Project Overview
Commodities
Practices
- Animal Production: aquaculture, feed/forage, grazing management
- Crop Production: high tunnels or hoop houses, nutrient management
- Education and Training: farmer to farmer, networking, technical assistance, workshop
- Farm Business Management: financial management, new enterprise development
- Production Systems: organic agriculture, organic certification
- Sustainable Communities: community development, local and regional food systems, quality of life, urban agriculture
Proposal abstract:
The Third Thursday Thing features monthly sustainable agriculture training sessions. The sessions take place at the Kentucky State University Harold R. Benson Research and Demonstration Farm on the third Thursday of every month with no session in December. Agricultural Professionals and farm leaders throughout the commonwealth and surrounding states are the target audience for the trainings. These trainings are structured for multiple learning types, with lecture style presentations followed by hands on demonstration/activities. We have also added a Fourth Wednesday program based on requests from the agricultural community.
Third Thursdays have become an institution in Kentucky professional development educational programming. The broad range of topics (listed in a later section) ensure that agricultural professionals and producer leaders have training in the skills necessary on a diversified small farm. TTT also serves as a space for synergies in small farm education. Many conferences and educational meetings are planned around “Third Thursdays” including:
o the Annual Small, Limited-Resource/Minority Farmers Conference,
o the International Pawpaw Conference,
o the Regional SARE Goat Project’s Collaborator Conference,
o the SRRMEC Regional Conference on the “Risk-Assessed Business Planning for Small Producers” curriculum, and many others.
Project objectives from proposal:
- Expand programming to include “quality of life” principles of Sustainable Agriculture through discussions of farm transition.
- Build capacity for these kinds of conversations by training-the-trainer and then supporting trainees in hosting their own local follow-up meetings.