OSU Extension announces Ohio New and Small Farm Colleges

By TONY NYE

nye.1@osu.edu

Are you a small farm landowner won­der­ing what to do with your acreage?

Are you inter­ested in explor­ing options for land uses but not sure where to turn or how to begin?

Have you con­sid­ered adding an agri­cul­tural or hor­ti­cul­tural enter­prise but you just aren’t sure what is required, from an equip­ment, labor, and/or man­age­ment perspective?

Are you look­ing for some­place to get basic farm information?

If you or some­one you know answered yes to any of these ques­tions, then the OSU Exten­sion Small Farm Col­lege pro­gram may be just what you are look­ing for.

OSU Exten­sion is offer­ing a pro­gram tar­geted at the new and small farmer. The Ohio New and Small Farm Col­lege is an eight-week pro­gram that intro­duces new and even sea­soned farm­ers to a wide vari­ety of topics.

The pro­gram will teach par­tic­i­pants how to set goals, plan, bud­get, and where to find resources avail­able for them if they chose to start a small farm­ing operation.

The courses will lay­out how to man­age finan­cial and farm records. Exten­sion Edu­ca­tors will illus­trate many dif­fer­ent enter­prises that can be prof­itable on land as small as one acre.

The edu­ca­tors will show the ben­e­fits and pit­falls of each enter­prise so that the par­tic­i­pant will be able to pick and chose what may work best for them and what suits their interest.

To round out the expe­ri­ence, a bus tour will be held around area farms so that par­tic­i­pants can see first hand how small farm life works, and also make con­tacts of prac­tic­ing farm­ers in the area.

The Small Farm Col­lege was orig­i­nally con­ceived as a way to help south­ern Ohio’s tobacco farm­ers make the tran­si­tion away from that crop as gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies were phased out. OSU exten­sion edu­ca­tors soon real­ized such pro­gram­ming also could ben­e­fit rural landown­ers who own small acreage in the countryside.

Since 2005, past regional South­ern Ohio New and Small Farm Col­leges have helped 568 indi­vid­u­als rep­re­sent­ing 436 farms from 52 Ohio coun­ties improve the eco­nomic devel­op­ment of their small family-owned farms. This pro­gram can help small farm landown­ers and farm­ers diver­sify their oppor­tu­ni­ties into suc­cess­ful new enter­prises and new mar­kets. And, it can improve agri­cul­tural lit­er­acy among small farm landown­ers not actively involved in agri­cul­tural production.

Many pro­gram par­tic­i­pants don’t expect to make a liv­ing off the land, but do want to recoup some­thing, said orga­nizer Tony Nye of OSU Exten­sion in Clin­ton County. First time farm­ers want their inter­ac­tion with their land to be productive.

“They like liv­ing in the coun­try, get­ting their hands dirty,” Nye said. “That has been their moti­va­tion for buy­ing land.”

The New and Small Farm Col­lege will be con­ducted at two loca­tions this year. The first col­lege will be held in Pick­away County at the Cir­cleville Fire Depart­ment, 586 N. Court Street, Cir­cleville, Ohio on Wednes­days, begin­ning Jan. 9 through Wednes­day, Feb. 27. Classes run from 6:30 to 9 p.m. each week.

The sec­ond col­lege will be held in Cler­mont County at the OSU Exten­sion Office, 1000 Locust Street, Owensville, Ohio on Thurs­days, begin­ning Jan. 10 through Thurs­day, Feb. 28. Classes run from 6:30 to 9 p.m. each week.

Lim­ited to the first 50 reg­is­tra­tions per loca­tion. The cost of the course is $150 per per­son, $50 for an addi­tional fam­ily mem­ber. Along with the vast resources and knowl­edge gained, par­tic­i­pants will receive a note­book (per each $150 reg­is­tra­tion) of all resource mate­ri­als, a soil test, refresh­ments, and the bus tour. Reg­is­tra­tions are now being accepted.

Indi­vid­u­als inter­ested in the pro­gram may con­tact the Pick­away County Exten­sion office at (740) 474‑7534 or the Cler­mont County Exten­sion office at (513) 732‑7070. Reg­is­tra­tion brochures for the pro­gram can also be found online at the fol­low­ing web­sites http://pickaway.osu.edu or at http://clermont.osu.edu and are avail­able in area Ohio State Uni­ver­sity Exten­sion offices.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion con­tact Tony Nye, OSU Small Farm Pro­gram Coor­di­na­tor at (937) 382‑0901 or E-mail at nye.1@osu.edu.

(L. Tony Nye is the Agri­cul­ture and Nat­ural Resources Edu­ca­tor for OSU Exten­sion, Clin­ton County.)

Posted by Tina Murdock on Dec 30 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.