Business Development Course graduates ten future farmers!
Course participants check out the wild boars at Smiling Goat Farm
The Spring 2008 Ready to Farm? Business Development Course concluded last Tuesday night with a celebratory supper of local delicacies. Ten future farmers – Alvin, Jason M., Jason H., Miguel, Valeria, Graham, Jake, Cheng, Tim and Jennifer – stuck it out through our intensive, nine-session course on farm business planning, co-facilitated by David Cohlmeyer of Cookstown Greens and our own Training and Resource Coordinator, Sophie Llewelyn. The course guided participants through a process of identifying values, visions, and goals, through developing production, marketing, and financial plans, to building a business plan that new farmers can take to the bank. A series of workshops and farm tours anchored the theoretical stuff of our regular course sessions in the practical day-to-day considerations of planning and running a farm.
Participants graduated from the course with plans to start a hog operation, an organic Asian mushroom farm, an organic vegetable farm and processing operation, a greenhouse and agritourism enterprise, and a small-scale intensive mixed farm and art studio/store. Congratulations to all our of our future farmers!
We’d also like to extend a hearty thanks to the organizations and farms whose collaborative efforts made our course a success: the EFAO OMAFRA, ECOCERT, Farmers Growing Farmers, Greenfields Organic Farm, Smiling Goat Farm, Best Baa Farm, and of course Cookstown Greens.
May 8th, 2008
