C.R.A.F.T.

OPENING MEETING, FARM TOUR & POT LUCK DINNER

Saturday April 14, 2012 3:30pm
Markristo Farm
markristo@taconic.net

Welcome to CRAFT! This opening meeting is disigned to meet and greet all of the members (farmers and apprentices) of CRAFT 2012. We’ll be learning the nuts and bolts of CRAFT and sharing how to get the most out of this experience. There will be a quick tour of Markristo Farm and we’ll round things up with a pot luck supper for all.

SOIL HEALTH

Saturday April 21, 2012
Caretaker Farm
don@caretakerfarm.org

What is soil? What defines the quality of soil? How do you determine the quality of your soil? During the visit to Caretaker Farm we will discuss the importance of soil health for the sustainability of your farm. We will also tour the land and observe how our soil health fits into the environmental sustainability of the farm.

FORESTRY TOUR

Saturday April 28, 2012
Holiday Brook Farm
info@holidayfarm.com

SEASON EXTENSION/ DIRECT MARKETING

Monday May 7, 2012
Indian Line Farm (West)
elizabeth@indianlinefarm.com, alexander@indianlinefarm.com

Our presentation will focus on season extension with heated and unheated hoop houses. We will also touch on our direct marketing techniques and briefly discuss our unique land tenure model.

SEASON EXTENSION / DIRECT MARKETING

Monday May 7, 2012
Crabapple Farm (East)
crabapplefarm@verizon.net

SMALL SCALE / STARTING UP

Monday May 14, 2012
Little Seed (West)
lseed2002@yahoo.com

SMALL SCALE / STARTING UP

Monday May 14, 2012
Stone Soup (East)
stonesoupfarm@gmail.com

How big does a farm need to be? How small do you want it to be? Stone Soup is a relatively new upstart, now heading into season 4, and at six acres production is rocking your socks. We’ll look at the needs of starting a farm, the needs of a running a new farm, and some of the ways you can structure a farm for success. We’ll also look at the different advantages of scale, from the coziness of small market gardens to the efficiency of larger more mechanized operations. Stone Soup will be on display, specifically with an eye for the kinds of ideals that went into it, compromises we have needed to make and some that we have not had to.

HORSE POWER / COVER CROPPING

Monday June 4, 2012
Natural Roots Farm
csa@naturalroots.com

We will discuss our use of four workhorses as the exclusive source of draft power on our farm. We will cover equipment and techniques for everything from primary tillage to bed forming, transplanting, cultivating, foliar feeding, mowing, crop harvesting, and more in the vegetable operation. We'll also touch on our process of harvesting loose hay to fuel the working herd. This visit will feature demonstrations of horse power on two to four different implements in the field. We will also discuss the use of cover crops to target a variety of goals such as improving soil structure, maintaining organic matter, controlling weeds, and creating beneficial habitat as well as our approach to managing soil fertility and plant health. Technical considerations will be shared in the context of the philosophy which shapes and guides our approach to steward the farm ecosystem.

FRUIT PRODUCTION

Monday June 11, 2012
Thompson Finch Farm
thompfinch@fairpoint.net

We will tour strawberry, blueberry, raspberry and apple plantings and give a walking presentation of our cultivation, organic disease and insect controls, and PYO and CSA sales of our fruit. The presentation will include precision cultivating tools that are part of our planting system and have some applicability to vegetable production. Time will be left for questions and discussion. If the strawberries are ripe and we are open for PYO, participants are welcome to pick (and pay). We will meet in a field on the north side of the road through the farm, signs will indicate where to park.

MECHANICAL CULTIVATION & PRODUCE PACKING PROCESS

Monday July 9, 2012
Red Fire Farm (East)
info@redfirefarm.com

85 acres of organic vegetable crops can be a challenge to keep weeded, and even more of a challenge to get picked, packed and delivered! During this tour of Red Fire Farm we will look at strategies that we use to get these jobs done. In the first half of the tour we will look at mechanical cultivation tools and strategies that are used to minimize weeds while also minimizing expensive and time consuming hand labor. In the second half of the tour we will go over produce harvest and packing strategies that can be used to help reduce the grunt work and improve the pace of getting crops picked and washed. We will have a tour of the packing barn and winter storage chambers that we recently spent $250,000 to renovate and expand in our farm's quest to become more efficient and easier to work on. One feature of interest is the geothermal refrigeration system that is in place for cooling the storage chambers.

Please Note: this CRAFT meeting will be held at Red Fire Farm's Montague MA farm location at 184 Meadow Road, Montague MA 01351. Please park by the tobacco barn which is nearest the road. We will start the meeting near this barn.

SYSTEMS - MECHANICAL CULTIVATION & INFRASTRUCTURE

Monday July 9, 2012
Sister’s Hill Farm (West)
shfarm@optonline.net

If you want to make a living farming, systems are what it is all about. Very few of us become farmers because we are psyched about developing systems. But if we don't address this issue we quickly become overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the workload and daily decisions. If you don't take the time to develop good systems, all farm work goes slower, you make less money, work more hours, or both. I got into farming to work with my hands, be outside, and do something positive; but what I discovered along the way was that I was fascinated by systems. On my farm tour I will show you many of the tools and infrastructure that I have designed and created that make the daily work of running a farm manageable, pleasant, fun, and efficient. I'm a firm believer that a farm should be something that serves your life, you don't want to be a slave to it; life's just too short. By developing good systems, you take control.

