Sunbow Farm GrapesWorkshops
Sunbow Farm workshops are designed to provide you with skills to ease the transition during this time of the end of cheap petroleum living. The topics form an integrated knowledge base which, when set into practice, will feed you and all your relationships with a sense of total well-being.
NOON TO 1:00 PM - LUNCH BREAK/DISCUSSION
1:00 PM TO 3:00 PM- PRESENTATION/DISCUSSION
BRING LUNCH
FEES
CONTACT
MAP
DIRECTIONS to SUNBOW FARM:
FROM HI 5 TOWARD CORVALLIS,
TAKE BYPASS TO OREGON BEACHES/PHILOMATH (turn left at this light)
GO UP TO 53RD ST., TURN LEFT
THEN 7/10ths OF A MILE TURN RIGHT ON PLYMOUTH DR.
LAST DRIVEWAY ON LEFT BEFORE STOP SIGN
Winter / Spring 2013
PRUNING PERENNIALS : FRUIT TREES , BUSHES/VINES
January 27 - Instructor: Steve Rose Organic Nurseryman & Farmer
Long - time organic grower with combined skills in how to prune young fruit trees, older trees, vines and bushes. A hands-on workshop using Sunbow’s orchard, blueberry, grape, and boysenberry patches.
Workshop Focuses:
- -How to decide a tree needs pruning
- -Thinning
- -Tip pruning
- -Tips on tree care for fruiting
- -Necessary pruning techniques for vine and bush fruiting
Note: please bring your own pruning tools and appropriate outdoor attire for rain.
ESSENTIAL SPRING-SUMMER ORGANIC GARDENING : THE BASICS
February 10 - Instructor: Harry MacCormack
Over 50 years of gardening experience, author of several hundred gardening articles and newly released The Transition Document: Toward a Biologically Resilient Agriculture. A practical workshop on basic methodology to help insure your gardening success.
Workshop focuses:
- -Decisions: what, where, when
- -How to prepare soil
- -Secrets of Germination
- -To transplant or not
- -Fertility: how to maintain what plants need
- -How to achieve Nutrient Density
- -The Tao of mulch
- -Choices of equipment
- -Strategies for growing enough to feed 2, 4, 10 year round
- -Weeds, sometimes they can help
- -Irrigation
- -How to harvest for maximum production
- -Elementary permaculture, mixing annuals and perennials
LIVING SOILS: BIOLOGY AND CHEMISTRY- AN INTRODUCTION
February 24 - Instructor: Harry MacCormack
Harry's grasp of the complexities of these topics were first unveiled in his classic book The Transition Document: Toward a Biologically Resilient Agriculture (4th edition (2010) which contains several chapters relevant to this workshop.
This workshop covers in 4 hours what it takes sometimes days to cover in other Soil Food Web oriented workshops. The material is essential to understanding how and why the dominant NPK paradigm and synthetic chemical practices work against a durable agricultural future. The microherd is our ally as we move away from inexpensive petroleum inputs. Cutting edge information is unique and guides informed organic and biodynamic practices. Soil tests showing the success of these techniques will be shared. Harry continues to promote what is still considered too controversial by those who embrace the conventional, even as that thinking is practiced in much of organic agriculture.
SURBURBAN/URBAN HOMESTEAD: BEING YOUR FOOD SOURCE
March 10 - Instructor: Harry MacCormack
Harry's work with Ten Rivers Food Web helping individuals and groups use lawns and neighborhoods to create an organized food source prompts this class. Harry has consulted with many who have transitioned yards to food sheds. He will also lay out some principles for organizing a food community within neighborhoods.
Workshop Focuses:
- -How simple, how complex? Examples
- -How to get the most food from small spaces
- -What's best to grow
- -How to integrate your garden into a neighborhood
- -To dig or not to dig
- -Utilization of existing landscaping
- -Compost, mulches, teas
- -Other organic amendments
- -Nutrient dense foods
- -Year around fresh
- -Health, pleasure, community
- -Tools, watering, simple protective devices
- -Time lines, calendars for busy lives
- -How much can your body do? Helpers and other resources
BEAN, GRAIN & EDIBLE SEEDS: Homestead Scale
March 24 - Instructor: Harry MacCormack
Harry has been working with grains, beans, and seeds on a homestead scale for 40 years. During the past 7 years the research plots at Sunbow Farm have been a large part of the drive to create the Southern Willamette Valley Bean and Grain Project. Some of the plot plantings have included black, pinto, soy, lentil, red and garbanzo beans, over-wintering peas, 3 rye varieties, 2 triticale varieties, 4 wheat varieties, 2 varieties of quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat and sunflower and will all be demonstrated during this workshop.
Workshop Focuses:
- -Field preparation, rotations, moisture, temperature
- -Over-wintering, advantages and disadvantages
- -Varieties for Fall and Spring planting, some very old
- -Nutritional measurements, the WSU work we participated in, and current measurements protein etc.
