WESTMINSTER — “Each part of your homestead benefits the other and works together in harmony.”
With this basic premise, offered by Westminster farmer Rachel Ware, the Food Security Collaborative will host her small-scale self-sufficiency workshop at 1 p.m. on Sunday, April 27, at her AlpineGlo Farm.
Ware will discuss gardening, including raised beds, container gardening, and cold frames, as well as preparing beds and using manure and compost from your own your homestead; picking beginner-friendly crops; planting timelines; staggered schedules; crop rotation; and the basics of harvesting.
She will also discuss chickens - eggs, meat, and husbandry - and will look at the harmonious cycle of chickens and one's homestead: food for you, manure for your garden, natural bug deterrents, and garden waste for your chickens.
The next step: raising more food for the table, and dealing with questions about sheep (she writes, “meat and/or lawnmower?”); goats (“meat and/or milk, and brush clearers?”); and pigs.
She also plans to discuss butchering.
In a program announcement, Ware asks, “Are you in an area that welcomes agriculture? Most zoning is conducive to small-scale animal keeping.”
Ware will then review in discussion how different animals and gardening techniques benefit land and landowners.
The Food Security Collaborative, a project of Post Oil Solutions, is active in Athens, Bellows Falls, Cambridgeport, Grafton, Rockingham, Saxtons River, and Westminster.
Its mission is to promote food security through the development of a garden-based local food system resulting in enhanced civic pride, a stronger local economy, and a more sustainable environment.