From Organic Growers School
Press Release
The Organic Growers School will draw over 2000 gardeners, farmers, and foodies to Asheville for a weekend of workshops scheduled for Saturday & Sunday, March 7 & 8, 2015 at the University of North Carolina-Asheville in Asheville, NC. The 22nd annual Spring Conference event features classes for beginning backyard growers to advanced commercial farmers, plus a trade show, seed exchange, silent auction, children’s program, and pre-conference, on-farm events. The largest locally-run sustainability conference in the Southeast, the cost is: $60 for Saturday, $55 for Sunday.
The event, which is open to the public, provides practical, regionally-appropriate workshops on organic growing, permaculture, homesteading, urban farming, and rural living. This year’s conference offers 70 sessions per day in themed tracks including Gardening, Soils, Livestock, Primitive Skills, Permaculture, Herbs, Alternative Energy, Sustainable Forestry, Homesteading, Cooking, Poultry, Farmers I and Farmers II. New tracks for 2015 include Mushrooms and Food Resilience. A complete list of the classes can be viewed on the website.
Class Titles by Track
TRACK A GARDENING
1A: Starting Your First Garden
2B: Creative Irrigation
3A: Container Gardening
4A: Small Scale No-Till Gardening
TRACK B MYCOLOGY
1A: Marvelous Mushrooms
2A: Medicinal Mushrooms
3B: Mycoforestry with Mushrooms
4B: Mushrooms of the Southern Appalachians
TRACK C SOILS
1C: Feeding the Soil Biodynamics
2C: Build a Compost Tea Brewer
3C: A Worm Composting System For Your Home
4C: Effective Microbes
TRACK D LIVESTOCK
1D: Fencing Everything with Electricity
2D: Incorporating Goats
3D: Homeopathy for the Whole Herd
4D: Draft Horse Teamster Roundtable
TRACK E ALTERNATIVE ENERGY
1E: Passive Solar Design
2E: Alternative Energy and You
3E: Build Your Own Solar Panels
4E: Backyard Biochar
TRACK F COMMERCIAL FARMERS I
1F: Penciling a Profit
2F: Keeper Crops
3F: Farming in a Changing Climate
4F: Lessons from The Pocket Farm
TRACK G COMMERCIAL FARMERS II
1G: Controlling Spotted Wing Drosophila
2G: Flame Weeding
3G: Getting More with Workers
4G: How to Train a Dragon Farmer
TRACK H PRIMITIVE SKILLS
1H: Intro to Bird Language
2H: The Gift of Invasive Species
3H: Small Animal Hunting
4H: TBA
TRACK I FOOD RESILIENCE
1I: Regional Resiliency
2I: Managing Rainwater as a Resource
3I: Co-op Businesses
4I: Envisioning Our Abundant Food Future
TRACK J PERMACULTURE
1J: Real Life Forest Gardening and Farming
2J: Horticultural Strategies
3J: Permaculture: A Toolkit
4J: Stored Patterns, Storied Wisdom
TRACK K HERBS
1K: Making Herbal Medicine
2K: Classical Chinese Herbal Medicine
3K: Outstanding Edible Wild Plants
4K: Gettin’ Down with Appalachian Roots
TRACK L SUSTAINABLE FORESTRY
1L: Raising Pawpaws
2L: Craft: Repurposing the Woodlot
3L: Brewing with Non-Timber Forest Products
4L: Community Scale Biochar
TRACK M HOMESTEADING
1M: DIY Aquaponics
2M: The WellStocked Pantry without Canning
3M: Save True Seed 101
4M: DIY High Protein Animal Feed
TRACK N COOKING
1N: Pickle It! Vegetable Fermentation
2N: Introduction to Specialty Coffee
3N: Herbal Cocktails
4N: Creative Cooking with Mushrooms
TRACK O ALL ABOUT POULTRY
1O: Using Poultry to Enhance the Land
2O: The Art of Incubation
3O: The Secret to Cooking Heritage Poultry
4O: Developing a Profitable Poultry Business
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