Schedule for 2011 Advanced Growers' Fall Seminar With Harvey UsseryFRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2011 Breakfast: 7:00am to 8:15am FRIDAY MORNING SESSIONS: 8:30am to 10:00am: Soil Care: The basics of soil fertility, minimizing tillage, feeding the soil with composts and mulches, with a more detailed discussion of cover cropping. 15 minute morning break 10:15am to 12:00pm: Garden, Orchard, and Forest Garden: Strategies for protecting soil structure and eating fresh year-round, managing a small orchard, and imitating the dynamics of a natural forest to create a forest garden. Lunch: 12:15 to 1:15pm FRIDAY AFTERNOON SESSIONS 1:30pm to 3:30pm: The Multifunctional Greenhouse: In addition to growing winter crops of salad and cooking greens in an unheated greenhouse, we can use it to house poultry or other livestock in the winter, practice large scale vermicomposting, and more. Includes a discussion of infrastructure and materials choices. 15 minute afternoon break 3:45pm to 5:30pm: Cultivating Edible Mushrooms: Using wild and cultivated fungi to grow edible and medicinal mushrooms and recycle woody wastes. Dinner: 5:45pm to 7:00pm SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2011 Breakfast: 7:00am to 8:15am SATURDAY MORNING SESSIONS 8:30am to 10:00am: Limiting Crop Damage by Insects: Keeping insect damage in garden and field to acceptable minimums naturally, with no use of insecticides whatever ("organically approved" or not). Trash to Treasure -- Bioconversion of Organic "Wastes" to Resources: Using organic wastes as resources for the farm and homestead, with emphasis on cultivating decomposer organisms such as earthworms and soldier grubs as high-payoff live protein feeds for poultry, pigs, and farmed fish. 10:15am to 12:00pm: Livestock in the Homestead and Small Farm: Using livestock to increase resource utilization, natural feeding, preventing predation, stacking species, managing manure as a resource and to prevent runoff pollution. Lunch: 12:15 to 1:15pm SATURDAY AFTERNOON SESSIONS 1:30pm to 3:30pm: Holistic Poultry Husbandry: For a more detailed example of holistic use of livestock in the homestead and small farm, a sketch of a whole-systems approach to husbandry of a mixed working flock not only to furnish all the family's eggs and dressed table fowl year-round but to engage them in such key tasks as tillage, insect control, and making compost. 15 minute afternoon break 3:45pm to 5:30pm: Finding Your Niche Market: It may make sense to find and serve a niche market for specialty farm products rather than competing with established producers of more standard offerings. Possibilities include pastured eggs and broilers, specialty fowl such as ducks or capons, game birds, lacto-fermented foods, artisanal cheeses, custom growing and milling of feeds, large-scale production of compost, and more. Dinner: 5:45pm to 7:00pm
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