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This week, Farmer Marlene, Frog Hollow’s beloved Farm Assistant and Veggie Gardener is braving the chills of upstate NY to participate in The Stone Barns Center’s 7th annual National Young Farmers Conference. The conference offers young farmers the chance to participate in unique workshops addressing soil science, technical skills, agricultural policy, farm business management, conservation and more. The conference is the centerpiece event of a broader movement by Stone Barns’ Growing Farmer’s Initiative – to educate and empower young, passionate farmers to tackle big challenges and produce healthy, sustainable food for a growing planet.
Marlene couldn’t be more excited to attend. She’s been a fan of Stone Barns Center’s work for a long time. She first heard about it when she heard NYC based farm-to-table chef Dan Barber speak at a reading for his latest book – “The Third Plate. ” The Stone Barns Center is an educational farm and hub of sustainable food innovation just 40 minutes out of NYC. Barber is on Stone Barns’ board of directors and founded Stone Barns’ farm-to-table restaurant, Stone Barns works year round to train and support new farmers looking to produce sustainable food. They run a farming lab, which is constantly trying out and sharing new techniques for less resource intensive and more productive.
The National Young Farmer’s Conference that Marlene is attending will be four days of learning. Each day offers dozens of workshops, with participants picking their top two choices for each 1.5 hour time slot. The workshops Marlene is most looking forward to are Hands-on Seed Saving, Crop Rotation, Reading the Land: Matching Your Crops to Your Farm, and Work Songs for Small Farms. She’s also very excited to hear from one of her farming heros – David Or, who’ll be a keynote speaker. His book, Earth in “Mind: On Education, the Environment, and the Human Prospect,” has been a huge influence on her.
When I asked her what moved her to apply for the conference she said she was excited to learn practical farming knowledge from experts and fellow participants in workshops. She’s most interested in learning about the innovative farming practices that Stone Barns is developing for farming with the onset of climate change and in alignment with her values for ecological sustainability and humane treatment of animals. Plus, she’s excited to meet a bunch of fellow young farmers! We’ll have an update from Marlene when she returns. We wish her luck and a lot of fun!
