My Workshops: Crop Rotations (Friday 1.30pm Premium Workshop in the Woodland Pavilion), Asian Greens (Saturday 4.30 pm in the Organic Gardening Tent at the Mountaintop – free workshop)
Book-signing
Mother Earth News Fair, Seven Springs, Pennsylvania. (to be confirmed) Anticipated Weekend Attendance: 18,000
Virginia Biological Farming Conference January 29-31 2015 in Richmond, Virginia. Conference registration covers your choice of the 25 workshops on Friday and Saturday; Friday dinner and Saturday lunch; access to the trade show, where you can handle the tools you’re considering buying, and ask questions of the vendors.
Cole Planet Junior Push Seeder
Speaking of tools, I hope to sell our (long-unused) Cole Planet Junior push seeder at the conference. They are $760 new. Ours is in working order with all the seed plates and an attached bag to keep them in. I’ll sell it for $350 cash or check. Should you ever need them, spare parts are readily available, for instance from Woodward Crossings. It’s not a museum piece or lawn ornament, it’s a working piece of equipment.
At the VBF Conference, there are 3 pre-conference workshops (4 to 7 hours each) on Thursday, for $60-$75: Essential Tools & Techniques for the Small Scale Organic Vegetable Growers by Jean-Martin Fortier of The Market Gardener fame, Urban Farming Intensive with Cashawn Myer & Tenisio Seanima, and Edible Landscaping with Michael Judd and Ira Wallace (of Southern Exposure fame).
I’m giving two workshops. Friday at 3pm: Succession Planting for Continuous Vegetable Harvests – How to plan sowing dates for continuous supplies of popular summer crops, such as beans, squash, cucumbers, edamame and sweet corn, as well as year round lettuce. Using these planning strategies can help avoid gluts and shortages and on Saturday at 10.30 am, Producing Asian Greens – Detailed information for market and home growers. Many varieties of tasty, nutritious greens grow quickly and bring fast returns. This session covers production of Asian greens outdoors and in the hoophouse. It includes tips on variety selection of over twenty types of Asian greens; timing of plantings; pest and disease management; fertility; weed management and harvesting. I’ll also be signing and selling books during Saturday lunchtime.
Bring a dish for the Friday potluck picnic at lunchtime, seeds for the seed swap, a notebook and two pens, a bag to collect handouts and so on, and if you play music, bring an instrument and some songs for the jam on Friday night.
Then the next weekend, I’m at the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture Farming for a Future Conference February 4-7, 2015, at State College, PA. There are extra pre-conference sessions on Tuesday 3rd and Wednesday 4th, then the main conference on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I am speaking on Growing Great Garlic (Saturday 3.10 pm) and also on Cold-hardy Winter Vegetables (Friday 8.30 am). I will also be doing book-signing and sales.
February 26-28, 2015 I will be speaking at the West Virginia Small Farms Conference in Charleston, WV. My workshops will be Succession Planting for Continuous Vegetable Harvests on Saturday 2/28 at 9.30 am and two new ones on Friday 2/27, Hoophouse Summer Crops at 9.30 am and Hoophouse Winter Crops at 10.30 am. They are currently listed as High Tunnel workshops. Some say that researchers and Extension agents call them High Tunnels and growers call them Hoophouses, but whatever you call them, high tunnels and hoophouses are the same thing.
My next booking is at the Mother Earth News Fair in Asheville, North Carolina, April 11-12, 2015. I haven’t firmed up my workshops and book signings yet, but I might do the hoophouse workshops again (from WVSFC)
The next booking after that that I have is at the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello September 11-12, 2015. Too soon to name the topic. MaybeCrop Rotations and Asian Greens. And I expect to be doing book signings at the Monticello Bookshop.
Now then, about pawpaws. Neal Peterson has worked for years developing superior flavored pawpaw varieties, and he wants to go global! That is, he wants to secure contracts to sell plants of his varieties worldwide. To do this, he has to have trademarked varieties. So he has set up a Peterson Pawpaws Kickstarter campaign to raise at least $20,000 by . If you’ve tasted pawpaws and if you support fruit diversity, consider if you can back up your support with some hard cash.
While I was checking SlideShare.net for my slideshows, to re-post my Cold-hardy Winter Vegetables one, I found this lovely one, from Alison and Paul Weidiger, two of my gardening gurus. They farm in Kentucky, which is the same winter-hardiness zone as us (zone 7) and the same latitude (38N).
<div style=”margin-bottom:5px”> <strong> <a href=”https://www.slideshare.net/awiediger/fall-and-winter-production-presentation” title=”Fall And Winter Production” target=”_blank”>Fall And Winter Production</a> </strong> from <strong><a href=”http://www.slideshare.net/awiediger” target=”_blank”>awiediger</a></strong> </div>
Alison and Paul will be presenters at the Virginia Biofarming ConferenceJan 31 – Feb 1, 2014 in Richmond, VA at the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel. They will give two workshops Growing Cool Season Vegetable Crops in High TunnelsandGreenhouse Herb and Transplant Production for Profit. There’s a great line-up of speakers including Mark Cain (another grower I much admire) on Cut Flowers, Harvey Ussery, The Modern Homestead, the $43,560 Project by Clif Slade and our dear friend Ira Wallace, of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange on How to Germinate Seeds Year-Round.
Also some speakers I haven’t met before, who sound really good: Successful Management of a Diversified Organic Farm by Stacy Brenner and John Bliss, of Broadturn Farm. Profitable Vegetable Farming on 1.5 Acres: BioIntensive Market Garden by Jean-Martin Fortier, of Les Jardins de la Grelinette, and Ray Archuleta, Conservation Agronomist, NRCS .and several more. See the VABF website for more details.
I left for the Mother Earth News Fair in PA on Thursday, and got home on Monday. It was a huge event! Over 240 workshops at 14 different locations, some indoor stages, some outdoors. Saturday was rainy, Sunday cold. I think it’s the first time I’ve given a presentation while wearing my jacket. but these Fair-goers are a hardy lot. The tent was packed. As well as the presentations, there were almost 400 booths with exhibitors, vendors and demonstrations, and the large MEN Bookstore, where I did book-signing on Sunday after my presentation.
Here’s a lovely piece of feedback I got: “I thought your presentation was excellent – best I went to. – you seem to really love your vocation and your information was all practical with no trite filler (like some). Well done.”
I also (at last, after a few years of emailing), had the pleasure of meeting my editor, Ingrid Witvoet, and my marketing person, Sara Reeves, from New Society Publishers. At the NSP authors’ reception, I got the chance to talk with other writers, comparing our experiences.
I joined the MEN Blog Squad at a lunch meeting, and signed up to also blog for them. Don’t worry, I won’t close this one down any time soon.
I hope to go to the Asheville, NC MEN Fair April 12-13 2014. I might need a new slideshow – so many of mine are intended for winter and fall conference audiences.
And now, back at home, fixing irrigation systems, sowing seeds for winter hoophouse crops and unpacking my cold weather clothes. there has been a decided shift in temperature in the past few weeks. Fall is beautiful here.
Mother Earth News Fair, Asheville Anticipated Weekend Attendance: 15,000.
Heritage Harvest Festival 
Carolina Farm Stewardship Association Conference.