- -How much is needed for a person, family, community: or how many pounds to expect from a 20’ x 20’ plot
- -Harvest how to
- -Threshing by hand and/or machine; machine designs
- -Storage
- -Creative uses of beans, grains, seeds
- -Potential community supported markets and storage
BACKYARD POULTRY
April 7th - Instructors: Steve Rose and Olaf Sweetman
Steve has a long history of raising chickens, geese, and other animals as part of an integrated small farm. Olaf has brought ducks back to Sunbow and has successfully raised them from day olds to producing egg layers.
Workshop Focuses:
- -Babies, sources, equipment, feed, etc.
- -Transition to adult; special needs, feed shifts, pasture etc.
- -Structures: how to build a variety of shelters
- -Fencing
- -Pasture and organic feed
- -Water
- -Egg production tips
- -Meat production practices and tips
- -Manure management
- -Integrating multiple kinds of poultry and their uses with other animals
- -Designing your poultry area (please bring a map of your property and plans for all to discuss)
MAKING AND UNDERSTANDING COMPOSTS AND COMPOST TEAS
April 14 - Instructor: Harry MacCormack is owner/operator of Sunbow Farm and has written and lectured internationally on these topics. He has extensive experience in making the products he uses. This popular workshop is a practical and hands-on introduction to the complexities of the Soil Food Web paradigm. Science for non-scientists, our approach leaves you with basic information and techniques. Essential information for gardeners or farmers.
Workshop Focuses:
- -Understanding the microherd and how it works for you
- -Understanding all the processes involved in producing "good compost"
- -Making composts in various conditions of climate
- -Making compost teas and extracts; brewers, foods, formulas, etc.
- -Strategies for fertilization, disease protection, fungal control etc.
- -Testing: when to do it, where to send it
COSMIC INFLUENCES ON GARDENING AND FARMING PROCESSES: Quantum and Nano Effects
April 28 - Instructor: Harry MacCormack
Practitioner of cosmic timing and other awareness in 39 years of gardening and farming, author of many articles for Llewellyn Publishing and others on these topics. This class will deal with the elements in Harry's newest book: Cosmic Influences on Agricultural Processes. This workshop has been well received as it leads your understanding through and beyond systems promoted by popular planting calendars.
Workshop Focuses:
- -Atomic and sub atomic Action; a quantum cosmology
- -Solar weather, what we now monitor, what is only recently seen, --How forecasting is effected
- -Solar wind patterns; how they determine perceived cycles, ancient and modern
- -The circle of twelve: How and why the ancients named patterns we still use to calculate perceived effects
- -Correlations in germination, breeding, growth, ripening, harvest and diet
- -Tracking cosmic patterns: What to expect over the next 187 year cycle, which begins this year, and necessary agricultural adjustments. It's most likely not what your expecting.
- -Sacred gardening: How Cosmic Influences enhance gardening and farming practices
SEED SAVING AND SEED STEWARDSHIP: The Path to Locally Adapted Seed and True Food Freedom
May 19 - Instructors: Andrew Still & Sarah Kleeger of the Seed Ambassadors Project , Adaptive Seeds and Open Oak Farm in Brownsville area
Workshop Focuses:
- -Why Save Seed: A profound act of social and ecological empowerment.
- -History of an Ancient Tradition
- -Seed Sovereignty and Food Freedom in a changing world
- -Willamette Valley as one of the best seed saving regions in the world.
- -Open Pollinated, Heritage/Heirloom, Hybrid and GMO
- -Sources: the importance of choice and diversity
- -Strategies: planning your garden for seed saving
- -Isolation: Crossers and Selfers
- -Population: Inbreeding and Outbreeding
- -Selection: Simple plant breeding for locally adapted seed
- -Harvest, Cleaning and Storage
- -Examples seed stewardship
- -Re-localizing a seed stewardship community
FALL AND WINTER ORGANIC GARDENING
June 9 - Instructor: Harry MacCormack
Along with a select few other growers in the Corvallis area, Harry and the others at Sunbow Farm have for over 35 years worked out ways to grow foods throughout the "off season". He has shared much of this knowledge through articles and in lectures throughout this and other countries.
This workshop is both a goad and a revelation of secrets. You will leave the session knowing what seems simple but requires discipline, awareness, and daily practice. Off season gardening is a total yoga.
Workshop Focuses:
- -What's with Winter in Summer? Why timing is essential.
- -Varieties for planning Fall and Winter foods.
- -Strategies for germination.
- -Fertility, how much of what, when?
- -Technical aids, an introduction to off season equipment
- -Lots of pictures of Sunbow's fall-winter crops
FOOD RIGHTS AND ORGANIZING
June 30 - Instructor: Harry MacCormack
Every few years Harry has offered to share his experience in community organizing with those who want to change some aspect of the communities in which we all live. This workshop will use his current work on Community Rights Based Initiatives as a focus for looking at strategies involved in successful organizing.
Workshop Focuses:
- -Food as a basis for organizing communities
- -Starting with "the choir"
- -Attracting the larger community
- -Organizing an organizing meeting
- -Focusing the focus
- -Rights based initiatives vs. Regulation
- -Internet, phones, door to door, events, how and when?
- -How to know when change is happening