Southern Ohio Specialty Crop Conference

| Nanette Neal

Registration is now open for the 2019 Southern Ohio Specialty Crop Conference. It will be held on February 5, 2019 at the Oasis Conference Center in Loveland, Ohio. The deadline to register for this conference is February 1, 2019 at 12:00 Noon. No walk-ins are permitted. Registration is limited to 75 people, so register early to avoid being shut out.

This is the conference to attend for Southern Ohio specialty crop growers. Fifteen different class options on fruit and vegetable production are available at this conference. Your registration includes a continental breakfast and a buffet lunch. All attendees will receive a USB memory stick with copies of every available presentation to take home, so even if you don’t attend the session, you’ll still get the information. Private pesticide and fertilizer re-certification credits will be available for categories 3, 5, core and fertilizer. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from industry experts and share information with other growers.

The Oasis Conference Center is conveniently located about 5 miles off of I-275 on the northeast corner of Cincinnati.
For more information about the schedule and to register for the conference, go to the conference website.

Registration brochure. 

 

New and Small Farm College Registration Open

| Nanette Neal

The 2019 New and Small Farm College program will be offered in three Ohio locations. Each location will host an entire eight-week program focusing on topics to get the most out of your few acres. The program begins at 6 p.m. with a light dinner followed by the program at 6:30 p.m. The program concludes at 9 p.m. Click on a location below for more details and registration information:

Montgomery County – Englewood, Ohio
Classes will be Jan. 8 – Feb. 26, 2019
Enrollment deadline is Jan. 2

Vinton County – McArthur, Ohio
Classes will be Jan. 15 – March 5, 2019
Enrollment deadline is Jan. 8

Adams County – Seaman, Ohio
Classes will be Jan. 16 – March 6, 2019
Enrollment deadline is Jan. 8

The New and Small Farm College is an eight-week program that introduces new and seasoned farmers to a wide variety of topics. Typically beginning in January, the program teaches participants how to set goals, plan, budget, and where to find resources if they choose to start a small farming operation. The course will lay out how to manage financial and farm records.

Extension Educators will illustrate many different enterprises that can be profitable on land as small as one acre. The educators will show the benefits and pitfalls of each enterprise so that the participant will be able to pick and choose what may work best for them and what suits their interest. To round out the experience, a tour will be held around area farms so that participants can see first-hand how small farm life works, and also make contacts of practicing farmers in the area.

Topics covered in the program include:

  • Getting started in the planning process
  • Sources of assistance
  • Agricultural legal issues
  • Insurance considerations for the farm
  • Inventory of natural resources
  • Financial and production record keeping
  • Crops and horticulture production
  • Animal production
  • Marketing

Sample Course Outline

Class Dates: Thursdays (day varies by location)
• January – March

Class Times:
• Light dinner at 6:00 pm
• Classes are from 6:30 – 9:00 pm

Cost:
• Price includes one 3-inch binder of resource materials, meals and dessert each night, and 1 soil sample evaluation
• Additional family member discount available (does not include a notebook).

Sign up for the Small Farms Email list and Subscribe to the “Go Farm Ohio” Blog, Facebook and Twitter to receive notices about the Small Farm Team’s opportunities. This list is only used by the OSU Extension Small Farms Team to send relevant information to its stakeholders.

Annie’s Project hosted in Clinton County

| Nanette Neal

Annie’s Project is an educational program dedicated to strengthening women’s role in modern farm and ranch enterprises. The mission of Annie’s Project is to empower farm women to be better business partners through networks and by managing and organizing critical information. Annie’s Project is a six-week course that focuses on the five broad areas of agricultural risk: human, financial, marketing, production, and legal. Sessions are designed to be very interactive between the presenters and the participants. Information presented is tailored to meet the needs of participants in their own geographical areas.

Annie was a woman who grew up in a small rural community with the life-long goal of being involved in production agriculture. She spent her lifetime learning how to be an involved business partner with her husband, and together they reached their goals and achieved success. Annie’s daughter, Ruth Hambleton, a former Extension Educator for the University of Illinois, founded Annie’s Project in 2000 in honor of her mother. Annie’s Project is designed to take Annie’s life experiences and share them with other women in agriculture who are living and working in this complex, dynamic business environment.

Former participants have stated:

“As a result of Annie’s Project, I’ve had great discussions with my husband.”

“I’ve started revamping our recordkeeping system. I feel like I have some direction now!”

“I believe attending Annie’s Project is the wisest investment of money I could have made. The amount of information learned from all the speakers is unbelievable. I feel like I can be a real asset to the farm operation now that I have a better understanding of the business.”

