We don’t have to tell you that farming is a skill! As farmworkers, we live that skill everyday. From mastering harvest techniques, to tractor maintenance, to knowing the seasonality of crops, to making that market stand pretty, to pivoting during storms or extreme weather to protect the crops…and that’s just to name a few. But what about FARM MATH and SPREADSHEETS?! The behind the scenes planning that happens in the off season.

Crop planning is to farming what training is to marathon runners: on race day it’s not necessarily seen, but it’s what gets you to/through the finish line without running out of steam (or crops!). But as farmworkers we may not be exposed to crop plan development because it often happens in the winter and by those in management or ownership positions – that changes today!

Join us on Tuesday, January 13 at 4pm PT / 7pm ET on zoom.

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At our upcoming Crop Planning 101 teach-in, we’ll be joined by seasoned farm manager, Maia Lipkin of Mountain Bounty Farm, who will walk us through the nitty gritty practices and considerations of preparing a crop plan individualized to our farms and our outlets. She’ll also use her own farm as a case study, sharing how Mountain Bounty approaches crop planning for CSA as a crew.

We’ll also discuss how to prepare a crop plan with intention and care for our communities and who we are growing for. We’ll hear from other farmers who crop plan in community with the neighbors they are nourishing, centering cultural relevance and their collective needs, and honoring ancestral practices. And there will be plenty of time for Q&A, so bring your crop planning questions!


Facilitator Bio: Maia Lipkin collaboratively manages Mountain Bounty Farm, in Nevada City, California where she helps run a 600 member CSA. Maia is enchanted with both the physical and intellectual nature of farming. This will be Maia’s fifteenth year working in organic agriculture. When she’s not farming, she’s usually thinking about food while out on long walks in the Sierra Nevada foothills, or crawling up, and swimming down rapids in the Yuba river canyon.

Accessibility information: This session will be facilitated in English and simultaneously interpreted into Spanish by Cooperativa Brujúlas. Closed captioned will also be available.

Co-hosted by Not Our Farm, UW-Extension, and FairShare CSA Coalition.

Please note that Free School for Farmworkers sessions are a farmworker-only space. We define a farmworker as someone working on a farm they do not own, for or without pay, including interns, apprentices, cooperative workers, and aspiring farmworkers. If you have questions about whether you are eligible to participate, please contact Anita Adalja at anita@notourfarm.org

Free School for Farmworkers strives to create pockets of opportunity to skill share, connect, and learn about parts of agriculture that can be overlooked, forgotten, or hoarded due to the nature of working on farms under capitalism.

Flyer designed by Grace Paik