Each spring, CRAFT farmers meet to discuss how best to meet the learning needs of farmers-in-training, new farmers and established farmers in eastern Massachusetts. Our emphasis is on small-scale sustainable agriculture with a focus on food production. Our discussion generates many topics and a list of farms we think will provide excellent learning opportunities. One to three CRAFT farmers usually volunteer to sort through all the ideas and sketch out a tentative schedule. Farmers and other presenters are contacted, calendars are consulted, and a schedule is created. This year, 2010, Amanda Cather is our volunteer CRAFT scheduler.
When a farmer joins CRAFT, she indicates if she is interested in hosting a CRAFT visit, and if so, what topic she is interested in presenting. If you are a farmer new to CRAFT, or a farmer with a CRAFT visit idea, please go to the Join CRAFT survey and tell us about your idea! This year, 2010, Gretta Anderson is the volunteer who manages the Join CRAFT list.
To Host a CRAFT Visit:
Before the visit:
- Reacquaint yourself with the focus for the visit. It’s listed on the CRAFT schedule.
- Send an email to the emassCRAFT list with this information:
- Confirmation of the date of the visit to your farm
- Topic or focus, with one-sentence description
- Your preferred contact information
- Directions to your farm, or a link to a website that has directions
- Any other information you’d like folks to have about your farm: budget, profit and loss sheet, mission statement, crop plan, or other documents you think might be useful for visitors. To have posted to the CRAFT web site, send them to webmaster [at] emasscraft.org
The day of the visit:
- Remember to introduce yourself and your farm
- Have CRAFT visitors introduce themselves
- Provide time for questions and answers/ discussion
- Create handouts if it is useful or relevant
- Have a great time!