Submitted by Jeff Hake on Wed, 07/02/2014 – 12:34pm Wes Jarrell takes the class on a tour of Prairie Fruits Farm and Creamery. It was the end of three days of intensive training and the room was quiet as our participants pored through the multi-page evaluations I had just handed them. After a minute, one […]
Jeff Hake
The Fifth Season
Submitted by Jeff Hake on Mon, 03/21/2016 – 5:42pm Until I began working for The Land Connection, “conference season” was not a season with which I was familiar. “Winter”, “summer”, or even “monsoon” had crossed my path before, but conference season was novel. So what is conference season? It straddles a bit of fall, all […]
The freedom of the frost
Submitted by Jeff Hake on Thu, 11/20/2014 – 11:18am A funny thing happens to many farmers this time of year. They take a long overdue deep breath, as if the growing season was a weight that had been lifted from their chests. This in itself is not the funny thing. Rather, it’s that this breath […]
This land is our land
Submitted by Jeff Hake on Tue, 07/07/2015 – 7:53am “How do I get on some land?” It’s probably the question I hear most often from beginning farmers. It’s also among the most daunting. Americans are increasingly looking to farming as a viable career option, but land ownership is concentrating into fewer and fewer hands. Those […]
Time to Grow
Submitted by Jeff Hake on Fri, 02/07/2014 – 11:58am This is the afternoon of the fourth day in my new position as Farmer Training Program Manager with The Land Connection. First let me tell you why I love this work and why I’ve insisted on this career path, this mission, for the past several years, […]
Tractors depreciate; mentorships pay dividends
Submitted by Jeff Hake on Tue, 05/31/2016 – 1:13am We received a grant from FarmAid this year. This is exciting for two reasons: 1) the email telling you that you got the award also comes with a picture of Willie Nelson signing the grant documents, which really is a reward in its own right; and […]
