Winter conference season is upon us. Greenhorns will be screening and convening beginning farmer mixers all over this eastern seaboard over the winter -- a big deal for us is NOFA NY on January 20. It is in Saratoga Springs, a super wonderful (train accessible) town with natural hot water, a horsey Gilded Age main street, and a kickass winter farmers market. The Cornell/USDA cats have funded and planned a whole Beginning Farmer Track -- and there are quite a number of young farmer scholarships left. So get in touch, and if you are going to attend, help us with set up. Volunteer for that to Patrick at [email protected]. Other state NOFA chapters (NJ, VT, NH, MA) will also have greenhorns presence at their winter conferences. The complete schedule is online on our Events page. Merch. Just in time for the holidays our bike flags are back in holly berry red! Along with books, stickers, seeders, and new posters! It's all assembled for your leisurely perusal over at our ETSY shop. Posters are cheaper then ever before! Buy a lot, their revenue helps keep us going between those uncertain grant cycles. 2011 is big. Seed Circuses, Grange hall Mixers, Sleepover training camps in Maine and West Virginia, Workshops, farm tours, Screenings, theater performances, BBQ, bicycle powered sewing machines, design charrettes, agrarian history lectures, charities, craft-celebration projects and Art collaborations. We have our schedule up on the wall here at HQ, and its pretty darn full. If you are wanting to collaborate with us in 2011, please be in touch SOON and be ready to hear scheduling is already very tight. Be hereby encouraged to PLAN AHEAD -(longer than watermelon lifecycle)- so we can co-foist up a mixer or training in the place where you live. Winter is for planning, and we are looking for artists/ craftspeople to collaborate with in the production of celebration infrastructure. Contact us day or night: [email protected] Screenings. We are sure happy to start being able to schedule screenings! Now don't all email at once. We have a Nifty WEBLINK on our homepage where you can fill in your information. Please use that form. Please use the web form. Please please please. It does not ask for your date of birth or entail a binding contract in any way. Outreach/Screening questions can also be directed to Patrick:[email protected]. He will urge you to consider buying a screening kit, with organic popcorn, stickers, posters et al. He is very organized and effusive. Greenhorns Book project. Many of you have seen our Guidebook + Land Access Mini-compendium. They are free! on the website or for sale on ETSY. On the merit of that zine-length guidebook we got a book deal from Storey publishing to do an expanded version with young farmer essays. So, in short, we want to hear from you!  The due date has been extended to January 15th. description of project: Greenhorns GUIDEBOOK is a resource for the new generation of farmers who are popping up all over the country. This collection of essays and stories conveys our ethic of thrift, innovation, persistence and strength. One part pep talk, one part advice column, and one part celebration, this book aims to give readers a taste of the beginning farmer experience: the pitfalls and the poetry of choosing a livelihood so far left of mainstream- of building a business around our love of agriculture. The book will give new and aspiring farmers – Greenhorns – a glimpse of the road ahead in order to help them steer a satisfying and realistic trajectory into farming. For non-farming readers, this collection of witty, gritty, raw essays written from the trenches will shed some light on what it takes to pay your bills when you decide to start growing food for a living. In the collaborative spirit of The Greenhorns Project, these written pieces by young and beginning farmers are woven together with how-to guidance and interjected with wise words from our agrarian elders. Inspired by the pluck and purposeful protagonism of these young farmers, we hope that readers, eaters, voters and moms will come to understand the tremendous potential of sustainable agriculture in the reclaiming of America. If things have finally slowed down a little for you and you meet the contributor criteria, pick up the pen and send us an essay! We'd specifically love to see some witty pieces on these general topics: Weeds Land Access Family issues New social methods for farmers Getting credit Water/water rights Bees/worms and other essential micro-critters on the farm Predator/pest tales Draft animal stories Marketing bling, zing, and secrets to success The Writer Guidelines are downloadable here. National Young Farmers Coalition Report on the Young Farmers Conference, Stone Barns

Well, it was pretty super. There were hella young farmers there. Katheleen Merrigan spoke about how she used to talk about ag-policy at parties and no one wanted to talk to her. (I've heard similar stories for dairy girls having no luck getting a date) But now when she talks about Ag-policy she's the belle of the ball. Well, she's also Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, so some of those people at the ball might be her staff. I was really moved by her intention to support young farmers, and make good on Vilsack's mandate to grow 100,000 new farmers -- it seems the USDA wants to hear from us on how they can help our businesses succeed. So we are telling them: Here is an article that NYFC Director Lindsey Lusher wrote for Grist on the policy panels that we hosted (as National Young Farmers' Coalition) http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-12-15-young-farmers-review-farm-bill-program Here is the testimony that Hannah Bernhardt delivered to the Beginning Farmers and Ranchers Development Program Advisory Panel at the USDA: http://www.youngfarmers.org/2010/12/928/