Growing barley for malting will be the chief topic when CFAES holds its Small Grains Field Day on June 12 in Wooster. CFAES scientists will share new information about barley varieties, contracts, diseases and more. Malted barley is used to make beer.
local foods
Celebrate ‘food, sustainability, community’
The next Environmental Professionals Network breakfast program, 7 a.m. to noon June 12, involves a field trip. Participants will ride a bus from Ohio State’s Columbus campus, or drive on their own, to the town of Mechanicsburg, 40 miles west of Columbus, where they’ll visit and hear from local food supporters The Hive Market and Deli (for breakfast), Hemisphere Coffee Roasters (for coffee), In Good Taste Catering and an associated family farm (for walking and wagon tours of its crops, livestock and conservation practices). It’s a celebration of “food, environmental sustainability and community,” says the event’s website.
Buckeyes slated at organic conference
Ten Ohio State experts, most of them collaborators in CFAES’s Organic Food and Farming Education and Research program, will be among the many speakers at the largest sustainable food and farming conference in Ohio. (Photo: CFAES.)
How to get more local food in schools
CFAES’s OSU Extension outreach arm will serve as local host for the National Farm to Cafeteria Conference on April 25-27 in Cincinnati. The event is for teachers and administrators wanting to start or expand Farm to School programs, consumers interested in local food opportunities, and farmers wanting to sell their food to schools and other institutions. Read more.
Early bird discount registration runs through March 9.
This beer is green — and that’s good
“We’ve successfully made a case for why sustainable beer sells and how it can be sourced locally,” said Vincent Valentino, sustainability major manager for Columbus’s Land-Grant Brewing Company, speaking to the Environmental Professionals Network (EPN) recently.
Valentino graduated in the second class of CFAES’s Environment, Economy, Development and Sustainability major.
EPN, a service of CFAES’s School of Environment and Natural Resources, hosts a series of monthly public breakfast programs. (Photo: iStock.)
Tuesday: ‘Lessons in sustainability’ from Columbus craft brewery
The next monthly Environmental Professionals Network (EPN) breakfast program, “Land Grant to Land-Grant: Lessons in Sustainability from a Brewery in Our Backyard,” will feature Columbus’s Land-Grant Brewing Company, a small urban craft brewery.
The speaker, Land-Grant sustainability manager Vincent Valentino, will share “successes, challenges and failures that the brewery has faced in its first year of pursuing sustainability,” the event description says. He’ll also “talk about their partnership with urban farmers, Columbus community groups and where they want to go next.”
The event is tomorrow, Tuesday, Jan. 9, from 7:15 to 9:30 a.m. on Ohio State’s Columbus campus. Read more and register.
EPN is a service of CFAES’s School of Environment and Natural Resources.
Ohio Maple Days on tap Jan. 18-20
2018’s Ohio Maple Days will be on Jan. 18 in Morrow County, on Jan. 19 in Wayne and Holmes counties, and on Jan. 20 in Geauga County.
The annual program, the same at each location, will feature educational sessions on maple production. It’s timed to help producers prepare for the coming season, which in Ohio may run from January through mid-March, depending on the weather. Both hobby and commercial producers are welcome.
The event’s sponsor is CFAES’s Ohio Maple Program.
How to grow barley for beer in Ohio
“We’re looking forward to beer made from Ohio-grown barley,” says CFAES scientist Eric Stockinger, a co-author of CFAES’s Management of Ohio Winter Malting Barley, a new guide for growers. “It’s taken us a lot to get to this point.”
Winter malting barley is new to Ohio.
Needz moar vines
How to keep Ohio wine production growing and sustainable? The answer is literally rooted in the ground, said CFAES winemaking expert Todd Steiner in a WBNS-TV, Columbus, story via the Associated Press. Check out, too, a related CFAES press release.
In Fairfield County, a bicycle tour of sustainable foods
The first annual Harvest Ride takes a 40-mile, intermediate-level bicycle tour of sustainable farms and food businesses, starting in Lancaster in Fairfield County. (Also longer and shorter options.) It’s from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. this Sunday, Sept. 24. Registration is $35 for members of the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association and $50 for nonmembers. Get registration and other details.
Co-sponsored by Columbus Outdoor Pursuits, 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.