NOFA Winter Conference

Last weekend Max and I went to the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) Winter Conference in Worcester, MA. As a non-farmer, I was a little sheepish about going, but the program included a nice mix of beginner, intermediate, and advanced activities. In fact, there were so many workshops on things I am interested in as a gardener and potential farmer that I had trouble deciding what to attend.

The one-day conference also included a key-note speech by an organic apple farmer, a teacup auction for various farm goodies (neither of us won, but we really wanted the Armsby Abbey gift certificate), a potluck lunch, and a nice vendor selection. At the technology conferences I occasionally attend, you don't get cheese samples, seeds, organic soap, and sips of raspberry wine accompanied by roasted beet spread on crackers.

I went to three workshops, one on raising certified organic poultry, one on finding your own farmland, and one on edible landscaping.

The organic poultry workshop was largely new to me. I was interested in what they do to raise the chickens from the beginning of life, and that warm chickens wander; cold chickens huddle. After they are old enough and can fend off some predators better, they are given lots of outside space. I'm used to chickens in school buses, but they talked up the chickens with the movable cages, which is what Salatin uses. It allows the chickens to add manure to the field while cutting your grass. You move cages twice per day, and add new ones as the chickens grow. You can plant on the field, but harvest must be 90-120 days after the chickens have been there. There was some talk of the changing legislation for organic farming solutions, and how it might be to work with the new Congress. Apparently NOFA sued and lost over the organic standards back in 2002, but many of their changes are under consideration.

In the workshop on acquiring farmland, sponsored by Land for Good, I had a wonderful time talking to people who were in various stages of trying to start their own farm. Some were currently working at local farms and hoping to strike out on their own. Others, like me, had a full-time job outside farming, and were saving money. The big thing I learned is that it's very difficult to get land without a business plan and experience farming. It's also very difficult to get money when you are farming. Everyone noted that you can't readily do both at the same time. But a few had done it, one gave up his software job, another really wanted to raise kids on her farm, and she and her husband saved up and now were "living the dream." It was really interesting to see all the paths and ages in the room, and the Land for Good folks are developing tools and workshops to help you sort out your farming goal. I'm currently reading Salatin's You Can Farm, and he really stresses that this is an entrepreneurial adventure, not an escape from real life. And in this workshop, I received a sheet on budgeting and a worksheet on my own values. I also got a healthy idea of what it means to work this out as a couple, and managed to have conversations with my boyfriend that I just haven't learned to frame in the right light. It's a big thing, figuring out a farm.

The last workshop I went to was about landscaping with wild edibles, run Ethan Roland by AppleSeed Permaculture. One of the first pictures Ethan displayed was a woman standing with banana trees in Holyoke, MA. Wow! It turns out that you can grow the banana leaves up here, though the plants will not fruit. You can use these lives in cooking or as serving dishes. He went on to talk about kiwis and American persimmons and the pawpaw, a fruit that is native to North America and tastes like mango. There's a hardy pawpaw that can grow in Zone 6, which is about where I am. I also learned where pine nuts came from (and why they're so expensive...it's a 20-year start-up period to get the tree growing). He talked about an edible landscaping wiki sponsored by the Apios Institute. It includes information about growing the plants, their uses, what to plant them with, and plans of existing gardens that include these plants.

I left this conference wishing I had a couple acres to play with, but instead I must appease myself with dozens of seed packets that need starting. I learned last year that you can't start leeks too early, so I put 50 seeds in the seed trays from Johnny's Seeds. I added water, and now I wait for spring in my landless, balcony-less condo.