Our farm tour will focus on mechanical cultivation for weed control and infrastructure. When discussing weed control I will show you how we mark out grids on our beds with a belly mounted bed marker, how we plant precisely to those beds by hand, and how we cultivate them with a buddhing basket weeder. With regard to infrastructure you'll see our new loading dock, yards of level concrete slab, root washer station, hands free pressure assisted bunch washer, mini and regular pallet system, electronic pallet scale, ergonomic height adjustable wash station, rolling greenhouse benches, and our new cooler.

To give you a sense of our size and scale; we grow strictly for CSA, I train two full season apprentices, we grow about 225 full weekly shares on 5 acres with no double cropping, and last year we harvested 87,000 pounds of veggies for our members.

SMALL SCALE DIVERSIFICATION

Monday August 6, 2012
Simple Gifts (East)
jbp@the-spa.com

What are the benefits and downsides to diversification? Our goal has been to create a balanced farming system that utilizes our land base to build healthy soil, healthy animals, healthy customers, and a healthy home based economy. We now raise vegetables for CSA, farmer's markets, and a farmstand, seedlings for our own production and sale, herbs, flowers, fruit, berries, sheep for meat and wool, cattle for beef, dairy, and draft power, chickens for eggs, hay and grain. We will look at ways to integrate livestock with crop production for fertility cycling, soil building, and weed control, niches for different types of livestock on a mixed farm, alternative forage and fodder crops for livestock (we're growing row crops anyway...), marketing a diversity of products, time management, and grain production. We have been involved in trialling heritage wheat varieties for the past several years, and will have around three dozen varieties of wheat, oats, and barley in our trials this year. Our goal is to develop appropriate, workable methods of harvesting and processing grains on a small commercial scale.

SMALL SCALE DIVERSIFICATION

Monday August 6, 2012
Locusts on Hudson Farm (West)
locustsfarmer@gmail.com

Your visit to our farm will include a farm history and tour of our diverse family farm, including how goal setting has helped our family bring an old farm back into sustainable production on less than perfect ground. We will discuss a comparison of marketing venues, and the importance of integrating animals and poultry into vegetable production. Livestock production includes pasture raised chickens, turkeys, pigs and grassfed cattle, and helps to support our CSA and cut-flower businesses. Our growth and profitability is due to the diverse nature of our farm, and has allowed another generation to continue farming here. This farm is not a picture-perfect farm with the most beautiful of river bottom soils. Instead, you can expect to see how we have made the most of our rolling hills, rocky soil, and two generations of farmers working together.

BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

Monday September 10, 2012
Brookfield Farm Farm (East)
info@brookfieldfarm.org

This visit will be an overview of the major areas of business management that we rely on to make our farm economically functional. We will cover planning (including budgeting), bookkeeping & accounting, marketing, insurance & administration, communication (website, email, database). We will consider this a “survey” and give lots of information on all of these topics, but not dwell too long on any one of them. We will give out written materials to be used as reference for the meeting and for later reference.

BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

Monday September 10, 2012
The Farm at Miller's Crossing (West)
kasorganic@hotmail.com

The Farm at Miller's Crossing was originally started by Katie Smith in 1995 as a small wholesale operation on 3 acres of rented land in Ghent, NY. Today the farm consists of 200 acres in total, which includes 50 acres of tillable land rotated in and out each season with vegetables and cover crops (approximately 25 acres of veggies each season and 25 acres of small grains.) The remaining 150 acres is dedicated to hay and pasture for a 25 head beef herd. The farm also grows bedding plants, hanging baskets and veggie starts in the spring. The farm markets its products three ways-CSA, wholesale, and farmer's markets. Katie does all the business management; payroll, invoicing, bills, taxes and customer contacts (wholesale availability, CSA newsletters, and farmer's markets signage) at home off our PC. In this visit we will discuss our invoicing system (Quick Books) budgeting, marketing, and the development of our new web site.

WHOLE FARM SYSTEMS

Saturday September 29, 2012
Roxbury Farm (West)
info@roxburyfarm.com

Communication is an important tool on the farm, and all methods of planning, seeding, weeding, harvesting, and pest control need to be methodical, transparent, and logical to all crew members on the farm. Absence of a system and good record keeping makes for inefficiency, confusion and possibly poor crew morale. Any system adopted needs to work for 150 members and be easily adapted for a 1,500 member CSA. If a system for a 150 member CSA does not have the inherent flexibility to adapt when greater production is needed, any expansion will have more than the usual growing pains. We will guide you through some of our production systems and tools, and our aids to communicate these systems to our farm staff.

WHOLE FARM SYSTEMS

Saturday September 29, 2012
Atlas Farm (East)
gideon@atlasfarm.com

(CLOSING MEETING) GRAZING & LIVESTOCK

Saturday October 13, 2012
Hawthorne Valley Farm
apprenticeships@hawthornevalleyfarm.org

We will tour the pastures and explain our rotational grazing system for our dairy herd. The basic life cycles of a cow will be described, and we will form a picture of what it is like to work with animals on a larger scale. We will tour our compost piles, all made with materials from our farm. We will discuss some basics of a Biodynamic farm. We will tour our dairy processing plant, where we make yogurt and cheese from our milk. We will tour our kraut cellar, where we make raw, lacto-fermented vegetable products. We will discuss why it is important for this farm that we add value to our farm products. We do appreciate CRAFT members arriving on time, (9am), to our visit. We will meet at the parking lot in front of the big red barn.