BRATTLEBORO — Demand for year-round local produce is on the rise, as demonstrated in increasing interest in winter farmers' markets and winter CSAs.
Learn to store and market your produce year-round too. University of Vermont Extension, with support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program, offers a one-day workshop on crop storage for fruit and vegetable growers, aggregators, processors, and distributors.
The workshop is Sept. 17, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., at the UVM Extension office, 8 University Way.
The focus is on long-term storage of crops for sale throughout the winter and into early spring, but is relevant to a variety agricultural and food storage needs.
The instructor is UVM Extension Agricultural Engineer Chris Callahan, whose work focuses on enhancing Vermont's food systems through education and outreach programs on analysis, design, evaluation, and adoption of infrastructure, technology and equipment that meets the needs of food producers and processors.
Callahan will cover the growing importance of long-term crop storage; principles of energy and heat transfer; basic heating and refrigeration; construction for utility and efficiency; maintaining temperature, airflow and humidity; biological processes of crops in storage; storage characteristics of various crops and sizing; and design of storage systems.
Included are pre-class work, instruction, group discussion, hands-on activities, and individual work time. Participants are encouraged to bring information on their own storage needs and plans to review with the class and instructor.
Growers who already have systems in place will benefit from an enhanced understanding of storage needs of each crop and will gain ideas on how to increase efficiency or expand existing systems.
Those who have not yet begun to store crops will benefit from in-class work time devoted to designing an individualized system from scratch.
Participants will leave with the skills and knowledge to create or enhance their crop storage systems based and the individual needs of each farm and the various crops they grow and store.