Crop Planning and Starting Seedlings for Beginning Market Gardeners
February 14th, 10am – 4pm, Ignatius Jesuit Centre in Guelph, $25
Join Leslie Moskovits, 3 year CSA farmer, who will introduce some tips on how to plan your market garden – from deciding what to grow to scheduling your plantings and more!
For more information on this workshop, and to register, visit www.farmstart.ca/workshops
January 30th, 2009
Ready to Farm? Planning your New Farm Business is a two-day workshop for aspiring farmers who want to launch a new farm business.
In addition to introducing participants to the valuable Small Farm Planner workbook, the workshop will also include a presentation by new farmer Angie Koch describing her first year of running a 2-acre market garden; a discussion on small farm regulations by experienced farmer Ann Slater; and an introduction to the programs and services that OMAFRA has available for new farmers.
Workshop Schedule
Session #1: Saturday January 17th 2009, 12:30pm – 4:30pm
Session #2: Saturday January 31st 2009, 10am – 4pm
For more information and to register for the workshop, please visit FarmStart’s website or contact our workshop facilitator, Ali English (aliATfarmstartDOTca).
January 6th, 2009
FarmStart and our partner, Farmers Growing Farmers, are planning to host a series of workshops and farm tours through the summer and fall of 2008, and we’d like your input on their content! As a future farmer, new farmer, or transitioning farmer, what skills are you looking to develop? Please fill out our new survey and let us know! Your feedback keeps our programs responsive and strong.
The survey closes June 13th, so please be sure to complete it soon!
May 28th, 2008
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
Sowing Seeds, Reaping Profit is a series of seven case studies featuring innovative Ontario farmers with non-traditional backgrounds. It shares practical production tips, innovative marketing approaches and creative ways to successfully negotiate the myriad challenges that new farmers face in their start-up years and beyond.
View all seven profiles at our Ready to Farm? resource site.
March 5th, 2008
Sowing Seeds, Reaping Profit is a series of seven case studies featuring innovative Ontario farmers with non-traditional backgrounds. It shares practical production tips, innovative marketing approaches and creative ways to successfully negotiate the myriad challenges that new farmers face in their start-up years and beyond.
“I am an herbalist. And I wanted to grow what I tell people to eat. I wanted to do that in Germany originally, but the money was a problem. When you bought land over there, it was five times as much as over here. So I started a little farm here, a 20-acre hobby farm, with a few goats, a few chickens, and a few ducks. Then I met Tom, and he wanted to go bigger. So that’s why we bought this farm. And then we got even bigger and bought a second one.Well, we are in a big change right now, because my partner and I separated. So I have to do it a little bit different now. I’m by myself, and that’s a little bit more difficult.”
February 27th, 2008
Sowing Seeds, Reaping Profit is a series of seven case studies featuring innovative Ontario farmers with non-traditional backgrounds. It shares practical production tips, innovative marketing approaches and creative ways to successfully negotiate the myriad challenges that new farmers face in their start-up years and beyond.
“I am a mechanical engineer, and I worked for a couple of years in Germany, then I started my own landscaping company. Seven years ago, I decided to come here to Canada to do some farming. Ideally, we wanted to be self-sufficient. We’re not striving towards making big money. We want to save the land and produce good quality food. For me, it’s more important than the money.”
Quinte Organic Farmers Co-op started three years ago at an EFAO meeting. There were around 25 farmers talking about how to market products. We are halfway between Toronto and Ottawa, and there are basically no markets here. Each of us was going to Toronto and the journey ate up all of our profit. ‘So,’ we said, ‘we have to do something to be able to market together, to make it feasible. If we work together and put our produce together, then we can share all the costs.’ I think the co-op is my biggest achievement – being part of it.”
February 20th, 2008
Sowing Seeds, Reaping Profit is a series of seven case studies featuring innovative Ontario farmers with non-traditional backgrounds. It shares practical production tips, innovative marketing approaches and creative ways to successfully negotiate the myriad challenges that new farmers face in their start-up years and beyond.
