Is a Food Hub a Good Fit for Me? Opportunities and Challenges to working with a food hub: Delaney Ryde, Klamath Grown; Yana Ludwig, North Coast Food Web, Kristy Athens, Good Groceries LLC; Carrie Juchau, Josephine County Farm Collective.
What is a food hub, anyway? Hear more about the growing network of Oregon food hubs. Learn how to sell to a food hub and expand your market reach. We will cover the different types of products most food hubs offer to their customers and the basic requirements needed to join this growing community.
Small Farms and Community Food Systems at the Oregon Legislature: Rachael Ward, Executive Director, Farmers Market Fund; Greg Holmes, Working Lands Director, 1,000 Friends of Oregon; Alice Morrison, Co-Director of Policy and Development, Friends of Family Farmers; Amy Wong, Board Chair, Oregon Organic Coalition; Rose High Bear, Founding Director, Elderberry Wisdom Farm.
Oregon’s Legislature is in “short session” this year, but there is still plenty of legislation in the works that really matters to farmers and community food systems. In this session, you’ll hear from a panel of farm and food system advocacy organizations about 2023 Oregon legislative outcomes and 2024 top priority bills and funding programs they are tracking.
Searching for farmland? Things to consider when looking for farmland to lease or purchase: Natalie Danielson, Co-Director, Friends of Family Farmers; Silvia Cuesta, Oregon Farm Link Navigator, Friends of Family Farmers; Mehmet Balkan, Owner and Operator, Daydream Farm.
Join Friends of Family Farmers and farmer, Mehmet Balkan to learn more about things to consider when looking for farmland including: visioning and preparation, land search, evaluation, and common lease terms. For better or worse, there are no magic solutions when it comes to searching for land and we will share all the methods we’ve heard of. We will also cover the basics of evaluating a piece of land for your farming needs and how to work with a landholder for a legal and mutually beneficial lease arrangement. .
The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Julia Shanks, Julia Shanks Food Consulting & Author of The Farmer’s Office: Tools, Tips and Templates to Successfully Manage a Growing Farm Business.
You decided to become a farmer because you love being outside, working the land and making a difference in the way we eat and farm. And when you started your farm-business, you also became an entrepreneur, with new responsibilities of financial and people management. How do you juggle it all? There’s always a more pressing chore – like feeding the chickens or covering the pac choy before a frost. In this workshop, we’ll discuss the entrepreneurial mindset, what gets in our way of doing what we should, and strategies to overcome them. We’ll discuss time management, moving past our fear of numbers and learning how to delegate.
Using Your Farm to Educate and Build Community: Audrey Comerford and Melissa Fery with the OSU Extension Service Agricultural Tourism project.
Making connections with community and educating the public about agriculture are two strong motivations for farmers to add agritourism to their business. In this session we will talk about various types of on-farm education activities and how to incorporate them effectively. There will be time for discussion and information sharing amongst the group.
Making and Selling Bigleaf Maple Syrup in Oregon: Eric Jones, Forest Ecosystems and Society Dept.;
Melanie Douville, Oregon Maple Project; Joy Waite-Cusic, Food Science and Technology, Dept.
A new industry is emerging on Oregon small farms, syrup and other sap-based foods from native bigleaf maple and walnut orchard trees. In this session you will learn how to identify bigleaf maple, assess your commercial potential, and how to take your first steps toward making quality end-products. The session will cover the new Oregon Farm Direct revisions that include maple and walnut syrup, food safety considerations, sensory test results, and an overview of the basic equipment and labor required to be a producer. You will learn about opportunities for training through OSU Extension and through the Oregon Maple Project sugaring collective. Attendees will have the opportunity to sample bigleaf maple syrup produced in Oregon.
Business of Flower Farming: Lennie Larkin, Farm Business Instructor with Flower Farming For Profit & B-Side Farm.
Cut flowers can be one of the most profitable crops on a small farm, but building an efficient and financially sustainable farm business can be a challenge when trying to grow a vast array of crops and sell through multiple channels. Lennie Larkin’s forthcoming book from Chelsea Green: Flower Farming For Profit, teaches both established and aspiring flower farmers how to strategically build the business behind the blooms. This presentation will focus on methods for increasing profitability in cut flower operations, starting with data-driven crop planning. Lennie will share the methodology and some results from her Western SARE-funded cut flower crop cost of production research with ten small farms using Know Your Cost To Grow, a program created by Oregon Tilth in Collaboration with the OSU Center for Small Farms & Community Food Systems, and share actionable strategies for getting in touch with your own cost of production.
Assess and Adapt: Pasture Planning Workshop – Shayan Ghajar, Oregon State University
This session will address what to look for when evaluating a pasture to determine its capabilities and make goals and plans for a successful grazing system. Attendees will learn to estimate forage productivity, assess species composition, anticipate seasonal extremes, and use new free technology to map out their pasture’s most and least productive areas.
Pricing Info For 2024
- Registration $85 per person until Feb. 1st
- After Feb. 1st $100 per person
- At the door registration may NOT be available due to venue capacity.
