protect conneticut gmo labeling law

We need ALL hands on deck.  Please call and e-mail your Congressman today and make sure they are voting NO on the DARK Act, if you have not already called.  Please state the following:  “Thank you for protecting CT’s GMO labeling law.  We need your help defeating the DARK Act (HR 1599)  Please speak with your colleagues and urge them to vote NO on the DARK Act.  Please be our voice in Washington DC”.  Not sure who your congressman is?  Click HERE: (http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/).  It is critical that you make this call today as the House is expected to vote on this bill next week.  If it passes, our right to label GMOs will be overturned!!!

Better yet, if you are able, please call ALL FIVE CT Congresspeople and urge them to vote NO and encourage their colleagues to vote NO.  We need to make sure they hear from us before this vote:

John B. Larson         (202) 225-2265
Joe Courtney            (202) 225-2076
Rosa L. DeLauro     (202) 225-3661
Jim Himes                (202) 225-5541
Elizabeth Esty          (202) 225-4476

new connecticut farmers annual meeting and hootenanny: friday feb. 20th

The New CT Farmer Alliance (NCTFA) is hosting their 2nd Annual Meeting and Hootenanny at The Dirt Salon in Hartford, CT. The gathering will be held on Friday, February 20, from 5-10 p.m. to provide farmers with engaging opportunities to network with others who farm throughout the state.

There is no cost or membership required to attend and farmers of all ages and specialties are welcome to join. Attendees will be able to connect with other farmers in their region in a fun atmosphere full of live music, local food and craft beer, raffles, and other lively activities.

The meeting is part of NCTFA’s mission to host a social event each year in order to grow their membership and meet new farmers, as well as to celebrate the farming community’s achievements in the past year. There will be a portion of the meeting designated to reflecting on the past growing season, in addition to highlighting what will come in 2015.  The aim of NCTFA is to support the next generation of growers, specifically those who are small in scale, first generation farmers, new or beginning farmers, market direct-to-consumer and use sustainable growing practices.

To learn more about the Annual Meeting and Hootenanny or the work of NCTFA, visit newctfarmers.com

About the New CT Farmer Alliance

NCTFA is a farmer-led and farmer-driven group that works to support the next generation of growers in our state. The organization formed in 2010 and is led by a steering committee of full-time and part-time farmers.  NCTFA is an affiliate of the National Young Farmers Coalition and is fiscally sponsored by the Connecticut Farmland Trust.  

Contact: Morgan Osborn, NCTFA Coordinator. newctfarmers@gmail.com

work songs for working farms

Noon, December 6, 2014 at Sub Edge Farm, 199 Town Farm Rd., Farmington, Connecticut

Presented by Bennett Konesni, Edith Gawler, and friends.

Join Bennett Konesni and Edith Gawler (of Sylvester Manor and worksongs.org) for this small-group, hands-on, sing-out workshop  at Sub Edge Farm in Farmington. Participants will learn a collection of songs useful on vegetable farms with working crews. In the process, we’ll discuss how to use worksongs as a cultural technology, a tool you can use to improve your effectiveness in the field and transform your experience of mundane handwork.

Based on new experience and insights from using worksongs during the 2014 season, we will cover simple call and response songs from the Americas and Africa, and may touch on livestock calls of  Europe and Asia.  We’ll explore the careful steps you can take with your fellow cultivators to introduce songs into the field setting and touch on details such as leader/group dynamics, space and song layout, working patterns, and the history and modern practice of this lively and useful agrarian tradition.

Suggested Donation: $10.00

Visit EventBrite to register for the workshop!

http://www.eventbrite.com/e/work-songs-at-sub-edge-farm-tickets-13900828753

More Info:

http://subedgefarm.com/worksongs

job posting: part-time connecticut farmer alliance coordinator

A very exciting part-time job opportunity in Connecticut!

The Connecticut New Young Farmer Alliance is seeking a coordinator to help grow their network, manage events, and promote their organization. The ideal applicant will be passionate about farming and farmers, experienced with event coordination, an savvy with social media.

Check out the posting HERE!

To apply, send a resume, cover letter, and two references to newctfarmers@gmail.com

connecticut farm tour tonight!

The New CT Farmer Alliance hosts monthly farm tours; if you can’t make this one, check out the next!

Join Us on Sunday at Urban Oaks in New Britain

Farm Tour: 4-6pm

Potluck and Social: 6-8pm (bring a dish to share and your own place setting)

Join Farmers Mike Kandefer, Mark Rutkowski, and Joey Listro for a farm tour of one of Connecticut’s first urban farms.  We’ll tour five greenhouses used for year-round growing and learn about how the farm maximizes use of this space year-round.  Mike will discuss the organic seedling sale, one of the largest income generators for the farm, and how it has grown over the years. The farmers will discuss the challenges of growing in small spaces, serving a low-income community, and maintaining aging infrastructure.  They will also discuss their wholesale niche of serving speciality and heirloom produce to farm-to-table restaurants and their love for growing exotic grapefruits, avocados, limes, and figs in our greenhouses.

young farmer scholarships for CT NOFA gathering!

Take advantage, Connecticut greenhorns!