“When I was 20 I came to Stratford and worked for 11 years with a German family. I had started to work for them in 1980, in Bavaria, then their farm was sold for the Munich airport expansion, and they immigrated to Canada. They asked me if I wanted to come with them. I said, ‘Yes, for a year.’ And I stayed for 11 years.We were potato growers in Germany and we got a call from my former boss, who said there is a farm for sale. My husband got the call on Friday, he flew over on Saturday, and the auction was on Monday. He didn’t know a word of English, except yes and no.”
February 13th, 2008
Sowing Seeds, Reaping Profit is a series of seven case studies featuring innovative Ontario farmers with non-traditional backgrounds. It shares practical production tips, innovative marketing approaches and creative ways to successfully negotiate the myriad challenges that new farmers face in their start-up years and beyond.
“I came to Canada in 1971. I was raised a farmer, I lived on a farm. My background is all farm life and my brain too. I graduated high school, and I came to Canada with $15 in my pocket. How could I start farming? It was impossible. So one week later, I went to work at CN, on the railroad. I worked six years there, so that we could buy land.
Even after I started farming at the Holland Marsh, I always worked an evening shift with CN. I was an inspector for the freight trains. I worked from 4pm to 12am and in the morning I wake up 9am, and from then until 3pm, I’ve got to work farming, because I love farming. So tired, eh? I did like this, two jobs, for three or four years. Until one day, I had to make a decision. Which one I took for the future: CN or farming? At that time, I quit CN, and I farmed. At CN, I had a regular, secure income. Farming is not secure – no guaranteed income. But I changed my job to farming. To start farming took me almost ten years.”
February 6th, 2008
Sowing Seeds, Reaping Profit is a series of seven case studies featuring innovative Ontario farmers with non-traditional backgrounds. It shares practical production tips, innovative marketing approaches and creative ways to successfully negotiate the myriad challenges that new farmers face in their start-up years and beyond.
“I guess I’ve been interested in farming for a while. I took Environmental Studies at school and during the five years that I was at school I developed an interest in organic agriculture. But I grew up in the suburbs; I had never even had a garden before.”
I just finished my third CSA pickup. They’ve all been quite successful. People are happy with what they’re getting and there’s an abundant amount in the fields. I think I’ve made a few believers out of people who initially, because it’s my first year and because I’m young and maybe because I’m a woman – I don’t know – but who were a little hesitant at first to join. I think they’re pretty happy.”
January 30th, 2008
Sowing Seeds, Reaping Profit is a series of seven case studies featuring innovative Ontario farmers with non-traditional backgrounds. It shares practical production tips, innovative marketing approaches and creative ways to successfully negotiate the myriad challenges that new farmers face in their start-up years and beyond.
“I always loved to farm. I always loved the land. I was a social worker for quite a few years, and I just knew that wasn’t what I wanted to do. So when we moved out here, the gardens just kept getting bigger and bigger… It just sort of evolved out of wanting to do something different. And I always thought I wanted to do something related to growing.
“When I started… I had never heard of CSAs before. I just had this idea that it would be good if I could get a group of people who would agree to buy my vegetables for the season. And that’s exactly what I did. And then I started doing a newsletter, too, without realizing that that’s just what you did! So then I was doing this, and I heard about this thing called a CSA, so then I realized, that was what I was.”
January 23rd, 2008
Sowing Seeds, Reaping Profit is a series of seven case studies featuring innovative Ontario farmers with non-traditional backgrounds. It shares practical production tips, innovative marketing approaches and creative ways to successfully negotiate the myriad challenges that new farmers face in their start-up years and beyond.
“The reason why we chose sheep is that they’re nice animals. The other thing is that there’s a good market in Ontario for lamb. And perhaps most importantly, I firmly believe that a lot of agriculture is in the pockets of large multinationals. They use their monopoly power to take advantage of farmers, with the result that the farmer doesn’t get a just return on his investment.
Sheep are not in that realm. No big business is interested in sheep. They will not let themselves be treated the way cattle so often are, because they will die. It’s quite simple. So that was part of the reason why we originally chose sheep.”
January 16th, 2008
We would really like to hear what you have to say about our Ready to Farm Program?
There are many many people from farmers, to retailers, to consumers that will have great ideas about how to improve opportunities in the agricultural sector.
This is our chance to hear from you. Please add your 2 cents below.
If you would rather sent us a message directly contact us.
June 28th, 2007
