
In their sparkling commercial kitchens, they use recovered, donated and garden-grown food to prepare and cook made-from-scratch meals. Donations come from farmers, grocers, restaurants and markets. 1 in 7 Nashvillians do not have access to the food they want and need. Currently 40% of all food produced in the USA is thrown away. This knowledge drives the Nashville Food Project to continually explore new ways to recover would-be wasted food and steward it toward its best and highest use… and what better use for food than to feed neighbors!In their community, they share nourishing meals in partnership with local poverty-disrupting nonprofits and community groups.
We stayed two nights with Dr Brenda Butka and her husband Dr Tom John, who were very welcoming hosts.They are founding members of the Bell’s Bend Organic Farms Conservation Corridor. Bells Bend Conservation Corridor’s mission is to promote and protect the rural character of the Bells Bend. (It’s within the city limits, and yet has never been built on.) They are working to establish an outdoor recreational, agricultural, and residential conservation district that serves as a county, state and regional planning model for open space preservation.
They are raising money to provide funding to individual land owners seeking conservation easements from the Land Trust for Tennessee. While developing and funding programs that promote farm education, environmental stewardship, and the importance of land preservation. They currently have over 350 acres in Tennessee Land Trust Conservation Easements.
On Monday, I spoke to the Women Farmers of Middle Tennessee at Old School Farm, where a Scottish philanthropist bought and renovated an abandoned school house and set up a non-profit farm employing people with disabilities.
They work together with MillarRich, a healthcare company that specializes in providing family-style foster careand employment services for adults and children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. They also work with The Store which operates a year-round free grocery store allowing people referred to them (and the referring agencies) to shop for their basic needs at no charge. They may shop for food to supplement their income during times of crisis and as they work toward self-sufficiency.
I gave a presentation for the Women Farmers of Middle Tennessee on Production Planning for Late Fall, Winter and Early Spring Vegetable Crops. Here’s the slideshow:
Blueberries are easy to grow if conditions are right. They are a popular choice with organic growers, because they don’t need any pesticides to produce a good crop. They do, however, need annual pruning to be sure of a high quality crop. Pruning also keeps the bushes at a height easy to harvest from. Pruning is done during the dormant season, usually between December-early March in the Piedmont.
Some people are reluctant to prune because it does remove some of the flower buds and reduces berry production for that year, but if pruning is not carried out, berries become smaller each year and the health of the bushes declines. Pruning is an investment in the long-term success of your plants!
The Growing Small Farms website links to many how-to videos and fact sheets, with diagrams and photos. There are excellent resources on pruning and blueberry production in general. Everything you need to know about pruning blueberry bushes!
Side-by-side comparison of blueberry bushes before and after pruning. Slide by Bill Cline Read more at: https://growingsmallfarms.ces.ncsu.edu/2023/01/february-is-a-great-time-to-prune-blueberries/
Another good resource is this article in the Agricultural Research Service newsletter
Researchers at the Horticultural Crops Production and Genetic Improvement Research (HPCGIR) Unit in Corvallis, Oregon, are developing new cultivars of not just blueberries, but also blackberries, red raspberries, black raspberries, and strawberries to meet the particular needs of growers in the Pacific Northwest. Also useful to those in other areas.
“We focus on improving the shelf life of fruit so that it reaches consumers with consistently better texture and flavor,” said Claire Luby, plant geneticist with HCPGIR. Perhaps a large challenge for Luby and her colleagues is developing a cultivar that is resistant to a disease known to be a scourge of the berry: blueberry shock virus.
Blighted flower clusters due to blueberry shock virus infection. https://www.ncipmc.org/projects/pest-alerts/blueberry-shock-virus-bromoviridae-harvirus/
“We’re studying diverse blueberry plants to understand the genetic basis for blueberry shock virus, which can significantly impact yields for farmers,” she said. “Our hope is to use the insights from this project to develop new cultivars that are resistant, or at least more tolerant to, the disease.” Blueberry shock virus has caused annual crop losses of 34-90% in the Pacific Northwest.
Researchers combine traditional plant breeding with genomics to create their disease-resistant cultivars. The traditional technique (used in one form or another by people trying to improve agricultural crops for millennia) is to take pollen from one plant and use it to pollinate a different plant with complementary characteristics. They study the progeny of these crosses, looking for new characteristics that meet the goals of the breeding programs. Traditional blueberry breeding can take more than 20 years from the time an initial cross is made to when a consumer might eat from a resulting cultivar.
