Clinton Wilson

by Lynne Whitbeck | Sep 21, 2022 | 2022 Speakers, Webinars

Clinton Wilson

A native of rural Texas, Clinton has spent most of his career working for social-service non-profits in the Pacific Northwest. In 2017 he and his family relocated to Fort Collins, Colorado where he supported local farmers and ranchers through his role as the Executive Director of Poudre Valley Community Farms; a farmland cooperative assisting with land access for local producers. He is now the program director for AgWell, a project of Rocky Mountain Farmers Union that supports the well-being of farmers, ranchers, ag workers, and their families as they navigate what is often a stressful profession. Clinton is passionate about creating a more connected, community-focused, collaborative, and robust support system for the agricultural community here in the Rocky Mountain Region.

Webinar Week

Cultivating a Restorative Lifestyle

The most important part of any agriculture operation is the people doing the work. Farming and ranching can be very rewarding and also very hard on our mind and body. This workshop will explore ways that people working in agriculture can prioritize and support their own mental and physical well-being along with the well-being of the people they work with. It will also look at how the needs of the crops, and livestock inform the needs of the people raising them. Restorative economies depend on restoring the health and well-being of the farmers, ranchers, and agriculture workers that make them possible.

Ann Adams

by Lynne Whitbeck | Sep 21, 2022 | 2022 Speakers, Webinars

Ann Adams

Ann has worked in the nonprofit world for over 25 years, creating and directing national programs, collaborating with over 100 non-profit and government entities to create positive impact among producers and land stewards seeking to build & maintain sustainable farms, ranches and healthy land. Her fund development work has included raising over $1 million for national whole farm planning training for beginning farmer programming. Ann served as HMI’s Executive Director from 2015-2020. Ann has been a Holistic Management Certified Educator since 1998 and has practiced and taught Holistic Management® in multiple capacities for 25 years. She also has facilitated classes (onsite and distance learning), taught workshops and presented at conferences. She has written countless articles, helped develop agriculture-based software for financial and grazing planning and written a training handbook, At Home with Holistic Management: Creating a Life of Meaning. Ann also taught courses at Indiana University, Wittenberg University, and Antioch College. She earned her BSED from Ohio University and her PhD from Indiana University. When she isn’t serving as HMI’s Education Director, Ann is Chief Goatherd on her small farm in the Manzano Mountains and Captain of her Earthship (a house made out of tires with photovoltaics, composting toilet and rainwater harvesting) southeast of Albuquerque, New Mexico with her wife, Ellen.

Book: At Home with Holistic Management: Creating a Life of Meaning

Webinar Week

Determining Value, Risk, and Scale: How to do a Gross Profit Analysis

A Gross Profit Analysis (GPA) is an essential piece of Holistic Financial Planning and a great way to determine your cost of production for any enterprise. You can also determine the risk involved in that enterprise at different scales so you can determine the right scale for you for any enterprise as well as the profit you can expect from that enterprise. A GPA will also help you determine the right price for your products. In this experiential workshop you will have time to practice this financial tool so you will have the skills to do a GPA on your enterprise. Bring your calculator to the workshop! Taught by HMI Certified Educator Ann Adams who has been teaching Farm Service Agency Borrower Training and Beginning Farmer Financial Planning Training for over 20 years.

Rachel Armstrong

by Lynne Whitbeck | Sep 21, 2022 | 2022 Speakers, Webinars

Rachel Armstrong

As the founder and Executive Director of Farm Commons, Rachel Armstrong has led dozens of webinars and workshops for thousands of farmers nationwide and created the organization’s innovative approach to farm law risk reduction. Her vision for changing the way consumers experience business law has been awarded two fellowships: a 2012 Echoing Green Global Fellowship and a 2018 Ashoka Fellowship. As a leading authority on direct-to-consumer farm law, she has authored dozens of publications on farm law matters for farmers, alongside several academic and trade publications for attorneys. Ms. Armstrong instructs continuing legal education classes for the American Bar Association, teaches farm law for the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and is a co-author of “Farmers’ Guide to Business Structures,” published by Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education. A graduate of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law and the University of Wisconsin Madison, she lives in Northern Minnesota. She is licensed to practice law in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Webinar Week

Building Your Farm Team: Strategizing Selecting an Insurance Agent, Accountant, or Attorney for the Farm

Eva Stricker

by Lynne Whitbeck | Sep 21, 2022 | 2022 Speakers, Webinars

Eva Stricker

Eva is a dryland microbial ecologist with interests in how plant-microbe interactions in soil affect biogeochemical cycling such as carbon and nitrogen. She has a background in curriculum development for learners of all ages and backgrounds, for example through a science communication fellowship with the Explora Museum and a teaching assistantship that built ecology and evolution labs for the University of New Mexico Department of Biology. She has also trained in active listening and mediation as a way of better engaging with collaborators across all backgrounds. Eva was born and raised in New Mexico (weekends spent on a horse on her dad’s property in La Puebla), explored the coasts for college and her masters, and came back to New Mexico for her PhD working with the Sevilleta Long Term Ecological Research Station. At Quivira Coalition, she enjoys conducting field work around organic amendment research, developing curriculum, organizing, facilitating, and presenting outreach events such as in-field workshops and academic conferences, and overseeing and conducting technical support such as grant-writing and assisting others with grant-writing. In her free time, she enjoys vintage fashion, dance, and music, and watching F1 car racing.

