Conversations

New piece published today! In the time of COVID-19, The Moment for Food Sovereignty is Now: From panic planting to cooperative gardens, farmers focused on equity and food justice know that ‘if you can feed yourself, you can free yourself.’

https://civileats.com/2020/04/02/the-moment-for-food-sovereignty-is-now/

Hi all,

Are you overwhelmed thinking about how to face a future of intensifying wildfires? Join our newest 7 week online course: “Farmers Build Fire Resilience, Feb 13-March 26 2020” to help you face a future of fires. Free to farmers and ranchers, though anyone interested may join as well. By the end of the course, you’ll have built your own Resilience Plan specific to your site that you can start applying right away.

Last Call - Sign up and Reserve your Space

Feel free to reach out with questions to fires@mesaprogram.org. We look forward to learning with you!

Topics Include: Land Management for Fire Preparedness & Mitigation Emergency Response Preparing Your Home, Farm Crew, Family & Livestock Community Preparedness & Organizing for Recovery Fires & Finances Health & Food Safety Understanding Fire Ecology

Katie Brimm and the Fires Resilience Team

With the current issues about fire, and air permits and insurance, we are going to have to move away from flame weeding.

Wondering if anyone has experience with steam as a weed top kill agent ? a couple weekly cycles and that should eventually starve the roots. Anyone have a system for hire, or maybe consider shared ownership or tool library. $17K for weeding 6x a year is steep..

Hi Folks,

Overwhelmed thinking about how to face a future of intensifying wildfires? Did October’s fires have you wondering if your farm, ranch and community know how to prepare, adapt or recover?

You’re not alone. With 65 years of combined experience working with farmers, MESA and CAFF/The Farmers Guild have worked hard to bring you an innovative, farmer-centered, holistic online course and network, “Farmers Build Fire Resilience, Feb 13-March 26 2020” to help farmers and ranchers face a future of fires.

By the end of the course, you’ll have built your own Resilience Plan that you can start applying right away. Free to farmers and ranchers in California.

Register Here and See Full Course Details Here

Feel free to reach out with questions to fires@mesaprogram.org. We look forward to learning with you!

Katie Brimm and the Fires Resilience Team

We ran it and tested it in my Sunol field yesterday. I would describe it as an autonomous universal tool carrying platform.

Demos in CA, AZ and hopefully NV. Ping me if you would like to host a demo or attend a demo(this week in Bay Area and one in watsonville)..it’s going to Bakersfield from there and Yuma for a bit before coming back to CA. I am helping to co ordinate northern Cali demos.

For now, we have a rotovator and sprayer. Looking for a seeder to rent for the demo. Bed width 80inches. Can’t pull high draft like ripper or subsoiler, but works with most PTO implements and those using three point hitch.

I can’t seem to attach the video I took yesterday. Will try again.

cant upload. But this is a YouTube link: https://youtu.be/oQb9qngmCoY

Penny Leff, Agritourism Coordinator of UC SAREP, announced two new guides: Guest Lodging on Your California Farm or Ranch , and The Big Event: Hosting a Festival on your California Farm .

Penny Leff, Agritourism Coordinator of UC SAREP, announced two new guides: Guest Lodging on Your California Farm or Ranch , and The Big Event: Hosting a Festival on your California Farm .

The Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF) and the Farmers Guild is hosting a Small Farm Tech Expo December 8-9 in Forestville, where we’ll showcase technology, equipment, and tools useful for small to mid-scale farms through workshops and demonstrations.

We’re looking for farmers and ranchers, technical advisors, and industry folks familiar with solar, irrigation management tools and tech, and/or whole orchard recycling who are interested in hosting or participating in a one hour workshop on December 9. For industry representatives, we’re looking for someone who can speak to specific considerations around choosing and managing a system or technology for the farm without explicitly promoting a specific product. Growers and ranchers, we want to hear about what tools and tech you've used as well!

You can submit a workshop proposal through this link

If you’re interested in being part of the expo or have any questions, please reach out to emily@caff.org.

