Workshop for new and aspiring farmers

The Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association holds its Farm Vision Workshop this Sunday, Oct. 15, from 1 to 5 p.m. in Columbus. Consider attending if you’re a new or aspiring farmer. The workshop will “help you map out your farm vision, clarify your goals and values, and assess your strengths, resources and needs before beginning a farming enterprise,” the event description says. A panel of early-career farmers will speak, too. Get details.

The event is part of the Ohio Sustainable Farm Tour and Workshop Series. CFAES’s Sustainable Agriculture Team is a co-presenter of the series.

See stunning aerial photos of Lake Erie algal blooms

NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory has posted some stunning aerial photos, taken Sept. 20, of a harmful algal bloom in western Lake Erie. You can see more, too, from Sept. 14 (the fifth one down, among many, may smack your gob) and Aug. 14.

Sssselebrities to follow on Twitter

Follow Skeate, Arwen, Hermione and Mr. Darcy, among others — radiotagged timber rattlesnakes living in southeast Ohio woods — on the @TimberTweets Twitter feed by CFAES’s Peterman Lab. Lab staff are tracking the secretive snakes, an Ohio endangered species, to see how forest management affects them. Venomous but shy, with a taste for eating small rodents (including ones spreading Lyme disease), timber rattlers help ecosystems and, quietly, people.

Lab head Bill Peterman, assistant professor in CFAES’s School of Environment and Natural Resources, says, “I’ve had a passion for amphibians and reptiles since I was a kid catching frogs and snakes.” He’s in the video above.

Tour a farmstead, micro dairy in the suburbs

Jedidiah Farm and Studio hosts the Suburban Farmstead and Micro Dairy Tour from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 2, at 5058 Smothers Road in Westerville.

The 5-acre farm uses “ecologically inclusive principles to encourage biodiversity and resilient food production,” the event description says. “Visitors can expect to see a space that is in transition from the typical suburban to perennial food forests, guilds, woodlands and pasture, incorporating annual and perennial crops within rotational grazing principles.”

The free event is part of the Ohio Sustainable Farm Tour and Workshop Series. CFAES’s Sustainable Agriculture Team is a co-presenter of the series and is the specific presenter of this tour.