And the Scholarship Goes to...

The Farmers Guild is happy to announce the first round of scholarship recipients for the Farmers Guild Scholarship Fund. The Fund works to sustain sustainable agriculture by offering financial assistance to farmers and ranchers for continued education in the fields of land stewardship, animal husbandry, marketing, soil science, business planning, water conservation and other skills that promote their success as food producers. The Scholarship Fund would not be possible without the generous contributions of dozens of community members and local organizations that invested their resources in the future of farming in our region- we’d also like to recognize a few groups that went above and beyond to help each of our recipients get closer to their goal.

Andrea Davis Cetina of Quarter Acre Farm in Sonoma, CA will be travelling to the National Young Farmers Conference at Stone Barns Center in upstate New York State. At the conference, Andrea will be able to attend unique workshops that address soil science, technical skills, agricultural policy, farm business management, conservation and more with young farmers from around the country. 

Special thanks to the Sebastopol Grange & Sonoma 
Grange Pomona for making her trip possible!

Thomas Herzog of Stone Meal Farm in Santa Cruz County develop his understanding of the entire Soil Food Web via Dr. Elaine Ingham’s online workshop series on Soil Health & Actively Aerated Compost Teas (AACT), so that he and fellow Guild members can learn how to reduce their inputs and increase their soils nutrient cycling and water capacity at the same time. 


Thanks to FarmsReach for their contribution to his online learning journey.

Marie Hoff of Capella Grazing Project and Bodega Pastures is heading to the Western Regional Grazing Conference in Chico to “meet leading holistic management practitioners, scientists and agricultural ‘solutionaries’ and learn how these leaders are using livestock to improve soil, decrease dependence on water, grow more grass and improve profits.”[1] 


Marie’s participation is due in part to the 
generous support of Slow Food Russian River. 

Stay tuned! You’ll be hearing more from Andrea, Thomas, and Marie and what they’ve learned at your local guild gatherings and through this blog. If you have a program that you’re interested in applying for, you can submit your applications  between January 5th and February 5th, 2015. Recipients will be announced on Feb 25th. If you're interested in supporting the scholarship fund, get in touch with [email protected].

[1] http://jeffersonhub.com/western-regional-grazing-conference-grazing-for-change/