New Farmer Training Program at UVM

By Susie Walsh Daloz, Program Director
While we are still deep in the season of root vegetables, wood stoves and shoveling, it is also time to order seeds and daydream about getting dirt under our fingernails.

For all you aspiring farmers out there, there is a new reason to get excited about this growing season: UVM has created a new Farmer Apprentice Program where in 7 months you can get a Certificate in Sustainable Farming.

In the program, students learn through managing a 2-acre plot, working alongside successful Vermont farmers and taking intensive classes from UVM professors, food systems experts and local farmers. This is an amazing opportunity to spend a focused season delving into the details of running a sustainable farm business. The program is a partnership with the Intervale, Bread and Butter Farm and your own City Market. By connecting UVM’s depth of resources with these successful food and farm businesses in the Burlington area, the program will be an exciting blend of hands-on and classroom-based farm and food education.

If the mounds of snow have you plotting to fill your yard with arugula and tomato plants, check out the UVM Farmer Apprentice Program. In one intensive season, you can transform your gardening hobby into a career in sustainable farming.  And who knows? You could be the next farmer to sell beautiful produce to City Market.

The program runs from April 4-November 1, 2011.
For more information or to apply, visit our website:
http://learn.uvm.edu/sustainability/farmer-apprentice-program/