Growing, growing, and more growing....

A second day at the Organic Growers Conference was just as interesting, although with the beautiful spring weather, I'd really have rather been hiking or gardening! The threads of interest at this conference were fascinating -- the growers who are making a living providing organic vegetables and edibles are clearly working hard, but at something they love. As a home gardener and garden educator, I'm feeling like maybe I take a bit too much for granted in terms of my food supply. I recently joined the American Farmland Trust -- their bumper sticker of No Farms, No Food tells the story.

A artisan baker (Farm and Sparrow) whose bread I greatly admire (I'd sign up for his classes anytime) who was a vendor, said that he didn't have time right now for teaching, but was hopeful of focusing on just wholesale in the winter and doing more teaching again.

But, today, I learned more about management of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium with cover crops, antique and heirloom apples, hoop house production of vegetables, and passive solar greenhouses. Maybe I should have learned more about heirloom tomatoes or managing tomato diseases. But all were interesting.

Comments

  1. There is a lot to learn. Nothing you learn will be wasted.

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  2. Every time I try to open the Farmers web page I get an internet error and the IE closes.
    Your workshop sounds interesting.

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  3. I'd be surprised if this wasn't advertised at the weekend's event, but just in case it wasn't, The Asheville Artisan Bread Festival is next Saturday: http://www.asapconnections.org/bread2009.html

    It's a great chance to taste breads (including Farm and Sparrow's) and local cheeses and there are great learning opps with some of the wonderful experts in our region-- Jennifer Lapidus, Peter Reinhart (my favorite baking teacher), and Glenn Roberts of Anson Mills in Columbia among them.

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  4. Hmm, Janet, I always use Firefox, but when I tried IE, it did crash -- in addition to making the blog template look really bad. The link for American Farmland Trust is: http://www.farmland.org/ I hope you see the blog in its normal format on your computer! I think I have a very old version of IE.

    And, CEN, thanks, I did run across the Asheville Artisan Bread Festival last weekend. I'm hoping to make it back up there -- being a keen (whole-grain) bread baker, it's always interesting to learn more.... I hadn't heard of the festival before. I'd sure like the NC bread flour project to take hold!

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  5. Lisa,
    This certainly seems to have been a fascinating two days and made me think that I should be searching out these opportunities in England.
    Cheers
    Rob

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