“We try to improve the accuracy and speed of the plant breeding process,” Luby explained. “We are now able to obtain a lot more genetic information about the plants and we can use that information to potentially predict whether an offspring of a given cross might have the characteristics we are looking for before we plant it out in the field. This is important because it can increase the speed of the plant breeding process.”
“Our goals are to develop blueberries that require fewer chemical inputs to fight disease, which can be better for both the environment and for growers’ bottom lines,” Luby said.
The Agricultural Research Service is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s chief scientific in-house research agency. Daily, ARS focuses on solutions to agricultural problems affecting America. Each dollar invested in U.S. agricultural research results in $20 of economic impact.
Crop Planning for Sustainable Vegetable Production
Twin Oaks Garden Colored Spots Plan for crop planning
At the in-person Pasa Sustainable Agriculture Conference, I gave two presentations. I also sent a recorded workshop for their virtual conference in January. That one was Feeding the Soil. I’ve just scoured through all 8 pages on my website that check the category “Slideshows”. I found Feeding the Soil twice.
My Alliums Year Roundpresentation is new this year and I posted the handoutafter my presentation at VABF. Pasa had shorter workshops, so I pruned the slideshow, but left the handout with the “bonus material”.
My other presentation at Pasa was Crop Planning for Sustainable Vegetable Production. That is one of the very first topics I tackled when I started out as a speaker, so the three versions on this website span the past ten years. 2014, 2016, 2019. Here is the 90 minute 2023 version and ts handout:
Jean Hediger grows Proso millet on her Nunn, Colorado farm Photography courtesy of Jean Hediger
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Jumping Worms are also Having a Moment
Invasive Jumping Worm Matt Bert, Piedmont Master Gardeners
The January newsletter of the Piedmont Master Gardeners (The Garden Shed) has this sobering article about Invasive Jumping Worms by Cathy Caldwell. The article includes the all-important information on how to distinguish an invasive jumping worm from any other kind of earthworm (it’s not hard!), and what to do if you find one.
Heatmaster tomatoes. Jon Braunfeld, Piedmont Master Gardeners
Another article in the January Garden Shed has helpful information on heat-tolerant vegetable varieties. In good time for us to order seeds and try some tomato varieties alongside our usual ones
I just got back from the Virginia Association for Biological Farming conference in Roanoke. There I gave a half-day presentation on Year-Round Hoophouse Vegetables, which you can watch here:
The conference was very well-attended, and not everyone at my workshop on Friday, or the Alliums Year-Round 90 minute workshop on Sunday morning got a handout. I promised to post them here, and now I’m making good. I’m also posting the handout for the third workshop I gave, Asian Greens in the Winter Hoophouse. This rounds out the set, and gives a chance to those who went to a different workshop at that time to get a look in.
The 23rd annualVirginia Biological Farming Conference is Virginia’s premier organic and sustainable agricultural conference! The Conference brings together farmers, gardeners, eaters, educators and advocates of biological and organic farming and gardening. The Conference will be held in person January 6-8, 2023 at The Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center.
The three-day Conference includes: Full and Half Day Pre-Conference intensive workshops, 50+ sessions and workshops, presentations and panel discussions, 40+ tradeshow exhibitors, locally sourced farm meals and book signings. The Conference features a Silent Auction and networking opportunities including regional networking meetings, and the Taste of Virginia Expo & Social!
Keynote Speakers
Dr. Elaine Ingham, Soil Food Web School
Leah Penniman, Founding Co-director Soul Fire Farm
I will be presenting a half-day workshop 8am-noon on Friday Jan 6, on Year-Round Hoophouse Vegetables
90 minute workshop Sunday January 8, 8.30 am – 10 am Alliums Year Round
90 minute workshopSunday January 8, 10.30 am – noon, Asian Greens in the Winter Hoophouse
Included in the Conference Registration and free and open to the public is the Taste of Virginia Expo & Market on Saturday, January 7, 2 – 9 PM in the Crystal Ballroom at Hotel Roanoke. Featuring sampling and sales of Virginia-crafted foods, local libations, handicrafts, and herbals. Complete the evening with music, dancing, and socializing from 8-10 PM.
