To everything there is a season.
A time to reap, a time to sow -and a time to attend farm shows and conferences.
"Everybody I know tries to schedule meetings from December to March," said Dan Welch, a resource educator at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Cayuga County. "The farmers are out harvesting well into November and by April, they're doing tillage prep work."
That's why so many agricultural organizations - New York Farm Bureau, Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, the Natural Resource Agricultural and Engineering Service, the New York State Vegetable Growers Association to name a few - look to these months to hold annual meetings, trade shows and educational seminars.
Moravia farmer Don Hatfield appreciates Cornell Cooperative Extension of Cayuga County's annual Crop Day conference - held last week at the Grant Avenue offices - because it allows him to get updated objective information about topics that are important to him during a time of year that he's the least busy.
Hatfield grows corn, oats and hay. Cornell conferences during the winter, he said, are especially helpful because of the expertise that's shared by people at them who are world-renown researchers.
Russell Hahn, an associate professor of crop and soil sciences at Cornell University, was a featured speaker at the Cooperative Extension event. Hatfield said Hahn's work in crop research with Cornell is invaluable to farmers in Central New York, where the test fields are centered.
"They do the trials and they pay for them," he said. "They bring the information to us, and we're not taking it from Monsanto. No one's trying to sell me anything here."
Rose Ryan of Moravia, owner of Harvest Hill Organics, went to the "Restoring our Seed" conference in Brattleboro, Vt., in December to learn more about saving seeds from year to year to produce genetically identical plants.
At the three-day conference, she met like-minded organic farmers, who see seed-saving as a link to restoring food and farming traditions.
Ryan already saves seeds from her beans, flowers and tomatoes, but she wanted to know more about saving squash and potato seeds.
"It was just fabulous," she said. "I got a lot of valuable information. It was also great to be with other growers because the nature of our work is so solitary."
Kelly O'Hara, of Oakwood Dairy in Aurelius, focuses on the crop side of the operation, as well planning and maintenance. He attends a lot of conferences in the winter months, most based on nutrient management and labor issues. He was at Cornell's Crop Day, but he said some of the conferences he attends are in other states.
He recently returned from a conference in Indiana where he toured a 27,000-cow dairy, more than 10 times the size of his own operation.
"It was nice to see an operation that size and how they do it," O'Hara said.
Not all of the shows are purely educational. The Empire State Fruit and Vegetable Expo at the Oncenter in Syracuse Feb. 15-17 will focus on the commodities grown in New York, including potatoes, sweet corn, onions, tree fruit, berries, cabbage, snap beans, peas, beets, carrots, leafy greens, vine crops and stone fruit. But the show also features more than 100 trade show exhibitors, giving farmers the opportunity to see what's new.
Later in the month, at the New York Farm Show, which takes up five buildings at the state fairgrounds in Geddes, there will be some educational material, but it will largely give farmers a chance to shop and check out displays.
"The antique John Deere tractors, that's what I go to see," Hatfield said.
New York Farm Bureau will be at that show, said Alan Knight, head of communications for the state's largest farm lobbying organization. Farm Bureau is out to increase its membership and is looking to be where farmers gather when they are off their tractors and out of their barns.
"As soon as we get a spring thaw to the end of the first hay cutting, they're busy," he said about catching farmers when they have time to pay attention.
"It makes sense," Ryan said about holding farm conferences in the colder months. "No one can get away in the summer."
Staff writer Louise Hoffman Broach can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 238 or louise.hoffman@lee.net
"Everybody I know tries to schedule meetings from December to March," said Dan Welch, a resource educator at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Cayuga County. "The farmers are out harvesting well into November and by April, they're doing tillage prep work."
That's why so many agricultural organizations - New York Farm Bureau, Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, the Natural Resource Agricultural and Engineering Service, the New York State Vegetable Growers Association to name a few - look to these months to hold annual meetings, trade shows and educational seminars.
Moravia farmer Don Hatfield appreciates Cornell Cooperative Extension of Cayuga County's annual Crop Day conference - held last week at the Grant Avenue offices - because it allows him to get updated objective information about topics that are important to him during a time of year that he's the least busy.
Hatfield grows corn, oats and hay. Cornell conferences during the winter, he said, are especially helpful because of the expertise that's shared by people at them who are world-renown researchers.
Russell Hahn, an associate professor of crop and soil sciences at Cornell University, was a featured speaker at the Cooperative Extension event. Hatfield said Hahn's work in crop research with Cornell is invaluable to farmers in Central New York, where the test fields are centered.
"They do the trials and they pay for them," he said. "They bring the information to us, and we're not taking it from Monsanto. No one's trying to sell me anything here."
Rose Ryan of Moravia, owner of Harvest Hill Organics, went to the "Restoring our Seed" conference in Brattleboro, Vt., in December to learn more about saving seeds from year to year to produce genetically identical plants.
At the three-day conference, she met like-minded organic farmers, who see seed-saving as a link to restoring food and farming traditions.
Ryan already saves seeds from her beans, flowers and tomatoes, but she wanted to know more about saving squash and potato seeds.
"It was just fabulous," she said. "I got a lot of valuable information. It was also great to be with other growers because the nature of our work is so solitary."
Kelly O'Hara, of Oakwood Dairy in Aurelius, focuses on the crop side of the operation, as well planning and maintenance. He attends a lot of conferences in the winter months, most based on nutrient management and labor issues. He was at Cornell's Crop Day, but he said some of the conferences he attends are in other states.
He recently returned from a conference in Indiana where he toured a 27,000-cow dairy, more than 10 times the size of his own operation.
"It was nice to see an operation that size and how they do it," O'Hara said.
Not all of the shows are purely educational. The Empire State Fruit and Vegetable Expo at the Oncenter in Syracuse Feb. 15-17 will focus on the commodities grown in New York, including potatoes, sweet corn, onions, tree fruit, berries, cabbage, snap beans, peas, beets, carrots, leafy greens, vine crops and stone fruit. But the show also features more than 100 trade show exhibitors, giving farmers the opportunity to see what's new.
Later in the month, at the New York Farm Show, which takes up five buildings at the state fairgrounds in Geddes, there will be some educational material, but it will largely give farmers a chance to shop and check out displays.
"The antique John Deere tractors, that's what I go to see," Hatfield said.
New York Farm Bureau will be at that show, said Alan Knight, head of communications for the state's largest farm lobbying organization. Farm Bureau is out to increase its membership and is looking to be where farmers gather when they are off their tractors and out of their barns.
"As soon as we get a spring thaw to the end of the first hay cutting, they're busy," he said about catching farmers when they have time to pay attention.
"It makes sense," Ryan said about holding farm conferences in the colder months. "No one can get away in the summer."
Staff writer Louise Hoffman Broach can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 238 or louise.hoffman@lee.net
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