This course involves a series of classes, discussions, and work periods throughout the whole year. Students learn how to take soil samples and then to read and interpret the soil report that comes back from the lab. Students learn the many things that go into improving and maintaining healthy soil from compost applications to cover cropping, amending, fertilizing, crop rotation, and effective conservation tillage.

In this three part course students learn the step-by-step process of creating a crop plan for a CSA or a market farm. We begin by setting harvest goals for various crops, investigate potential yields of those crops, and then look into the space required to grow various crops. We examine varieties of crops, management practices, crop rotations, as well as seed ordering, record keeping and costs of seeds for various crops.

This course takes place in discussions and work periods from early spring through late summer. Students are taught all the skills they need to successfully start seedlings on a production scale. These skills include seeding, watering, temperature control, thinning, disease control, hardening off, and fertility management. Students also learn about various supplies that are needed in a greenhouse environment from pots and flats, to soil media, labels and pens. Students grow to be individually responsible for watering and managing our greenhouse production for one week at a time.

This course takes place throughout the year during work periods. In this course students learn the skills that it takes to manage a diverse vegetable farm with up to ten acres under active cultivation. These skills include (but are not limited to) tillage and field/bed preparation, seeding, transplanting seedlings, hoeing, hand weeding, field cultivation, harvest management, and presenting high quality vegetables for sale. This course is central to the production needs of the farm and students take on real responsibility to help the farm succeed.

In this course students learn to identify and manage pests, weeds and disease organically. This is done through a series of classes, field walks, and farm work periods. In various classes students learn the proper practices to limit and inhibit pests, weeds and disease. During weekly field walks with instructors, students learn to identify the various things that can inhibit a plants growth from cucumber beetles, to switch grass, to late blight. In work periods, students take part in actively preventing or managing pests, weeds, or disease through the use of row covers, tractor tools and various organically-certified sprays.

In our short New England growing season we try to find ways to increase our harvest window for our CSA and market customers as well as our community here at The Farm School. In this set of discussions and farm work periods we examine various levels of tools that can be used to extend our harvest season. Beginning in the spring with our use of floating row covers, carrying over to the use of row covers to protect crops in the fall. Students are exposed to small-scale season extension techniques through the use of cold frames and larger scale season extension through the use of our 30’x90’ high tunnel which produces food through the winter for The Farm School Community. Students also learn how to grow for and to manage a root cellar.

In this course students learn the annual cycle of care for apples, blueberries, strawberries and raspberries. Students learn how to prune, fertilize, and manage these crops through a series of special classes and Farm Work Periods that involve a professional orchard manager and a fruit scientist from UMASS. In these classes students will learn the proper skills and techniques to care for these long lived fruit crops.