Locally Sourced Meals
VABF and LEAP Local Food Hub are working together to procure the majority of our Conference food from local member farms. We look forward to supporting our member farms and enjoying delicious, fresh, local food from the farms below! All Conference Registrations include lunch and dinner on Saturday, lunch on Sunday and morning coffee and tea.
The Conference will be held at Worcester State University on Saturday January 14 and online Sunday January 15. We encourage you to make the most of the range of possibilities – i.e. tastings in person, international discussions over Zoom, tool modifications, storytelling. Creativity is welcome!
An organic lunch on Saturday is sandwiched by over 40 educational workshops for a full day of learning and socializing.
This is a valuable opportunity for farmers, gardeners, homesteaders, educators, and environmentalists to share resources and ideas to grow our vibrant organic community. We are excited to come together around this winter’s theme, “Cooperative Foodways: Building Our Future Together.”
The conference hosts 40+ workshops and draws hundreds of attendees from throughout the Northeast.
I will be giving a workshop on Crop Planning for Sustainable Vegetable Production
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Cold damage update
Bright Lights chard with cold-damaged stems. Dec 27. Pam Dawling
I reported very little damage to our hoophouse crops last week when it was 2F (-17C) outdoors. Since then, no plants keeled over, but some leaves are showing tan patches of dead cells, either where the leaves touched the rowcover. or where they were not properly covered. So, we have lost some leaves of senposai, a few of spinach, some on the yarrow we planted for beneficial insects. But, overall, I’m extremely happy with the good condition of our crops.
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Mistake about potato yields
Sorting potatoes two weeks after harvest to remove problem potatoes before rot spreads. Photo Wren Vile
Yes made a mistake back in 2012, when I wrote Sustainable Market Farming, which I hope has been corrected in reprints since I was first notified of this in August 2019. If you have an older edition of my book, it might still have the error. In yield numbers on page 376, it says about potatoes, “Yields are likely to be 150 lbs/ac (168 kg/ha); 200 lbs/ac (224 kg/ha) is a good yield”.
“Yes, my mistake indeed! On page 45, I have the (better!) info that potatoes can yield at least 110 pounds/100 feet, or 49.9 kg/30m. I think I probably meant to write on page 376, that a low yield could be 150 pounds/100ft, which is equivalent to 11 tons/acre. In the metric system, that’s 223 kg/100m, or 24.4 tons/ha. Other sources suggest average yields could be almost twice this. And good yields, even 4 times the low numbers.
So it should say
“Yields are likely to be 11 tons/ac (24.4 tons/ha); 22 tons/ac (48.8 tons/ha) is a good yield”
That’s US tons of 2000 pounds, metric tons of 1000 kg. Or for a smaller scale, probably closer to what most of us are growing,
“Yields are likely to be 150 lbs/100ft (223 kg/100m); 200 lbs/100 ft (300 kg/100m) is a good yield”
Harlequin bugs. Photo University of Maryland Extension Service
At the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association Sustainable Agriculture Conference, in Durham, North Carolina, November 5-7, I facilitated a Farmer Round Table on Working Through Production Challenges. I started the event by providing stickers and asking participants to fix them on a chart, which had a circle divided into 16 segments, labeled Land & Space; Weather; Capital, Infrastructure & Equipment; Time Use & Planning; Quantities; Prioritizing; Labor; Crops & Varieties; Planting; Weeds & Pests; Harvest, Wash & Pack; Contingency Plans; Learning; Resources; Support; and Other Stuff.
Production Challenges chart from my workshop at CFSA
I asked people to use red or pink stickers for their three worst production challenges, orange or yellow for their next worst, and green or blue for topics where they had once had a problem, and have since found a solution. (The reason for the varying colors is that I didn’t know how many people would be there, and used stickers I had on hand!)
Honestly, we could have made a full-day workshop, trying to cover all the challenges! Apologies to the people whose problems never got mentioned out loud.
We started with the category of Weeds and Pests as that had the most red and pink stickers, and spent a bit of time towards the end on labor challenges and a tiny bit of time on solutions that people had found to various problems. In fact, we spent most of the workshop talking about insect pests, from nematodes up by size, through flea beetles to potato beetles, Japanese beetles and harlequin bugs.
To make up for weed and pest management topics we didn’t get to, here are some updated resources from my first book, Sustainable Market Farming. This will also be useful to owners of my book, (as the links are now 9 years old), and anyone else looking for pest, weed and disease biological management.
