Submitted by Cassie Carroll on Mon, 08/29/2016 – 5:54pm There’s a new event on the block – the Artisan Cup & Fork – downstate Illinois’ premiere food competition. The tagline, “Life is too short to drink bad booze and eat bad food” is the perfect way to describe this unique culinary experience. The event highlights 8 […]
Event Recaps
I have grain on the mind
Submitted by Mallory Krieger on Thu, 08/18/2016 – 4:46pm This is my first blog entry at TLC and I have grain on the mind. One of my first large tasks as the Farmer Training Program Manager has been to finalize the planning of our upcoming workshop on organic grain marketing. It has my head swimming with […]
Managing Risk in Organic Grain Production
This workshop was held at Goldmine Farms in Pana, Illinois in July 2016. Goldmine Farms is owned and operated by Jack Erisman, who has been farming organically since the early 1970s and now grows over 2000 acres of organic grains, from yellow corn for tortillas to the rare perennial intermediate wheatgrass, and also raises grass-fed […]
Women, Communication, and managing Risk
Submitted by Cara Cummings on Mon, 05/02/2016 – 5:44pm I traveled to Fort Worth, Texas last week to attend a training for 2016 Extension Risk Management project directors. The Land Connection was awarded a risk management grant for a project titled Risk Management for Illinois Farmers Transitioning to Organic and Identity-Preserved Crop Production, but I’m […]
You have the questions and we have the answers
Submitted by Bob Porter on Mon, 01/18/2016 – 5:04pm We were at the 2016 Illinois Specialty Crops, Agritourism, and Organic Conference in Springfield two weeks ago, talking to people about the workshops and projects we have planned for the next few months. We talked with people who are just getting started in farming to those with a decades worth […]
Who Gets the Farm?
This was the big question we talked about at the Sangamon Aquifer Celebration in Decatur last week. It’s actually a question I hear a lot at public events. People are well aware that the average age of farmers is headed upward, and they’re deeply concerned about what will happen to to farmland once the current […]
