Project Overview
Commodities
- Nuts: chestnuts, hazelnuts, walnuts
- Additional Plants: herbs, native plants
- Animals: bees, bovine, poultry, goats, rabbits, sheep, swine
- Animal Products: dairy
- Miscellaneous: mushrooms
Practices
- Animal Production: grazing - continuous, free-range, watering systems
- Crop Production: conservation tillage
- Education and Training: farmer to farmer, mentoring, networking, on-farm/ranch research, youth education
- Farm Business Management: new enterprise development, cooperatives, value added
- Natural Resources/Environment: afforestation, biodiversity, habitat enhancement, wildlife, carbon sequestration
- Pest Management: biological control, botanical pesticides, compost extracts, mulches - killed, mulches - living, row covers (for pests), sanitation
- Production Systems: permaculture, agroecosystems, holistic management, organic agriculture
- Soil Management: composting, green manures, organic matter, soil analysis, soil microbiology
- Sustainable Communities: local and regional food systems, new business opportunities, public participation, urban agriculture, urban/rural integration, sustainability measures
Summary:
This project will produce a 14 part video series of information bytes, to be used in the classroom to augment the students' hands-on exposure to ecological farming as it relates to consumer responsibility, environmental restoration and creating a resilient food system for the future of food security.
Project objectives:
We can increase demand for ecological farming through education. Eaters need to understand what ecological farming is, what it looks like, how it works, where to find it and most importantly, why to seek it out. We, the ecological farmers, are the best teachers of this subject. While it might not work for all farmers to get out there and teach a Jr. High or College class, some of us can (and while it is exciting and rewarding to share our knowledge and passion with the younger generations, teaching can also create another income stream for small farmers).This project proposes to create 14 Youtube videos, most 3-5 minutes in length that will bring three local farms into the classroom. I have chosen 14 videos to correspond with the weeks in a typical semester class. This series will look at ecological farming on three levels of production, backyard, urban and small farm, and includes many best practices from each. The first video will be a general overview of eco-farming, 5-10 minutes, including introducing each of the three farms participating in the video series. The remaining 13 videos will be sequenced for individual use. The videos will be designed to engage students in a hands-on understanding of the importance of ecological eating, for the consumer, the farmer and the environment. To ensure a quality presentation that includes as much information as possible in each video clip, I will hire a videographer (interested in restoration agriculture) to do the filming and production. Interns and farm volunteers will be part of the cast as we spend one season collecting an abundance of film to create this series. Year two will be used to bridge any gaps in filming, to compile video, do reviews, final edits and outreach