Golden Glory zucchini. Open, disease-resistant plants Photo Pam Dawling
Resources on Plant Diseases
Why Things Bite Back, Edward Tenner. See the chapter on vegetable pests, accidentally introduced weeds and deliberately introduced exotics to better understand the “revenge of unintended consequences.”
Identifying Diseases of Vegetables, Pennsylvania State University. Good photos and symptom lists.
University of Illinois Extension, Vegetable Seed Treatment. The first two pages describe hot water treatment for killing diseases on seeds. After page 3, it’s not organic.
Mushroom Mountain, information and mycorrhizal fungi granules for plant roots:
Resources on Sustainable Weed Management
Cover of Manage Weeds on Your Farm SARE
Manage Weeds on Your Farm: A Guide to Ecological Strategies, Charles Mohler, John Teasdale and Antonio DiTommaso, published by Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE). Includes profiles of many, many weeds. $24 or free (large) download
In January 2020 I was part of a group tour of Cuban farming organized by the Organic Growers School. In 9 days we visited 9 farms, had several speakers address aspects of life (and particularly farming and environmental issues) in Cuba, had a couple of walking tours, ate many delicious farm-to-table type dinners and still had time for a salsa lesson.
When I got home I planned to follow up with a public slideshow, but instead we got the Covid pandemic. I made a series of blogposts, which you can revisit:
“This 9-day tour of Cuba’s sustainable farms, community gardens, and historical centers provides a rare opportunity to learn about the Cuban food system and learn about alternatives to corporatized agriculture. Participants will have the chance to:
Learn from farmers and food activists about Cuba’s transition to agroecological farming practices and its national policies that prioritize sustainable farming and hunger remediation.
Connect with farmers, consumers, activists, NGOs, policymakers, and experts working to transform the global food system.
Acquire the knowledge and strategies to create just, sustainable, local, and healthy food systems in your own communities.”
Check out the linked presentation for a summary of the January 2022 tour and for a sneak peek of the types of activities involved in the tour. OGS successfully operated a tour group in January 2022. No-one got Covid. OGS brought the first educational trip from the United States to Cuba since the beginning of COVID
On the website you can get your most likely questions answered: legal, financial and health requirements, sample itinerary, reasons to visit Cuba, reasons to go with OGS, reasons to value agroecology, and a one-hour Info session video. The trip includes bus transportation within Cuba, a minimum of 2 meals each day, 9 nights in casas particulares accommodation, a very good ag-knowledgeable tour guide and tour manager, and entry fees to various sight-seeing exhibitions.
Farmer Fernando Funes Monzote showing us the vegetable beds, terraced on contour, at Finca Marta, Artemisa, Cuba Photo by Pam Dawling
CAFF - Extend Your Growing Season into Colder Weather with High Tunnels I’m spending October home on the farm, preparing and planting the hoophouse with winter crops. Meanwhile I’m applying to speak at quite a few sustainable agriculture conferences and preparing slideshows, handouts and talks. I’m going back to in-person conferences. We have very limited Wi-Fi in this part of rural Virginia and video-conferencing is just not possible. I managed to make some recorded narrated slideshows during the pandemic and I picked up more writing work. But there is an undeniable something I get from in-person conferences!
In the past year I’ve been at two in-person events: The very safely and carefully orchestrated PASA conference back in February, and the September CAFF presentation, half of which was outside touring the farm and half in a large airy lecture room. Now I’m lining up quite a few conferences. Go to my Events page on this website to get all the details, including links to register. Hope to see you at one of these:
I will be facilitating the Farmer Roundtable:Working Through Production Challenges on Saturday, November 5, from 1:30 – 2:45 pm with time to linger afterwards.
I will be presenting a 75-minute workshop on Spring and Summer Hoophouse Use, especially how to manage extreme heat and diseases in hot and humid climates.
Tennessee Local Food Summit logo
January 6-8 (Fri-Sun), 2023, Virginia Association for Biological Farming is hosting the Virginia Biological Farming Conference, Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center. Conference INFO Home Page
I hope to be presenting a half-day pre-conference session on Friday January 6, on Year-Round Hoophouse Vegetables. Also maybe a regular length session during the main conference.
VABF 2023 Conference banner
January 14, 2023 (Saturday), NOFA-MASS Annual Winter Conference. Northeast Organic Farming Association, Massachusetts Chapter.https://www.nofamass.org/conferences/Worcester State University on Saturday January 14 and online Sunday January 15. I hope to give a presentation on Saturday.
