First Columbus urban farm tour is Saturday

Franklintin imageThe Columbus Urban Farm Tour Series starts Saturday, July 30, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Franklinton Gardens, a nonprofit, 2.5-acre, “high-output” fruit and vegetable farm whose goal is to demonstrate that “urban agriculture can be a cornerstone of a healthy urban food system.” Admission is free and open to the public. The Franklin County office of OSU Extension, CFAES’s outreach arm, is a co-sponsor of the series. Read more here and here.

Get the 411 on QGIS

Conceptual keyboard - GIS (blue key)Learn the ABCs of using QGIS — in this case, to map tree cover, land use and similar data — in an Aug. 17 workshop in Mansfield. QGIS is a free and open-source geographic information system, or GIS. It works on operating systems including Mac OS X, Linux, Unix and Microsoft Windows. Sponsoring the event is CFAES’s Ohio Woodland Stewards program. Read more.

See unusual herbs, berries in Columbus

July 17.Take a Unique Kitchen Herb and Berry Farm Tour from 2-4 p.m. Sunday, July 17. It’s at Foraged & Sown in Columbus and is part of the ongoing Ohio Sustainable Farm Tour and Workshop Series. Foraged & Sown is a growing and foraging operation that sells at the Clintonville Farmers Market and select retail outlets. See herb seedlings, culinary herbs, alpine strawberries, other specialty berries, a backyard-scale greenhouse and high tunnel, and more. Get details here on p. 34.

Grow your own quality dairy forage

July 15.The Ohio Sustainable Farm Tour and Workshop Series continues at 10 a.m. Friday, July 15, with the Quality Forages for Dairy Operations Farm Tour. It’s at the Heckman Family Dairy in Yorkshire in western Ohio. The Heckmans milk 80 cows, raise replacements and rotationally graze them on 340 certified organic acres. They also grow all their own feed. Learn more here on pp. 11-12.

No waste left behind; or, big doings soon in London

Holstein cowsThe 2016 North American Manure Expo is about to land in Ohio. The big event, covering the serious business of using livestock leavings to help grow crops, while doing it safely and greenly, is Aug. 3-4 at CFAES’s Molly Caren Agricultural Center in London, about 25 miles west of Columbus. Read the story…