Howdy Farmers,

I am looking for specific tractor models, old or new (manufacturer, model, and year) that veggie growers have really liked, so that I can search them used on TractorHouse. Our situation is this...

My partner and I are tooling up to break ground on a 6-8 acre, diverse vegetable CSA in Sebastopol. We are researching tractors, and deep into the classic "one tractor conundrum". With the ability to only afford one tractor, we would like to have a versatile one. We'd like it to be able to do primary tillage, as well as has have properly spaced and thin enough tires to get it into our shaped beds to help renovate beds for second-plantings (to undercut, disc, rototill, or spade), to weed the furrows and to possibly flame-weed (if we can find a 60" tractor mounted flame weeder). We will cultivate in-row manually the first years.

Our requirements are: ~50 horsepower, 4WD, 60" center-to-center tread

Howdy Farmers,

I am looking for specific tractor models, old or new (manufacturer, model, and year) that veggie growers have really liked, so that I can search them used on TractorHouse. Our situation is this...

My partner and I are tooling up to break ground on a 6-8 acre, diverse vegetable CSA in Sebastopol. We are researching tractors, and deep into the classic "one tractor conundrum". With the ability to only afford one tractor, we would like to have a versatile one. We'd like it to be able to do primary tillage, as well as has have properly spaced and thin enough tires to get it into our shaped beds to help renovate beds for second-plantings (to undercut, disc, rototill, or spade), to weed the furrows and to possibly flame-weed (if we can find a 60" tractor mounted flame weeder). We will cultivate in-row manually the first years.

Our requirements are: ~50 horsepower, 4WD, 60" center-to-center tread spacing with thin <13" rear tires, a front end loader, and gearing or a transmission that can go slow enough to run a spader. We could pay ~$30k for the right machine.

This tractor does exist new. It is the Kubota M7060 outfitted with a creeper gear and thin 12.6" rear tires. Shone Farm in Santa Rosa and New Family Farm in Sebastopol have this tractor. But at $50k, this is outside of our budget, and is too much tractor for our site and scale.

I have looked at cheaper new Kubotas (L and MX series) and John Deeres (5E series), but while some of them meet many of the requirements, one key element is missed. For example, the John Deere 5055E is the right horsepower and size, 4wd, can have a loader, but it's lowest gear is a touch fast at .9mph, and right now our dealer is essentially saying "not possible" for thin rear tires.

I'm seeking advice, and if farmers could share specefic model numbers and years, of any "Goldilocks" tractors they have used and loved @60" spacing, with low gearing.

Thank you!

David

Small-scale/ Backyard Livestock and Poultry Survey

If you have backyard livestock or poultry or are a small-scale producer of livestock or poultry, this survey is for you. This questionnaire asks about the specific practices and perceptions that you apply to your animals’ health, husbandry, and antimicrobial use. It is being conducted for research and outreach purposes in order to find better ways to serve people and communities with backyard and small-scale livestock or poultry.

Conducted by the University of California Cooperative Extension and the School of Veterinary Medicine and funded by the California Department of Food and Agriculture, this survey will take about 20 minutes to complete. Provided information will be kept strictly confidential. We will not connect your name with your responses.

Originally created as part of the Healthy Animals,Healthy Peopleworkshop series in California, the

Small-scale/ Backyard Livestock and Poultry Survey

If you have backyard livestock or poultry or are a small-scale producer of livestock or poultry, this survey is for you. This questionnaire asks about the specific practices and perceptions that you apply to your animals’ health, husbandry, and antimicrobial use. It is being conducted for research and outreach purposes in order to find better ways to serve people and communities with backyard and small-scale livestock or poultry.

Conducted by the University of California Cooperative Extension and the School of Veterinary Medicine and funded by the California Department of Food and Agriculture, this survey will take about 20 minutes to complete. Provided information will be kept strictly confidential. We will not connect your name with your responses.

Originally created as part of the Healthy Animals,Healthy Peopleworkshop series in California, the survey is now open to all owners and small-scale producers of livestock and poultry in California regardless of workshop attendance. We would appreciate your time and participation in this survey, accessible here.

Thank you,

Alda Pires

apires@ucdavis.edu