For more information about the Clinton County Program click here.

If you would like to have an Annie’s Project in your area of the state, contact your local county extension office to start the process.

GAP’s Training (Good Agricultural Practices)

| Nanette Neal

Image result for good agricultural practices

Wednesday, May 23, 2018  4p – 7p

OSU Extension Madison County is hosting a GAP’s Training Class (Good Agricultural Practices) at the Procter Center, 11235 OH 38, London, OH. Click here for registration.

What is a GAPs Class?

•An educational course that covers good agricultural practices or ‘GAPs’, which help reduce the risk of on-farm produce contamination
•Attending the OSU GAPs class does not equate to being ‘GAPs Certified’

T o p i c s I n c l u d e :

• Water Quality
• Worker Training, Health & Hygiene
• Manure and Compost Handling
• Domestic and Wild Animals
• And More

Women’s Tractor Operation and Safety Program

| Nanette Neal

Image result for woman on tractor

Saturday, June 2, 2018

9:00 AM – 12:00PM

Location: Brown’s Family Farm Market, 11620 Hamilton Cleves Rd, Hamilton, OH  

  • Space is limited.
  • Registration is required (see attached flyer for more information)
  • Reserve your spot by May 18, 018

This event empowers women to:

  • become more comfortable with agricultural equipment.
  • have a greater knowledge of general operation.
  • become more safety minded while operating equipment.

For questions, please call:

Ohio State University Extension, Butler County

513.887.3722

2018 NE Ohio Living Your Small Farm Dream Conference

| lewandowski.11@osu.edu

The 2018 NE Ohio Living Your Small Farm Dream conference will be held on Saturday, April 7 at the RG Drage Career Center, located at 2800 Richville Drive SW in Massillon Ohio.  The conference provides education and topics of interest for small farm and rural landowners.  Participants will walk away from the conference with knowledge and ideas of how to improve existing enterprises or marketing opportunities.  For those who have some acreage but don’t yet know what to do with it, the conference is an opportunity to consider possibilities, gather information and make contacts.

The 2018 Living Your Small Farm Dream conference offers 26 different breakout sessions divided between five different track topics; Horticulture, Livestock, Marketing, Farm Management and Specialty Crop.  Presenters include OSU Extension specialists, Extension Educators, Business owners, and small farm producers/entrepreneurs.  Conference participants will have the opportunity to attend four different sessions over the course of the four breakout sessions.  The Small Farm conference trade show offers another opportunity to learn and gather information.  The trade show vendors/exhibitors feature goods and services used in small farm operations.  The conference schedule includes time between each breakout session and over an extended noon hour to visit the trade show.

The specialty crop track features sessions on malting barley and hop production to tap into the growing microbrewery businesses.  One session involves a panel discussion with several local microbreweries who will share their stories and use of locally sourced ingredients in their products.  The horticulture track offers sessions on growing grapes, brambles, vegetables, flowers, beekeeping, use of soil amendments, and managing soil health.  The livestock track includes sessions on raising and marketing pasture produced beef and poultry, as well as hay production and Ohio livestock care standards.  The farm management track includes Ag law, business planning, tax issues, farmland renting, health care issues, and creating profitable small farm enterprises.  The marketing track includes a two-hour super session focused on developing on-farm agritourism and agriculture entertainment businesses as well as sessions on how to scale up your small farm business to take advantage of marketing opportunities and a session on developing a distribution system for locally grown foods.

Conference registration/sign-in and the trade show opens at 8:00 am on April 7.  Following some brief conference opening comments at 9:00 am, the first breakout session begins at 9:30 am.  The conference concludes by 4:00 pm.  Conference registration is $60/person or, if attending the Women in Agriculture Conference at the same location on April 6, plus the Small Farm Conference on April 7; $100 for a combined registration.  Student discounts are $30 for attending the small farm conference alone or $50 if attending both the Women in Agriculture and the Small Farm conference. Pre-registration for both the Small Farm conference and the Women in Agriculture conference is due March 23.  On-line registration is available at http://go.osu.edu/NESmallFarmReg .  A Living the Small Farm Dream conference brochure that lists session topics and presentation times along with a mail-in registration form, and a document with descriptions of all the presentation topics is available at http://go.osu.edu/NEOHSmallFarms .

For more information about the Living Your Small Farm Dream conference contact Rory Lewandowski in the Wayne County Extension office at 330-264-8722, email: lewandowski.11@osu.edu; or Emily Adams in the Coshocton County Extension office at 740-622-2265, email: adams.661@osu.edu .

A DAY in the WOODS (2nd Friday Series Program) 2018 Schedule Now Available!

| David Apsley

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