Lexy Close On Friday evening, November 15, at the Washington County Soil Conservation District awards banquet in Sulphur Springs, ARCD Project Director Lexy Close will be named the 2019 Educator of the Year for her work training beginning farmers in the region. ...
The Farmer and Rancher Mentorship program (FARM) is accepting applications for a 200 hour on-farm summer internship with a variety of farmers across East TN and Southwest VA. We still have spots open and wanted to highlight the awesome farmers that interns can choose...
As we’ve now been in the agricultural world for some time, we’ve been to quite a lot of agricultural workshops. I swear, one common thread running across all of them is how difficult it can be to make money from a farming endeavor, and that’s not by accident. The...
When we moved to our current location two years ago, we did a lot of work on visioning the future of our new farm business. We sat down with our landlady, Lisa Williams, and an employee of Appalachian Sustainable Development, Tamara McNaughton, to work on crafting a...
After months of preparation, we finally got to meet our newest batch of Field School students on Thursday, November 8th at our first session, Visioning Your Farm! Our main speaker for the night was Tamara McNaughton, of TNT Farm N Greenhouse, who shared about her...
Hi! We’re Becca and Joe, a farming couple living in Duffield, VA, growing open-pollinated, Certified Naturally Grown produce. Tending the land has always been our number one priority as people, so it only makes sense that it should be the main focus of our life. We’ve...
We receive great feedback from our Field School students each year and we wanted to share some of them with any prospective students out there interested in pursuing their dream of farming! Thanks to funding from a USDA Beginning Farmer & Rancher Development...
It’s hard to believe that our third year of the Field School is coming to a close already, but our graduation celebration will be on Thursday August 9 at 6pm at Grand Oak Farm in Jonesborough. This year, we had our largest enrollment yet, with 40 beginning farmers...
On Saturday, April 21st, Field School was held at John Abe Teague’s Farm in Telford. The topic of this session was Sustainable Livestock Management, with a focus on rotational grazing systems. Rotational grazing is an intensive pasture management system that rotates...
On Saturday, April 14th, the Field School visited Grand Oak Farm in Jonesborough, TN, owned by Dana York. Dana’s family settled at this property in the 18th century, and she returned to revitalize it after retiring from a distinguished career with the NRCS. 2018 will...