Download more info here!

a summer gathering ~ growing food, farms and community

Saturday, July 19, 2014
9:30 am to 5:00 pm 
Winvian, Morris, CT

This summer’s gathering is a high-energy, interactive and fun, yet serious educational event targeted at the grassroots, with an in-depth single focus on the fusion of food, sustainable agriculture and related issues with a call to action. Our goal is to help a broad audience from all walks of life understand the critical issues in our food system, and what they can do about them.

Registration:

Family Activities Only:
Family 4 pack: $35; 12 yrs – adult: $12; 6-11 yrs: $5; 5 yrs & under: free

Keynotes, Workshops, All Activities:
Individuals: $50 Members/$60 Future Members
Students, apprentices & beginning farmers (less than 10 years): scholarship funded-$0

Both Friday* and Saturday Events:
$175 Members/$185 Future Members

Online registration available HERE.

 

new ct farmer alliance event

New CT Farmer Alliance May Farm Tour and Potluck

Sunday May 25th 4pm-6pm 
Truelove Farms
122 Thomaston Rd Morris, CT 06763

Truelove Farms is a small, sustainable farm focused on using natural, grass-based practices to ethically raise pork, beef, eggs, and poultry.  They use no growth hormones or sub-theraputic antibiotics and animals are brought up on pasture for a better quality of life and a higher quality product.  They are located in Morris, Connecticut, nestled in the heart of the Litchfield hills, on land whose agricultural origins date back to the mid 1700s.  Tour will focus on their beef herds, mobile chicken coops, meat birds, and most importantly, their pastured pigs, considered to be their mainline operation.

After the tour stay for a potluck social. Bring a dish to share and a plate, utensils and drinking glass. Meet other farmers in CT to network and share ideas, stories and challenges!

Information available at New CT Farmer Alliance

build your network, grow our future

This upcoming event from the NCFA looks great!  Connecticut Greenhorns, take note.

In collaboration with UConn Cooperative Extension, Farm Service Agency, Natural Resource Conservation Service, CT DoAg, and Community Farm of Simsbury, the New CT Farmer Alliance is very happy to present…

BUILD YOUR NETWORK, GROW OUR FUTURE

A networking event to strengthen Connecticut’s agricultural community

Wednesday Febrary 19th, 8:30 am – 3:30 pm

Scout Hall Youth Center – 28 Abbe Rd, East Windsor (just off I-91)

This is the chance every farmer dreams of….the opportunity to meet every person in the state who provides support to farmers (i.e service providers) in a farmer-driven, discussion-based format.  

wendell berry to speak at yale

a must-see if you’re in the area!

Poet, novelist, philosopher, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer Wendell Berry will present the next Chubb Fellowship Lecture as a guest of Timothy Dwight College and theYale Sustainable Food Project(YSFP).

Berry will appear for a public conversation at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 7 in the Shubert Theatre, 247 College St. The event is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. Tickets will be available beginning on Tuesday, Nov. 19 from the Shubert Theatre box office.

A pioneering and influential advocate for change, Berry has spent more than 50 years helping to shape the movements for agricultural and ecological sustainability. His poetry and essays flow from the rich agrarian tradition of American writing, and Berry’s relationship to his Kentucky farm has been compared to that of Thoreau’s to the forest — a place that nurtures his thinking about the value of physical labor, self-sufficiency, and communities of people living in harmony with the natural world.

more HERE

food sovereignty: a critical dialogue

Coming right up: Food Sovereignty Conference, September 14–15, 2013 at Yale University.

A fundamentally contested concept, food sovereignty has — as a political project and campaign, an alternative, a social movement, and an analytical framework — barged into global agrarian discourse over the last two decades. Since then, it has inspired and mobilized diverse publics: workers, scholars and public intellectuals, farmers and peasant movements, NGOs and human rights activists in the North and global South.

some grange press

Always a good thing.

Can-do: Grange shows how to preserve nature’s bounty
by Mike Lauterborn
Monday, August 12, 2013 for the Fairfield Citizen

With a can-do attitude and an interest in preserving the bounty of the harvest, a group gathered Saturday at the historic Greenfield Hill Grange to learn about canning and preserving homegrown fruits and vegetables.

The program was one of a series planned in conjunction with the grange’s 120th anniversary this year.

Steven Golias, a graduate of the Culinary Instituteand a grange member, led the two-hour session, which was attended by about 15 people. They took notes as he described the process of canning, and sampled some of the preserves and pickles Golias prepared in the grange kitchen.

“The Greenfield Hill Grange chapter was established in 1893,” said Beth Bradley, the grange vice president, “though this actual structure wasn’t completed until 1897. It was a club for area farmers, for the sharing of growing techniques and community services. Essentially everything that everyone is now doing with local sustainability was done then — they were ahead of their time.”

Read the full article HERE 

connecticut farm tours

from the New Connecticut Farmer Alliance. Read on for the full schedule.

Each Farm tour, accompanied by a potluck, will take place every third Sunday of the month.

Tours will begin at 4:00pm with a potluck at 6:00pm until dusk. Bring your own place setting and beverages.  Farmer friends welcome.

 

May 19 – Provider Farm, Salem CT

Provider Farm is a 10 acre non-certified organic vegetable farm that uses biodynamic methods managed by Max and Kerry Taylor. They are primarily a CSA serving 200 shareholders and sell to farmers markets and wholesale accounts.