Webinar Week

Erosion Control and Amendments & Organic Amendments on Rangeland

Across the intermountain west, interest has been growing in using organic amendments and native seeding with erosion control structures to increase plant establishment and productivity while ameliorating active headcuts. The Carbon Ranch Initiative has built rock rundowns on five ranches across New Mexico, with treatments of compost, mulch, and a native grass mixture to measure and compare the impacts of the treatments on different soil health indicators. This webinar will explain how we’re conducting this research, and the initial results we’ve found one year after building the structures and adding the treatments.

George Whitten

by Lynne Whitbeck | Sep 19, 2022 | 2022 Speakers, Webinars

George Whitten

George was born into ranching in Saguache, Colorado, on the operation his grandfather established in 1893. Knowledgeable in all phases of sheep and cattle production, he specializes in grass-finishing techniques, genetics, soil health, certified organic production, and restorative ranching practices. He has been a Holistic Management practitioner for 35 years, and he served on the Board of Directors of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District for more than 25 years. He and his wife, Julie Sullivan, co-founded Sweet Grass Cooperative, a marketing coop of small family ranches raising grass-finished beef. He and Julie are also founding mentors in the Quivira Coalition’s New Agrarian Program. More and more as he gets older, George believes in finding whole solutions to whole problems.

Webinar Week

Leasing Our Future in a Changing World

A lease, as defined in the dictionary, is a contract by which one party conveys land, property, services, etcetera to a second party for a specified time usually in return for a periodic payment. There is a great deal of room for innovative thinking in that definition, which is why understanding leasing is so important to a young person who may not own land, livestock, or equipment for starting a business. In this workshop, learn how to take the grazing skills you have and combine them with a leasing opportunity. The presenters will share what makes for a win-win grazing relationship and how a lease provides clarity and structure for this. The presenters will also discuss some of the economics behind leasing land and discuss some unconventional leases that are being implemented in a constantly changing agricultural landscape. This workshop is geared towards beginning or aspiring ranchers who are in the first 10 years of their career.

Roxanne Swentzell

by wpengine | Sep 6, 2022 | 2022 Speakers, Field Days, Special Events

Roxanne Swentzell

Born in 1962 in Taos NM, into a family of Santa Clara Pueblo Artists (Naranjos), Roxanne grew up with her two sisters in a creative environment. As a young child, she wasn’t able to communicate due to a speech impediment, but her mother handed her some clay and Roxanne found a new language. She sculpted human figurines depicting something going on in her life that she wanted others to know. Meantime her parents were studying solar energy and as a family built themselves a solar adobe house in Santa Fe, NM. They had a small garden plot and fruit tree along with turkeys and chickens. Roxanne took it upon herself at an early age to be the caretaker of the gardens and animals. She also took over (from her mother) making the dishes for the household. Roxanne was able to attend the Institute of American Indian Arts while finishing her high school credits. She then went on to study at the Portland Museum Art School in Oregon but after a year she returned home to be closer to her Native Culture and raise her two children. She built a solar adobe house by hand for her and her children at Santa Clara Pueblo. During this time, Roxanne was introduced to Permaculture and with the help of her husband (at that time) Joel Glanzberg, and a like-minded friend (Brett Bakker), they started the non-profit, Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute in 1989. Roxanne’s home site was the place they would experiment with the practices of permaculture and teach. Soon it became obvious that Roxanne’s ties to the Pueblo culture steered the Institute into cultural preservation and ways to become more self-sufficient. She has written and had published, “Our Home” an experimental place in sustainable life-ways, “Droppings” an occasional newsletter for the community, “Extra-ordinary People”, (NM Magazine Artist Series), a number of “how-to” booklets, and her latest on the diet of her people, “The Pueblo Food Experience” Museum of NM Press. Roxanne also created The Tower Gallery in Pojoaque, NM where she shows and sells her artwork. These days, Roxanne homeschools her three oldest grandchildren, tends gardens and animals, makes sculptures, teaches building and gardening skills, and gives talks all around the country on her art, work in the tribe, and permaculture. Visit her website.

Field Day

Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute: Erosion Control and Land Health Workshop