Southern SAWG Conference Blog… Dawg

Here in the office, the farm team is buzzing around. We are attempting to organize the abundance of information we obtained from Southern SAWG’s (Sustainable Agriculture Working Group) 18th Annual Practical Tools and Solutions for Sustaining Family Farms Conference. It was held this past weekend at the Chattanooga Convention Center from Wednesday January 22nd to Sunday January 25th. We Beardsley folks attended the conference from Thursday to Sunday and here are some tidbits from our experience; what we learned, who we met, and the different events we attended!

Friday was the first day of the concurrent sessions where we spent the majority of the conference. There were so many classes that sounded interesting it was difficult to choose but overall we were pretty satisfied with our decisions. We went to classes ranging from building community food systems to cultivating mushrooms to stories of a mobile farmers market.

Saturday also hosted several concurrent sessions as well as “meet and greets” for like-minded farmers in categories such as young farmers, mid-scale farmers, flower producers, retiring farmers, etc. The classes this day were just as good, if not better! There were tons of classes offering advice under the new farm bill, classes about livestock, co-op’s, leadership, composting and so so much more. To top off a great day of learning we were served a delicious meal of grass-fed beef and homegrown greens, carrots and potatoes and pecan pie for dessert! All this during an amazing key note address by agricultural economist John Ikerd. His speech was truly inspiring. You could feel the intensity in the room as he preached about the importance of sustainable family farms in reference to meeting the ecological and social changes confronting our society. I highly recommend everyone who reads this blog to check him out.

Here are a couple links:

http://web.missouri.edu/ikerdj/

http://homesweetfarm.podomatic.com/entry/2008-08-14T19_25_04-07_00

http://www.salmonnation.com/voices/john_ikerd.html

There was also a grant writing work shop on Sunday that a few of our team members attended. Besides being able to attend classes and workshops the conference was a great opportunity to meet like-minded individuals. On several different occasions myself and others had the opportunity to meet farmers from all over the southeast with great stories, questions and advice. And we were also able to acquire a good deal of info from the conferences trade show by talking to representatives and collecting pamphlets and publications.

Overall the weekend was a great success and I look forward to attending next years conference. I recommend checking out some of the links below to learn more about SAWG and some of the people and places that presented their inspiring stories.

Southern SAWG’s website: http://www.ssawg.org/

Crabtree Farms: http://www.crabtreefarms.org/

Twelve Aprils Dairy and Happy Cows Creamery: http://www.happycowcreamery.com/tour.htm

Mushroom Mountain, LLC: http://www.mushroommountain.com/

Rural Resources: http://ruralresources.net/

Jubilee Project: http://www.timesnews.net/article.php?id=9002247?fromrss=1 http://www.apspringcoop.com/

Gaia Farms: http://www.gaiaherbs.com/brochure.php?id=12

Anson Mills: http://www.ansonmills.com/

Waterpenny Farm: http://www.waterpennyfarm.com/