February 8-11, 2023 (Weds to Sat 2.30pm), PASA2023 Sustainable Agriculture Conference. Lancaster Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, 25 S Queen St, Lancaster, PA. https://pasafarming.org/conference/
I will be presenting two 60 min or 75 min workshops:
Alliums Year-Round (Brand New!)
Crop Planning for Sustainable Vegetable Production.
December lettuce and spinach in our hoophouse. Photo Wren Vile
Recently I traveled to Fayetteville, Arkansas to give my presentation Extend Your Growing Season into Colder Weather with High Tunnels. Run the mouse over the slide and click on the lower left.
We are getting ready for fall and starting to plant our winter crops in the hoophouse.
I have written about transition to winter crops here: Planning and Growing Winter Hoophouse Vegetables (August 16, 2022). This post includes a bed plan, and links to lots of related posts, such as selecting and planning winter crops, bed prep, direct sowing and transplanting, and then caring for the crops, optimizing use of the space, harvesting, and what to do if something goes wrong,
Fall Lettuce Transition
From September 11-17 we sow to transplant in our greenhouse, and on September 15 and 24 to transplant in our hoophouse. This is our fall transition and I’ll write about that when the time comes.
On September 15 and 24, we sow leaf lettuces and romaines in an outdoor nursery bed. We transplant these into our hoophouse at 10” (25 cm) spacing. This is a bit closer than the 12” (30 cm) spacing we use outdoors. We will harvest outer leaves from the hoophouse lettuce all winter, so the plants won’t get as big as they do outdoors.
Beautiful baby lettuce mix in our hoophouse in February. Photo Wren Vile
On October 23 we start sowing lettuce mix in the hoophouse. Baby lettuce mix can be ready in as little as 21 days from mid-spring to mid-fall, longer in colder weather. Our first sowing will be harvestable form 4 December to 15 May if we’re lucky, although if it gets too hot, this planting will get bitter and we’ll need to pull it up.
Baby lettuce mix is a direct-sown cut-and-come-again crop, the plants regrow and can be harvested more than once in cool seasons. We sow 10 rows in a 4’ (1.2m) bed, 4.5” (11cm) apart. Weed and thin to 1″ (2.5 cm). When 3″–4″ (7.5–10 cm) tall, cut 1” (2.5 cm) above the soil. Gather a small handful in one hand and cut with using large scissors. Immediately after harvesting, weed the just-cut area so the next cut won’t include weeds. Rake after harvest with a fine leaf rake to remove outer leaves and cut scraps. If you want to make more than one cut, you will need to remove anything that isn’t top quality salad while you can see it. Larger scale operations have harvesting machines.
We make four or five sowings of baby lettuce mix, sowing our last one on 15 February, for harvest starting mid-March, and ending in May when it gets too hot. By then we should be happily harvesting juicy lettuce heads outdoors and will have lost interest in the lettuce mix.
The soil temperature range for germination of lettuce seeds is 35-85°F (2-29°C), with 40-80°F (4-27°C) being the optimum range and 75°F (24°C) the ideal. At 41°F (5°C) lettuce takes 15 days to germinate; at 50°F (10°C) it takes 7 days; at 59°F (15°C) 4 days; at 68°F (20°C) only 2.5 days; at 77°F (25°C) 2.2 days. Then time to germination increases: 2.6 days at 86°F (30°C); after that it’s too hot.
Removing Shadecloth from our Hoophouse
We are now removing our shadecloth. Normally we would have removed the shade cloth in mid-September, or at least by the Equinox, but this year we are delayed a week. After 15 years with our initial piece of shadecloth we ordered a new piece. Well, we ordered two new pieces, because we mistakenly ordered a piece only half long enough. We bought a matching piece for the other half, and this winter we are going to sew the two pieces together with nylon twine, because the ends of each piece roll back, leaving a central gap about 6 feet long by September. Measure twice, order once!
Our hoophouse with two pieces of shadecloth (by mistake). Photo Pam Dawling
Before next spring we need to replace quite a lot of the hooks the shadecloth ropes attach to. Next time we replace the big plastic we also need to replace the baseboards, as they are rotting and not holding the hooks well.
