Two national experts on green labels and keeping them trustable are the featured speakers for September’s breakfast by the Environmental Professionals Network.
Month: August 2016
Helping ‘make water quality a priority’
Jay Martin, head of CFAES’s Field to Faucet effort, and Chris Winslow, director of the Ohio Sea Grant program, write about Ohio State’s efforts to improve water quality for Ohioans …
Soil phosphorus levels trending downward
Agricultural soil phosphorus levels have held steady or trended downward in at least 80 percent of Ohio’s counties from 1993 through 2015, according to recent findings by CFAES scientists…
What’s known about Lake Erie’s algal blooms
Learn the latest on Lake Erie’s blue-green befoulers at Understanding Algal Blooms: State of the Science, a Sept. 15 conference in Toledo. The event, according to its website, will “highlight current scientific knowledge about algal blooms: model predictions, updated best management practices and water treatment methods to remove toxins.” Co-hosts are Chris Winslow, interim director of the Ohio State-based Ohio Sea Grant program, and CFAES’s Jay Martin (head of the Field to Faucet initiative), Greg LaBarge and Kevin King. Find out more.
How to grow edibles, medicinals in the city
Also this Sunday, Aug. 7, will be the Experimental Agroforestry Site Tour, which is from 2-4 p.m. at Cooke Forest Edibles and Medicinals in Columbus. It, too, is part of the Ohio Sustainable Farm Tour and Workshop Series. The tour description says the company “grows on an acre of wet clay soil at the back of a three-acre city lot.” Owners Bethani Turley and Chris Burney grow a wide variety of perennial and annual plants “in an attempt to mimic the eastern deciduous forest biome.” Details here on pp. 35-36.
40 good reasons to go to the Gwynne
See woods, ponds and prairie — and prairie plant compadres like this monarch butterfly — in the Gwynne Conservation Area during the Sept. 20-22 Farm Science Review in London, Ohio. Then check out the 40-some talks in the area that are scheduled throughout the Review. Many of the speakers will be experts from CFAES. Trees, fish, wetlands and wildlife will be among the topics — plus managing pastures, safety with chainsaws and even Zika mosquitoes. See a complete schedule of the talks here. Read more here.
See ‘sustainable production with a social purpose’
“Sustainable production with a social purpose.” That’s the Columbus Growing Collective‘s motto. Described as an “eclectic group of farmers, restauranteurs, social entrepreneurs and environmentalists,” it grows food in multiple ways, including in shipping containers, on rooftops and for farm-to-table restaurants, and in multiple locations, including its flagship Italian Village Urban Farm, which you can visit this Sunday, Aug. 7, when it hosts the Multi-Location Mission-Driven Urban Farm Tour from 1 to 2 p.m. The tour is part of the Ohio Sustainable Farm Tour and Workshop Series and Columbus Urban Farm Tour Series. CFAES is a co-presenter of both series. Learn more here on pp. 23-24.
With a name like that, it has to be fantastisch
Red Beet Row. Now that’s a name to remember. It’s a new 14-acre education farm in Jefferson in far northeast Ohio. It uses permaculture and holistic growing and building methods; has a passive solar underground greenhouse, mobile animal shelters, hugelkultur (mound) beds and more; and is hosting the Permaculture and Green Building Farm Tour from 1 to 3:30 p.m. this Saturday, Aug. 6. It’s another in the Ohio Sustainable Farm Tour and Workshop Series. Read more here on pp. 30-31.
Growing an urban farm in Columbus, using unused land, feeding people
Visit Columbus’s Clarfield Farm, which is part of Urban Farms of Central Ohio, which in turn is part of the Mid-Ohio Foodbank, when it hosts the Large-Scale Urban Farm Tour from 2 to 4 p.m. this Saturday, Aug. 6. The tour description says Urban Farms of Central Ohio “transforms vacant and underutilized sites in underserved neighborhoods into productive, sustainable urban farms that provide low-income, food-insecure residents increased access to fresh, local produce.” It’s part of both the Ohio Sustainable Farm Tour and Workshop Series and the Columbus Urban Farm Tour Series. Learn more here on p. 23. CFAES is a co-presenter of both series.
Bucks from pastured buck buck bucks
Learn to make money raising pastured poultry in a workshop called Profitable Poultry in Motion: Maximizing Performance from Your Pastured Flock. It’s this Friday, Aug. 5, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., at Breakneck Acres in Ravenna in northeast Ohio. It’s part of the Ohio Sustainable Farm Tour and Workshop Series. This one has a fee: $50 for members of the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association (OEFFA), $70 for nonmembers, lunch included, limited to 35. Learn more here on p. 19. OEFFA and CFAES are two of the series co-presenters.