Dear friend,

Connecticut needs more farmers and a lot of people would like to farm.

To help bring these two resources together CT NOFA is launching its New Connecticut Farmer program, supported in part by a USDA Beginning Farmer grant in collaboration with NOFA NY and other NOFA chapters. (according to the USDA, a beginning farmer has been farming for fewer than ten years.)

We've contracted with Shannon Raider  (a partner in Four Fields Farm) to coordinate this program.

She's designed this survey for beginning farmers. Please take a moment to fill out and pass on a survey to share your farming experiences with us.

The results will help us program our Getting Started in Organic Farming Conference on January 29, 2011 in New Haven, and the beginning farmer track at the Annual Conference on March 5th in Manchester. We have scholarship funding to help beginning farmers pay for registration to those conferences.

This February new, young, and emerging farmers are getting together for the first ever New CT Farmer Summit and Farmer Mixer! This organizing summit serves to unite farmers who are in their first to 9^th season and are looking to network, resource share and commiserate in support of our efforts to farm and KEEP farming in CT. As the next generation of Connecticut farmers, we are digging into what Connecticut has to offer. This will be an opportunity to share our successes and challenges together.

We welcome all new and beginning farmers to participate, whether they are organic or not.

If you'd like to sign up for a New Farmer eNews, reply to this email with "Add me to the New Farmer eNews" in the subject line.

This project was supported by the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, USDA, Grant # 2010-49400-21847.