Sunshine Grove Farm

Online Course and Resources for Beginning Farmers

I found this course on the Cornell University Cooperative Extension website. It is for new farmers who are starting a farm based business. It has a strong focus on business planning, which should hopefully equal business success. The course material is available FREE on the website, or you can pay $100 and have the benefit of an instructor.

Here is the free course work:
http://beginningfarmers.cce.cornell.edu/index.php?page=learning

Or here is the info for the online course:

http://beginningfarmers.cce.cornell.edu/index.php?page=onlinecourse

I found these free PDFs too, and I thought I would share links to them, too.

Here is a free PDF from the Washington State Housing Finance Commission. Although it does have specific resources for Washington, it does have useful information about starting a farm no matter where you live. Also, it has quite a few links to other resources. You can read it here: http://www.wshfc.org/FarmRanch/resources.pdf

Also, I found this from the Center for Rural Affairs about farming advice for newbies. You can read it here: http://www.cfra.org/files/adviceforbeginners.pdfx

Happy reading and planning!

Info from ALBC on How To Improve Chicken Flock for Meat and Eggs

On the American Livestock Breed Conservancy website (http://albc-usa.org/), there are three free PDFs on how to assess chickens for breeding for meat production and egg production.

The PDFs have lots of good information and pictures for newbie chicken keepers, like us. You can find the free PDFs here: http://albc-usa.org/downloads.html#chicken.

Also, if you poke around on that same page, you can find information about raising turkeys, too.

Lots of good info so I thought I would pass it along. Enjoy!

Interesting Article about "Urban Chicken Farming"

"Urban Chicken Farming" is gaining popularity. Here is an interesting Newsweek article about keeping chickens in the city. Read it here: http://www.newsweek.com/id/168740/page/1

Also, while you are reading about the peeps you might want to check out this list of "Urban Chicken Blogs" at blogs.com. Take a look at the list here: http://www.blogs.com/topten/top-10-urban-chickens-blogs/

Before today, I had not heard the term "urban chicken farming." Now, I have seen it twice in one day. Who knew city chickens were so cool?