{"id":4213,"date":"2014-12-29T22:45:17","date_gmt":"2014-12-29T22:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/?p=4213"},"modified":"2014-12-29T22:45:17","modified_gmt":"2014-12-29T22:45:17","slug":"farm-focus-marlene-shares-experience-from-the-national-young-farmers-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/farm-focus-marlene-shares-experience-from-the-national-young-farmers-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"Farm Focus: Marlene Shares Experience from the National Young Farmer’s Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_7642\"<\/a><\/p>\nEarlier this month, I had\u00a0the pleasure and privilege\u00a0of attending the National\u00a0Young Farmers Conference at the Stone Barns\u00a0Center for Food and Agriculture in New York. It\u00a0was a three day whirlwind\u00a0of learning, networking,\u00a0and celebrating good food.Stone Barns is an amazing\u00a0nonprofit farm just north\u00a0of New York City. They\u00a0work to make the farm as\u00a0sustainable as possible through its diversified livestock and grazing management,\u00a0as well as long term crop rotation plans. They have chickens, ducks, sheep, pigs,\u00a0and more, that move through the acres of pasture throughout the warmer months.Everyone was settled into their winter shelters as I explored the grounds, but you\u00a0could tell all the animals were happy and healthy.\n\nThe first day of the conference dealt with agriculture, climate change, and the need\u00a0for more resilient farmers. Much time was spent discussing the logistics of no-till\u00a0agriculture. This is a complicated issue as tilling is often relied on for weed suppression in organic production. However reducing tillage, while building soil organic\u00a0matter, can lead to more productive farming in the long term.\n\nDuring the next two days of the conference, I attended many workshops including ones on crop rotation, market gardening, reading your land, and a grounds tour.\u00a0However, my favorite workshop had to be \u201cWork songs for Small Farms.\u201d A group\u00a0of about 25 of us learned songs from various parts of the United States as well as\u00a0around the world. Then, a surprise: they took us out to the veggie field where we\u00a0sang as we pulled parsnips! It was cold and muddy but we all dug in eagerly with\u00a0our bare hands that soon grew numb. If you want to listen to some of the songs I\u00a0learned, check out www.worksongs.org<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nDuring the conference, I had the opportunity to rub elbows with some amazing\u00a0farmers including Eliot Coleman of Four Season Farm and his wife and daughter,\u00a0Fred Kirschenmann who is President of Stone Barns, and Dan Barber, the executive\u00a0chef at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. My new group of young farmer friends and I were\u00a0star struck by all these veteran farmers. But as Erik, my new Minnesotan farmer\u00a0friend, said: These guys aren\u2019t going to be the next leaders in agriculture - we are.\u00a0We should be proud of what we are setting out to accomplish as young leaders in agriculture and be inspired by the veterans as well as the young innovators. Because it\u2019s not going to be one of the old guard who will be the next head of the USDA. It could be someone sitting right next to you.\n\nGo forward and grow in 2015!\n

\"IMG_7612\"<\/a><\/p>\n \n\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this month, I had\u00a0the pleasure and privilege\u00a0of attending the National\u00a0Young Farmers Conference at the Stone Barns\u00a0Center for Food and Agriculture in New York. It\u00a0was a three day whirlwind\u00a0of learning, networking,\u00a0and celebrating good food.Stone Barns is an amazing\u00a0nonprofit farm just north\u00a0of New York City. They\u00a0work to make the farm as\u00a0sustainable as possible through its diversified […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4214,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[123,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/IMG_7642.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5HwAU-15X","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}