Our Production-Focused Block Two Courses Will Help Grow Your Farming Skills
Our new season of online courses is underway, and now’s the time to register for our upcoming block two courses. With webinars starting the week of October 31, our second block of courses focuses on production strategies from berries and veggies to cattle and cut flowers.
Our suite of online courses is offered on a user-friendly platform, which grants registrants permanent access to their course content. Also, courses have tiered pricing based on household size and income to make access to the courses more affordable and equitable for everyone.
Registration is now open for all courses, with live content starting at the end of October for our second block of courses:
Tuesdays: November 1 – December 6, 2022
This new course will show you how having a successful cattle business is about much more than just buying a few head and putting them in a field. Learn about appropriate breeds, marketing strategies, and many more aspects of starting a beef enterprise.
Wednesdays: November 2 – December 14, 2022 (skipping the week of Thanksgiving)
If you’re exploring the idea of adding berries and bramble fruits to your farm, this course will help you think through this decision, from varieties and site selection to profit and marketing. This course will be especially useful if you are interested in growing berries for income.
Mondays: October 31 – December 5, 2022
Fields of flowers are dreamy, but without the background knowledge on production techniques and a solid plan for selling, those flowers can be more costly than profitable. This new course will give you an introduction to the business of flower farming, including the topics, resources and questions you’ll need to answer if you intend to operate a flower farm or add flower production as one component of an established business.
Getting Started with Pastured Pigs
Wednesdays: November 2 – December 7, 2022
Pigs can be a profitable stand-alone enterprise, or can be integrated into an existing farm structure, as they provide a variety of products and are also ideal for turning agricultural wastes into valuable product. This course will guide you through the production and marketing of pigs raised in pasture settings.
Intro to Maple Syrup Production
Thursdays: November 3 – December 15, 2022 (skipping the week of Thanksgiving)
Maple syrup production is rapidly growing around the Northeast and offers a sound financial opportunity to utilize woodlots. This course explores the range of possibilities of maple sugaring on your land, including “alternative” trees for production, such as Birch and Black Walnut.
Tuesdays: November 1 – December 6, 2022
With a bit of practice, mushrooms can be easily grown in the woods on many products. This course trains new and experienced farmers in the background, techniques, and economics of farm-scale woodland mushroom production.
Tuesdays: November 1 – December 6, 2022
Many new farmers get started with poultry because it’s a relatively low-investment with a fairly quick revenue turnaround. The margins can be slim though, and this course will help you develop the necessary skills to build a successful poultry enterprise.
Wednesdays: November 9 – December 14, 2022
This course will help you answer basic questions about site selection, crop rotation, seeding and transplanting, as well as the financial aspects of vegetable crop production. Afterward take Vegetable Production II, the continuation of this course, which will guide you through the growing season from planting to harvest.
Our program offers more than two dozen online courses to help farmers improve their technical and business skills. These courses cover a range of topics any farmer needs to succeed, such as beekeeping, holistic financial planning, vegetable farming, and so much more. Experienced farmers and extension educators guide students through course content, including weekly live webinars, videos, and resources.
New additions to our online course suite include “Goat Production,” which will guide beginning farmers through the production and marketing of goats for dairy, meat and fiber. Also, we’ve added “Identification and Use of Mushrooms in Farms, Gardens, and Forests” to teach you basic ID, species, life cycle, and potential applications of mushrooms to solve community level challenges.
In recent years we’ve also added: “Access to Capital” for anyone seeking funding for a farm enterprise; “Cut Flower Production” on the business of flower farming; a course on “Beef Cattle Management;” a primer on “Social Media & Online Marketing” for your farm business; and a 4-week intensive in how “Reading the Land” can help you monitor its health.
The bulk of the course happens on your own time, with discussions, readings, and assignments in Teachable, our online course platform. To add to the experience, webinars will be woven into the interface of the course for a dedicated time slot each year to allow you to meet on a weekly basis to learn from presenters and ask questions in real-time. If you miss one, they are always recorded and posted for later viewing.
You can browse all of our course offerings on our website. You can learn more about our courses, including answers to common questions, on our course FAQ.