A reader passed on this tip: “When I ordered shadecloth for my hoophouse, I overshot each end by ten or twelve feet. We stake that out on either end, using six-foot T-posts, to give us a shaded area where air moving into the hoophouse’s open ends can be cooled before entering the structure. Every year in July and August, I’m grateful we did.”
Washing Down the Salts in the Hoophouse
Effects of excess soil salt levels on crop foliage. Photo Rose Ogutu, Horticulture Specialist, Delaware State University
Next week we will leach the salts that have risen to the surface of the soil and dried out there. My book The Year-Round Hoophouse has a whole chapter on recognizing, monitoring and reducing salts that have built-up in the hoophouse, and reducing the likelihood of problems in the future. There is also a chart of salt tolerance of various vegetables, so you can choose what to grow while you remediate your soil. Here I’ll just give a very short intro, in three slides. Click in the lower left of the first slide to move to the next one.
We are starting to close the doors at night when the temperature looks likely to drop below 50°F (10°C) outside. We had to trim down the grass to be able to push the doors to. We had to re-drill the holes the door-bolts (“cane bolts”) go down into. The doors have been wide open all summer.
View through the hoophouse doors in December. Photo Kathleen Slattery
In fall/winter/spring, if night time outdoor low temperatures will be below 40°F (4.5°C) here, we close the windows as well as the doors.
One of the sliding doors on our hoophouse. Photo Pam Dawling
Be Ready for Winter
See my post Dealing with winter weather in your hoophouse (Jan 2022). Be ready to deal with snow and strong winds, extra cold temperatures, and holes in the plastic letting cold air in. If you have a double layer hoophouse, the air inflated between the layers adds strength to the structure, as well as thermal insulation. Holes are bad news.
Hoophouse snow scraping tool on a telescoping painter’s pole. Photo Pam Dawling
Winter Kit
SnoBrum and telescoping painter’s pole
Hat with visor
Long-handled broom with bristles covered with a towel or some bubblewrap
Signing books at a winter conference. Photo P J Kingfisher
I started to make in-person bookings again a year ago, then Omicron arrived and lots of conferences switched to being virtual. The only in-person event I attended this spring was the PASA conference, which I enjoyed a lot. I am still doing some virtual events, and planning some live ones too. Everything is subject to change!
As of right now I have two in-person events booked, and one new podcast interview. June and July are the months for speakers to apply to make winter and spring conference presentations, so I’ll be doing that! See my Events Tab for ideas I have of which events to apply to.
CAFF was developed to strengthen and expand our food and farming system, enhance local communities, and provide opportunities for farmers, food entrepreneurs and food system leaders.
Combining traditional and experiential learning opportunities, their Farm School and Apprenticeship programs teach the production and business skills to develop resilient and sustainable businesses.
CAFF is dedicated to increasing the number of thriving farms and farmers in Arkansas. To accomplish this, the center provides farm education, training, networking, and resources. Creating a supportive farm community network will bring more people into farming and help retain current farmers by increasing their success.
Join CAFF at the farm to learn about extending your growing season with high tunnels. Space for this class is limited.
The CAFF Jan. 11 to March 1 two-hour courses remain available for viewing through Oct. 31. To pay the $10 access fee, please visit the registration page and email Heather Friedrich, program manager, at heatherf@uark.edu to confirm receipt.
A harvest cart with cabbage, kale, squash and lettuce. Photo by Wren Vile
Make the most of your space and time growing vegetables at home using planting schedules and techniques timed to the seasons, seed varieties, crop rotation, and use of protective structures such as coldframes and greenhouses. Learn labor saving and innovative planting and soil fertility techniques for growing and harvesting a full range of fresh, delicious, organic vegetables. Fill your salad bowl and dinner plate year round!
Folk School logo
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Accidental Gods Podcast
Exploring the liminal space between science and spirituality, philosophy and politics, art, creativity – working towards the conscious evolution of humanity.
Accidental Godsis two women, Manda Scott and Faith Tilleray, dreaming of a different future. Faith Tilleray designs the website and the Instagram feed. Manda Scott is a podcaster (also: novelist, smallholder, renegade economist etc. etc. ). Both are living in the UK.
Recent posts include Imagination Activism, Bioregionalism, Sacred Earth Activism, managing the New Economy (based on SEEDS regenerative currency), and Making Use of Methane.
In their community, they share nourishing meals in partnership with local poverty-disrupting nonprofits and community groups.
