Zoe Schaeffer in the flower hoophouse
By Natasha Anderson
The Organic Growers School’s 28th Annual Spring Conference takes place online Saturday, March 13, through Sunday, March 21. The event offers practical workshops on farming, gardening, permaculture, urban growing and rural living and includes a virtual trade show, keynote speakers and special entertainment features.
“This conference has been designed very thoughtfully, utilizing input from our experience hosting our Harvest Conference virtually in September, as well as by doing a lot of research regarding best practices and how people are adapting to online learning,” says OGS director of programs and systems design Sera Deva. “As a result, we’ve come up with a grab bag of offerings for our flagship event.”
Those offerings include a one-day kick-off that gives people affordable access to keynote speakers, track teaser videos, and exhibitors from farms, gardening suppliers and cottage industries specializing in organic products and resources. Live demonstrations, promotional and networking opportunities and live question-and-answer sessions provide face-time with all presenters. Throughout the week, 12 pre-recorded track sessions are offered that participants can watch on their own schedule. Access to the kick-off event is $20. The cost for the full week of 12 tracks plus the live event is $175. Individual tracks can also be purchased separately.
Each track consists of three hour-long workshops. Themes include cooking, farming, food systems, gardening, herbs, livestock, mushrooms, permaculture, soils and sustainable living.
“I attended the fabulous two-day Cherokee panel webinar during the Virtual Harvest Conference and learned stories, songs and traditional food preparations from two generations of Cherokee,” says wildcrafter, gardener and local food supporter Ellen Rubenstein Chelmis. “I was thoroughly impressed with the quality of the transmission and production, which was good by any standard, but exceptional for a first effort.”
Keynote speakers for the Spring Conference are agroecologist, political economist, lecturer and author Eric Holt Giménez; certified beekeeper, master gardener and Mother’s Finest Urban Farms founder Samantha Foxx; and urban agriculturist, farmer, community developer, author and Truly Living Well Center for Natural Urban Agriculture founder Rashid Nuri. Poet Ross Gay will also be featured during the live kick-off.
For 28 years, the OGS Spring Conference has reinforced WNC’s role as a regional leader in sustainable food and farming. Attendees have described the event as the kick-start to their growing season. The event has grown exponentially—from a small gathering of 100 growing enthusiasts in 1993 to a regionally recognized conference drawing more than 2,500 attendees, exhibitors and speakers. This year, with the new virtual programming, the conference is expected to draw in more attendees from across the nation, offering an opportunity to learn from and connect with fellow growers and teachers.
“All of our instructors are tried-and-true amazing educators, many of whom we’ve been lucky to work with locally for many years,” says Deva. “I fully believe that the type of information we offer at OGS can benefit small farmers and home growers across the country, and be a beacon of true grower-to-grower education in a time when growing food and living sustainably is exactly what we all need to focus our energy on.”
The Organic Growers School is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization with a mission to inspire, educate and support people to farm, garden and live organically.
For registration or more information, including workshop descriptions and keynote speakers, visit OrganicGrowersSchool.org/conferences/spring.
