4 more organic, sustainable farm tours this weekend

The Ohio Sustainable Farm Tour and Workshop Series continues this weekend with four events. Check out the series booklet here and the page numbers given for the details: Saturday, Sept. 19: Sustainable Living Farm Tour, Wood County, p. 36. Sunday, Sept. 20: Organic Weed Management Farm Tour, Madison County, p. 14; Carriage House Farm Open House, Hamilton County, p. 18; Sustainable Fruit Orchard Management Tour, p. 28.

Growing food greenly: Field day is Thursday

Organic field dayNext in the Ohio Sustainable Farm Tour and Workshop Series is the Organic and Sustainable Agriculture Field Day. It’s from 5-7 p.m. Thursday at CFAES’s John E. Hirzel Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Site at the Agricultural Incubator Foundation in northwest Ohio. Free admission and meal. Featured will be projects by CFAES’s Organic Food and Farming Education and Research Program, or OFFER, including research studying organic grain crops, organic pest control and zeolite as a soil amendment. Get full details here (PDF) on p. 28.

Ohio shale’s biggest environmental impact may be on forests

Growing forests 2Shale drilling’s biggest effect on Ohio’s environment might not come from the wells themselves but from the many new pipelines they need. So says CFAES watershed expert Joe Bonnell, who will speak twice on his research exploring the Ohio shale industry’s environmental impacts at Farm Science Review. The Review, which CFAES sponsors, is Sept. 22-24.

Sustainable farms, food, communities? Come share your ideas, plan action

It’s about growing green farms. Building sustainable communities. And helping keep more people fed. Ohio’s ninth annual Stinner Summit is Oct. 16 at Malabar Farm State Park near Mansfield, and anyone interested in healthy land and clean water — including such issues as local food, urban farming, food security and sustainable agriculture — is welcome to attend. Read about it …

Talk today by UMass prof: ‘New Psychological Tools for Promoting Conservation’

Ezra Markowitz of the Department of Environmental Conservation at the University of Massachusetts presents “Going Back to the Future: New Psychological Tools for Promoting Conservation” from 4 to 5:30 p.m. today at Ohio State in Columbus. There’s a video link, too, to CFAES’s Wooster campus. Everyone’s welcome. Details.

Cover crops: Sustainable Farm Tour Series

Discover cover crops (see what we did there?) next in the Ohio Sustainable Farm Tour and Workshop Series. The Turnwald Farm in northwest Ohio will host a Cover Crops Farm Tour from 6-8 p.m. this Thursday, Sept. 3. The tour will feature more than 10 different cover crops and cover crop mixtures after wheat that you can broadcast, drill, or apply with or without manure — at least 40 possible combinations in all. Cover crops’ benefits include richer soil and increased yields and income. Learn more here on p. 27. (More on cover crops. And, even more.)