With farming a knowledge-intensive career, we focus our training in a few key areas: farm business planning, farm equipment/safety programming, organic vegetable and grain production, and soil health practices. Our program areas offer educational related to their on-farm research including farm ecology, seed growing, and agroforestry. The are opportunities for farmers and neighbors to join us in workshops, field days, and topical convenings. We’re also committed to leadership development in key areas of communication: English and Spanish classes and computer skills training.
Farm Equipment and Safety/Equipos Agrícolas y Seguridad
Farming at scale using organic practices requires unique skills and experience. We’ve taken great care to make farm safety at the forefront of all that we do, from the safety of our workers to that of the food that leaves our farm. We offer training on tractor safety and operation, and launched Tractores y Equipos: Entrenamiento Fundamental, a new Farm Hub program that began in the fall of 2022.
We also offer tractor training targeted at new and beginning farmers, and for experienced farmers aiming to take steps toward mechanization. Our two-day Tractor Intensive covers the basics of tractor safety and operation, including field-based driving practice. We go over the parts of the tractor, cover safety and associated hazards, as well as routine daily checks and maintenance. Check our events page for more information.
Farm Business Planning
A note about our former ProFarmers
Our inaugural farmer training initiative, the ProFarmer Program, was retired as a multi-year program in 2021. We are honored to have supported the learning paths of former participants like Jesse Goldfarb, who started Tributary Farm in High Falls, NY, in 2018, and of our current trainee Jayne Henson, who is now in her 3rd season of business, at Transgenerational Farm in Accord. Some alumni are now working as full-time members of our production team, including Andrew Casner, now Field Crops Coordinator, and Jesus Gonzalez-Negrete, a tractor operator and instructor in our farm mechanics programming.
We continue to develop educational programs and workshops with the aim of making them available to members of the community.
Sometimes we find it too easy to believe that in the modern era, agriculture is about bits and machines, and satellites that feed information into automated machinery, and biotech, and very high technology. All of that blinking light stuff does not matter when it comes to the fact that raw, brute, menial labor is still required, matched with knowledge, expertise, and skills to recognize how the Earth and plants and animals work, and that that knowledge is concentrated in that farmer class and in the farm laborers.
Resources
Partners
We continue to develop educational programming in service to the Hudson Valley agricultural community and are always looking for partners in this work. We are committed to racial, gender and economic justice and are particularly focused on programming that will reach those historically and presently marginalized in agriculture.
Contact
Sara Katz, Education Program Manager, [email protected].