Year: 2012
The Small Farms Update includes small farm announcements, events, job and internship opportunities, grant and loan opportunities, and latest handbooks, tools and other small farm resources. It is intended for farmers and agricultural service providers in New York and the Northeast. If have an item to be included in the update, please contact Violet Stone…
The Northeast Beginning Farmer Project is pleased to announce the remaining two webinars in the Summer Lunchtime Learning Series: Alternative Farm Financing and Serving Diverse Beginning Farmer Audiences. The 1 hour webinars are for beginning farmers and service providers. The webinars are free to attend, but please register here. **Please note the date change for…
Message from the Editor Summer is upon the farm and this always means sweaty long days where we often push our bodies and minds to their limit; sometimes not leaving the field until the sun has slipped down over the horizon. We are busy as farmers, and there never seems to be enough time in the day. I’ve…
The NOFA-NY Mentorship Program will assist (as a free benefit of NOFA-NY membership) beginning or transitioning-to-organic farmers in finding a farmer mentor who will help them develop their career and farming practices. Drawing from a network of farmers who are eager to share lessons learned during their many years of farm experience, new farmers (“mentees”)…
I never thought I would be learning to farm with oxen. I grew up in Chicago and I did not get to see the country all that often. The only “Bulls” I knew of were a professional basketball team. After high school, I chose to go to college out in Iowa. It is interesting how…
When I first moved to Madison County in central NY, I was surprised to learn that very few farmers were selling products in the NYC market. In my fresh perspective, connecting upstate farmers to NYC seemed like a fairy tale waiting to happen. Madison County had rolling hills that were not being plowed under to…
Tools are now and have always been vital to farming: They’re how we interact with the land to get things done. Whether it’s a stirrup hoe or a cultivating tractor, our favorite tools become extensions of our bodies, as we use them again and again. We farmers have a very interesting relationship with our tools.…
Craig Kahlke engaged local growers in trials of a new preservation method for sweet cherries. Welcome to the Northeast SARE Spotlight! SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education) offers grants to farmers, educators, universities and communities that are working to make agriculture more sustainable – economically, environmentally, and socially. Learn about whether a SARE grant would…
NY Nut Growers Association Seeks to Preserve Heirloom Nut Trees In the 1930’s, a lot of interest developed in growing English (Persian) Walnuts in New York State. The Canadian Minister, the Rev. Paul Crath, had collected seed nuts and seedling trees from his native Poland and was growing them successfully in Southern Ontario. He formed…
Our summer photo features comes to us from “The Farmer’s Husband”, a diversified farm in Schoharie County, NY, owned by Thomas McCurdy and Bailey Hale. The farm is currently raising chickens, ducks, turkeys, rabbits, goats, sheep and pigs. Thomas says, “We don’t want to be big, just big enough to be self-sustaining, producing as much…
