FarmStart

Please join us in Brampton at FarmStart’s McVean Farm Grand Opening this coming Sunday!

For directions and more information, please check out our Flyer or our website at www.farmstart.ca/McVeanGrandOpening.

We are also still looking for a few more volunteers for the event on Sunday for general help, face-painting, etc. If you would be interested in helping facilitate this event, please email info@farmstart.ca or call Keturah at 519-836-7046 x103.

We are really excited about this opportunity to show you our beautiful urban farm, let you get to know the farmers on our land and share some of the wonderful produce the farmers have been growing this season! Don’t miss this chance to come out to the ground-breaking at McVean farm.

Come rain or shine (preferably shine), we hope to see you there!

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.

The McVean Farm will soon support four new farm enterprises

FarmStart is all about new farmers getting started on the land, so we are very excited to welcome a new group of incubator farmers for 2008. This season will see six new farmers working at our farm facilities: two at the Ignatius Incubator Farm near Guelph, and four at the McVean Farm, our new research and training farm in Brampton. This brings the total number of new farmers working the land this year to eight, including two farmers continuing farm operations started in 2007.

Follow this link to read on

FarmStart is currently accepting applications for the following position:

Project Animator and Farm Manager

The Newcomers FarmStart-Up Project is a new initiative that will provide training programs and support services to help newcomers to Canada start new agricultural enterprises in near urban areas to meet the growing demand for locally grown, directly marketed and culturally appropriate fresh produce in Southern Ontario.

The Animator will be responsible for developing and managing the New Canadians FarmStart-Up Project as well as FarmStart’s Brampton Incubator Farm Facility. The Animator will report to the New Canadians, New Farmers Initiatives Coordinator and liaising with FarmStart’s Program Manager. S/he will also liaise with other FarmStart staff to integrate the project with ongoing FarmStart programs and services

Closing date: March 3, 2008

Intended start date: March, 2008

Please visit our Employment page for more details.

Patrick was recently on Metro Morning with Andy Barrie talking about his experience emigrating from Rwanda to Canada and the experience of new immigrants to Canada. You can list to the interview below.

Patrick runs the New Canadians, New Farmers Program for FarmStart. Patrick holds a Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine from University Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar, Senegal (he loves horses and wildlife) and a Master of Arts in Economics from University of Toronto (he loves numbers).

Patrick is an outspoken advocate for minorities’ rights, the integration of immigrants in the Canadian society and the economic empowerment of African-Canadians. He also counts agriculture, economic development and food security in his areas of expertise. Patrick recently returned from his native Rwanda, where he worked as a visiting lecturer at the National University and occupied senior positions in the Government including being the Minister of Agriculture.

 

 Patrick Habamenshi on Metro Morning: Play Now | Download

Growing International: Producing and Marketing Ethnic Food in Ontario
November 27th, 28th and 29th – Durham Region, Toronto and Guelph
Full Details —> http://www.farmstart.ca/growinginternational

FarmStart, along with the Ontario Institute of Agrologists, Durham Region Economic Development and the Centre for Land and Water Stewardship, is organizing a three-day conference to bring together farmers, farm leaders, food distributors and purchasers, ethno-cultural and new immigrant leaders, food system analysts, and policy makers to discuss how Ontario’s agri-food industry can take advantage of opportunities in the province’s growing ethno-cultural markets.

The three-day conference will take place in three separate locations: Durham Region, Toronto and Guelph.

Our keynote speaker for each of these days is Dr. Bill Sciarappa, an agricultural and resource management agent with Rutger’s University. Dr. Sciarappa, who holds a PhD in economic entomology and agricultural pest management, is an expert in specialty crop production and marketing. Together with a diverse team of researchers and extension agents, he is currently engaged in a major, USDA-funded research initiative to study crop production for ethnic markets throughout the North Eastern Seaboard.

Each day of the conference will feature panels and presentations from diverse stakeholders on specific issues.

Blackstock, Durham Region – November 27, 2007
Focus on ethnic crop production in Ontario, and will ask how farmers can viably access ethnic markets.

Toronto – November 28, 2007
Focus on new market opportunties and demands, as well as food system infrastructure needs.

Guelph – November 29, 2007
Focus on the development and coordination of critical market and production research and support.

We hope you will join us! We welcome the participation and perspectives of anyone interested or engaged in these issues.

Please note: pre-registration is required.
For full conference details and registration, please visit www.farmstart.ca/growinginternational

If you have any questions or suggestions, you can contact the conference organizer, Melissa Benner
Conference Contacts

FarmStart has started a bookstore featuring, you guessed it, books about farming.

We wanted to bring together a collection of useful books for new and old farmers as well as urban gardeners. We also receive a portion of the money from each book that sells to support our programs.

Some of the titles include:

Successful Small-Scale Farming: An Organic Approach
By Karl Schwenke

Fields of Plenty: A Farmer’s Journey in Search of Real Food and the People Who Grow It.
by Michael Ableman

Square Foot Gardening: A New Way to Garden in Less Space With Less Work
by Mel Bartholomew

Including many more.

You can see all of them at http://www.farmstart.ca/store

But we could use your help. Do you have titles to suggest?

We are looking for books that old and new farmers have found useful. Or books about urban agriculture, cooking and canning that have helped you to use and preserve our harvest.

Please add your comment below with your ideas for the FarmStart Book Store.

The Centre for Land and Water Stewardship at the University of Guelph, and its partner FarmStart, are beginning a major outreach and training initiative to support involvement in agriculture by the GTA’s immigrant communities.

As one starting point we wish to fund a short initial literature and information review to develop a list of alternate crops and crop varieties (especially vegetables) that are both of interest to these communities and potentially grown in southern Ontario. The timeline is short, as we wish an initial report by Nov. 23, 2007; further phases of the research will be planned based on the success of phase one. Funding available is $3000.00 or $20.00 per hour.

Job Description.pdf

FarmStart’s first AGM went very well. After a great picnic supper, we got down to business by reviewing our progress and our future directions. We elected 5 new dynamic board members to join our current team.

If you missed the AGM – you can check out our Future Directions Presentation detailing what FarmStart is up to.

Christie Young made the following presentation at the Ontario Farmland Trust Conference.

Click Here to view the presentation.