What's it all about? These workshops are designed to give you a 'hands on' experience learning how to grow your own organic vegetables, forage your own greens,and preserve your food. The sessions are held in the farmhouse, the barns, the fields, and gardens as appropriate to the season and class topics. Each workshop provides you with hands-on experiences and a take-home gift that you will have made yourself.
This year most of our workshops run from 9:30 am until 1:00 pm and cost $75 per person. They start with a light breakfast treat as you sign in and we introduce ourselves. The class starts promptly at 10:00. The workshop size is limited to 10 people, and we require you to pre-register with a deposit.
Your Instructors Allison Hosford: [email protected] Judy DeJosia: [email protected] Allison and Judy started working together over 16 years ago teaching farm-to-table workshops for four years. After years of people requesting more, they're back presenting workshops again. Allison has been managing and working her farm, Two Pond Farm, with her husband Roger Knight, for over forty years. Judy is a retired middle school science teacher, school and community garden director. Five years ago she created a productive kitchen garden on the farm, two years later she expanded into the half acre gardens at Bear Swamp Farm and two years later again, she expanded into the full acre organic garden at Bear Swamp Farm. Together they bring decades of experience and depth of knowledge with lots of humor. Please contact either Allison or Judy to sign up for a workshop(s) and to sign up for our email list so you can get more information about all of the workshops and... to see what else we are up to!
Workshop Schedule 2025 March 8 - Seeds: Saving and Starting For Self-sufficiency - Learn all about seed saving, and starting vegetables from seed. Take home some of our saved seeds and a couple of pots of sowed seeds for your garden>
May 3 - Digging Deeper Into the Garden. Take your garden to the next level with this workshop: companion planting and inter-cropping, succession gardening, crop rotation, and an in-depth look at building up the soil. You’ll take home lots of information and your own started fermented plant syrup using nettles.
June 5 - Foraging and Making Pesto - Eat Your Weeds - Many wild edibles will be identified, harvested, and prepared. You’ll take home some pesto from plants you’ve harvested and prepared!
August 9 - Preserving the Harvest - The gardens and markets are in full swing! You will learn how to preserve using the water bath technique. This is truly a hands-on experience and you will take home the canned goods you’ve made.
October 25 - Putting your Garden to Bed and Growing garlic - We will go over what you should do in your gardens now to make your spring much easier! And its time to plant garlic so that's what we're going to do..
November 8 - Pumpkin Pie From Scratch - Make a pumpkin pie from start to finish. From roasting and preparing the pumpkin, rendering lard, making the dough, preparing the custard, and finally baking a pie to take home. This is a full day workshop and will include a yummy lunch while we wait for our pies to bake!
Workshops are limited to 10 participants so register early to hold your spot.
To Register for one or more workshops Go to the Growing With Food website: