Wisconsin School for Beginning Market Growers

Posted January 2009

CIAS held the Wisconsin School for Beginning Market Growers in Madison on January 16-18. We had a record 65 participants this year! These participants ranged from college age to retirement age. Some were back-to-the-land career changers, while others were current or former farmers wanting to do something different. We had people with several years of market farming experience as well as people who live in town but are exploring ways to get into farming. The participants were interested in the overall sustainability of small scale market farming, the specifics of greenhouse construction, post-harvest handling, tax issues and many other topics. Grower-instructors Tricia Bross and Michael Racette once again shared their years of fresh market vegetable production experience. New grower-instructor Jenny Bonde of Shooting Star Farm was a participant in the very first SBMG in 1998. Thank you to our instructors and the students in the UW-Madison Agroecology program who helped with this year’s school.

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Vegetable Storage Crops Workshop

Learn how to extend your marketing season by growing and selling winter storage crops like carrots, beets, winter squash, cabbage, potatoes, onions, garlic and more. This workshop will be held on December 4 in Hudson and December 11 in Madison. For details, see the workshop flyer. Hope to see you there!

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CIAS in the community

CIAS Hosts Annual Meeting of Eco-Apple Growers

On Thursday, November 12, CIAS hosted its annual meeting of apple growers engaged in its Eco-Apple pesticide reduction program. Notably, the group of 48 growers celebrated the successful completion of a six-year effort designed to reduce the use of pesticides on orchards throughout Wisconsin. During the course of the program, all reporting orchards demonstrated a reduced reliance on pesticides in favor of a diversity of IPM strategies, and some realized a near-total elimination of organophosphate applications. CIAS thanks its team of growers for their enthusiastic and committed participation. In particular, CIAS wishes to thank Dave Flannery, Wendy Schafer, Bill Stone and Anna Maenner for their fortitude in seeing this phase of the project through to a successful conclusion. UW rsearchers Dan Mahr, Patty McManus, Matt Stasiak and Teryl Roper have been critical to the project’s success. Thanks also to EPA-V and the USDA for their support and encouragement.

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