Learning About Urban Farming with Like-Minded Folks

The Ohio Ecological Food & Farm Association (OEFFA)annual conference was this past weekend in Granville, Ohio, and Price Hill, Delhi, and the Enright CSA were well-represented at the conference. There was a class on Saturday morning called "Preserving Beyond Canning" that I think I counted eight west-side folks attending. It was a particularly good class, too; if you want to find out more about what we learned, I suggest you visit the Hounds in the Kitchen website of the instructor, Rachel Tayse Baillieul. She has some good ideas for infusing and drying that could come in handy if our basil harvest this year is anything like it was last year.

There were lots of other classes, some interesting exhibits, and plenty of heady talk during meals (which were delicious). I learned a lot, thought about things I might not have otherwise thought about, and really enjoyed the Snowville chocolate milk, too.

One of the classes I took was on using social media to promote your farm or products (also taught by Rachel, she's a talented lady), and I found that we are ahead of the game in a sense, since we already have a website, a blog, and a Facebook page. But we can do more--of course! So, we'll be on Google Places soon (that's an easy one), and apparently Twitter could be helpful, it's especially good for in-the-moment announcements, such as letting people know about work opportunities and what's for harvest. I've been a Twitter holdout, so we'll see how that goes.

But it was a good weekend. Nice to see so many people are at least thinking about where their food comes from and how they can make more sustainable choices when they decide what they are going to eat.